Advice on links after Penguin hit
-
Firstly we have no warnings or messages in WMT. We have racked up thousands of anchor text urls.
Our fault, we didnt nofollow and also some of our many cms sites replicated the links sitewide to the tune of 20,000 links. I`m in the process of removing the code which causes this problem in most of the culprit sites but how long will it take roughly for a crawl to recalculate the links?
In my WMT it still shows the links increasing but I think this is retrospective data. However, after this crawl we should see a more relevant link count.
We also provide some web software which has been used by many sites. Google may consider our followed anchor text violating spam rules. So I ask, if we were to change the link text to our url only and add nofollow, will this improve the spam issue? We could have as many as 4,000 links per website, as it is a calendar function and list all dates into the future.......and we would like to retain a link to our website of course for marketing purposes. What we dont want is sitewide link spam again.
Some of our other links are low quality, some are okay. However, we have lost rankings, probably due to low quality links and overuse of anchor text.. Is this the case the Google has just devalued the links algorythmically or is there an actual penalty to make the rankings drop?
As we have no warnings in WMT, I feel there isnt the need to remove the lower quality links and in most cases we havent control over the link placements. We should just rectify that we have a better future linking profile?
If we have to remove spam links, then that can only be a good reason to cause negative seo?
-
Well Mary, I took my eye off the ball last year. So I didnt really notice but year on year graphs through analytic show the drop around end April. Almost 60% drop in traffic and rankings from #1 to 60 Up until that point I had more than enough work, i spread myself thin to earn the money being self employed, and never really checked my work. However the EMD finally finished me off.
Apart from being annoyed with myself, the Google WMT forums (are they G employees?) were so damn rude and ignorant. Apparently I shouldnt be in business have such a spam site! I have more than enough happy clients to counter that. Funny how the business I got through G SERPS actually turned those clients into Adwords clients through me?
Another annoying feature is all this so called seo`s who couldnt rank above me, now claiming they are experts....basically as they never had the nous to use anchor text.......they never knew the Penguin update was coming as nobody did. Lucky. Im like lots of people basically being punished for doing what everybody did. Now we are pariahs. EVERYBODY chased backlinks and anchor text. My only saviour is Bing and Yahoo and by looks of it Adwords.
However is Penguin a penalty? I assumed it was an algo change not a penalty, so effectively those links arent worth nada, zilch, zero. I can remove them, the bulk....change some to urls etc. Im probably ranking where a site with no backlink structure would rank. However the over optimisation of my footer links wasnt planned as a lever for rankings.
Im thinking about a rebrand and of course url and branding links are the order of the day and the emphasis on content more than ever. But I dont really want to lose my domain age even if i can redirect 301 the whole caboodle to a new url.
-
Can you pinpoint the day of your organic traffic drop? If it was Apr 24, May 25 or Oct 5 then Penguin likely is the culprit. Your situation sounds very similar to this one and it's probably a good idea for you to read this article carefully:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
If this is Penguin, then no one can tell you for sure what to do to recover. Nofollowing the footer text links will be a good place to start. Do you need to address your additional low quality links? Perhaps. It's a tough call. If they're using the same anchor text that you've been dinged for then likely yes.
The important thing to know about Penguin though is that you likely will not recover until Google refreshes Penguin. At this point that doesn't happen very often. The last was October 5. Many webmasters are anxiously awaiting the next one.
-
Only action is i am removing 22000 sitewide links over multi domains contained in the footer with keyword anchor text and no nofollow!
Good idea, yes i think so.
Calendar is anchor text that was same as footer text.....all adds up to bad news!
Rank his dived on keyword main targets. I have no social media strategy so all my previous ranking were pre penguin. Basically i lhave lots of footer or low quality links over optimised for anchor text
-
If you haven't been hit by a penalty and haven't received any warnings in GWT, then I wouldn't take any rash actions. It's good to remain vigilant and have contingency plans in place, but going out and making a big change to your link profile could have an adverse effect on your current rankings.
What keyword are you currently using for your calendar function? If it's just your brandname, you're probably safe. If it's an exact anchor text match keyword, that could be more risky. Are you currently ranking well for the keyword you're using, because changing it to a url could result in lower 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
-
Malicious links on our site indexed by Google but only visible to bots
We've been suffering from some very nasty black hat seo. In Google's index, our pages show external links to various pharmaceutical websites, but our actual live pages don't show them. It seems as though only certain user-agents see the malicious links. Setting up Screaming Frog SEO crawler using the Googlebot user agent also sees the malicious links. Any idea what could have caused this or how this can be stopped? We scanned all files on our webserver and couldn't find any of malicious links. We've changed our FTP and CMS passwords, is there anything else we can do? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEO-Bas0 -
Are link directories still effective? is there a risk?
