Possible Penguin 2.1 fix - Anybody tested this?
-
Possible Penguin 2.1 fix?
This happened to client site - Stay with me - this takes some explaining…
A clients home page is set as index.html
Which in domain settings goes to the root address: http://www.domain.com/
But is a setting on a domain/hosting - you can set any page to the root-
I always link directly to the root address (the second one)
So if you set the new root page as http://www.domain.com/index.htm --- going to the root - essentially is a new page- any previous poor linking would be then broken and would have no effect
So it would be a matter of changing the domain settings to use the index.htm page (which would function exactly the same- internal link structure of site goes to the root)
thoughts?
-
Thanks- we have seen Unnatural links warnings come in as well (other domains) -ranking dropped we left it for a week- and it came back to the same place....
Undecided at this point what i will do- might start with Disavow of links....and go from there...
-
If I had to place my money of what would happen next from what I've seen int he past I would put it on one of two things assuming you are 301 redirecting to the new homepage:
1 - Nothing. Penalty passes instantly or is already assigned to the domain which was part of what the focus of Penguin 2.1 was about. Matt Cutts, discussing this update said:
"The previous iteration of Penguin would essentially only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas."
or ...
2 - Google gets tricked and passes the weight but not the penalty. In this event the rankings will likely last somewhere between 1 and 3 weeks before the penalty follows. I've seen this happen as well but mainly in cases where the penalty was an "unnatural links" warning.
Google luck and if you go for it, I'd love to hear how it turns out.
-
I see one of two things happening with that... Either your prior homepage 404s which will hurt you even more or your prior homepage will redirect to the new one and nothing will have changed.
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 to fix Duplicate Content Warnings on Pagination? Indexed Pagination?
Hi all! So we have a Wordpress blog that properly has pagination tags of rel="prev" and rel="next" set up for pages, but we're still getting crawl errors with MOZ for duplicate content on all of our pagination pages. Also, we are having all of our pages indexed as well. I'm talking pages as deep as page 89 for the home page. Is this something I should ignore? Is it hurting my SEO potentially? If so, how can I start tackling it for a fix? Would "noindex" or "nofollow" be a good idea? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jampaper0 -
Starting over after a Penguin Penalty
Hi, Has anyone tried starting a new domain after being hit with a Penguin penalty? I'm considering the approach outlined here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2384644/can-you-safely-redirect-users-from-a-penguin-hit-site-to-a-new-domain. In a nutshell, de-index the OLD site completely via Google's Removal Tool, and then relaunch old content under new domain. This seems to have merit, unless Google keeps a hidden cache of content (or uses other sources like Wayback Machine). My concern is doing the above listed approach, but Google still passes the old links to the new domain. We have great content, but too much spam (despite me removing a lot of the links + disavow). Any feedback based on experience would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14401 -
Why this site is not hit by google penguin only experts answer please
Hello I know a site which has the following things and it is not hit by google penguin at all and is ranked on first page first link in google.com.pk it has 1.3K total backlinks its has 34 referring domains according to ahrefs the exact match keyword which is ranked in google.com.pk as first position is used in 1.2 K backlinks its DA is 18 and PA is 31 its citation flow is 19 trust flow is 13 targeted exact match keyword is present in Title and description also. Now tell me what is happening here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tanveerayakhan0 -
How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?
Hi Mozzers, A quick question. In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP. Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4). So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic. Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more. So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank? Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this? Any advice is much appreciated.0 -
Is it possible we are being penalized for doorway pages?
www.trophycentral.comHi, we were hit very hard a few years ago by Panda and have been try to recover. We completely revamped our site (structure, canonical, duplicates, content, etc.) and had a couple of keywords recover. However, most traffic has not comeback and still cannot be found in the top 30 pages or so for major phrases. We have compared ourselves to major competitors in our industry and see very few differences. The only thing I see as a difference is that many of our products are in multiple sections. For example, we have all baseball awards (trophies, pins, medals) grouped together. We then have just baseball medals together and just baseball pins together. Is this something that could be causing us not to rank? I am asking because the phrases that are ranking are the ones that don't have multiple categories. We have no manual penalties, but now I am thinking this is what Google might consider a doorway page?As an experiment, I just noindexed all but one category for baseball and soccer to see what happens.Does this make sense? Has anyone else seen this?Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Migrating EMD to brand name domain. Risk of Penguin Penalty?
We would like to migrate from an EMD to a brand name domain, since our service offer has become much broader than indicated by the current EMD. The current domain name is a money keyword. Do you believe there is a big risk of suffering a penguin penalty if we go ahead with the domain migration, due to large share of anchor texts containing keyword of old domain name? Quick facts about our site:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
-about 500.000 pages indexed by google PR6 10 years old 1200 linking root domains 30% of linking root domains contain our domain name with domain ending as anchor text 5% of linking root domains have just the domain keyword as anchor text Any thoughts?
Thanks0 -
Backlinks from one website to my 3 websites (hosted in 1 c-block) ?
We are making some linkbuilding. And have very nice backlinks offer. So we are planning to put our 3 websites in it. Our 3 websites are on separate IP, but same C-block. Can it be a red flag for google? Can i put my 3 backlinks in one blog post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Is the Penguin algorithmic penalty on a page basis or a site basis?
Just wondering if there has been any clarification of whether the Penguin algorithmic penalty is on a Page basis or a Site basis? In other words, is it all or nothing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | darkgreenguy0