Been Penalized, Starting from Scratch, Need Advice
-
Good Morning,
We've been penalized for unnatural links on the site : http://goo.gl/JgK1e
After attempting to contact many of the sites with links pointing at our site, and getting no response, we decided to start from scratch on a new domain : http://goo.gl/XUH3f
The first thing I did once the new domain was up was remove all of the unique content (text) from the original site and place it on the new site...
I am still having a difficult time getting the new site to rank in the SERPS.
Can you guys please provide pointers as to what steps should be taken to get the new domain, http://goo.gl/XUH3f a high ranking in the SERPS?
Thanks!!
-
But my site is not SEO related, and it is very hard to find sites that I can get links from in my industry.
-
If your site is seo related, yup (in fact I just left a comment). Also note that these backlinks are nofollow. Why would you think this is a bad place to leave a comment on?
If there were 6817684 comments with shitty, spammy links - I would say no.
-
Oleg,
One of the highest Domain Authorities in my OSE profile is for this site: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ahmed/ultimate-seo-checklist/
Are you saying that going ahead and commenting on this blog with my new domain as the URL is a good strategy? Isn't that part of what got me here in the first place?
-
Before you start building links again I recommend you invest in a 10 year old + domain, domain authority is a huge factor..
-
Thank you both! I will look into this right now.
Also, i'm open for anymore suggestions anyone has
thanks again!
-
Easiest way is to sort by domain authority or page authority and just go down the list. View each page > If the page's content has 1) real content, 2) low outbound links and 3) is relevant to your site, its probably a good link.
You can also write more unique content - although I'd build more links first since you say that your current site is all unique content already.
-
I recommend a link building strategy. You have a good site however it needs to have some authority (relevant quality links). There are many ways to build links to your site: Guest Blogging / Press Releases / Contacting a webmaster and giving some value in exchange for a link. Also take a look at your competitor links for whatever keywords you are trying to rank for. Type the keyword in google and take the top site paste it into OSE and evaluate these links. Are these links relevant? Do these sites have fresh content? Will your site / Can your site add value to the users of these site? If all three answers are yes, do whatever it takes to get those links or similar links.
Build a blog on your site and get others to blog on it using a good blog service (http://myblogguest.com), make sure that you only link to other relevant quality sites (sites that have good linking profiles).
Be sure to keep you link ratio natural (majority of your inbound links anchored with your URL/Brand name)
Create content on your blog that others will be interested in: Cute video of 20 kittens in a plastic bin... 5 reasons why our bins are indestructible... Yogi gets stuck in bin...
Create unique (entertaining, educational, funny) content that others will naturally link to and then share it with niche related people via social networks.
SEOmoz has hundreds of great link building strategy that you can utilize. Simply go to the search in the top right and type: link building or guest blogging or Press Release.
-
Thanks Oleg, but just out of curiosity, how do i know which links are considered good and which ones are bad?
Also, any advice other than building links?
Thanks,
-
Build more links? http://bit.ly/OAhzDI
The previous domain was also more keyword rich so it ranked easier.
Quick tip - go through the old site's backlinks, pick out the good ones, and ask the webmaster to change the URL to the new site.
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
-
Google search console: 404 and soft 404 without any back-links. Redirect needed?
Hi Moz community, We can see the 404 and soft 404 errors in Google web masters. Usually these are non-existing pages which are found somewhere on internet by Google. I can see some of these reported URLs don't have any back-links (checked on ahrefs tool). Do we need to redirect each and every link reported here or ignore or marked to be fixed? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Will Google penalize 2 sites for targeting "like" keyword phrases?
I own (2) different websites, one an HTML site that has been live for 20 years and a ecommerce site that has been live for 7 years. We sell custom printed (branded) tents for use at trade shows and other indoor and outdoor events. While our ecomm site targets "trade show" tents our HTML site targets "event" tents. I believe that the keyword phrases are dissimilar enough that targeting "trade show tents" on one site and "event tents" on the other should not cause Google to penalize one or the other or both sites for having similar content. The content is different on both sites. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with, or opinions on, my thoughts... either way. Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | terry_tradeshowstuff
Terry Hepola0 -
Can Google penalize a country keyword
Hello again guys Thank you for your previous help with www.kids-academy.co.uk - we are slowly getting there! I wanted to ask something I cannot seem to find an answer to, can Google penalize you by country? By this I mean; Search term
Algorithm Updates | | LeanneSEO
Nursery franchise UAE Page 1
Nursery franchise UK Nowhere to be found! The page in question (well a section of the site) has been optimised for UK, however, as they do have a sister site in the UAE, it mentions those areas too. The pages I have been working on are now ranking reasonably well to say there is a long way to go, but for long tailed keywords NOT including anything to do with the UK. There are no naughty backlinks with the anchor text to do with the UK, the server is hosted in the UK, it is a .co.uk URL (no geotagging but I would like to know if this is of any use with this type of URL, everything says no, but it cant harm can it?) - is it possible Google due to bad practices in the past have slapped a penalty on the specific keyword area? Not something I have come across previously but I am scratching my head over here! Time for a brew break 😄 Thanks in advance guys! Leanne1 -
Simon Covell Divorce messed up my rankings, please advice?
