Starting fresh on a new url after serious Penguin update down rank
-
Hi friends
My site www.acupunctureclinicvictoriabc.com was recently hit by the penguin update and i dropped to page 5 of local searchs for my key words. A while back I had some bad link building done and now paying for it:(
I thought the disavow tool (used 4 months ago) would deal with this issue but apparently not
The current url is feeling like a lost cause.
My question is if I start fresh on a new url, can I use my old content (or even clone the site and move it to a new url) without being punished for duplicate content on the new site?
Any recommendations for starting fresh?
I really appreciate any thoughts on this matter, as I am feeling a bit lost and bummed about this issue
thanks!
-
That is encouraging for me, thanks Vanja. Ill get busy on the content end of things
even with the hit I still seem to be getting some inquiries,
all the best
Silas
-
Since I've been a webmaster at several sites, some of them got hit by spammy links. Not going into why and how, the simple solution was always content for us! Getting a good article on why is acupuncture great, getting an article about real life help scenarios, you know, anything and everything an average reader would like to know about your service. If you provide a helpful article, it will get shared on other sites and blogs, social media and get the healthy link number up in a certain period of time. There are sites with 400-500 spammy domains pointing to them, but they aren't affected. Bear that in mind.
-
Hi Vanja
yes I think i have learned my lesson from this experience
I am still confused on how to get natural links, I do have some good content but this is a topic I will have research more
thanks for your thoughts
Silas
-
My idea is always do one thirds of everything - one third of time to contact spammy website owners to remove them, one third to have a fresh list of disavowed links and one third of building quality, healthy and great links through user help, great content, excellent services and such. Third part is the most important! I've seen from some cases on the web where websites had 300-400 spammy link domains pointing to them, algorithm penalty, rankings dropped, website owners and webmasters taking a complete turn in content creation, service creation, where the sites recovered and ranked on top pages for several keywords later on.
My thoughts are always make a website for human beings and provide a useful product, service, article, idea or whatnot. It will then help a great deal to make a website which garners tons of healthy and natural links since people find your site helpful and amazing. Nothing else is needed.
A link portfolio of a few hundred spammy links is what most sites come with these days. Unfortunately how ever Google and a ton of experts say negative link building is not that common, it really does get around in some highly competitive niches. Google has released the disavow tool just for that and it should definitely be used if you experience problems.
But bear in mind, Google devalues some spammy links with their ongoing daily procedures. When a website has 10-20 healthy links and 100-200 spammy ones which get devalued, rankings drop. Not just because there's a penalty, but because there simply aren't that much high quality links to start with.
Hope it clears it up somewhat. Thanks!
-
Thanks Vanja
yes I think you are right about letting cooler heads prevail
Do you think that I need to hunt down those bad links or will google forgive my sins over time?
I am not clear wither bad links put you on a permanent s$#t list
cheers
Silas
-
Well first ask yourself this question: Are the links leftover after disavow tool was put to use quality ones? I mean, people always say their disavow tool hadn't worked and they haven't fully recovered. It is almost always the issue of the leftover links not posing any relevance to move you up in rankings. Nothing more.
Honestly I wouldn't scrape that site by any means. Your PageRank 3 is still good, means you do have some good links coming to your site and doing rash decisions just a short time have passed after a major algorithm change is never a good thing to do. This means your rankings may improve later on when all things settle down.
But the biggest question still stands. Are you having a good amount of high-quality and healthy links, natural links, pointing to various aspects of your website? Or are you now leftover with just a few good links when you disavowed all the bad ones? Thanks!
-
HI Alan
thanks for your post and sorry for the false url - it is actually - www.acupunctureclinicvictoriabc.ca
In regards to content, I definitely made mistakes with key word stuffing in the past, but thought I had corrected this issue
based on the reports from SEOmoz
Grade A for on page and 31 for site authority
I did get 29 crawl errors (most due to duplicate content) and 91 crawl warnings (related to missing meta descriptions)
The issue seems to be with the bad links. There are currently 141 pointing to the site, I disavowed a bunch already
Based on me fixing the issues mentioned an focusing on natural link building from here on in I might recover over time?many thanks!Silas
-
First of all, that web address is not working so there's no way for anyone here who might have guidance, to be able to review anything.
Beyond that, if you're in a worst case situation, and you absolutely believe a new domain name is called for, yes, you can migrate the content of the old site over. However if you perform "301" redirects from the old site to the new site, some people have made anecdotal claims that doing so carries the bad link signals.
