Penguin 2.1 recovery
-
Our website took a huge hit due to Penguin 2.1 we are looking to keep our domain but create a new site to disavow all our links. Will this work? Any Ideas on this tactic?
-
Here's the only correct answer to this question: "Nobody knows".
According to Google, you need to identify your manipulative links, disavow or preferably remove them and then wait for a Penguin refresh. However, they've never been clear on whether removing is necessary. John Mueller hinted in a hangout that disavowing was the same as manually removing but then he went on to say that it could be better to manually remove.
I have seen some sites make some sort of recovery with Penguin, but the scary reality is that very few do. In order to recover you need to have a good base of natural links (not self made, but earned) and also be able to attract new links in the future. And, you need to do an extremely thorough job on cleaning up your link profile.
"we are looking to keep our domain but create a new site to disavow all our links. " - If you start up a new site on the same domain then you'll still have all of the same bad backlinks that got you into Penguin trouble so you won't be any further ahead. EDIT: That is, assuming that most of your links point to your home page. If you have bad links pointing to inner pages then you can change those urls and effectively remove those bad links. But, in most cases the bad links are pointing to the home page and those can't be removed by changing the site.
-
I will write a brief response not covering all my thoughts (due to time, sorry) -
Disavowing all links will not be enough to lift a site wide penalty. Tactics change depending upon whether this was a manual action or algorithmic penalty. Do you have any messages in GWT?
You need to make real, documented efforts to manually remove each and every bad link you have pointing at your site. There are many guides to how to do this and even a definitive guide on the Moz blog currently that works very well. The jest of it is you need to request each link be removed, remove it yourself, and document yourself along the way. Take screenshots of contact forms filled out on domains in question, keep email copies, and organize spreadsheets. Submit all of this to Google as a reconsideration package and only disavow those that never respond after multiple requests.
If it isn't manual and isn't site-wide, simply changing site structure and all URLs MIGHT potentially work, huge emphasis on MIGHT.
But the one thing that is for sure is your best bet is to start removing those links while shifting your efforts to a true SEM campaign and producing quality content to build organic links.
Read around and listen to the awesome people in this community. Check the blogs! You can do this!
-
Hi Steve
Others will comment on this I am sure and how effective your strategy may be. The article here may also help you.
Peter
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
-
How Long for Penguin Recovery if All Links Were Removed at Once?
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on length of time before a Penguin recovery can take place, assuming you removed all the bad links at once? I have a client that has a Penguin penalty, with all the bad links pointing in to a domain, which then redirected to theirs. So, I simply had that domain removed and it now returns a 404 instead of redirecting to the main site. Now all of the bad backlinks do not pass through. All of this happened at once about 5 weeks ago. I was glad to discover such an easy solution, but am wondering how long something like this would take. My initial thought was it would take 2 or 3 months to see recovery, but I was hoping since the issue was fixed so quickly, recovery would be faster. Any experience with Penguin recoveries with all spam links removed (less that 100 links) at once?
Link Building | | wiredseo0 -
Gained my first quality link, was it worth 2 hours of work?
Hello,
Link Building | | wppseo
I'm a newbie. I'm building a brand new site. In a niche service business, worldwide.
Today I gained my first link, I tried to reach to the highest qualify link I could identify.
I'd like to know if you think my two hours effort was worthy, or laughable. Because I can gain other 3 or 4 links from other domains working like that. I tell you where is my first link: the top domain is in the same niche business, DA 79
My link is in a subdomain page (always in the same niche business) that has: 20 other links (mine is the only external dofollow) Domain Authority 79 /100 Page Authority 31 /100 Page Link Metrics Just-Discovered 79 in 32 Days Established Links 1 Root Domain 4 Total Links the homepage of the subdomain has Page Authority of 66 /100 Page Social Metrics 0 0 0 0 0 I'd appreciate any feedback.0 -
Penguin,No warning message from Google
I'm losing traffic & I have been since April. I'm pretty sure it's Penguin but I have not received any messages from Google. Should I proceed with the disavowal tool to remove some of the spammy directory links? PS Submit Edge is owned by the Devil
Link Building | | KrisPhoto0 -
Penguin issue or wrong linkbuilding strategy?
Quite a few month ago before Google implemented Penguin algorithm I had a great situation. After 24th of April my ranking and traffic dropped instantly. Here a a screenshot from my GA: http://imageshack.us/a/img15/4717/screenshot20121013at120.png I have reviewed my linkbuilding strategy and on-page optimisation however some keywords which dropped out of page 5 don't want to come back even close to page 1. I would appreciate a professional advise on how my strategy, on-page optimisation can be improved. For those who are interested here is my domain: http://www.desertsafariabudhabi.ae The keyword which is more interesting for me is "desert safari abu dhabi". Thanks in advance, Russel
Link Building | | smokin_ace0 -
How do you use anchor text post Penguin?
I have a client with several businesses within the same industry - Each of these businesses have their own websites. So, I have a few questions with this in mnd: **When using anchor text (exact keyword phrases) on his website pages, how many links are safe to use per page? And if I want to interlink between his businesses, is it better to use exact keyword phrases to link or just a straight URL link for those other businesses? **When guest blogging or using an external blog of our creation, is it best to use exact keyword phrases (and how many) or URL links? I want to make sure I am not over linking - help? thanks a lot
Link Building | | BenjaminDonley0 -
#1 in yahoo and bing, not in top 50 in google. Why is that?
Just noticed that some keywords #1 in yahoo and bing and not in top 50 in google. Some keywords. Vice Versa. #1 in google and not in top 50 in yahoo and bing . What could be the problem? Thank you
Link Building | | vadimmarusin0 -
What does it mean to ping you web 2.0 backlinks?
We know that a major backlinking strategy is to create web 2.0 articles linking to your main money site. But these web 2.0 articles also need to be recognized by google, so people tell me I need to ping them? What does that mean?
Link Building | | sleepmaster0 -
So I ran into a site that was not ranking 4 days ago and has over 2 million links to it on some keywords. My guess is this is a link bomb, but the issue is this is pushing one of my sites down. Does anyone know a good way to over come a bomb like this?
So I ran http://www.riogrande.com/ into this site not that long ago and wanted to see if any other SEO's have an opinion on it. I've seen a Google bomb before, but the amount of links going into this URL is insane. The thing is how does one over come a Google Bomb? Do you just wait to see what Google does or do you just hope to rank under that URL? I should also note that it appears that all the keywords to it are relevant to the sites content. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks
Link Building | | kateG12980