Penguin: Carry On & Hope Or Start A New Site
-
I'm at a loss and no so-called SEO agency/expert I've hired appears to know the main causes of our post-Penguin downfall of our traffic.
To set the scene, I set up a voucher code site (www.ozvouchercodes.com.au) in Australia 3 years ago and since, it's been growing very well up until Google launched the Penguin update in April.
Having read as much as I could on the update my understanding is toxic links cause the slap. For on-site I've checked the site and tried to reduce keywords [spamming], increased [unique] content across the site and made sure there are as few instances of duplicate content as possible.
To attempt to understand my back link profile I've used SEOmoz & Link Detective as the current SEO agency give me little visibility on this.
It appears we're a little top heavy with 32% & 11% of are keywords containing 'coupons' and 'promotion codes' respectively. Consequently we no longer appear on those two terms but also hundreds of other terms we once appeared in the top 3 postitions.
The Link Detective report downloaded also appears to have a number of back links with the words 'Penalized' and 'Banned' next to them. Unfortunately there is no explanation on Link Detective whether this needs action or not.
My current SEO agency suggest that we have been too focused on a limited number of keywords and that a few more months of diversifying the range will solve it.
So do I spend another £X amount for 3-6 months of SEO or drop the site on a new URL and start again.
Any ideas?
Any help is very welcome & appreciated.
Henry
-
Thank you for sharing that story. It all makes sense. Using an automated link building script to create spam links with "natural" anchor text.
I wonder how the site owners will react when Google improves their algorithm next and all the old links PLUS all the new ones need to be removed. What a mess.
-
Ryan - Thanks for taking the time to discuss Penguin recovery. Your initial thread and follow-up Moz article were very informative. On a lighter note, I moderate all of the comments to my blog. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when an automated spamer targeted the keywords "click here". LOLZ. I suppose they were going to use a bot to attempt to spam a more "natural" link profile. Only one comment like it I've seen and I was tempted to award a small amount of creativity points although their clients are probably being sold a terrible bill of goods about how to acquire a "natural" link profile.
-
Hey Henry, if you put this work out to 'seo experts' you are pretty much a victim of the system and bad advice (and people making a quick buck like you say). Sorry buddy, hope it works out for you. Marcus
-
Thank you for your help Marcus.
Whilst I have some knowledge of SEO it was good of you to put my sites situation into perspective with an honest answer to help me make a better decision.
All the best.
-
Thanks Ryan for your help. I wish I had the knowledge and help a few years back when I first started. I put my trust in to 'SEO experts' who quite possibly acted as agents on behalf of cheap out-sourced labour from developing countries with the aim of earning a quick buck. I'll do some sums and work out whether I want to start again or not.
-
**It appears we're a little top heavy with 32% & 11% of are keywords containing 'coupons' and 'promotion codes' respectively. **
You understand the basic problem... but you are sugar-coating it with the words "a little". Get rid of all of these links or move any worthwhile content to a new domain. After you have done than then stop "building links" and start earning them.
-
Hey Henry
I have just taken a quick look at your link profile in open site explorer and I think your agency is being wildly optimistic. Simply, adding more links with a wider variety of keywords is simply not going to work. Likewise, if they are using the same historical approaches to add the links then they are likely to dig you an even bigger hole.
There is only one well documented case of recovery I am aware of being the WPMU site and they were fortunate in that they could remove a huge swathe of links in one fell swoop. Looking at your link profile, you don't have any such options.
Some very quick statistics here.
1400 linking domains
- 300 approx are branded (various)
- 100 branded + keyword (various)
- 1000 keywords only (various)
Then, anchor text is only part of the picture, looking at the sites that are linking to you, they are pretty weak in general. Link farms, content farms, article sites - it's a real mess! In fact, I have not found one good to honest link that is not from a spun, barely literate article.
So, what do you do? Well, in my mind, the first thing you should do is clean up the mess and see if you can bounce back. But you have some real work to do here, no doubt about that.
I wish I could give you happier news but when it comes to applying the phrase 'toxic link profile' then your link profile is just that. Lots and lots of, and I hesitate to even use the word, 'articles' with links to your site but they are clearly outsourced webspam articles written by someone who's first language was not english.
It's very hard to advise the exact course of action, but certainly, just 'throwing some more links at it' is not the way to go here. Any work you do should be to clean up but looking at your link profile, I have looked at about 100 links and not found one that was not a 100% total webspam.
The fact of the matter is, your site, and your marketing is exactly the deliberate manipulation of search results which Google has been targeting so it may be that starting again is your best approach. Certainly, if out of that 1400 links, if there are such a small percentage of real, honest links, then that may be your only real choice.
Google has targeted three things of late:
- link farms
- web spam
- artificial links
Unfortunately, your site is (was) propped up by artificial links from web spam on link farms - so to dig your way out of this hole could be tough and may leave you with little actual link equity to make it worthwhile.!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news so don't shoot the messenger!
Marcus
-
Henry,
I encourage you to read this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
My current SEO agency suggest that we have been too focused on a limited number of keywords and that a few more months of diversifying the range will solve it.
I hear this advice a lot and to be quite candid, it pisses me off.
Google's message is quite clear and it has been for some time. STOP BUILDING LINKS AND START EARNING THEM. The point of Penguin is to penalize sites which built links in an effort to manipulate search ranking. The manner is which Penguin identifies links currently is to examine anchor text.