In that scenario, when the new site launches, the old site needs to be blocked from indexation to prevent duplicate content issues.
The other major issue I have found is sites are more likely to take a major hit for any high level flawed SEO if other aspects of SEO are also severely flawed. So for example, if the site was already weak on-site or over-optimized up to the edge of acceptability on-site, that site is more likely to have been nailed in a Penguin type update.
So that then begs the question - is the content you want to retain truly high quality and strong enough outside of the off-site signals? From topical focus to topical depth to internal linking methods and so on...
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
-
Canonical tag On Each Page With Same Page URL - Its Harmful For SEO or Not?
Hi. I have an e-commerce project and they have canonical code in each and every page for it's own URL. (Canonical on Original Page No duplicate page) The url of my wesite is like this: "https://www.website.com/products/produt1"
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo
and the site is having canonical code like this: " This is occurring in each and every products as well as every pages of my website. Now, my question is that "is it harmful for the SEO?" Or "should I remove this tags from all pages?" Is that any benefit for using the canonical tag for the same URL (Original URL)?0 -
Google suddenly stops ranking a page for a "keyword" with same "keyword" in title tag. Low competition.
Hi all, We have released our next version of product called like "software 11", which have thousands of searches every month. So we have just added this same keyword "software 11" as page title suffix to one of the top ranking pages. Obviously this is the page has been added suddenly with "software 11" at page title, multiple header tags and 1 mention in paragraph. Google ranked it for 2 days and suddenly stopped showing this page in entire results for the same keyword we optimised the page for. Why does it happened? Does Google think that we are overdoing with this page and ignoring it? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Google Panda and Penguin "Recovery"
We're working with a client who had been hit by Google Panda (duplicate content, copyright infringement) and Google Penguin (poor backlinks). While this has taken a lot of time, effort and patience to eradicate these issues, it's still been more than 6 months without any improvement. Have you experienced longer recovery periods? I've seen sites perform every black hat technique under the sun and still nearly 2 years later..no recovery! In addition many companies I've spoken to advised their clients to begin right from the very beginning with a new domain, site etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Content optimized for old keywords and G Updates
Hi, We've got some old content, about 50 pages worth in an Ecommerce site, that is optimized for keywords that aren't the subject of the page - these keywords occur about 8 times (2 keywords per page) in the old content. We are going through these 50 pages and changing the title, H1, and meta description tag to match the exact subject of the page - so that we will increase in rankings again - the updates have been lowering our rankings. Do we need to completely rewrite the content for these 50 pages, or can we just sprinkle it with any needed additions of the one keyword that is the subject of the page? The reason I'm asking is that our rankings keep dropping and these 50 pages seem to be part of the problem. We're in the process of updating these 50 pages Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Should you include keywords in your domain name to rank well on Google Places?
Is it okay to include keywords in your domain name (as well as business name) to rank well on Google Places? In my opinion, this is very spammy and the sites using this technique will be slapped by Google sooner or later.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | thegoatman1 -
Who knew Penguins were so scary?
I thought they were supposed to be cute and cuddly? nicepenguin.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cbielich0 -
My website disapeared from google rankings, please help?
Our website url is http://www.phoria.com Around January 16th we disappeared from google for the keyword 'kratom' We were on page 3 for the longest time. We have no critical messages in webmaster tools however I did notice most of our links seem to be website directory links.We still rank for a couple terms like buy kratom on page 6.I think a google update occurred around this time so I've read however if we had a variety of links that went against google guidelines wouldn't we have received a message stating so in Webmaster Tools?This month has been very confusing to say the least. Any help would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gregdotcom0 -
How to rank internal pages?
Hello, I have a website about consoles, on the homepage are a few thoughts about what consoles are and a short history. The main attraction are the pages about Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PSP Vita. So, I want to rank my homepage and my internal pages about the consoles ranking for "xbox360", "play station 3" each one on a separate page of course. Basically I want to rank brands. My main questions are: 1. How much link builing should I do for my homepage considering that I'm not really interested in ranking it as much as the internal pages? In percentage how it would look like? Random (stupid) example: 60% links to homepage, 10% to each internal page? 2. I guess I must do links for internal pages otherwise they won't rank good, only linking to homepage. 3. Considering the penguin update, my main keyword should be around what % of the overall anchors to each internal page? Thank you very much for your help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | corodan0