Hit By Penguin...Wait for recovery or do i change domains?

[CSN]

Hey Guys

Would very much appreciate all opinions on our following situation, we have an .uk based ecommerce sports nutrition site www.cardiffsportsnutrition.co.uk

Previously we worked with an SEO, that to put it simply did not follow webmaster guidelines(money anchor heavy, bad links etc), we reached some very good ranks too quickly and subsequently after the first penguin we where hit. We didn't receive any link warning or manual penalties just what i am assuming algorithmic...Rankings and traffic drop significantly, but not business ending.

Since the first penguin we have done very little to no SEO, some unique content, re-writing of product pages, lots of social activity and didnt really lose much traffic after that, some small ups and down after refresh s and a slight slow decline on some keywords. Come Penguin 2.0...things that where still ranking for have now dropped even further, impressions in webmasters is now down over 50% and we have a had a wkly but not drastic drop in traffic since then. Over the last couple of months we have obtained some good quality links, have added lots of great unique content that has been shared significantly and generated some great traffic to our blog, added more unique product pages and category pages. But organically things are starting to look pretty grim apart from our brand keywords and everything is still in a slow decline and no increase in impressions in webmasters either jsut small drops

We have been working to remove the poor quality and toxic links that the previous SEO built,getting anchor text corrected and collating information on the whole process ready to submit a file of links to disavow tool. which we are planning to do within the next couple of wks. Now i have read some successful stories and some not so successful one, so im starting to think of how to deal with this worse case scenario, If our domain is too damaged by the previous SEO guys

We have the same domain name but on the .com that will help us carry over our brand name directly, but my concern is even though we have not had any manual penalty and not 301'd the .com back to the .co.uk or any other form of link will the penalties be carried over to the new domain just on the basis of brand association. We wouldn't plan to redirect any of the .co.uk traffic back to the .com but rather focus on our already strong ablate less converting traffic from the likes of twitter and facebook and run a small PPC campaign for some brand keyword to help buffer the traffic loss. While we focus on building good quality links and putting up plenty of new quality content on the site on the new domain that does not have any poor quality links back to it.

What im trying to avoid is carry on spending time money and effort on the .co.uk domain for the next 3/4 months and continue to lose traffic slowly and then have to switch the domain anyway. I plan to wait and see for the next 4-6wks after we run the dissavow to but October time would be time i would have to make a decision and go for it.

Any advice or opinions would be appreciated

marc

[Coraltoes77]

Hi Marc

I hope you don't mind me dropping you a line, but I wondered what you decided to do in the end and whether it was a positive outcome?

We too have suffered an algo penalty and have gone down the link removal/disavow route.  We've also invested into redevelopment of the site.  But, it doesn't seem to be enough and I'm now looking at the possibility of changing the domain as the next step, if things don't improve in the next couple of months.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Marc,

The fact that you did not receive an unnatural links warning does not mean that you don't have a manual penalty.

Despite comments from Matt Cutts and John Mueller that suggest otherwise, I have personally dealt with almost 100 site owners through rmoov support who never received any communication from Google until we suggested they lodge a reconsideration request because the effect in the SERPS looked like more than algorithmic adjustment to us - sure enough, in each case back came notification of a manual penalty.

I would do as Mark suggested: proceed as though you are dealing with a manual penalty and continue to document all of your link removal activities meticulously, then lodge a reconsideration request. After all, that is the only way you will know for sure whether there is a manual action in effect or not.

Sha

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Hi Marc,

You've written out a very detailed question, and I think you are in the right direction with the disavow. You already stated how you have spent a significant amount of time on your link cleanup procedure, and have documented a lot of the work you have done and the outreach you've done to try and clean up your backlink profile created by your previous SEO. I would submit this to Google in your reconsideration request after doing the disavow - it can't hurt to submit the reconsideration request. But keep in mind, if you got hit by an algo penalty like Penguin and not manual action, the webspam team won't be able to remove the penalty. Only if the webspam team applied a manual penalty to your site or part of it will the reconsideration request help.

In terms of the disavow, as shared by the webspam team (Matt Cutts, Joh Mueller), take a machete to your problematic backlinks - http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-machete-16844.html. If you find domains that have problematic links on them, instead of trying to disavow each page with probleatic links, use the domain: operator and disavow the whole domain/subdomain. Don't be precise and surgical, but use a machete on those problematic domains and links. Once this has happened, I'd see what happens with the rankings.

In terms of Google carrying over the penalty to your new .com domain due to brand association, I wouldn't worry about this. If you were in fact hit by an algorithmic penalty based on links, if the links remain pointing to the old domain, and you don't give the search engines indications that they should replace the old domain with the new one (301 redirects, change of URL via webmaster tools), there should be no reason the engines would pass over the links and the penalty to the new domain. I don't believe the algorithmic link penalty is based on your brand, but rather on the specific site and that site's backlink profile. So if you do start from scratch and don't 301 redirect to the new domain, you are in effect starting from scratch. You many not rank in the beginning, but that's not because the link penalty transferred over, but your site may not have enough link equity on its own to rank.

Either way, good luck with whichever path you choose - I personally hope the disavow helps you and you can salvage your current site, so you don't have to put all of the hard work and effort you put into your old site in the trash.

Good luck,

Mark