Site Has Not Recovered (Still!) from Penguin
-
Hello,
I have a site that just keeps getting hit with a ton of bad, unnatural backlinks due to the sins from previous SEO companies they've hired. About every quarter, I have to add more bad links to their disavow file... still. Is it time to move them to a new domain? Perhaps a .net? If so, do we just completely trash the old domain & not redirect it? I've never had a client like this in the past but they still want to maintain their branded name.
Thanks for your feedback!
-
hey guys,
Any updates on the ahreflang tests?
I'm in a similar boat - one site got a manual hit in Feb2014...sitewide penalty, at one point brand name was even deindexed.
Got penalty lifted in 5 months. But traffic has not recovered one bit since then.
-
Please keep me posted what you decide to you. As awful as this is, it is nice to know we are not alone. We may just be rebranding and starting from scratch since Google has not provided any indication when they will release the next update. Also, I came across this a couple of weeks ago so it could be several months: http://searchengineland.com/google-we-are-working-on-making-the-penguin-updated-continuously-222247.
-
no need, all hreflang sites are linked in the eyes of Google. Also you still want people going to your original url which is where all your brand building and everything else was done.
At some point Penguin will refresh and your original site will regain the ability to rank. At that point you can decide what you want to do.
I had set mine up so that my co.uk was set to "EN" this capturred all english enquiries. Then in OCT 2014 my site regained its ability to rank and So I switched it so that my co.uk was set to "en-gb". The co.uk extension is an additional signal in google.co.uk for ranking and we are a truly global company with plans to expand into dedicated sites for certain countries. So it was a welcomed find.
However there is no harm in setting up the second site to target your main audience.
Lets say you are a company in the United States with a .com that is waiting for a penguin refresh.Get a second domain, point it to the same directory on your server. Do some clever coding to manage it so that you only have one set of code. (also think of a plan for the future to deliver separate content to both sites, maybe two database tables serving up content based on TLD).
Lets say you get a .netThen apply the following
Do this for each page making sure to keep the same url structure. (John mueller just started the importance of maintaining the same URL structure)
Once your original site regains the ability to rank again from an algo refresh go into webmaster tools and set the region of the new site to your desired specific location such as United States.
Then change the hreflang to:This way you are now telling Google to send only english searches from the US to your site and it will be a localized domain with a higher chance of ranking than the original site.
OR you could at that point remove hreflang and drop the newsite.net
This is the only way I was able to KEEP my original site up maintain my brand and all the people that go direct to my main brand website and also have a way of ranking again.
Its complicated to explain WHY it works but at some point I will write a big article for MOZ on this subject.
Hope that makes things more clear.
-
Yes the domain does not matter.
You can even test it out with just one single page. I spoke to John Mueller about this a while ago, he said when using hreflang you can use it in the same way you use a canonical tag. So maybe you could test it on an internal page that you know should be ranking better than it currently does.
Setup the new domain, create a blank index.php page and just replicate the internal page and URL structure.
FYI, John actually talked about URL structure for hreflang just 2 days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1sewHcbKTJw#t=2171In an ideal world you want to create a clever bit of PHP so that your code is being pulled from one directory otherwise you will have 2 versions of your site that you will need to maintain and that would just be a royal pain in the a$$.
Before you do anything I suggest you read the page below and watch the video by Maile Ohye on there too.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=enFell free to ask me any questions I have had to do this on a few sites and have been doing it for a long time now.
Setup your current site as the x-default and the new one as "EN" so that all english inquiries are served up by Google to your new site.
I look forward to hearing how it goes. FYI its possible you may see your results drop for a day or two and then popup with the old URL again and then the new one, It can take a few days for it to recalibrate. It can also happen right away and then random adjustments happen over the next few weeks.
Also make sure to use fetch as Google in WMT on both site pages to get Googlebot looking at your pages ASAP. I have seen results in 30 seconds before.
-
@Gary, Would this work between a .com & .net website? I'm willing to test anything at this point. Thanks!
-
@ruth
I urge you to try the hreflang solution sometime as a test.
"but it's not something I would test unless you actually do have different English-speaking audiences."
You can Always set the old domain to "x-default" and the new one to "EN" so that all English search results switch to the new site, this is great for sites not willing to wait up to a year for a Penguin refresh or affected by other SERPS suppression. Both sites can be identical and will not cause duplication issues. hreflang is amazing tool for testing.
