Does anybody know about a Penguin recovery for a small business website?
-
Does anybody know about a Penguin recovery for a small business website and the methodology they used? I have a PR 5 website that lost more than 50% of the traffic in Google. I removed some of the wide site links at the best of my ability but I see little or no results so far.
-
hmmm...I went looking on your profile to see if you had listed a URL and having run your domain through Open Site Explorer, I can see that it is very likely that the bulk of your problems are coming from your site's external link profile.
Here are a few more blog posts that might help you to get a clear picture of things:
Penguins, Pandas and Panic at the Zoo by Dr Pete Meyers.
Anchor Text Distribution: Avoiding Over Optimization by Geoff Kenyon.
Bad Backlink Checking by Richard Baxter
and for something a little less intense, but that can help immensely if you are trying to get a picture of your own situation, Link Removal Flowchart by Bob Meinke.
Hope that helps,
Sha
P.S. The Google Algorithm Change History can also be very useful in checking whether changes in site traffic, rankings etc coincide with changes at Google.
-
Hi Sorin,
If your site tanked on 25th-26th April, then it is safe to presume that your site was indeed hit by the Penguin update. There was a smaller Panda update that happened on 18th April as well. If you have access to Google Analytics or rank trackers, you should be able to tell by looking at the dates whether it was Panda or Penguin.
Coming to the issue of your small website, I would agree with Sha. It would be most appropriate if you can disclose the affected URL on the forum for real helpful suggestions.
Penguin penalized everything that was on the 'over' side. It punished sites with over-optimization at each level. Be it links (internal and external both) or the covert keyword stuffing across web pages. Penguin's impact could be felt more extensively because it affected almost everything that an SEO would have done to boost site's rankings.
I guess, if you are really looking for non-generalized approach towards helping your cause, then website's url is much needed.
Best Regards,
Rajesh Dhawan
-
Hi Sorin,
There are a couple of very comprehensive blog posts that will give you some very good information on identifying and removing problem links. Both talk about issues and successes.
The first of these is Identifying Link Penalties in 2012 by Ryan Kent.
Ryan also provided some very detailed information in this Q&A thread.
The second post that provides real detail on a recovery is How W.P.M.U. Recovered from the Penguin Update by Ross Hudgens. As you will see from reading all of these, recovery will be heavily influenced by the actual elements that have contributed to the problem.
The most critical part of a recovery is in accurately identifying the issues that are contributing to the problem...one big thing to remember is that Penguin came accompanied by another Panda. I have seen instances of people making the assumption that they were hit by Penguin, when in fact Panda finally caught up with them. This is not to say that your problem is not from Penguin, but to emphasize that you need to make an informed analysis and be sure of the real issues before going down a path.
If you are unsure where to start, then you could post the site URL and those here can take a look and give you their thoughts.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
If it was panda its algorithmic, wait till Google re-crawls your site. Also keep in mind if you are removing links that you will need to not only remove them but replace them to regain rankings.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Penalty for duplicate content on the same website?
Is it possible to get a penalty for duplicate content on the same website? I have a old custom-built site with a large number of filters that are pre-generated for speed. Basically the only difference is the meta title and H1 tag, with a few text differences here and there. Obviously I could no-follow all the filter links but it would take an enormous amount of work. The site is performing well in the search. I'm trying to decide whether if there is a risk of a penalty, if not I'm loath to do anything in case it causes other issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
One website with multiple advertising domains?
Working on a website for a business with distinct lines of business, one is more B2C and one is B2B yet the type of service is related. To think of an example, let's say it's for a photographer who does weddings, but also does real estate photography. He wants to make sure he can market to each audience separately so when they go to his homepage the homepage content is oriented for the services that audience is looking for. If you use two separate websites, they have to be totally unique to avoid dupe content flags, and you also end up diluting each website's domain authority since you are spreading your inbound links between two different websites. However would this be the optimum strategy then? One website hosted on: bozophotography.com A second domain: bozoweddings.com that has a 301 redirect to the wedding section home page on bozophotography.com A third domain: bozorealestatephotos.com that has a 301 redirect to the real estate section home page. So on certain advertising, business cards, etc, the business could choose which domain they want to publicize to insure the audience sees a home page related to that line of business. I suppose you could publicize it as a subdomain like: realestate.bozophotography.com or as a slash address: bozophotography.com/weddings but those seem much less professional, visually, than just having bozoweddings.com. There is rumor you don't quite get 100% of the link juice, but the main domain would be used the majority of the time so I really see no downside?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jazee0 -
What is the difference between Multilingual and multiregional websites?