Hi there, I was getting good ranking on some of the 'Divorce' related keywords but after Simon Covell name involved with divorce, I've just noticed that I am pushed back to page 4 today. Page 1 is one full of magazine and newspaper websites, i don't think i can compete with them. Shall I wait and hope that this news will be old and hopefully they won't rank or is there anything I can do bring back my rankings? It was one of our good converting keyword 😞 Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Rubix0 -
Panda, Negative SEO and now Penguin - help needed
Hi,
Algorithm Updates | | mlm12
We are small business owners who've been running a website for 5 years that provides our income. We've done very little backlinking ourselves, and never did paid directories or anything like that - usually just occasional forum or blog responses. A few articles here and there with some of our keyword phrases for internal pages. Of course I admit we've done some kwp backlinks on some blogs, but our anchor text profile is largely brand names and our domain name and non keywords (excepting for some "bad" backlinks). Our DA is 34, PA 45 for our home page. We were doing great until last Sept 27 when we got hit by Panda and have been working on deoptimizing our site for keywords, we made a new site in Wordpress for good architecture and ease of use for our customers, and we're deleting/repurposing low quality pages and making our content more robust. We haven't yet recovered from this and now it appears we got hit May 22 for Penguin...ARGH! I recently discovered (hard to have time to devote to everything with just two of us) that others can "negative seo" a site now and I feel this has happened based upon results below... I signed up for linkdetox.com yesterday and it gives a grim picture of our backlinks (says we are in "deadly risk" territory). We have 83 "toxic" links and 600 some "suspicious" links (many are in malware/malicious listed sites, many are .pl domains from Poland, others are I believe foreign domains, or domains that are a bunch or letters that make no sense, or spammy sounding emd domains), - this makes up 80% of our links. As this is our only business, our income is now 1/3 of what it has been, even with PPC ads going as we've been hit hard by all of this and are wondering if we can survive fixing this. We do have an SEO firm minimally helping us along with guidance on recovering, but with income so low, we are doing the work ourselves and can't afford much. Needless to say, we are quite distressed and from reading around, not sure if we'll be able to recover and that is deeply saddening, especially from Negative SEO. We want to make sure we are on the right path for recovery if possible, hence my questions. We haven't been in contact with Google for reconsideration, again, no penalty messages from them. First of all, if we don't have a manual penalty, would you still contact all the toxic/malicious/possible porn looking sites and ask for a link removal, wait, ask for link removal, wait then disavow? Or just go straight to Google disavow? For backlinks coming from sites that are "gone" (like a message saying the account has been suspended), or there is no website there anymore, do I try and contact them too? Or go direct to disavow? Or do nothing? For the sites flagged as malicious (by linkdetox, my browser, or by Google), I don't want to try and open them on my browser to see if this site is legitimate. If linkdetox doesn't have the contact info for these - what are we supposed to do? For "suspicious" foreign sites that I can't read the webpage -would you still disavow them (I've seen many here say links from foreign sites should be disavowed). How do you keep up with all this is someone is negative SEOing you? We're really frustrated that Google's change has made it possible for competitors to tank your business (arguably though, if we had a stronger backlink profile this may not have hurt, or not as much - not sure). When you are small biz owners and can't hire a group to constantly monitor backlinks, get quality backlinks, content, site optimization, etc - it seems an almost impossible task to do. Are wordpress left nav and footer link anchor text an issue for Penguin? I would think Google would realize these internal links will be repetitive for the same anchor text on Wordpress (I know Matt Cutts said to not use the same anchor text more than once for internal linking -but obviously nav and footer menus will do this). What would you do if this was you? Try and fix it all? Start over with a new domain and 301 it (some say this has been working)? Just start over with a new domain and don't redirect? Thanks for your input and advice. We appreciate it.0 -
How long does it take for a website to starting ranking once the website becomes live?
I am in the process of finishing the last touches on my new company's website and I am wondering about the process of getting my new website to rank on google. I've heard many different things from many different people who believe they know everything about SEO, but they can't all be right. Is there a definite timeline? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | uofmiamiguy0 -
URL is starting to appear capitalized in Google Search Results. How come?
Our domain (www.absoluteautomation.com) has just today started appearing in search results as www.AbsoluteAutomation.com. Any ideas why?
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
Are we penalized if our meta description is longer than 150-160 characters?
I've read on other SEO sites that description can be 350 characters or 60 words long. Some of my descriptions are a little bit over those numbers. Will Search Engines stop crawling through the description at after a certain amount of characters, or will it completely ignore it if it's too long, hence hurting my site's SEO performance?
Algorithm Updates | | jmbuytaert0