Cleaning up after Penguin | Next steps?
-
Background:
We've come to the realization that Google's Penguin update back in 2013 has penalized us and are just now attending to the issue. We had subscribed to a link-building service for years and just recently cancelled their services. Unfortunately those links are still out there. We've submitted a disavow list to Google on January 14, 2014; but there is no way to tell when/if they processed it.Our homepage used to rank in the top three listings for our main keyword, but now we're somewhere around #31 on page 4. It's not even our homepage that ranks any longer either; its a page specifically created recently that is tailored to our main keyword.
What I've Done So Far Using MOZ, I determined our homepage was using our keyword 53 times in various ways; so I dwindled that down to 27. I built a new page tailored to our main keyword that apparently is ranking in Google as #31 now; not gaining any placement at all though. I've implemented canonical tags in the
<header>of most pages (usually just linked to itself to minimize duplicate pages being detected from URL variables and such). I've worked on Title and meta description length issues.
Duplicate Content?
We sell hotels, so we have a ton of internal links 500+ hotels, linking to/from one another. One page might have 100 hotel links (all internal). Another category page might be duplicating half of those links. For example, we have 200 all-inclusive resorts, so they are listed as links with the hotel name and a short description. On an adults-only page, we have 100 resorts, but 75 of them are the same resorts as on the all-inclusive page; so it may appear like duplicate content. << Not sure how to combat this. ?Too Many internal Links on Homepage?
Our homepage: navigation bar has 68 links, rest of page has ~74 links. I've read that that's too many and other people say it's fine as long as your page has textual content that is long enough. Any thoughts?Domain Name Change?
An SEO company that we talked to said they would transform our site into a Wordpress-based site for SEO reasons and that we should change our domain name; thus starting fresh and ridding us of the bad/spammy links that are coming to us. They also said they have several high-quality ranking pages that they would write articles on and link to us.Considering we don't have many good links to our site to begin with, what are your thoughts on a domain name change? It's drastic and we're not that open to the idea (yet).
Would the SEO's link-building technique be what MOZ is talking about in his video 7 days ago. If so, I think that's a scary route to take; especially when after we stop the SEO's services, they said our links would come off those pages. Won't google see that happen and flag us as using black-hat tactics?
As for Wordpress; we have 500+ hotels.. so that's doable, but a chore in itself. If our CMS code and website can be cleaned up some I think our custom CMS is fine for SEO. Any WP fanatics out there think WP is good for 700+ page sites? *we already have our CMS programmed to pull data from vendors; so that code would need rewritten also to work with WP.
Analytics Data
I reviewed Google Analytics closely looking at the google organic traffic closely from Jan 2012 till now and I don't see any sudden drops; just gradual decreases. Is this normally the case for Penguin-hit sites; or shouldn't there be a sudden drop in organic traffic?If you've read this far; THANK YOU. Any comments to the above questions are appreciated.
</header>
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
-
Is paper.li a Penguin no-no?
One of our blog posts was just linked to from a paper.li site; the post on the site was then tweeted by the site's owner. From what I was able to determine, paper.li is little more than an aggregator, and the tweet was most likely automated. So, this is my two-part question: 1) Is the paper.li platform one that Penguin disapproves of, and 2) if so, should I prepare to disavow?
Industry News | | RScime250 -
How do you measure impacts of Google Updates Like Penguin 4?
Having a conversation with a fellow SEO via twitter and we were discussing measuring algorithm updates. In the aftermath of Google Penguin 4 how do you determine the effects it has on your site/sites and your respective verticals?
Industry News | | Thos0030 -
Penguin 2.0 Update - Just Hit - Google Messes up again, can anyone on SEOMOZ please tell me why or how some of these websites are ranking?
