Diagnosing a likely Penguin Penalty that's never been recovered from
-
The context: my market
Here, for reference, is what I’d like to see with my website (New York Jazz Events), and I think I deserve to see: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gf2ajw80iciqii/Screenshot 2015-11-27 12.09.08.png?dl=0
Intrigued by that screenshot? Please read further!
I have only a few competitors in my market (jazz bands offered in the city of New York for corporate events and weddings), those being Gigmasters, Gigsalad, and Thumbtack. (Each of those three, by the way, are much more general sites than mine (they offer everything from musicians to jugglers), and should be behind me if one is ranking based on quality and relevance.) Of the next nearest type of competitor, single, individual jazz (which also should be behind me if one is ranking based on quality and relevance), there are a dozen or so.
The context: my plans
No matter what, at the least I’m going to be doing a complete modernization and redesign of my site soon.
Please refer to the following screenshot of my Google organic traffic throughout the life of my site while reading the account that follows: https://www.evernote.com/l/AAOQpSw8Hn9DGpCQAt5onH9WMBiwGTDcCk8
What I’d like to find out: exactly what caused the Penguin penalty (if there was one); exactly what would remove it and restore my site to its previous standing.
You can see that when my site launched, it only took four months (12/10-4/11) for it to consistently, and seemingly effortlessly, ranking 5th or 6th in Google for the most important keyword combinations related to my industry (such as “jazz band new york,” “jazz trio new york,” “jazz wedding new york”). That's for a new site with no backlinks. From this I inferred that there is little to no direct competition in this market (i.e., jazz bands in New York marketed specifically for weddings and corporate events).
Then, around November of 2013, I paid for some bogus links (51 to be exact) to these keyword combinations in order to improve the ranking of my site, which worked briefly (see Google Analytics screenshot, January 13) until Penguin launched the following Spring, at which time my site was essentially removed from the search results altogether due to an apparent algorithmic (not manual) penalty which I presumed were due to these links (although I could be wrong, it could be penalized due to something else that I don’t understand).
After removing most of the bad links (down to 3 from 51, see https://www.dropbox.com/s/kolb665rth47q11/bad links 2013-10-24 explorer.numbers?dl=0) and disavowing all the offending URLs, and after Penguin updated to 3.0, Google still failed to recognize my site, with one odd exception: in Fall of 2014 it began to place the keyword combination "jazz bands new york" ("bands" plural, not singular) back on page one, and tied it to a completely undeveloped Google Plus page with zero reviews on it, that it displayed simultaiously (the “knowledge graph?” or “maps listing”?). (Google works in some strange and not very intelligible ways. For example, in a searcher removed the “s” from “bands” and the site remained banished from the results altogether. The same is true for every other keyword variation.)
Encouraged by this unexpected development, last Winter (2014-15) and Spring (2015), I developed my Google Plus Local Business page with lots of useful videos and photos, increased the review count from 0 to 13 (all real and all five star, by the way), linked my YouTube page to it, and, on Google’s advice and against my better judgment, closed down my other Google Plus Local Business pages related to other business services I market on the web (I’m a graphic designer and videographer in addition to being a bandleader). (Unhelpfully, Google keeps them in the search results but just marks them as “closed.” Thanks so much, Google. I probably could have left them up.) I also made a massive effort to clean-up my local directory listings so far as possible, removing listings for my competing businesses (again, against my better judgment), making the format of my business address and contact information consistent so far as possible (I'm a service business and so hide my full address when possible, but this is not always possible depending on the policies of the particular citation website, hence some inconsistencies), and added this information to the footer of all the pages on my site.
After making these improvements, rather than improving my rankings, my site was entirely removed from the first several pages of Google’s search results, including for the keyword combination "jazz bands new york.” On occasions when my site could be located (several pages down), it was no longer associated with my Google Plus Local Business page, unless one searched specifically for my site’s name, New York Jazz Events (which nobody does, because 99.9% of people searching on Google don't know my business name).
Some questions this raised in my mind: Why did Google make a link between my site and my Google Plus Local Business page back when the page was undeveloped? Why did Google then break that link (stop the association my website with their business page (or knowledge graph, or maps listing, whichever it is now), apart from the exception noted above) once the Google Plus Local Business page was developed? And indeed, why wouldn't developing that page, along with cleaning up my citations, logically result in more search term combinations bringing my results back to the first page, along with the link to the Google Plus Local Business page, rather than the opposite?
Then, unexpectedly, this last November my website rank for "jazz bands new york" in Google briefly returned from "buried" all the way to #1! And the 1st page of the search results was dominated by my site in three places, all #1: the top spot for paid ads (as usual), the very top of the natural search results (first time ever), and the top and only local listing, on the right! I was even ahead of two giant national corporate competitors, which would seem to be impossible to me as they probably have thousands of backlinks. I basically “owned” page one of Google to an extent I’ve never seen for anyone before. It was actually a bit bizarre.
You can see this here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gf2ajw80iciqii/Screenshot 2015-11-27 12.09.08.png?dl=0
Now, what is also bizarre, was that, as before, I was still buried for every other keyword combination that's relevant to my site, including extremely similar combinations (for example, substituting "band" for "bands," or "NYC" for "New York," etc.). These keyword combinations essentially return the exact same results, only with my site missing from organic and local.
