Advice on links after Penguin hit

[xtopher66]

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?

[xtopher66]

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.

[MarieHaynes]

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.

[xtopher66]

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

use OSE http://www.kent-website-designer.co.uk/

[TakeshiYoung]

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.