Penalized by Penguin 2.0
-
I believe our site has been penalizes by Penguin 2.0. Our impressions in Google Webmaster are down and our traffic in Google Analytics also took a hit. Both of these occurences took place right when Penguin 2.0 was unleashed.
What are the steps I need to take to regain my ranking? Is disallowing all the links I think maybe spammy the first thing to do?
-
Its all about relevancy IMO. The closer you can get to the niche with that particular page the better. Remember the entire site does not necessarily need to be related to your niche (of course it does help if it is) as much as the individual pages do. The reason I say that is I have a hard time finding full site related niches who are not my competitors. Of course I am not going to be able to get a link on their sites, so I have to find those 1 pagers (usually news, blog and such) that happen to be perfect for my niche.
So if you are going to place that link on a particular page, try and make sure the relevancy is a perfect match (The higher the relevancy, the higher the impact). I have learned that when links are placed at the end of content they tend to not have as much of an impact (especially in forums, blog comments, etc...) the only reason I say this about the end of content is because I no longer will place links at the end of anything, only in the middle of text. Of course make sure that its relevant and helpful to the readers and make sense. You don't want to place links just to place them.
Also remember that Google still loves anchor text (yes even post penguin :)), but you really have to evaluate how you are placing that text in the link. Try and take yourself out of the SEO mode (I know I have too) and really think how you would link to that page and with what anchor text. Be as natural as possible when writing and make sure it makes sense. I tend to write my content first then I pick the most relevant text to highlight and place my links there.
Many times people make the mistake of thinking about the link before the content. Write your content whether its a blog comment, forum post or whatever and make sure the comments relates to the question. Then after you have answered the question ask yourself if a link is really necessary. If not, then don't place a link. Which I know is hard to do sometimes, but honestly that's what spam is all about. If anything most profiles have the ability to place a link to your homepage to them. Just make sure that's in place and leave well enough as it is.
I personally don't place percentages to my anchor text to my brand name. I just write the content and look at the best place to place my link and do that. Naturally it tends to be my brand term, but sometimes it's text like
- this article
- about this site
- check this link out
- freakin awesome tool
Yes even misspelled words, because naturally I will write them like that
and I know that Google understands that too.
If I learned anything its that because of the amount of SEO I know I tend to gravitate to keywords and subconsciously tend to use them too much OR it causes me to write content that can be somewhat un-natural. I don't mean to do, but it just seems to happen. What I started doing was asking friends of mine to write my content for me. I tell them the subject of the page, verbally tell them the keyword without letting them know that's the keyword
and let them write something for me. 99.9% of the time, it will be extremely natural flowing content
-
Our home page was affected, so I believe it's a little on the home page, more so on the targeted page level.
-
Wow great job! How long did that take you? What kind of quality links did you get and how did you get them? I'm a bit frustrated because I've been doing some quality links, even got two from 2 different pr7 .gov links, and still haven't recovered yet :s
-
I stuck with certain rules
- Rewrote Content
- Only added keywords to Title, Description, H1 and First paragraph (long tail)
- Added Sitemaps
- Contact Us Pages
- Increased Social Media
- Added Mailing List
- Added more quality backlinks
And the most important (that I felt) was leaving the disavowed tool alone.
I never received a manual penalty for any of my sites, I simply dropped in ranking after Penguin 1.0. Because of this obviously Google did not see anything sneaky with my back links so I most likely suffered simply a devalue of some of my back links from other sites which brought me down. So I figured I needed more quality back links to build myself back up. Took a while, but that seemed to fix it because I am ranking for keywords I have not seen since Penguin 1.0. I'm not as high as I was before.
Also I studied all my back links and the keywords used. I figured that since I ranked for those terms at one time, I tried to figure out which back links devalued and what keywords were used and tried to replicate it. If some were to spammy then I just branded them, otherwise I created new links (quality) with similar anchor text
-
What did you do?
-
Our home page was unaffected, so I believe 2.0 is targeting the page level. It is only getting pages for certain keywords we have targeted heavily in the past.
-
We did not receive a message in GWT.
-
Well I know is I did something right since 1.0 because I'm back baby!
-
Sadly, we can only speculate. I think it's reasonable to think that Penguin 1.0 may have acted sitewide, whereas Penguin 2.0 could be more targeted, but that's not so much an issue of where the links are pointing as it is of the impact of the penalty. The original Penguin did seem a bit all-or-none, in some cases. The update may be more nuanced. I think Google waited a long time for this roll-out because the collateral damage was just too high in testing. So, it's likely they found ways to make the action more targeted.
-
The only thing that kept me scratching my head was the comment Matt Cutts said about "Penguin 1.0 primarily focusing on the homepage only"
-
I just want to add that this is a difficult and even potentially dangerous process. There's no way to know exactly what Google didn't like, so it's easy to cut too deep. On the other hand, if you don't cut deep enough, Google may actually take that as a negative sign (don't just keep removing 5 links and then submitting a new disavow).
We don't know much about how Penguin 2.0 differs from 1.0, except some hearsay that it's targeting the page level now (and isn't just a sitewide action). So, I think the first thing you need to do is really pin down which keywords lost ranking and which pages those keywords target. It's possible that you've been too aggressive with links to a specific page or with anchor text using specific terms. If you see a pattern, then you can focus on just those links.
Also, keep in mind that, if the vast majority of your link profile is low quality, there may not be much left after you disavow. In other words, you may remove the bad links and still not recover. So, as Takeshi said, it's important to both address the problem and build for the future at the same time.