As I mentioned, these astonishing results were temporary, and now my site is again buried for all keyword combinations including the once and sometimes astonishingly-performing “jazz bands new york.”
Something else interesting and relevant to this conundrum: I’ve done searches for all my three major keyword search terms in Bing, and guess what? In the top three results for two out of the three of my search terms in organic results, with my Bing local listing right up there, and my other website (NYCJazz.com) not far behind!
Now, it's strange to me that these incredibly great (and, as far as I'm concerned, high quality) Bing rankings lead to no inquiries, that nearly all of my customers find me from my paid advertising in Google, but that's another bafflement for another day… what is relevant to this discussion, is that my Bing results makes the essential invisibility of my website and my local business listing in Google's natural results all the more baffling. One could speculate that Google is a more sophisticated search engine and is returning more relevant results, except that that's not true… my site is in fact the most relevant for those terms (or at least, to be generous, in the top few in terms of relevance). And in the past, before Penguin, it used to be in the top few results in Google, just like in Bing. It's hard for me to swallow that I'm just lacking in proper SEO, when it used to rank great, when I've subsequently been working hard to further improve the SEO for years, and it's a top site everywhere else. Something has to be up with Google… I wish I knew what it was and what I could do…
What I have done already:
I’ve worked hard over the last five years cleaning up bad backlinks and making citations consistent. I think I understand well my most important keywords already, and have my pages optimized for them. I understand on-page optimization and think my site’s in pretty good shape in that regard (and I will further improve the on page optimization when I redesign it very soon.) It could use more good backlinks, but that’s a problem for the future as far as I’m concerned, and not related to the penalty in any case. I understand AdWords well and my ad is at the top of the search results consistently for all relevant keywords, so I don’t need any help there…
Anyone who may have any insight to this… thanks very much in advance!
-
For the reasons given in my last post (May 2), could someone from the staff please mark this discussion as "not answered" rather than "answered"? Thanks.
-
I really appreciate Laura's advice, but I would rather this is not marked "answered," because the essential questions still aren't answered. It may be that they are unanswerable and I just need to scrap the site and start over from scratch.
Regarding the Penguin update, Penguin was already updated with 3.0 back in 2014 but that did not correct my site's tanking. Maybe a further update will, but that remains to be seen and I remain skeptical based on 3.0 having had no effect.
Regarding Google Plus, I know it was separated from Google Local, but when I say I developed my Google Plus page I'm primarily referring to the 13 reviews that were added and that occasionally display nowadays with the knowledge graph or maps or Google Local or whatever it should be called now; perhaps it would have been more clear if I referred to Google Local rather than Google Plus. It's the the Google Local features (map, reviews, business hours, etc.) that are randomly being associated and disassociated from my site in the organic results.
Regarding acquiring more legitimate backlinks, I'm not denying their value as something always worth pursuing that will be certain to help rankings in general, I'm just putting them aside for now for the sake of this discussion as they were not a causal factor in my site’s tanking, because my site ranked towards to top before Penguin without them. And I've done plenty of additional SEO work since then, including creating and cleaning up citations throughout the web, that's had little effect… In fact, nothing I do or have done seems to have much effect… that's the problem. I’m aware that I always can and should do more… but that doesn’t explain my site’s curse.
My best hypothesis is that maybe some aspect of Penguin caused Google to no longer be able to discern the identity of my site (see [https://moz.com/community/q/google-can-t-discern-the-identity-of-my-site]). But that’s just a hypothesis; I haven’t really figured out an explanation that makes sense to me.
-
Thanks for your advice, Laura.
-
First of all, we are all rather impatiently awaiting the next Penguin update, which is long overdue and expected any day now (for the last few months). It's been a while since the last one. If your website traffic did tank as a result of Penguin, you'll see the results of your clean-up efforts soon(ish???).
Secondly, your experiences with Google Plus/Google Local are probably related to the fact that Google separated the two over the last year. Read more at https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-kills-off-google-local-still-committed-local-search/146049/.
Thirdly, I disagree with your conclusion that building good backlinks to your site is "a problem for the future as far as I’m concerned, and not related to the penalty in any case." If your site has not incurred a manual penalty, meaning that it's algorithmic in nature, you'll help offset any negative effects of the bad backlinks by increasing the number of great backlinks to your site. If your site is set up with Google Search Console, you'll know if you have a manual penalty.
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
-
Daytona Beach Web Design vs. Daytona Web Design: What's Best?
Three months ago we had our team create local pages for some of the services we render -- _i.e., _web design. As we reviewed the pages, they created two pages with similar content; one with URL: /daytona-beach-web-design/ & /daytona-web-design/ We knew we had to kill one of them to avoid duplicate content. Here is where the hard decision came and hence the question. We though about keeping the '/daytona-beach-web-design/ ' URL but for some reason, Google had already crawled the shorter version of the URL '/daytona-web-design/' So we ended up deleting the long tail URL and kept Daytona Web Design instead. Which one would you keep and have you experienced similar issues?