-
Thanks Ruth for your feedback. I just wanted to address your 2 points above:
-
we actually have been adding all new links to our original disavow file, so we are all set there.
-
yes, we do understand that the loss of links did cause a drop in rankings. Due to this, we've actually started building out natural links throuhh outreach & PR, redesigned the entire site & updated all content as well Along with ongoing contemy creation on site and off.
With those things in mind, is there anything else left? I'm just wondering if we're completely missing something and in getting desperate - is this domain just dead?
And thanks for the heads up on the hreflang, that was a little over my head.
Thanks for your feedback
-
-
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- When disavowing new inbound links, make sure that you're adding them to your existing disavow file - if you just submit the new sites, that new disavow file will overwrite the previous one and un-disavow links.
- A manual penalty is only part of the traffic/ranking loss you'll see with Penguin. Don't forget that you also lost the link value of a bunch of spammy links that previously were providing value. The penalty may be gone, but so are your links! To regain traffic levels, you'll need to build new quality inbound links, so make sure that's a big part of your strategy going forward.
I haven't tried the hreflang solution, so I can't comment on its effectiveness, but it's not something I would test unless you actually do have different English-speaking audiences.
Good luck!
-
Thank you for the lengthy response! I am not sure how to use hreflang but will look into it more this week. As for the your final question, our manual penalty was revoked in Oct. 2013 & it just hasn't performed worth a damn since. We updated all content and are working on a design refresh now in order to support responsive design - hoping that would help as we'd hate to change the domain but we're just at a loss & getting desperate. This is out only client who came to use for this type of cleanup service that has not yet recovered.
-
I have the ultimate answer for you and you will not find this elsewhere online.
I have been through this process and it was a huge pain the a$$
I spoke with John Mueller at Google for years trying to resolve our issues until one day we spoke about hreflang. At which point John said to me that it would be OK to use it. So we played with it and it turned out that we recovered IMMEDIATELY from penguin for a new domain that was hrefland linked from our original site.
So basically this allowed us to keep our original brand name site up while traffic was going to our new co.uk site (in your case .net)
Let say for instance your client is US based. Take the .com site and set it as x-default, then set the new .net site as "en" or if you want to be more specific "en-US".
All Google traffic in english or english from google.com in the US will now start flowing in your non penalised site. the hreflang simply does a swap in those search engines but it happens before the penalty is enforced. So your rankings will return right away depending on where you would now rank after the penalty is lifted and your new content will also be back to their rightful ranking positions. Basically all the suppression is gone.
Dont worry about duplicate content as hreflang handles all that. Its very common for sites to have just a few small changes such as $ to £ or a few spelling changes like color and colour. There is no downside.
If you are clever with the way you code your site you can make it a seamless transition without having to maintain code on two domains. Only took me a few hours to code something up.
The best thing is it opens the door to targeting multiple regions of the world with other languages. (When you are ready).
Hope that answers your question.
Also FYI, when did your manual penalty get revoked? It can take up to a year for your site to be ready for the refresh to consider it OK to lift the suppression. Based on that you may have not been ready for the OCT 2014 refresh and may be waiting for the next one which could be a long way away.
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
-
How much SEO damage would it do having a subdomain site rather directory site?
Hi all! With a coleague we were arguing about what is better: Having a subdomain or a directory.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Let me explain some more, this is about the cases: Having a multi-language site: Where en.domain.com or es.domain.com rather than domain.com/en/ or domain.com/es/ Having a Mobile and desktop version: m.domain.com or domain.com rather than domain.com/m or just domain.com. Having multiple location websites, you might figure. The dicussion started with me saying: Its better to have a directory site.
And my coleague said: Its better to have a subdomain site. Some of the reasons that he said is that big companies (such as wordpress) are doing that. And that's better for the business.
My reasons are fully based on this post from Rand Fishkin: Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday So, what does the community have to say about this?
Who should win this argue? GR.0 -
Website still not recovered from Panda # 20 (Sep 2012 update)
Hi everyone,My website was hit by Panda around the 27th September 2012 (Panda # 20 or EMD) , since then, it's no longer in Google search results for a particular keyword [wallpapers], resulting in a massive sudden traffic drop (-90%) (see the screenshot below).Despite my best efforts auditing my links, identifying unnatural backlinks, disavowing bad links, enhancing my website content, improving user experience... (I even ended up with a completely revamped website: new design, new structure and new content), I didn't see any improvement! Can you please look at It and Advise me? I am ready to give up; I am in deep despair.What are my competitors doing better than me? Competitor #1 Competitor #2Thank you in advance - I appreciate your timeMy website: http://goo.gl/maaxazLroAvD5.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spinodza0 -
Is there anyway to recover my site's rankings?
My site has been top 3 for 'speed dating' on Google.co.uk since about 2003 and it went to below top 50 for a lot of it's main keywords shortly after 27 Oct 2012. I did a re-submission request and was told there was 'no manual spam action'. My conclusions is I was dropped by Google because of poor quality links I've gained over 10+ years. I have a Domain Authority of 40, a regular blog http://bit.ly/oKyi88, a KLOUT of 42, user reviews and quality content. Since Oct 2012 I've done some technical improvements and managed to get a few questionable links removed. I've continued blogging reguarly and got more active on Twitter. I've seen no improvement and my traffic is 80% down on last year. It would be great to be able to produce content that others want to link to but I've not had much success from that in over 10 years of trying and I've not seen many others in my sector, with small budgets having much success. Is there anything I can do to regain favour with Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0 -
My site still out of rank
Hello, I am working on a site for past 3 months, here are the problems with this site, 1. It had a forum full of spam becuase initially captcha was not included, 10000 spam backlinks 2. Affiliate page was also hit by spam about 4000 spam backlinks which were either not existing or porn etc.... 3. Too many internal links which were indexed, these additional links were generated due to tags, ids, filters etc. Existing SEO team decided to remove the forum and after 30 days they blocked it in robots. But within 30 days the site moved from 3rd page to no where. Now after few days lator internal links are also cleaned by putting following in the robots, Dissallow: / *? Dissallow: / *id Dissallow: / *tag Links are now cleaning up, all the spam and bad links are now put into disavow file and sent to google via disavow tool. On daily bases good quality links are been produced such as through content, article submission, profile linking, Bookmarks etc. The site is still not any where on top 50 results. The impressions are decreasing, traffic also do not rise as much. How do you see all this situation. What do you suggest and how long do you think it will take to return to top 10 when good linking is being done and all preventive measures are being taken. I would appreciate any feedback on it. Thank you. Site URL: http://www.creativethemes.net keywords: magento themes, magento templates
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
SEO for bigcommerce site
I have a site on bigcommerce platform .from Where do i need start SEO for these types of ecommerce sites.Looking for Experts ideas . Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Recovering from Programmers Error
Hey Everybody! Last year one of my bigger sites hit a snaffu. I was getting about 300k + hits a day from google, and then, when a developper released an update with a robots.txt file that basically blocked google from the entire site. We didn't notice the bug until a few days later, but by then, it was already too late. My google traffic dropped to 30k a day and I've been having the hardest time coming back ever since. As a matter of fact, hundreds of sites that were aggregating my content started outranking me for my own terms. For over a year, I've been working on building what I lost back and everything seemed to be coming together. I was back at 100k+ hits a day Until today... My developpers repeated the exact same error as last year. They blocked google from crawling my site for over 5 days and now I'm down to 10k se hits a day. My question : Has anyone encountered this problem before and what did you do to come back?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0 -
Advice on Getting this site ranking?
Hi there I'm looking to optimise this site for SEO -> Gets about 3,000 visits per day but all from branded searches. Gets virtually no 'keyword searches' It's just a landing page at the moment. Would you recommend I integrate a blog with it, so we can start targeting more long tail keywords (free football game etc) Any thoughts/advice appreciated 🙂 Thanks Howard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HowardK0 -
Is it possible to Spoof Analytics to give false Unique Visitor Data for Site A to Site B
Hi, We are working as a middle man between our client (website A) and another website (website B) where, website B is going to host a section around websites A products etc. The deal is that Website A (our client) will pay Website B based on the number of unique visitors they send them. As the middle man we are in charge of monitoring the number of Unique visitors sent though and are going to do this by monitoring Website A's analytics account and checking the number of Unique visitors sent. The deal is worth quite a lot of money, and as the middle man we are responsible for making sure that no funny business goes on (IE false visitors etc). So to make sure we have things covered - What I would like to know is 1/. Is it actually possible to fool analytics into reporting falsely high unique visitors from Webpage A to Site B (And if so how could they do it). 2/. What could we do to spot any potential abuse (IE is there an easy way to spot that these are spoofed visitors). Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770