Penguin 3.0 Site Dropped after Update

[AMG100]

Hi

We was hit by the Penguin update a long time ago and we lost a lot of traffic/positions because of this. For a long time we worked really hard to identify all off our links that may have caused us to recieve this penalty. After Months of work we submitted the disavow file and reconsideration request and in June 2014 we recieved confirmation from google in webmaster tools that the manual spam action had been revoked.

over time we then started to recieve more traffic and better positions in the serps, however since penguin 3.0 we have dropped again for a range of keywords. many going from page 1 to 2 or page 2 to 3/4

Any ideas what we should do here , any help will be really appriciated as I'm totally confused

We havent done any link building at all since the penalty / recovery

[mrodriguez1440]

Hi Adam,

I recently experienced a rankings drop after P3, and here's some of the things I did to correct the problems.  Before proceeding, I know that everyone says that Google must re-run Penguin to see any changes.  However, from my experience, that depends on the way Penguin affected you.

If P3 penalized you by completely removing your site, then you're probably not going to see any recovery until Google re-runs Penguin. On the other hand, if you experienced a rankings demotions, as we both did, then you can take steps to fix it and will see results without Google re-running Penguin.

Obviously, this is an area of HUGE speculation. I know it seems like Google has stated that a Penguin penalty requires that Google re-run Penguin to see that penalty lifted. However, the Penguin algorithm is just one part of Google's algo, so it only accounts for a portion of what Google considers when deciding where to rank your site for a given keyword.

Further, I'm not focused on a P3 penalty, but rather a demotion. A demotion does not necessarily mean a penalty, but instead could indicate (1) links to your site were de-valued, thereby hurting your rankings, or (2) your competition cleaned up their link profiles and were rewarded, thereby allowing them to outrank you.

Regardless, here's what I did and I hope this helps you.

1.  I used CognitiveSEO to go through my link profile. There are other similar tools out there, but I like this one.

2.  After going through my link profile, I uploaded a disavow file to GWT.  If previously disavowed links are still showing in your GWT, don't worry.  They will still show in GWT, but will be marked as "no-follow."

3.  Carefully go through your entire site.  Ask yourself, "Is this a good user experience?"  Be honest with yourself on this point. Is the content good/useful/informative? Is the site nicely laid out? Does the site inspire trust? In short, make it a great site.

4.  Internal linking - huge area of opportunity. I would say carefully go through each page and ask yourself how to improve the user experience by internal linking.

5. Promote via social media. Also, carefully study your competition to understand how they are promoting their sites.

I know this may sound cheesy, but I really believe that Rand is correct when he tells us to "be awesome." If you make a great website and promote it, people will not only come to the site, but also come back to the site. Repeat business is everything.

Although I'm certain I experienced the same panic/stress/anxiety you did when you saw your rankings drop, I realized there was nothing I could except really focus on making a better site: content, U/X, conversion driven design, download speeds, social media, and a link profile that I wouldn't be ashamed of. I believe that if you do those things, you'll see an improvement in rankings.

I hope that helps.

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Adam,

It sounds like you went down the right route - however from experience you didn't necessarily need to disavow all links that contained commercial anchor text. Going forward I would concentrate on earning brand links.

Do you do a lot of social media? Which channels? How does your content go on there?

Matt

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Adam,

Yeah we are just down the road from you based in Mercury House

[MonicaOConnor]

That sounds like a good plan. Disavow the bad links and make sure they are completely gone. Getting rid of bad links will help your DA as well as building high quality links.

[AMG100]

Using that tool I have identified the drop is from the last Penguin update, I think if I start a campaign to improve the DA and PA for the Website by obtaining highly relevant links this should help. I dont really want to disavow anymore, we disavowed 1000s before and had the message in webmaster tools to say we had recovered.

I disavowed any that looked spammy and were not relevant and contains anchor text containing keywords not brand name.

Maybe its time now to start growing the DA and PA

Thanks

Adam

[AMG100]

Thank you everybody , very helpful I have lots to go on there

Matt - I think we are just down the road from you if you are the same company

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Adam,

Out of interest have you run your sites analytics through the panguin tool? If you haven't come across this previously it maps all Googles updates against your organic traffic. The reason I mention it is because over the last month or so there has been a lot of change in Google and always worth checking every aspect.

http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

When you say you haven't done any link building - I would recommend you still look at working on earning links with great content. By the sounds of it you do a lot around your blog, how's that content doing in terms of social shares etc?

In terms of new links what is the just discovered function of opentsiteexplorer saying? Many new links discovered in the last 60 days?

[David-Kley]

"The Problem I have is the links that are shown in webmaster tools are links I have already disavowed but they are still showing as links to our site, so I am unsure if there are any new ones."

True you disavowed the links, but did the link manually get removed from the offending sites? Did you possibly remove some of the good links with the bad? How did you determine what was good, and what was harmful?

Short answer is: you need to analyze the sites that gained in rank, and put you on page two. Run a link profile check for opportunities, look at their on page content and back-end optimization efforts, and check your own domain for errors such as 404's, bad redirects, additional variations of URL's (duplicate content), etc. By just looking at a few metrics and focusing so much on your own past linking strategy you will stress yourself to death trying to figure out how to fix it. With a few updates over the past months, I would NOT tie all of your existing ranking issues to just one update, because of the penalty you just worked your way through.

[MonicaOConnor]

If you can still see the links in GWT, then they are still connected to your site. Use Open Site Explorer to verify that. The blogs are good, however if the content is lacking on the other pages of the site that won't help them rank for keywords. Do you have any internal links from your blog to the other pages on the site?

[AMG100]

Thanks Monica

The Problem I have is the links that are shown in webmaster tools are links I have already disavowed but they are still showing as links to our site, so I am unsure if there are any new ones.

I can see websites on page 1 do have a higher DA and PA, but there are sites above us that have a lower DA and PA that us when running them through open site explorer

we are DA - 43/100 PA - 49/100

One above us is DA - 17/100 PA - 22/100

The Content on the site isnt too bad, we have content on most pages and we have 1000s of blogs on the blog page on the same site

[MonicaOConnor]

The way that Penguin works is that after you have been hit by the update, your "black cloud" effect on rankings aren't removed or reevaluated until the next update.

Two things could have happened here, the first being that others who were slapped with a penalty have seen improved rankings after the update , significant enough to knock you out of your rankings. The second being that your link profile is still lacking, so while you didn't receive a penalty, you still were negatively effected by this update.

Here are the steps that I would take;

Run your site through Webmaster Tools to make sure that you know all of the links to your site, and evaluate them for quality.

Use Open Site Explorer to evaluate the link profile of the websites that are outranking you right now. Do a competitive analysis to see if there might be some growth opportunities for your link profile. Freshness is important. If you haven't added any links in awhile that could be a problem.

Do a checkup on the content on your site. With a recent Panda update starting to effect a lot of sites it could be that Penguin isn't the culprit in your case. It could be that people seeing a ranking boost from the Panda update are outranking you because they have more quality content AND an better link profile.

Content and Linking, some would say, are the two equally most important parts of SEO. That means one can't be successful without the other. That is part of why guest blogging and featured reviews are a favorite link strategy. Write content that others want to link to. That is the simplest, most effective linking strategy I can think of.