Local Website Optimization | | WebDaytona0 -
What's the best international URL strategy for my non-profit?
Hi, I have a non-profit organization that advocates for mental health education and treatment. We are considering creating regional chapters of the non-profit in specific countries - France, UK, Russia, etc. What's the best long-term foundation for global organic growth? Should we simply internationalize our content (.org/uk/)? Or create a custom site for each ccTLD (.org.uk, etc.? Since it's an educational site, the content for each country would not be particularly unique, apart from: Language (regional English nuance for UK and AUS, or other languages altogether) Expert videos and potentially supporting articles (i.e., hosting videos and a supporting article for a UK Doctor versus a US Doctor) Offering some regional context when it comes to treatment options, or navigating school, work, etc. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks! Aaron
Local Website Optimization | | RSR1 -
How can I migrate a website's content to a new WP theme, delete the old site, and avoid duplication and other issues?
Hey everyone. I recently took on a side project managing a family member's website (www.donaldtlevinemd.com). I don't want to get too into it, but my relative was roped into two shady digital marketing firms that did nothing but a mix of black-hat SEO (and nothing at all). His site currently runs off a custom wordpress theme which is incompatible with important plugins I want to use for local optimization. I'm also unable to implement responsive design for mobile. The silver lining is that these previous "content marketers" did no legitimate link building (I'm auditing the link profile now) so I feel comfortable starting fresh. I'm just not technical enough to understand how to go about migrating his domain to a new theme (or creating a new domain altogether). All advice is appreciated! Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | jampaper1 -
Hosting Change & It's Impact on SERP Performance (with a Side of Domain Migration)
Hi everyone, I've read a lot on forums about the topic of hosting and it's impact on SEO, but I've seen conflicting opinions. I wanted to see if anyone might have a definitive answer for this scenario: Our parent company is based in the EU and wants to move our English domain to their site -- either as part of the main .com or potentially as a new subdomain. One of those things is going to happen; it's just a question of which one. One issue I have is that they host their .com with content targeting English speakers (mostly in the U.S.) in France, so if we moved our content to their site we'd be going from our existing domain hosted in the U.S. (with the majority of visitors coming from the U.S.) to a site that's hosted in France. I've read that folders are still usually better over subdomains in terms of passing the strength of the domain on to pages. So... would it be better to have a subdomain hosted in the U.S., or just have folders under the main domain, but that content would be hosted in France? Our existing domain and the domain we'll be moving to are about even in terms of domain authority and size. Happy to get any feedback you might have. Anyone come across any case studies on this particular topic that would be helpful? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing0 -
2 clients. 2 websites. Same City. Both bankruptcy attorneys. How to make sure Google doesn't penalize...
Hi Moz'ers! I am creating 2 new websites for 2 different bankruptcy attorneys in the same city. I plan to use different templates BUT from the same template provider. I plan to host with the same hosting company (unless someone here advises me not to). The content will be custom, but similar, as they both practice bankruptcy law. They have different addresses, as they are different law firms. My concern is that Google will penalize for duplicate content because they both practice the same area of law, in the same city, hosting the same, template maker the same, and both won't rank. What should I do to make sure that doesn't happen? Will it be enough that they have different business names, address, and phone numbers? Thanks for any help!!
Local Website Optimization | | BBuck0 -
UK website to be duplicated onto 2 ccTLD's - is this duplicate content?
Hi We have a client who wishes to have a site created and duplicated onto 3 servers hosted in three different countries. United Kingdom, Australia and USA. All of which will ofcourse be in the English language. A long story short, the website will provide the user 3 options on the homepage asking them which "country site" they wish to view. (I know I can detect the user IP and autoredirect but this is not what they want) Once they choose an option it will direct the user to the appropriate ccTLD. Now the client wants the same information to appear on all 3 sites with some slight variations in products available and English/US spelling difference but for the most part, the sites will look the same with the same content on each page. So my question is, will these 3 sites been seen as duplicates of each other even though they are hosted in different countries and are on ccTLD's? Are there any considerations I should pass onto the client with this approach? Many thanks for reading.
Local Website Optimization | | yousayjump
Kris0 -
What's the best way to add phrase keywords to the URL?
Hi, Our keywords are all our service + a list of towns (for example, "carpet cleaning St. Louis"). The issue I'm having is that one particular site could be targeting "carpet cleaning St. Louis", "carpet cleaning Manchester", "carpet cleaning Ballwin", "carpet cleaning Kirkwood", etc. etc. etc... up to maybe 15 different towns. Is there a way to effectively add these keywords into the URL without making it look spammy? I'm having the same issue with adding the exact keywords to the page title, img alt tag, etc. Thanks for any advice/input!
Local Website Optimization | | nataliefwc0 -
Site does not rank on Google's country specific search engines.
My site shows up on the first page of 'google.com' but not on the other search engines like google.co.uk / google.co.in / google.com.au. It shows up on the 3rd or 4th page for the most part. My competitors' sites rank consistently across all geographical versions of Google. Is there something i am missing out on? My website is a web applicaton and not a business listing.
Local Website Optimization | | dlsound0