Penguin 2.1: How to recover?
-
I know Penguin focuses on links but do you need to personally reach out and try to manually remove the links, or can you simply place the bad links in the disavow tool.
I know for manual penalties you must manually reach out and try to remove and use disavow as an absolute last resort.
Does the same go for algorithm penalties?
Any insight would be helpful.
-
Yeah, technically, you're supposed to make a good faith effort to remove the links, but Google isn't clear on how many, how much effort, etc. This seems to hold true for Penguin in addition to manual penalties. Most of the Penguin recovery stories I've head have involved pretty deep cuts, to be brutally honest.
-
102drive
I think Richard gives some reasonable direction here. So, if you know absolutely you have a problem, you need to take action. If you are seeing some movement in a site(s), don't be too quick to pull the trigger. If the links are from many different domains you have a different problem than if the links are a lot from one or two domains. With a lot of links from a single domain, IMO, you reach out, and see if you can get headway with the owner. Then you use the disavow tool.
When we see outside domains linking to a site, we usually do not get too uptight unless it is one that is going nuts. An example is that we had a directory called pinhub with over 5K links all of a sudden to a single site. We did not in any way engage them nor did the client. For something like that, we immediately use the disavow tool as we know, based on experience, they will not do anything to stop their behavior. Might as well shutdown any negative effect. Note: the links are still going to show, but you are telling Google, you are disavowing the links. We still send the email for our own backup, but we expect nothing from the perpetrators.
Hope that helps,
Robert
-
You are suppose to reach out and have the links removed as disavow is suppose to be used as a last resort tool.
Penguin 2.1 is pretty strange, some of my clients sites got hit, others saw a rise. Whats weirder is that the larger companies (amazon, yelp, yellowpages etc) are dominating the first page. Theres a few local keywords where 8 out of the 10 rankings is yelp!
Anyhow, I think you should let the website sit a week or so and let the dust settle before resorting to disavow. I think Google is just shuffling.
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 -
How should I use the 2nd link if a site allows 2 in the body of a guest post?
I've been doing some guest posting, and some sites allow one link, others allow more. I'm worried I might be getting too many guest posts with multiple links. I'd appreciate your thoughts on the following: 1. If there are 50+ guest posts going to my website (posted over the span of several months), each with 2 links pointing back only to my site is that too much of a pattern? How would you use the 2nd link in a guest post if not to link to your own site? 2. Does linking to .edu or .gov in the guest post make the post more valuable in terms of SEO? Some people recommend using the 2nd link to do this. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Penguin 2.1 Penalty- Can't Understand why hit by it?
Hi, I have lost all my rankings after Penguin 2.1 update. I haven't did anything wrong. Want to know the root cause of the penalty so that I can overcome this. Any help would be appreciated. Website: http://tiny.cc/hfom4w
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chandman0 -
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?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | joebuilder0 -
Page 1 Ranking - Disappeared!
Hi All We launched our client's website http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk in January this year. We have been building links making sure we are not over optmising anchor text and only following ethical SEO tactics. Our client's site eventually hit page 1 for it's main key word 'Roller Banner' 1 week ago, the site received impressions/clicks from the SERPS and has started to gain traffic from that particular keyword. I have checked today, and I cannot our client's website URL within the first 10 pages of Google, nevermind on page 1. Our client is currently undercutting competitiors on price, which we stated (the price) in the meta tag. Is it possible other SEOs could de-rank our website? If not, what would be a likely explaination for this occurance? Would just like to add, I recently build a link with anchor text 'Roller Banner Website, but one of my older links uses anchor text 'Roller Banners Cheap Website' - They're not exact match, but could this affect our ranking? Awaiting help Lewis
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SO_UK0 -
How to handle footer links after Penguin?
With the launch of Google's Penguin I know that footer links could possibly hurt rankings. Also too many links on a page are also bad. I have a client http://www.m-scribe.com That has footer links creating well over 100 links on many of their pages. How should I handle these footer links? Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
SERP Decline - Position 1 to Not in Top 50
Over the past week, I have experienced a significant decline in my SERP for about 20 high value keywords. I have worked extensively to build a link profile by the following: 1. Submitting to directories 2. Ghost blog writing 3. HARO interviews and postings 4. Article submission to blog sites What can I do to try to find the cause of this decline? How can I determine if it was something google changed with their algorithm or if it was my SEO strategy that was wrong? I would rather not post my url.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nayrmot0 -
Publishing Press Releases after Google Panda 2.5
For the past few years I have been publish press releases on my site for a number of business. I have high traffic on my site. I noticed that with the Google Panda 2.5 update PRNewswire.com dropped visibility by 83%. Should I stay away from publishing press releases now? Does Google consider Press Releases to be "content scraping" since multiple sources are publishing the release?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss2