Have I been Hit by a Penguin? No Warning in Webmaster / Some Pages still Rank
-
Hi all,
I have recently signed up to MOZ as I have seen a large drop in the turnover of a site I work with as well as a slump in visitors.
I know part of this slump is the transition from google product search from being free to paid and chewing through our adwords budget quicker.
The other part though seems a little more tricky, I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for.
As you can see in the attachment webmaster tools is showing much decreased visibility, and MOZ agrees with this. Key terms that have lost rank have done so by around 4-10 positions.
The content on the site has all been hand written by myself, however some of the pages are a little "stale" so I am currently running through re-writing every product page on the site (1000 products or so) all my product pages grade a minimum B with 99% A on the Moz page grader.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that fresh content should assist in getting google interested again?
However my real questions is, Is this Penguin? or is this just stale content?
-
Thanks for the detailed response, It is very much appreciated.
-
Hello speedingorange,
You wrote: "I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. "
I think you have it backwards. The Panda update, which is NOT algorithmic, is the one that would that would "see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools". The Penguin update, which IS algorithmic, is the one that would cause "site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for". And a Penguin penalty does not result in a Google Webmaster Tools notification. (That is my understanding. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mixed up, And I am OK with being corrected.)
Two of my sites are suffering from what I believe is Penguin damage. For both the damage is a lot of rank lost for only a few keyword phrases. Other phrases continue to rank normally. When I did a bunch of keyword research (using Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic results blended together) I found that the few keyword phrases that I severely lost rank for had both:
- a high percentage of Follow links using exactly those phrases as anchor text, and
- links from sources that didn't really pertain to the anchor text or to our website.
My understanding is that these are the type of things that Penguin will bite you for. So we did remove or change a few of the anchor text links, and did a Google Disavow on most of the remaining links. We did leave a few anchor text links that were from good pertinent sites. This was done in early June, and we still have not seen any results. I have read that we will not see any big results from submitting a Disavow file until Google updates Penguin again. So we are keeping our fingers crossed until then.
Couple of quick things to explore if you are going to try a similar rescue. First, we did not pay any attention to our NoFollow links since they supposedly do not effect rankings. Second, we did create a nice file of follow links from all our link research, and used it as an additional submission with the Link Detox tool (the spreadsheet report from that tool is very valuable when checking for overoptimized anchor text). Third, we disavowed entire domains rather than individual links because we heard that was most effective.
Good luck!
-
I will give it a read.
Many THanks
James
-
It's not stale content. As the dates in the graph appear to correspond to Penguin 2.0, I'd be thinking along those lines.
Google algorithm change history: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
-
I really recommend you to read this Case Study. It's quite long, but it will help you to understand how to use this and some other tools to find out if you where a Penguin's Victim.
http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/elearners-penguin-2-0-penalty-analysis/
-
Thanks Romeo,
I will be sure to check this out ASAP.
-
Hello speedingorange,
You can use this tool to find out if you have any Toxic inbound links. https://www.linkresearchtools.com/members/signup.php?product=linkdetox
Once you've discovered it, you can ask to Disavow them from your Google Webmaster Tools account and wait a couple of weeks to have them removed.
Good luck,
Romeo.
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
-
Why Google changed our page-title suddenly which has been same for years
Hi all, I know Google shows a different page titles. Happens when over optimised or when we copied competitors page title. But we did neither. Suddenly Google changed our homepage page title in search results. Our page title suffix "brand name" has been moved to beginning. Our page title is still for years.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Sitemaps for landing pages
Good morning MOZ Community, We've been doing some re-vamping recently on our primary sitemap, and it's currently being reindexed by the search engines. We have also been developing landing pages, both for SEO and SEM. Specifically for SEO, the pages are focused on specific, long-tail search terms for a number of our niche areas of focus. Should I, or do I need to be considering a separate sitemap for these? Everything I have read about sitemaps simply indicates that if a site has over 50 thousand pages or so, then you need to split a sitemap. Do I need to worry about a sitemap for landing pages? Or simply add them to our primary sitemap? Thanks in advance for your insights and advice.
Algorithm Updates | | bwaller0 -
How to Interpret Rankings Decline
My website operates in 14 languages, and overall we have not seen a decrease in traffic (hard to measure because we are very vulnerable to external factors) I started using AWR about a month ago and in that time have seen the following changes in my visibility for some of my major markets: Nothing major in either direction, but any advice of how to delve deeper to find an explanation for the markets that are decreasing? UK: 15% ->13% RU: 25 -> 26% AU: 25% -> 21% DE: 18% - 19% ES: 11% -> 10% SE: 42% -> 44%
Algorithm Updates | | theLotter0 -
Website Rankings Dropped April 12
A client website dropped drastically on April 12. Outside of some branded keywords, search results dropped off of the first page and are buried on page 3+ at best. Nothing has changed on the site, and there were no problems with the link profile. GWT has no manual actions. Kind of at a loss. Does anyone know if there was an algorithm update or anything external that may be causing some problems here? Site is www.averybiomedical.com if you want to take a look, but I'm just curious if there was anything I should be aware of. Thanks for the help!
Algorithm Updates | | AdamWormann0 -
Best Moz article on landing pages?
From what I understand, building landing pages to link back to sites is a thing of the past. I am looking for a good article that explains best current landing page practices (post Panda and Penquin). Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | cschwartzel0 -
Ranking under a non-geobased, one word phrase
We have a local client who would like to score under the words "locksmith" and "locksmiths". What is the best way to get him to rank organically and not just in Google Plus Local for those keywords?
Algorithm Updates | | GregWalt0 -
Canonicalization on more than one page?
is it proper to "canocalize" more than one page in a site? Or should it only be on the home page? eg: http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com">
Algorithm Updates | | sakeith0 -
Are creative widgets still a good strategy in the Penguin world?
Im planning on building a small utility widget that my site will distribute to related sites. I plan on implementing this with JS and including a small anchor link back to my site. In the new penguin world, will the possibly be destructive to my SEO efforts? Any do's or don'ts when developing a widget/badge for distribution to lets say a dozen sites?
Algorithm Updates | | DotCar1