Penguin issue or wrong linkbuilding strategy?
-
Quite a few month ago before Google implemented Penguin algorithm I had a great situation.
After 24th of April my ranking and traffic dropped instantly. Here a a screenshot from my GA: http://imageshack.us/a/img15/4717/screenshot20121013at120.png
I have reviewed my linkbuilding strategy and on-page optimisation however some keywords which dropped out of page 5 don't want to come back even close to page 1.
I would appreciate a professional advise on how my strategy, on-page optimisation can be improved.
For those who are interested here is my domain: http://www.desertsafariabudhabi.ae
The keyword which is more interesting for me is "desert safari abu dhabi".
Thanks in advance,
Russel
-
This is an interesting case. Your analytics data definitely looks like a Penguin hit site...but when I look at your backlinks you only have 3 domains linking to you. Penguin is almost always about GROSS abuse of anchor texted keywords in backlinks. I just can't see that happening with only having 3 backlinking domains.
I can think of a few possible reasons for your traffic to look like this:
1. Do you have a domain that you are redirecting to this one? If the backlink profile of that domain was affected by Penguin then this would directly affect your current domain.
2. It's possible that one or more of the 3 domains that link to you were affected by Penguin and therefore, you lost the link juice from that domain on April 24.
3. When did you create this site? It's possible that the initial traffic on your graph was a honeymoon boost that a new site often gets and you just happened to drop at the end of April.
4. You dropped from about 40 visits per day to about 15 or so. It's possible that you were holding the #1 position but a competitor came in and beat you. A drop from #1 to #2 or #3 could result in a decrease of traffic like this. Mind you, you mentioned that keywords dropped to page 5 so this is likely not the case.
5. There could be some other issue that has caused you to drop such as malware, a bad robots.txt problem, etc.
Edit: I see that ahrefs reports 75 backlinking domains with your keyword being the most prominent anchor so it is possible that you were directly hit by Penguin after all.
We haven't seen too many credible reports of Penguin recovery yet. The general thought is that if you can remove all or the majority of your spammy backlinks then you can recover but seeing as there were very few reported recoveries after the refresh Oct 5, no one really knows if that is possible.
There is a way to recover by migrating penalized pages to new pages though...but it's complicated and you would have to start fresh with a clean backlink profile for those pages.
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
-
Is guest posting recommended as a link building strategy?
Is guest posting a powerful methods when it comes to building backlinks? There are many relevant websites that have been set up to accept guest posts, still with good DA and PA and traffic Many relevant websites where it's easy to get a guest post on with good DA, PA and traffic What are the metrics to approach websites for guest posting?
Link Building | | elenamendez0 -
International linkbuilding for an national company
Hi guys, Just wondering, what’s you take on doing international linkbuilding for an national company? In Holland there are very few websites / blogs / information platforms about certain niches. Let’s take SEO for example. There are a few marketing websites, a few SEO related websites but at an certain point my attention goes to what’s happening in America (on Moz for example). I think writing an YouMoz post is a great way to add something to the community. If that would reward an backlink, I’m all motivated to start writing! But does this help our rankings for Dutch query’s? I can see a lot of examples in which “the place to be” isn’t a Dutch website, but some big ass international forum / website etc. I would love to hear all of your opinions!
Link Building | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Content Marketing and Link Building Strategy in Industrial B2B
We struggle link building because engineering sector has few blogs and is much more traditional than many industries. I've just had a new idea on how to do this and wanted to bounce it off people to help refine it and improve it. Search LinkedIn for "content marketing" or similar Refine by Industry etc Ask people on resulting list to guest post on our blog - which is focused on engineers in our sector Then..... For us it boosts our blog content with high quality posts that are interesting for our audience and maybe some traffic benefit. For them it provides SEO benefits and possibly some market exposure. How can I parlay this into getting a link back as well? What else can I do to make it more effective? Cheers Denis
Link Building | | Zippy-Bungle1 -
Linkbuilding with Hootsuite
I wonder about a good way to distribute my content in social networks! I was using Hootsuite but never see my post or shared news in http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ or giving me any relevance, Could be the shrinking URL. Who get the link Juice with a shrinking URL company? like hootsuite or anyparticular website. I can mention another example http://inbound.org/ I past any url my any website that I want to promote and after 24 hours I can counting as a back link in http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ Probably I don't know how to use those kind of tools!
Link Building | | seo-apprentice0 -
What is white hat seo for google penguin and google panda?
Hi, This is my 1st question to some experts. I need advice on link building. Are following good and white hat seo? 1: Bookmarkings on top sites 2: Top directory submission, or directories that seomoz recommended? 3: Top article directories, yahoo voices, ezine etc.. 4: Top web 2.0, wordpress, blogger, tumblr 5: Guest posts on quality blogs. I was use to with black hat methods (by mistake) , that i was not aware, Some are pure blackhat, that i never did. some time it hard to judge which are black hat. In past google like some links, now most are devalue or got penalty. Now i want to do quality seo work and slow process. any advice will be great regarding quality seo. Thanks.
Link Building | | chsajid110 -
Any new link building strategies?
What are the latest link building strategies that people are using? Is everyone sticking to the tradional link request and if so- how? or are people focusing on guest blogging?
Link Building | | 2Stroke0 -
Link Building Strategy Advice
Hi, I was wondering what everyone's general strategy is for link building. We're doing it all ourselves manually (i.e. not paying $5 for 100,000 links) and are using the Site Explorer tool to find links to competitors and related websites. The majority of sites are blogs and directories which ask for payment ($50 per month for example). We're obviously looking for free links as well but we're finding that pretty much every site wants something in return (cash or reciprocal link) - unless the content is amazing, why would anyone link to another site without an incentive? We're focussing heavily on content and writing articles, blogs, press releases every week but the subject matter isn't always exciting enough for someone to really want to link to it naturally. Thoughts?
Link Building | | AndyMediaLounge0 -
Other than the homepage, what other pages need linkbuilding TLC?
With my linkbuilding efforts, I know what keywords I want to target but my homepage ranks for most of my keywords. The other pages were written and built for specific keywords, but do they need linkbuilding TLC? They don't rank in the SERPs much anyway (if not at all) and the homepage is by-far the strongest in the SERPs.
Link Building | | Bill4Time0