Should I Even Bother Trying To Recover This Site After Google Penguin?

[smaavie]

Hello all,

I would like to get your opinion on whether I should invest time and money to improve a website which was hit by Google Penguin in April 2014.

(I know, April 2014 was nearly 2 years ago. However, this site has not been a top priority for us and we have just left until now).

The site is www.salmonrecipes.net

Basically, we aggregated over 700 salmon recipes from major supermarkets, famous chefs, and others (all with their permission) and made them available on this site. It was a good site at the time but it is showing its age now.

For a few years we were occasionally #1 on Google in the US for "salmon recipes", but normally we would be between #2 and #4.

We made money from the site almost entirely through Adsense. We never made a huge amount, but it paid our office rent every month, which was handy.

We also built up an email database of several thousand followers, but we've not really used this much. (Yet).

In the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012 the site attracted just over 500k visits.

After the rankings dropped due to Google Penguin, traffic dropped by 77% in the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012. Rankings and traffic have not recovered at all, and are only getting worse.

I am happy to accept that we deserved our rankings to fall during the Google Penguin re-shuffle. I stupidly commissioned an offshore company to build lots of links which, in hindsight, were basically just spam, and totally without any real value. However they assured me it was safe and I trusted them, despite my own nagging reservations.

Anyway, I have full details of all the links they created, and therefore I could remove many of these 'relatively' easily. (Of course, removing hundreds of links would take a lot of time).

My questions ...

1. How can I evaluate the probability of this site 'recovering' from Google Penguin. I am willing to invest time/money on link removal and new (ethical) SEO work if there is a reasonable chance of regaining a position in the top 5 on Google (US) for "salmon recipes" and various long-tail terms. But I am keen to avoid spending time/money on this if it is unlikely we will recover. How can I figure out my chances?

2. Generally, I accept that this model of site is in decline. Relying on Google to drive traffic to a site, and on Google to produce revenue via its Adsense scheme, is risky and not entirely sensible. Also, Google seems to provide more and more 'answers' itself, rather than sending people to e.g. a website listing recipes. Given this, is it worth investing any money in this at all?

3. Can you recommend anyone who specialises in this kind of recovery work. (As I said, I have a comprehensive list of all the links that were built, etc).

OK, that is all for now.

I am really looking forward to whatever opinions you may have about this. I'll provide more info if required.

Huge thanks
David

[MarieHaynes]

If you have the ability to remove the bad links, then this is always the better option.  It's a bit of a pain and can take some time but removing is always better than disavowing.

Feel free to send me an email at marie@hiswebmarketing.com and I'll put you in touch with someone who can give you a good idea as to whether or not your site is a good candidate for recovery.

[smaavie]

Thanks Marie,

I really appreciate you taking the time to provide your thoughts here.

I am sure you are right, and that almost all the links we created over the years are probably now considered unnatural, regardless of whether they were built in a relatively low intensity way several years ago or more high intensity by our Sri Lanakan supplier. Regardless, I fear that once they are all removed / disavowed, then we still won't rank very highly as we won't have enough natural links to provide the rankings we hope for. Of course, if take a long term view of the project then it is definitely better to 'wipe clean' our past mistakes now and start again from a low base, rather than to just leave all the unnatural links in place forever. But it is still a sobering thought to have to spend time/money on cleaning this up now with no real understanding of what to expect once the work is done.

One quick question ... can I simply disavow bad links right away, or would it be better for me to try to remove them manually first?

Finally, I would really appreciate you putting me in touch with your friend who may be able to look into this in a little more detail for me.

Huge thanks again
David

[MarieHaynes]

Hi David,

"At that time we did occasionally do some off-site SEO work such as paying for a batch of articles to be created and submitted, or getting a custom written press release distributed."

Many of these links are likely ones that Google may now consider unnatural.  Whether or not your site can recover from Penguin really depends, IMO, on the number of truly naturally earned links that you have.  I've worked with companies with manual penalties (a little bit different than Penguin, but still quite similar) where we tried to remove the penalty by just dealing with the most obvious spam links made by a low quality SEO link building company.  Google failed us and gave us example links that were from years ago prior to hiring an SEO.  They were links that the site owner had made on his own via publishing articles and submitting to directories.  My point is that you may find that some of your previous rankings were propped up on the power of links that are now considered unnatural.

Unfortunately though, to know whether you're likely to be able to recover is a tough call.  I am not currently taking on clients for consulting jobs like this, but I'm happy to put you in touch with someone who can take a really good look at your site and give you an idea as to whether or not recovery is likely and how hard it would be to do the work.

"I am fairly sure that a high percentage of our inward links are either having no positive effect or, worse, are having a negative effect. What is the simplest/easiest/cheapest way for me to safely and comprehensively get rid of all these dodgy links so that I can start new SEO activity afresh?"