I am getting a bit tired now writing all of this so please excuse grammar and spelling mistakes, I wanted to post this up quickly tonight so I could possibly get some feedback by morning. So I feel I figured out some of the new update that just hit and I am sure the update will continue to keep coming and rankings will most likely change for a while, but I do have a few questions in the mean time if they stay. Please look below, why would some of those sites be ranking? Some sites utilize no onpage SEO, some no backlinks, one of the sites is a single page site and every page is a broken link even the contact us page and it's rank 1..... I am not 100% sure that Google got this one right. I see many instances below where other sites are much higher quality and have more authority. It's as if Google took terrible sites and said here is a site for you, now deal with it and I hope it works out at the top. I do see several sites that belong on the first page, but I see others that are very questionable. This is how the following is written below. Before the url is the anchor text density % for the site. This indicates the percentage of the amount of times the anchor text was backlined versus other anchor texts they used. Issues with the sites. Most of these sites don't utilize onpage SEO and it's clearly not a factor for onpage density purposes, there is a site with 37% keyword density on it. Some sites even have broken links. Please note: I already know that there is a lot of data that is analyzed to determine rankings more than this, but PA/DA is suppose to be a major factor according to everyone that believes in SEOMOZ.org. So I am taking in account for many of those factors being calculated due to this. These are just some random keywords I picked, because I know you need to analyze other SEO firms after and update to figure out what lasted and what didn't. All of my sites lasted due to ethical tactics, but I had some rankings move down and others go up, very odd. Keyword Analyzed: CHEAP SEO Not Knowng http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585 92-DA 75-PA - A lot of content 4715 words on the page including comments. not known http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-cheap-seo-or-link-building/45932/ 87DA 63 PA Words on page 3673 Not known www.cheap-seo-solutions.com 26 DA -- 38 PA 1112 words on page 9.52% www.cheapseocompany.com 34 DA ---- 41 PA 10 + anchor texts but 623 words on page 10.26% seocheap.net 35 DA --- 45 PA 10 + anchor text 855 words on the page I am not 100% sure why this is ranking lol, the services page isn't even working it errors out. The onpage SEO is sloppy and the writing looks forced. Why is this even ranking? The site also looks low quality. The density is higher than SEOMOZ even and it has less words. In this case DA + words carried this site up, not the anchor ratio being low. 6.17% http://www.cheapseo-services.com cheap seo Page Authority DA 28 -- PA 38 276 Words No onpage, 35 duplicate pages, free template, etc.. etc.. 10% www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-seo-cheap DA 94 --- PA 56 only 5 anchor texts used on this page. 8651 Words I am willing to bet if you diversified this with about 5 more anchor texts this could be number 1 easy. This only has 5 total diverse anchor text backlinks for this page. Keyword Analyzed: Affordable SEO Services Rank 1 47% www.affordableseoservicesx.com/ 24DA PA36 New site It still has broken links all over the page The Contact us page doesn't even work lol. Great going Google on ranking such a high quality 1 page website. 471 words How is this site ranking? How could Google even rank this site? Rank 2 The Term isn't mentioned at all accept in title and header not known mbseoservice.com/ da 20 pa 32 PR 0 Just has affordable seo services in title anchor Possible New Site 627 words Rank 4 12.77% affordableseoservices.net 22 DA 35 DA - Proof Exact match domains still work great with high diversity rates, low word amounts, bad DA, etc..... 348 words Rank 5 4.24% www.howardsemgroup.com DA 39 PA 49 893 words. Rank 6 2.49% www.i4.net/ 59 DA and 66 PA 588 words Rank 7 4.71% www.bluefrogseosolutions.com/ DA 31 PA 42 527 Words This site looks like it was created in 1998 and never updated. Low quality site IMO Rank 8 Not Known www.mainstreethost.com/ 76 DA 81 PA possible co occurrence added in with main domain name /url 281 Words not 1 exact anchor text match Rank 10 2.7% bestcheapseoservices.com/ 18 DA 29PA This is just a blog site, come on Google... 4379 Words
Industry News | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
Is there a Step by Step Online Tutorial for SEOing?
