Remove Google penalty or make a new website, Which is better??
-
My local website was hit by google and I have done all steps to remove the penalty, But it's still not ranked.
So it is better to make a new website with new content and start working on it?
-
In many cases, it is easier to start over than to clean up. But, no one can really answer your question without knowing a lot more facts.
In general though, I would recommend attempting recovery if either of the following are true for your site:
-You have a good base of truly natural links to your site
-You have a lot invested in your domain name.
But, if you're not married to the domain name and there aren't many natural links then starting fresh might be the best option.
-
Google states that it will likely take 6 months to a year (but can take longer) to see a recovery once a revoke is issued for a manual penalty if it is related to a Penguin Algo issue.
You must wait for a refresh of Penguin to run, but if it runs too soon after your revoke and Google has not finished reorganizing your disavowed and removed links then you will have to wait for the next update. Currently on 2 a year and the next will likely be in april/may
-
One reason you may be getting different answers is that a good evaluation of your situation may actually take several hours to dig in and find out what is going on, the cause(s) of the problem, ideas for solutions, etc. This may be a case where it would be good to contact an expert (we have a recommended list you can find in the footer) and ask for some help. You don't necessarily need to hire them to do all of the cleanup work for you, but it'd be a great place to start from in having confidence to know what to do.
-
If you know it is backlinks then you should only need to cleanse your profile. Manual - submit a reconsideration request; algorithmic - wait for an update.
If you do use a new domain you have no age, no authority and ranking will take time. Being local you have to ensure every source that contains NAP is updated with the new domain as you cannot redirect if you suspect there is any infection within the existing profile.
All I am saying is that I don't know your domain or scenario, but just ditching to a new domain may give you more headaches than you envisage and should definitely not be a knee jerk reaction to a slow recovery.
Then as mentioned there is a trust thing with your visitors changing domain, especially if it is branded. If you do go down that road I would get some business objective information out there as to why the change in name (on the site, social etc).
-
Here I am getting different opinions on “what to do”.
I know my current website was hit because of low quality backlinks, which I can avoid in the new website.
Can I start a new website with the same business name (with different URLs), with same address and phone number?.
-
The simple answer is we cannot give you confident advice. We don't know what the penalty/ies were, or if they are manual or algorithmic - do they tie up to any particular dates. Then that is only the start of real identification.
Does the domain have authority, age and an element of good link profile?
Does the domain have on-site technical issues hampering recovery?
My take on the question is that if you do not know precisely what the problem is then starting a new domain there is every reason to suppose you may fall down the same hole again. If you do know precisely the problem then fix it and wait, build out new content, create excellent links back to the site.
-
Hello,
Simply I will recommend you to focus on New Website. It takes less effort to Rank then to get back your website after penalty.
Thanks
-
Once the website is out of the penalty it usually takes time to come back to its original rakings and in my experience, it’s a slow process. Changing a brand name and start with the new website and content is again a time taking job and it’s not really simple decide one and go with it!
In my opinion, you have to consider several things in mind before taking any decision.
- How will your audience react to the website if they are going to find the same venders with the different names?
- What is the guarantee that your new website will not come under the Google Penguin/Panda radar?
If I will be at your place, I would consider the real problem and I think the real problem I see with your website is that you have one channel to get new customers and that was search engine. If this is the case than you should stick with the same website and try to diversify online channels to attract new customers, you can use content marketing as a channel, QnA forums as a channel, Youtube as a channel and more.
Instead of going with the new website instantly, try to find out the root problem and solve it accordingly.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Our new site will be using static site generator which is supposed to be better for SEO?
Hi folks, Our dev team is planning on building our new marketing webpages on SSG or Static Site Generator(we are stepping away from SSR). Based on my research this is something that can help our SEO in particular for site speed (our site has a poor score).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Are there any challenges or concerns I should be aware regarding this direction? If so what are they and how can this be addressed? Thanks0 -
Fetch as Google
I have odd scenario I don't know if anyone can help? I've done some serious speed optimisation on a website, amongst other things CDN and caching. However when I do a Search Console Fetch As Google It is still showing 1.7 seconds download time even though the cached content seems to be delivered in less than 200 ms. The site is using SSL which obviously creams off a bit of speed, but I still don't understand the huge discrepancy. Could it be that Google somehow is forcing the server to deliver fresh content despite settings to deliver cache? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
301 vs 410 redirect: What to use when removing a URL from the website
We are in the process of detemining how to handle URLs that are completely removed from our website? Think of these as listings that have an expiration date (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/test-prep/tphU3/sat-group-course). What is the best practice for removing these listings (assuming not many people are linking to them externally). 301 to a general page (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/search/test-prep) Do nothing and leave them up but remove from the site map (as they are no longer useful from a user perspective) return a 404 or 410?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abargmann0 -
Duplicating an existing website - new name and reskin
Would re-skinning, duplicating an exising ecommerce website with a new domain name cause any ranking issues? The plan would be that all product data, pricing info etc would be identical, the site would have a minor redesign to change colours, logos etc and all duplicate content would be rel=canonicaled to the original site. In case you are wondering the reason for this is a customer with an existing site wants to try out a new brand without incorporating a massive development costs. The majority of traffic would be driving through google shopping, a bit of PPC, social etc. Is this site duplication likely to harm the original site or will setting up rel=canonical to point to the original site going to be sufficient enough to prevent this happening? Is there anything else is should consider? Many thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinTaylor880 -
Penguin Penalty?
The past 2 days, specific keywords Ive been ranking well for have disappeared. If I google specific with brand it still shows up. So I havent been removed from the index. Is it possible that I was hit by penguin without any type of notice in the webmaster account? Organic traffic dropped substantialy in the past couple days without any warnings. Any help greatly appreciated! Thank You
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Regional websites
Hi, I run 4 websites London, New York, Singapore and Dubai. Same company but some of our products are different in each region. Each domain is registered in the relevant region and I have google webmaster tools set so they know the location of each website. The problem is that our Dubai and US websites are appearing higher that the UK website in google.co.uk organic. Does anyone have any ideas why? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-1971830 -
What are the different tactics for getting ranked/ included in Google finance searches such as http://www.google.com/finance/company_news?q=NASDAQ:ADBE
I don't know what ranking factors they are using for this feed. The results vary greatly from a search done at google.com or google.com/news and google.com/finance I'm working with a website that regularly publishes finance-related news and currently gets traffic from google finance. I'm wondering what we can do to optimize our news articles to possibly show more prominently or more often. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joemascaro0