We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binpress0 -
Blackhat Winners after Penguin 2.0
I know I'm not the only one that's seen this. After Penguin 2.0 some obvious blackhat SEOed sites flew up in the rankings. There's obviously a hole that hasn't been closed. I'm surprised it's been a month and that hole still hasn't been patched. I have no problem with other legit companies out ranking ours for various keywords. In that case I can feel alright knowing it's just something they were able to do that I wasn't but when I see complete blackhat sites ranking that's a whole different story. Estimated traffic before and after Penguin 2.0: http://goo.gl/gurXt What are they doing that's blackhat? Hidden text - compare the cached version vs. the live http://goo.gl/YYGDK 301ing lots of domains, many irrelevant. http://goo.gl/RjOJu Using a trade marked brand (steelers) - not SEO related but I'm sure the NFL wouldn't be happy. Linking between other domains they own. Notice how spammy these sites are. http://pittsburghwebdevelopment.org/2013/06/23/website-development-firm-website-design-pittsburgh/ http://seoinpgh.com/2013/06/23/website-designer-pittsburgh-affordable-web-design-in-pittsburgh-pa/ They were inflating their social presence. Wanted to show you but looks like twitter already took care of them https://twitter.com/seopittsburgh . Also making client sites link to them . http://pittsburghpaplumbing.com/2013/06/19/pittsburgh-plumbersplumbers-in-pittsburgh-paplumber-pittsburgh/ I've talked to other people and they've seen similar things. Thoughts, opinions? Can you find one good reason why this site would rank well for a competitive phrase?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eyeflow0 -
What are some of the worst links that you have come across?
I'm talking the least relevant and incredibly spammy. We've all done site audits and stumbled across some ridiculous ones. The funnier the better. I'm compiling a list of hilarious links that sites have gotten. Any input would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KevinBloom0 -
Competitor using "unatural inbound links" not penalized??!
Since Google's latest updates, I think it would be safe to say that building links is harder. But i also read that Google applies their latest guidelines retro-actively. In other words, if you have built your ilnking profile on a lot of unnatural links, with spammy anchor text, you will get noticed and penalized. In the past, I used to use SEO friendly directories and "suggest URL's" to build back links, with keyword/phrase anchor text. But I thought that this technique was frowned upon by Google these days. So, what is safe to do? Why is Google not penalizing the competitor? And bottom line what is considered to be "unnatural link building" ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20101 -
My Penguin Recovery Attempt
So I have decided today to attempt to beat the odds and try and do a full recovery from the Penguin Update. I am going to create a Google Doc in which I will make public and link at the end of this post for all of you to see. I am going to meticulously go through a massive back link audit of my site and try to see if I can recover from my loss of some of my main keywords back from April 24th. I want to clarify that I DID NOT get effected from Penguin 2.0, but I did from 1.0 and have not recovered since. I have to be honest I feel like I have done everything up to now, but I realized I needed to make this a very long journey into a massive audit into my back link profile which contains thousands of back links which I have been honestly avoiding. I just want to see if I put the work, I will see the results and maybe it can help others I will document everything I do in detail as well as dates when I do them. I'm sure there will be plenty of coffee fueled nights of Jibber-Jabber...and I apologize for that ahead of time. I hope at the end there is light and can shed some on others. I am starting with a blank canvas, so keep checking back on my progress. I generally work at night so you will see most changes in the morning. Here is the link to my Doc - http://bit.ly/11dUkzc Wish Me Luck
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cbielich1 -
Hit by Negative SEO
I've seen some discussion here about whether or not negative seo is real. I've just spent 6 months recovering from Penguin, rewriting content, removing hundreds of bad links, and seeing our traffic slowly improve. Yesterday we noticed in Google webmasters tools that we're ranking for the term "Free Sex." Here... http://screencast.com/t/ezoo2sCRXQ Now we have discovered that thousands of "sex" links have been directed at our improving domain. I am convinced I know who the culprit is. What would you advise a client to do in my situation? Forget about removing these damn links. I don't have the time, money or energy to go through that again. I'm sure he can add them much faster than I can ever remove them. Is the disavow tool best answer in this case? Or is there an international court of seo justice that I can appeal to?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Methods for getting links to my site indexed?
What are the best practices for getting links to my site indexed in search engines. We have been creating content and acquiring backlinks for the last few months. They are not being found in the back link checkers or in the Open Site Explorer. What are the tricks of the trade for imporiving the time and indexing of these links? I have read about some RSS methods using wordpress sites but that seems a little shady and i am sure google is looking for that now. Look forward to your advice.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | devonkrusich0