Google Penguin 2.1 Penalty - Recoverable?
-
Hello,
I have a client that was hit very bad by the Google Penguin 2.1 update. He mentioned he did an intensive link analysis and removed all the bad links; however there were a lot of them (around 6000). His domain has a decent sized domain authority of 30/100.
I'm wondering if it's worth it to try and save his domain, or start fresh from a new one. Due to the high number of links I'm not 100% confident that all the bad links were taken care of, and I've heard that even if you remove the links Google won't lift the penalties.
What would you do...get a new domain, or risk the next couple months trying to save the existing one?
-
Glad to hear it, Chris, and welcome to the community!
-
AMAZING HELP!!! This is good stuff here. I am in the same boat, and already started taking these steps before I even read this. I will say this is all working for me.
-
THIS.
Until more people understand what disavow actually does, it's going to be rare that we hear good recovery stories. Disavow gets rid of the rotten wood - it doesn't build you new foundations.
So if the disavow is done correctly and thoroughly, go build a new foundation. You can do that on the current site but yes, sometimes a new domain is the fastest & easiest way.
-
Beyond what Travis communicated I'll add this:
If a site was "artificially" ranking due to bad links, and those links are being removed, why would it somehow rank again after they're gone?
Think of it this way: You have a house built on a foundation made out of wood. Building codes require your foundation be built out of concrete. Take away the wood. Why would the house remain elevated at that point?
Without replacing the "artificial" signals with new, more trustworthy signals, a site isn't going to recover.
That then begs the question - how does the site get those new signals? More questionable links? Not advisable. Better to expend energy to generate higher quality reasons for ranking.
And that then leaves us with Travis' question about cost / worth effort considerations.
-
Have you looked at his disavow file? There might be a problem with it and the disavow never actually went through. I know it seems pretty basic, but I've solved a lot of problems by asking a prospect if they've checked their robots.txt configuration. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps enough bad links weren't removed. Though I've heard of recoveries taking up to one year, without new links earned or more old links removed, even though the disavow was thorough. Draw on multiple link sources and check again. I've manually plowed through thousands of links in a few days. Sometimes you just have to dig in, but it would be wiser to see if the disavow was properly formatted and submitted first.
If it was properly formatted and submitted, then you have to make a decision based on the client's business. At what point does time and money intersect at $0? Can you rebuild that traffic/profit faster than that by starting over? It's risky either way, but if you can find something went wrong in the first round there's still a fighting chance.
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
-
SEO Value of Google+?
Hi Mozers, Does having a Google+ page really impact SEO? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater1 -
Google indexing wrong pages
We have a variety of issues at the moment, and need some advice. First off, we have a HUGE indexing issue across our entire website. Website in question: http://www.localsearch.com.au/ Firstly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localdirectories
In Google.com.au, if you search for 'plumbers gosford' (https://www.google.com.au/#q=plumbers+gosford), the wrong page appears - in this instance, the page ranking should be http://www.localsearch.com.au/Gosford,NSW/Plumbers I can see this across the board, across multiple locations. Secondly
Recently I've seen Google reporting in 'Crawl Errors' in webmaster tools URLs such as:
http://www.localsearch.com.au/Saunders-Beach,QLD/Electronic-Equipment-Sales-Repairs&Sa=U&Ei=xs-XVJzAA9T_YQSMgIHQCw&Ved=0CIMBEBYwEg&Usg=AFQjCNHXPrZZg0JU3O4yTGjWbijon1Q8OA This is an invalid URL, and more specifically, those query strings seem to be referrer queries from Google themselves: &Sa=U&Ei=xs-XVJzAA9T_YQSMgIHQCw&Ved=0CIMBEBYwEg&Usg=AFQjCNHXPrZZg0JU3O4yTGjWbijon1Q8OA Here's the above example indexed in Google: https://www.google.com.au/#q="AFQjCNHXPrZZg0JU3O4yTGjWbijon1Q8OA" Does anyone have any advice on those 2 errors?0 -
Google is not honoring my descriptions
I finally got our title tags honored and now Google is just making the descriptions whatever it wants. This is happening on pretty much every one of our pages. An example: http://www.sqlsentry.com/products/plan-explorer/sql-server-query-view SERPS = SQL Server MVP Aaron Bertrand shares a demo kit for Plan Explorer to give you better insight into the advantages of the tool, and to help you share its virtues ... Description tag = SQL Sentry Plan Explorer is a free query plan analysis tool that will allow you to find the most expensive operators by CPU, I/O, or both. I can see the description tag when I view source so I know that it is pulling it from the table correctly. What can I do to fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
Google stripping down Page Titles
When viewing pages indexed by Google, I've noticed the Page Titles have be down stripped as follows: Actual Page Title: CITY Keyword - STATE keyword
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SpadaMan
Google Indexed Page Title: 1 - Domain.com None of the keywords in the actual PAGE TITLE are present; all words have been replaced with a random digit -domain.com. We launched a new version of the site several months back.. Any Idea on what can be causing this?0 -
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 -
URL Error or Penguin Penalty?
I am currently having a major panic as our website www.uksoccershop.com has been largely dropped from Google. We have not made any changes recently and I am not sure why this is happening, but having heard all sorts of horror stories of penguin update, I am fearing the worst. If you google "uksoccershop" you will see that the homepage does not rank. We previously ranked in the top 3 for "football shirts" but now we don't, although on page 2, 3 and 4 you will see one of our category pages ranking (this didn't used to happen). Some rankings are intact, but many have disappeared completely and in some cases been replaced by other pages on our site. I should point out our existing rankings have been consistently there for 5-6 years until today. I logged into webmaster tools and thankfully there is no warning message from Google about spam, etc, but what we do have is 35,000 URL errors for pages which are accessible. An example of this is: | URL: | http://www.uksoccershop.com/categories/5_295_327.html | | Error details In Sitemaps Linked from Last crawled: 6/20/12First detected: 6/15/12Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. Is it possible this is the cause of the issue (we are not currently sure why the URL's are being blocked) and if so, how severe is it and how recoverable?If that is unlikely to cause the issue, what would you recommend our next move is?All help is REALLY REALLY appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840 -
Google places
Is there away to get to the top of google places? Can it be manipulated?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dynamic080 -
Google Penguin Winners and Losers?
Hi All, Just wondering out of the SEOmoz community who has come out on top after Penguin and who has been hit and why. Personally my site has come out on top. I started workig on the site back in December and NOTHING had been done, no link development, no onpage, nothing, a virginal website. The site was chock-a-block with issues both technically and in content. After 4 months of hard work, we have climbed from 100+ to top ten on most of our phrases and post Penguin we have climbed even higher as some of our competitors were dragged down into the murky depths. So I think thats a win (for now). My focus has been on Guest posting, social outreach, reviews and getting my on page right (still a ways to go, but our CMS is clunky to say the least). A little humour attached 😉 (Why has no one yet stuck Matt Cutts head on a Penguin?) Are you a Penguin Winner or have you experienced the wrath of the penguin. keep-calm-and-deoptimise.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aran_Smithson0