Tough question to answer.  If you want to try doing this on your own...and I think it's certainly possible to do it on your own, then get as complete a list of backlinks as you can.  This may mean buying a membership for a month on ahrefs.com and majesticseo.com.  You can also download your links from Open site explorer, and of course, look at your Webmaster Tools links as well.  Put these links all together in a spreadsheet and manually look at one link from each domain linking to you.  For every single link, assess whether it was likely one that was made for SEO purposes.  If so, then add it to your disavow file and disavow on the domain level.  If you're not sure, then it's best to err on the side of caution and disavow.  Then, once your done, file your disavow file.  The next time Penguin refreshes (or possibly after two refreshes), if you have done a thorough enough job you should see some improvement.  If you don't, it means that either you have not disavowed all of your self made links, or that Panda is affecting your site which is a whole other issue.

One other thought - if you were given reports from your link building companies on what links were made, then start off by disavowing all of those.

Good luck!

[smaavie]

Hi Marie and Andy,

Thanks for your contributions.

Marie, your first post touches upon many very important issues.

We did rank well for e.g. "salmon recipes" on Google US and particularly on Google UK for a couple of years or more, before Penguin. At that time we did occasionally do some off-site SEO work such as paying for a batch of articles to be created and submitted, or getting a custom written press release distributed. This work seemed to make a positive difference at the time, but I can't be totally sure how worthwhile it was in terms of securing our good ranking at that time.

Then, we scaled up the off-site SEO quite a lot, hiring a company from Sri Lanka to do lots of work every month.

I am guessing that the links generated by this later and more intensive period of work are more spammy than those produced in the earlier, low-key efforts. I appreciate that the earlier work wouldn't have generated much in the way of 'quality' links, but my gut feeling is that this earlier work is probably less likely to be seen as definitely spammy.

Anyway, I guess I just don't know where we would have deserved to rank without any of this paid-for SEO work at all, and I have no idea where we'd deserve to be now if the spammy links get removed or disavowed.

I suppose there is not going to be any kind of clear answer to any of this without first doing the work to remove/disavow the links.

Maybe I should be looking at this a different way.

I am fairly sure that a high percentage of our inward links are either having no positive effect or, worse, are having a negative effect. What is the simplest/easiest/cheapest way for me to safely and comprehensively get rid of all these dodgy links so that I can start new SEO activity afresh?

Cheers
David

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Marie,

I am exactly the same as you in those circumstances and certainly no offence was taken to anything that you said. I didn't even think about that

-Andy

[MarieHaynes]

Hi Andy,

I just wasn't completely clear whether the previous high rankings were obtained before or after hiring a link builder.  It sounds like they were there before the bad links were made and if so, that is great news and the site does have some chance at recovery.  With that being said, I'd be a little concerned about a possible Panda issue if the site consists primarily of information that is aggregated from other sources.

Please know that my comment about checking references before hiring anyone was not meant to be a slight on your offer to help.  If you have success with Penguin recovery then that is fantastic, and David, you should take Andy up on his offer!  I'm just always careful to advise site owners to check references because there are a lot of people out there who claim to be able to recover any Penguin hit site but have never actually done so.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

"Prior to building the spammy links, did you guys rank well?"

As David said above...

"For a few years we were occasionally #1 on Google in the US for "salmon recipes", but normally we would be between #2 and #4."

And

"In the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012 the site attracted just over 500k visits."

-Andy

[MarieHaynes]

Prior to building the spammy links, did you guys rank well?  Do you have a good number of truly naturally earned links?  If so, then yes, you could recover from Penguin.  You will need to do an extremely thorough backlink audit and disavow every link that was self made for SEO purposes.

With that being said, there really haven't been many cases of true Penguin recovery reported.  There are many people who say that they can help, but if you are going to hire a company, be sure to ask for references from site owners whom they have helped recover.  Don't let them hide behind a NDA.  Any site owner that has truly recovered from Penguin would be very happy to give a glowing recommendation.

My personal belief as to why there haven't been many recoveries is that most sites that got into Penguin trouble would not have ranked if it were not for the power of unnatural links.  They'll never get that link equity back and as such, disavowing links is not going to cause the site to improve because there are no good links there to support rankings.  But, if you've truly got good links then it's worth a try!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi David,

Whilst I can't go into specifics here, it is somewhat messy in there, including a couple that are even flagged as especially dangerous. I can give you more info if you wish to mail me at info@inetseo.co.uk

However, this isn't the worst I have seen, and have had complete recoveries from those, so all is not lost

-Andy

[smaavie]

Thanks Andy, it is reassuring to know that no site is beyond help!

We have never received any kind of manual penalty or warning for this site. The decline in rankings was purely algorithmic, with a clear and major drop on 24th April 2012.

It you want to run a quick scan for me, that would be fantastic. I would really appreciate that.

I look forward to hearing from you whenever you have had time to do this.

Huge thanks again

David

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi David,

No site is beyond help. I have worked with sites who have been seeing hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, only to be hit by Penguin / Panda, and seen later recoveries. What it sounds like you need is to disavow lots of the links that are associated with you now. It certainly isn't something that you need to give up on and shouldn't cost the earth to do it.

I would be happy to run a quick scan for you to give you an idea of what sort of state your link profile is in, if you wish?

Have you had a manual penalty from Google at all, or does this appear to just be algorithmic?

-Andy