Strategies to recover from a Google Penalty?
-
2 years ago we took over a client who had a hacked site and also had signed up with a black hat SEO team that set up 50 spammy directory links back to the site. Since then we have cleaned up the hacks, had the site reviewed by Google and readded to the Search Index, and disavowed all the directory links through GWT. Over the last 2 years, we've encouraged the client to create new content and have developed a small but engaged social following. The website is www.fishtalesoutfitting.com/.
The site's domain authority is 30, but it struggles to rank higher than 20 for even uncompetitive long tail keywords. Other sites with much lower domain authorities outrank the site for our primary keywords.
We are now overhauling the site design and content. We are considering creating an entirely new URL for the primary domain. We would then use 301 redirects from the old url to the new. We'd welcome insight into why the current site may still be getting penalized, as well as thoughts on our strategy or other recommendations to recover from the events of 2 years ago. Thank you.
-
Thank you both for your expertise! Marie your article is a marvelous resource. We will continue to dig into the GA but will also seriously consider pursuing the landing page suggestion with a nofollow link out. Since we are rewriting content as well as redesigning, it seems that will produce the best chance to heal the site.
-
Yes, Marie's article is fantastic! Here's the live link to it: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2384644/can-you-safely-redirect-users-from-a-penguin-hit-site-to-a-new-domain.
-
Thanks Patrick.
-
^ Read Marie's article - it's fantastic!
-
Grrr. I typed a big long reply and Moz ate it. Let's try again.
The first thing I'd do is reassess the backlink profile. If you got a manual penalty, then there's a good chance that Penguin is/was affecting the site. You mentioned that bad directory links were the culprit, but have you also assessed other links. For example, this is one I'd disavow:
Also, sometimes sites that have bad directory links can continue to accumulate bad directory links. You may need to do more disavowing.
Many sites with issues with one algo can have issues with another. It's worthwhile to spend time mining GA for evidence of drops near Panda dates.
Google will tell you that a previously penalized site has no stigma on it once the penalty is removed. However, I have seen many sites that could never rank well again after getting a manual unnatural links penalty. I personally think that there is a problem with the Penguin algorithm that causes this and hope that a future Penguin update will fix this. But, I can't say that with certainty. As such, if you are pretty certain that the backlink profile is clear and that another algo is not in play then starting over may be a better idea.
BUT...do not do 301 redirects. If there is any link related issue (i.e. Penguin) you'll just pass the problems to the new site. I wrote an extensive article here on how to redirect a penalty hit site:
Hope that helps!
-
Hi there
Did you redirect the website? While not documented, some think that redirecting could transfer the penalty.
I would still attempt to remove links from the old site if you are redirecting. Here are a couple of great resources from Moz:
Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal (Moz)
Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation (Moz)I would make sure that you clean up all backlinks to the old site, update good ones to the new site, document your attempts, and file a reconsideration request.
That's just my thought process based on prior experience. Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Google says Geolocation Redirects Are Okay - is this really ok ?
Our aim is to send a user from https://abc.com/en/us to** https://abc..com/en/uk/ **if they came to our US English site from the UK So we came across this document - https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/05/creating-right-homepage-for-your.html We are planning to follow this in our international website based on the article by google : automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content. Will there be any ranking issues/ penalty issue because of following this or because of 302 redirects ? **Another article - **https://www.seroundtable.com/google-geolocation-redirects-are-okay-26933.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NortonSupportSEO0 -
Google Penguin penalty is automated or manual?
Hi, I have seen some of our competitors are missing from top SERP and seems to be penalised as per this penalty checker: http://pixelgroove.com/serp/sandbox_checker/. Is this right tool to check penalty? Or any other good tools available? Are these penalties because of recent Penguin update? If so, is this a automated or manual penalty from Google? I don't think all of these tried with black-hat techniques and got penalised. The new penguin update might triggered their back-links causing this penalty. Even we dropped for last 2 weeks. What's the solution for this? How effectively link-audit works? Thanks, Satish
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Penalty removing company recommendation?
We've got a manual penalty, not sitewide, that we've been trying to remove and keep getting our reconsideration request denied. We also do not have the manpower to manually check backlinks, contact domain owners, etc anymore. Does anyone have recommendations on a company to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Google +1s Quality Factors?
It is apparent that Google +1s are becoming an increasingly large factor in results pages and I had a few questions about some of the dynamics. Do +1s take into account factors such as c-blocks, location diversity based on IP, and similar elements? To what degree? Do +1s from well-diversified and historically more active/authoritative G+ accounts carry more weight than someone who simply has a G+ account because they use Gmail and were prompted? What is the spectrum here? How much weight would a +1 from Rand Fishkin hold in contrast to an account created one year ago with little activity? I know Google has a great deal of user data from Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Docs, search history and many more so would imagine this plays a role. Do +1s from newly created accounts that only target one business or niche cause damage? I am assuming that +1s should accumulate naturally just as backlinks so if what would be considered an unnatural amount of +1s in what time period? Any insights here are greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOGroup1230 -
Do some sites get preference over others by Google just because? Grandfathered theory
So I have a theory that Google "grandfathers" in a handful of old websites from every niche and that no matter what the site does, it will always get the authority to rank high for the relevant keywords in the niche. I have a website in the crafts/cards/printables niche. One of my competitors is http://printable-cards.gotfreecards.com/ This site ranks for everything... http://www.semrush.com/info/gotfreecards.com+(by+organic) Yet, when I go to visit their site, I notice duplicate content all over the place (extremely thin content, if anything at all for some pages that rank for highly searched keywords), I see paginated pages that should be getting noindexed, bad URL structure and I see an overall unfriendly user experience. Also, the backlink profile isn't very impressive, as most of the good links are coming from their other site, www.got-free-ecards.com. Can someone tell me why this site is ranking for what it is other than the fact that it's around 5 years old and potentially has some type of preference from Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
How to transform an excel file on a txt file to send the Google Dissavow
I have a disallow file made on excel with lots of columns off information. I want to transform to txt file saving it from excel, but the result file seems understandable Can someone helpme on how to transform an excel file on the Google Dissavow file format for the final import
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Google penalty having bad sites maybe and working on 1 good site ?!!!
I have a list of websites that are not spam.. there are ok sites... just that I need to work on the conent again as the sites content might not be useful for users at 100%. There are not bad sites with spammy content... just that I want to rewrite some of the content to really make great websites... the goal would be to have great content to get natual links and a great user experience.. I have 40 sites... all travel sites related to different destinations around the world. I also have other sites that I haven't worked on for some time.. here are some sites: www.simplyparis.org
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sandyallain
www.simplymadrid.org
www.simplyrome.org etc... Again there are not spam sites but not as useful as they coul become... I want to work on few sites only to see how it goes.... will this penalise my sites that I am working on if I have other sites with average content or not as good ? I want to make great content good for link bait 🙂0 -
Over optimization penalty on the way
Matt Cutts has just anouced that they are bringing in a penalty for over optimized sites, to try and reward good content. http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%e2%80%99s-working-on-an-%e2%80%9cover-optimization%e2%80%9d-penalty-for-that-115627?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed-main
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AlanMosley3