Hi People I know this sounds like a real dumb question, but hey! I thought I would ask. I am a newbie, and after continuously spending $165.00/day for my PPC adwords campaign for the last 5 years, I MUST get my site naturally ranked higher. So as a newbie; yet understanding the basic principles about SEOing, I searched High and Low for an accredited course, an educational programme or anything that looked structured, and had a distinct step by step structure, and to my amazement I couldn't find much. I did find Dan Thiess' online guide, the SEOMOZ guide, and a few other bits n pieces. It appears that SEO learning is all over the place. I couldn't find any courses at the local universities either! So I thought...well what does it take to become an SEO consultant if there's no real formal qualification as such? And my answer was...Experience and proof of experience! That is, a consultant of who has been around for quite a few years and can prove to potential customers that ... hey you see this website www.????.com notice how it's ranked #1 ? That's because of me! So I thought, I would post this question to the forum and 1. See if there is some formidable training course with a valued and recognised qualification upon completion? 2. If I am able to work for a consultant at no charge to them at all in exchange for their knowledge. I have a wealth of experience in business and people management, and Yes I do have some Web Development and IT experience. But I know to some consultants this is a big ask, so I thought I would put it out there! (you never know until you ask.) In the meantime if anyone could possibly guide for a step by step program...that would be greatly appreciated. Cheers George
Industry News | | Giorgio680 -
Google Penguin 2.0 - Coming soon
There is an interesting article on SEW that Google is going to update Penguin to the next major version - http://bit.ly/15Vkr6O So what do you think, what should we expect? And also, is there available updated webmaster guidelines?
Industry News | | ditoroin1 -
Any thoughts on Penguin 3.0?
Ok ok, so it's just a data refresh and not a major - but does anyone has some additional insight now that the data has been refreshed? Any thoughts about the winners and losers in this one?
Industry News | | Takudzwa0 -
How good is Guest post after Penguin Update ?
Hello 🙂 , You agree or not but 90% of guest posting is done for Link Building, we have seen several blogs on SEOMoz or more trusted SEO Sites that talk about Guest blogging. Everyone recommends guest posts with good content (Unique ofcourse) , valued content & linking to related websites. I have been doing Guest posting for many of my clients but from last 2 months, we got good success too (That is most of our content was approved) . Our writers did great job writing quality content, authoritative subject, providing do's & don'ts, tips, pros - cons etc. Though I have been trying to link to our direct URL instead of anchor text, or long words or name of our business not our main kws, just to be on safe side from Google. Sites where we posted guest post were minimum home page rank of 2 & seomoz's domain authority 30+ , so we know that our guest posts are not on junk sites or blogs. To be honest we have received around 35 guest blogs in one month (All unique content, never spun) linked on above topics, anchor links like I said above - other than that we have not done too fancy for link building, we paid attention to our social media, brand building, inbound marketing recommended by rand fishkin http://goo.gl/64VB5 & we never participated to buy link, buy guest post, buy any likes on fb etc... Still our ranks are not improved actually our ranks has dragged back, we have been doing SEO from last 4 yrs but we never did black hat, our website content is 10 times better than websites in front of us, our titles are unique and advice to human, but our competitors ahead in ranks talk to engines. Our website is up & running from 1993. That is too old and our service is top class. We used to rank well in most competitive words for yrs but new websites came in and started to outrank us. Now situation is this that - websites ahead of us are brands or microsites. I understand Google favors brands but that doesn't mean we are doing anything against Google. We have been practicing guest blogs from yrs but frequency was less. Now question is - Is Guest post worth, bz it is for link (ofcourse with good content) and Google say don't work for link. This is big dilemma We make good content and we need credit for that and link is credit which everyone wants. After penguin update things has started more worse than before. So modified question is - Is guest post worth after penguin update ? Thank you for taking time to read this & I look forward for ongoing discussion on this & I hope leading industry people will participate here, especially those talks and post about guest blogs. -Sunny.
Industry News | | sunny.popali0 -
Anyone interested in meeting up in Central NJ next week?
So I realize it's a bit of a short notice, but April 24 (next Tuesday), I will be hosting a Joomla users meetup in conjunction with Blogsvertise. The first get together is going to be more of a social meetup, with not much specifically planned. Topics that will be discussed: Joomla - everything from basics to advanced questions SEO - open discussion, Q+A, networking Bloggers - Bloggers will be there, and can connect with other bloggers/companies. Anything else web related as well. The event is going to be hosted at the Blogsvertise office in East Brunswick NJ. There is going to be some free pizza and snacks, and should be a good networking event. In the future we aim to get more organized, and have guest speakers and presentations, but for the first one we want to gauge people's interest, and see what they would want to hear presentations on. If you are interested you can reply here, or shoot me an email at vforvinnie at gmail dot com. My cell is 848.992.3171 but I won't be able to talk until after 5pm during the week. It is going to start at 6:30 and will probably run for a few hours. Cheers, Vinnie
Industry News | | vforvinnie0