Hi all, So, I have studied about multilingual and multiregional websites. As soon as possible, we will expand the website languages to english and spanish. The urls will be like this: http://example.com/pt-br
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mobic
http://example.com/en-us
http://example.com/es-ar Thereby, the tags will be like this: Great! But my doubt is: To /es-ar/ The indexing will be only to spanish languages in Argentina? What about the other countries that speak the same language, like Spain, Mexico, etc.I don't know if it will be possible develop a Spanish languages especially for each region. Should I do an multiregional website or only multilingual? How Google sees this case? Thanks for any advice!!1 -
Best Sitemap for Large Website
i have more than 3500 pages on my website. Please let me know the best sitemap plugin for my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard1 -
Rel=canonical on pre-migration website
I have an e-commerce client that is migrating platforms. The current structure of their existing website has led to what I would believe to be mass duplicate content. They have something north of 150,000 indexed URLs. However, 143,000+ of these have query strings and the content is identical to pages without any query string. Even so, the site does pretty well from an organic stand point compared to many of its direct competitors. Here is my question: (1) I am assuming that I should go into WMT (Google/Bing) and tell both search engines to ignore query strings. (2) In a review of back links, it does appear that there is a mish mash of good incoming links both to the clean and the dirty URLs. Should I add a rel=canonical via a script to all the pages with query strings before we make our migration and allow the search engines some time to process? (3) I'm assuming I can continue to watch the indexation of the URLs, but should I also tell search engines to remove the URLs of the dirty URLs? (4) Should I do Fetch in WMT? And if so, what sequence should I do for 1-4. How long should I wait between doing the above and undertaking the migration?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Questions on Google Penguin Clean-up Strategy
Hello Moz Community! I was hit with a REAL bad penalty in May 2013, and the date corresponds to Penguin #4. Never received a manual spam action, but the 50% drop in traffic was very apparent. Since then, I've had a slow reduction in traffic, to where I am today... which is almost baseline. Increases in traffic have not occurred regardless of efforts. In researching a little more, I see that my old SEO companies built my links with exact keyterm matches, many of them repeated over and over, verbatim, on different sites. I've heard two pieces of advice that I don't like 1) scrap the site, or 2) disavow all the links. I would rather see if I can get the webmasters to change the link to something generic, or my brand name, before I do either of these. To scrap my site and start new will be damn near impossible because I'm in an extremely competitive niche, and my site has age (since 2007), so rather work with what I have. A couple of questions, for folks who are in the know about this penalty, if I may: This penguin update, #4, on May 22nd, was it ONLY because of the link text? Or was it also because of the link quality? None of the updates before it harmed me, and I believe those were because of the quality? Could it be for links linking from my blog to my site? My blog (ex. www.mysite.com/blog), has close to 1,000 blog posts, and back in the days I would write these really long, keyword stuffed links leading to www.mysite.com. I've been in the process of cleaning these up, and shortening them, and changing them to more generic (click here's), but it is a LONG and painstaking process. If I get webmasters to change text to just the url or brand name, that's better than disavowing, correct? As long the linking site has a decent spam score and PA/DA on OSE? Is having SOME exact anchor text okay on these links? Is it just the abuse that's the problem? If so, how many should I leave? (like 5 max per keyword?) Or should I just change to the url, or disavow altogether, any and all links that have exact keyword matches? I've downloaded my link profile from OSE and Majestic, and will do so from Ahrefs (I believe it is)? Does Webmaster Tools have any section that can help give me insights into the issue? If so, can you point me in the right direction? Can I get partial credit, for some work done? For instance, say a major update, or crawl, happens, and I've only fixed/disavowed 25% percent of the links by then, is there a possibility that I get a small boost in traffic? Or am I in the doghouse till they are all fixed? Say I clean/disavow everything up, will my improvement be seen in the next crawl? Or the next Penguin update? As there may be a substantial difference in time there. 😎 I see AHREFS, has some information on anchor text... any rules of thumb as to percentages of use of a certain anchor text, to see if I'm abusing or not, before I start undertaking all of this? Thanks! Could the penalty have "passed" altogether, and this is just where I rank? Thanks guys, but the last thing I want to do is ditch my site... I will work hard on this, but need some guidance. Much appreciated! David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
Possible Penguin 2.1 fix - Anybody tested this?
Possible Penguin 2.1 fix? This happened to client site - Stay with me - this takes some explaining… A clients home page is set as index.html Which in domain settings goes to the root address: http://www.domain.com/ But is a setting on a domain/hosting - you can set any page to the root- I always link directly to the root address (the second one) So if you set the new root page as http://www.domain.com/index.htm --- going to the root - essentially is a new page- any previous poor linking would be then broken and would have no effect So it would be a matter of changing the domain settings to use the index.htm page (which would function exactly the same- internal link structure of site goes to the root) thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OnlineAssetPartners0 -
Looking for guidance on transferring and incorporating content from a purchased website into an existing website
One of my client’s recently purchased a competitor’s website, and we would like to transfer the content from the competitor’s website (http://www.wilson-hardness.com) to our client’s existing website (http://www.buehler.com); at the same time we want to minimize loss in keyword rankings the competitor’s website has established. The two websites work in similar fields: one measures and offers products in scientific measurement and analysis of various materials. The other website offers products that are in similar field: hardness testing equipment. Looking for suggestions on how to proceed or recommended reading on the topic. I’ve tried to do research, but haven’t found anything, so I’m not sure what to topic-names to search. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TopFloor0