-
Side Note: You only need to submit a reconsideration request if you have been "manually penalized"
You will know this by getting some kind of message in GWT, if you DID NOT get any message then its the algorithm that got you and that means clean things up and Good Luck!
-
First of all, assess all your external links with a tool such as OSE or Majestic. Identify all the links coming from low quality/spammy sites, as well as the anchor text that is being used for the links. Greater than 30-40% exact anchor text links can get you penalized.
Then, go through the links and remove all the links you are able to. Use the disavow tool in webmaster tools on those you aren't able to remove. Then file a reconsideration request.
Note that because you are removing all these links, you will need to build new links to get your traffic back to the level it was previously at.
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
-
My site in 2 page
my site in 2 page how can i rank with this keywords in dubai legal translation in Dubai
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | saharali150 -
Do you see sites with unfixable Penguin penalties?
Hello, We have a site with 2 Penguin update penalties (drops in traffic) and one quality penalty (another drop in traffic) all years ago, both just drops in rankings and not messages in Google Console. Now that Penguin is hard coded, do you find that some sites never recover even with a beautiful disavow and cleanup? We've added content and still have some quality errors, though I thought they were minor. This client used to have doorway sites and paid links, but now is squeaky clean with a disavow done a month ago though most of the cleanup was done by deletion of the doorways and paid links 9 months ago. Is this a quality problem or is our site permanently gone? Let me know what information you need. Looking for people with a lot of experience with other sites and Penguin. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW2 -
Why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aronwp0 -
Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?
I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat? I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links? Please share your thoughts on the topic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zorsto0 -
Are directory listings still appropriate in 2013? Aren't they old-style SEO and Penguin-worthy?
We have been reviewing our off-page SEO strategy for clients and as part of that process, we are looking at a number of superb info-graphics on the subject. I see that some of current ones still list "Directories" as being part of their off-page strategy. Aren't these directories mainly there for link-building purposes and provide Users no real benefit? I don't think I've ever seen a directory that I would use, apart for SEO research. Surely Google's Penguin algorithm would see directories in the same way and give them less value, or even penalise websites that use them to try to boost page rank? If I were to list my websites on directories it wouldn't be to share my lovely content with people that use directories to find great sites, it would be to sneakily build page rank. Am I missing the point? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
Not Sure Exactly How Penguin is Effecting My Site (looking for tuff love)
Hello Everyone, I own a small web design firm website. My site was for sure hit by Penguin, but not sure why they devalued my pages. I dont really do SEO or link building except for my own site. I normally turn clients down when they want SEO services. Mainly because we do web design really well, so I've chosen to invest my time doing that versus doing both. For most of my keywords I took a 5-10 spot drop. Nothing super major, but enough that its tanking my business. I've survived all of the panda stuff, so I assumed my content writing, and link building tactics were good, but I'm wrong. Here is my website: http://www.clikzy.com/ I will explain what I have been doing below, and I am looking for a little help/direction. I don't mind if you look at my site, links, and are brutally honest. I do have original content ( I just ran everything through copyscape a month prior), and I occasionally get duplicate pages as my CMS tends to create them automatically, but we do a fairly good job of redirecting those pages when they occur. My link building tactics have been a mixture of the following. I have used anchor text alot which could be my demise. Forum postings
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Juratovic
Blog Comments
Website Footers (roughly 20 over the course of a year)
Web Design Directories (explain below) I did start using directories in January. I would use OpenSite Explorer, and review some of my bigger competitors, and would occasionally get listed on a web design directory they were on. I think total I probably purchase 8-10 since Jan including botw, business.com, etc. I have some local pages which I create case studies for which ranked fairly well. For instance for the term Baltimore Web Design I used to rank #1, but not I'm 5-6. Here's the keyword: http://www.clikzy.com/reston-web-design.html One more note: I did redirect an older website I have (12 years) to my current site (3 years) in Jan. Mainly because it ranked well for terms in NYC. I've dropped for those terms around 5 spots. I have a few questions: 1. What would you suggest to fix something like this? Power Content? Better Links? (of course, we all want better links) 2. Remove links? I am not sure which ones are bad. One thought was to just kill my local pages (roughly 15 pages) which would also kill any bad links I may have point to them. 3. If I have a bad link pointing to a internal page, could that bring down my home page rankings? Any help would be appreciated. I am in the process of interviewing for a full time PR person to come on staff to help us with our content, and PR. I knew I should have invested in this person a year ago! ha! Thank you! Pete0 -
Penguin Update or URL Error - Rankings Tank
I just redid my site from Godaddy Quick Shopping Cart to Drupal. The site is much cleaner now. I transferred all the content. Now my site dropped from being in the top ten on almost every key word we were targeting to 35+. I "aliased" the urls so that they were the same as the Godaddy site. However when I look at our search results I notice that our URLs have extra wording at the end like this: ?categoryid=1 or some other number. Could this be the reason that our rankings tanked? Previously on the godaddy site the results didnt show this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0 -
Page Rank is 0
Hi. Can you please point me in the right direction concerning a site whose default page has a PR of 0? There does not appear to be any errors in the robots.txt file (that I can tell). When I ran a duplicate content check by searching the title tag and first sentance in quotes it did not return more than 2 sites. When I ran a site: it is reporting 287,000 results. Does this mean that they purchased links and have now been penalized? Or where should I go from here? Thank you for any feedback and assistance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JulB0