Killed by penguin 3

[smartcow]

So with the update to penguin 3.0 last week we notice that some clients have been significantly hit by the update. How do we rectify the situation for the poor links that are on the site.

We have used open site explorer and Google webmaster to try and identify which are the bad links to try and remove.

Now we can spot that some inbound links are from directories that may be perceived as low value/spam, but could not be sure what is affecting the ranking. The vast majority of these links are historical prior to inheriting this client recently and so do not have any logins to remove the links (if there are logins). These appear to be placed by teams outsourced in India. We would suspect that no site owner would spend the time removing links from the site any way.

How do we recover from the penguin hit. Is it just a case of trying to identify ones that we suspect could be perceived as spam and ask for these to be disavowed by Google? Do we contact all the sites to ask them to be removed and/or do we just push ahead with more engaging white hat methods of social SEO?

Are we likely to recover in the short term or be permanently hit. The site is for a small business with no more than 800 monthly hits so this fall from grace off very good front page positions is going to hit our client very hard even if the sins are from a previous business.

Any thoughts and suggestions PLEASE HELP

[smartcow]

Thanks for the responses.

Looks like bit of a tough road ahead, but long term will be much for the better in cleaning up the (off)site.

The disavow exercise has been interesting in getting to review links in placed. There have been some strange links placed and very difficult to contact some websites to get them removed, but will try.

All the very best

[Andy-Halliday]

1. Google is a bit secretive and hasn't let a lot slip out yet. My best guess would be when they next do an update if you have removed all the bad links you have the potential to increase, but this would be if Google thought you had cleaned up your bad links.

2. I use some software called ahrefs to get the full list of back links - even WMTs doesnt allow you to download the full list'

3. You could in theory have a link from a DA of 10 and be a great link, DA isn't really a great indicator - you could also have a link from a DA of 70+ and be a bad link. Check out these great articles:

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links 

http://moz.com/blog/category/link-building

But basically links need to be organic and natural, so if you have lots that are from forum signatures / comments, on websites outside your niche. If you sell garden furniture and have a lot of links sites about shoes for example, the odd one could be seen as relevant, but in general these aren't natural. You basically need to go to every page that is link to you and see if the link is relevant on the page, does it look natural and add value - or does it seem like it was just added in for the sake of a link.

4. For disavow you simply upload a file, please keep this master file when uploaded as if you ever want to update this you need to include all previous bad links, as they don't keep an historical record and just use the latest file.

You only need to show evidence if you have a penalty in WMTs and are trying to have it removed.

[BKraff]

@smartcow

In response to #1, unfortunately the answer is its impossible to know. We've had campaigns where disavowing links brought near immediate results, but we've also seen some that took months to correct.

As for #3, its more of a judgement call than a hard line on DA. As with all SEO, if there is good quality content on the page, then its a fine link to keep. If it looks borderline, probably better off disavowing it (better safe than sorry).

[smartcow]

Thanks for getting back to us, really usefull and leads to several questions (sorry)

1. Your response implies will we only recover once links are removed/disavowed and the next update is in place. is this correct of do we see results once we have fixed the rot.

2. How do we get a FULL link list, even Open site explorer does not seem to do a full list.

3. How do we know which links affect us, i.e. is domain authority of the linking page relevant, if so what level would be acceptable. Most are above 25 DA that show in open site and would think this is OK?

4. Not having to disavow anything before, by showing evidence does that mean passing copies of email. How long after requesting to remove a link do we go and look to disavow in webmaster. getting links added can take upto 6 months so getting rid of them I am sure could take longer without fully knowing they are going to remove them anyway.

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

Good news - you can recover, the bad news - you have a lot of hard work to do, and when you will recover I don't know, Google hasn't yet confirmed how frequently the updates will roll.

First of all. Do a FULL link analysis and what ever links look unnatural and fake - disavow them straight away.

If you have a penalty you must show evidence you have tried to contact the webmaster's to get the links removed. Try to contact as many as possible and then do a disavow - the sooner the better.

Unfortunately, all you can do is hard work. Even if you did purely white hat going forward (and most sites I would say do Grey hat in my honest opinion, sending products out for review and a link, in my eyes is grey hat - but I digress), you still wouldn't recover.

The site is basically now on sinking sand any and good building you put on top is going to sink and be a waste of time, until you have sorted out the foundations (i.e. removed the bad links).

Sorry to say, this client is going to be taking up quite a bit of your time in the coming weeks, but you can be the good agency. Sit down with them and clearly explain everything what is wrong, what the previous agency / in house teams have done wrong and how your going to fix it. Then explain once you have fixed the issues, you are going to be good and do white hat techniques so that they never get penalised again - potential client for life. Put in the effort now and they will keep coming back.

Hope this is helpful.