Many SEOs have the idea that all they need to do to fix manipulative links is fix the anchor text. It is shocking to see how many people are confusing the mechanism with the message.
White hat SEO....the kind of SEO which does not get penalized....is about building value for clients. It's about never having to worry that a client's site will be penalized. It sounds like you paid an agency in the past to build manipulative links on your behalf, and the result is your site is now penalized. So the solution they are proposing is to build more manipulative links to your site, but this time the links will be disguised better.
Could this solution work? It might! The question is...for how long. I predict Penguin will continue to evolve in a similar manner to Panda. If that is true, Google will continue to focus on manipulative links and get better at detection just how Panda continues to improve its ability to detect low quality content. IF that happens, then paying for more links to be built is likely a very bad idea for the long term health of your site.
As far as ideas, you can clean up your link profile by removing the bad links to your site, or find another domain. Those are the only two choices I would recommend.
Please note this advise is controversial and many SEOs will disagree. The advice offered is mine which you are welcome to take or leave.
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
-
Redirecting broken backlink to my site
Hello guys, I found an expired domain with inbound links from 41 different root domains, almost all of them from relevant sources. I have 2 ideas in my mind: A) I am thinking about buying this expired domain and place a 301 redirect to a post in my blog who talks about a similar subject.Relevance: let's say the content of the expired domain is about "horses wallpapers" and the content of my site is about "horse transport". Not the same, but a post in my blog could talk about "top 10 horse wallpapers". Do you see what I mean? B) Contact all the webmasters with broken links, alert them and expect they are nice and place a nice link to the post in my blog talking about "top 10 horse wallpapers". What do you think? Should I take A or B? Any other idea? I added a picture with the Domain Rank of the broken links 🙂 Thanks a lot !!! Luis V1LZBC3
Link Building | | Yeeply.com0 -
Site wide back links
Hi, One of our sites has a site-wide link from another site. So, Google sees 6700 pages from that site link to one of our pages. Is that something to be concerned about? The other site is http://www.daum.net/ We also have 2000 pages that blogspot.com links to us from. Both these sites have high domain authority, so I would hope all those links score well. But I certainly don't want to be penalized for links that appear spammy. Thank you in advance.
Link Building | | seotis0 -
Press Release Sites
I don't do that many press releases, but I need to do one soon. I had been using PRweb.com and I see they raised their prices. Are they considered the best online PR site or are there sites people have used that have gotten similar results for less money?? Thanks
Link Building | | ClickIt0 -
How to do SEO for a social networking site?
Howdy SEOmoz fans, We are about to launch an educational social networking site. We have planned a lot of good strategies for offline and online marketing. Coming to SEO, how we can do search engine optimization effectively for our social networking site. The home page will be sign up page and there wont be any content in it. It would be great if you can suggest us prefect SEO tactics for our site. Thank you.
Link Building | | jjv0 -
Is there a software to help me check whether the sites that i give link to, also place my link on their site (reciprocal link)?
When i exchange links with others, i usually put their link on my site hoping that they'll do the same. Since it's impossible to check all sites whose link i have placed on my page to see if they have put a link back to me, i was wondering whether there is a kind of software to help me do that!
Link Building | | isidora0 -
Guest posts on sites you buy advertising with?
What are your thoughts about the following scenarios. Scenario 1: You purchased a banner ad on a site for $50. Then you notice that the site accepts guest posts and you contribute a guest article which has a followed link. Scenario 2: You pitch a guest post to a blog and they say sure but first pay us $50. You say, I can't pay for links but how about I buy an ad spot for $50 instead in appreciation of you reviewing by submission. Scenario 3: You pitch a guest post to a blog and they say sure but it will cost $50 to be published. You say sure and pay them. Which of these would go against Google's guidelines and be considered a paid link? It seems like they are all buying links to a different degree, but they would all be indistinguishable to Google.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs1 -
How Do You Monitor & Deal With Plagiarism Of Your Content?
Hi everyone - hope you can help. I have an e commerce store with lots of products. I write unique, original content for all of the products we sell. I must be doing a good job because I repeatedly find my content being used in blogs, word press sites, and pay per posts which then link back to competitors. I have the standard free copyscape logo pasted a the bottom of each page - hasn't deterred anyone. I'm now thinking about using some sort of a cookie based software and installing the code on each page so that when they lift my content and use it, it will send a link back to that page on my site. I have called numerous plagiarizers in the past and threatened to sue using the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" phrase in the course of my conversation. It's tiresome. It's work. I am thinking after many years of frustration, that if I can't beat them I might as well try using this type of cookie based script/software approach to at least garner a link out it. And if the abuser catches it then maybe he'll stop mid stream and think twice about using...I mean copying my content. Is using this type of cookie/link back to us script a good or a bad idea? How do you all prevent your unique, original content from being used? And finally, if I'm looking at this from a positive link building standpoint (meaning, maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong angle), what is the best practice for garnering a link from this type of ongoing occurrence?
Link Building | | dmedirect_sbcglobal.net0 -
How to Add Content to a Product-Focused Site
I recently took over management of the SEO work for the following site: http://www.grovercorp.com/rings-and-seals/. I want to do link building, but don't have a ton of experience with it. From what I've read, offering linkable content is the best way to get links. However, this site -- like many in industrial B-2-B -- is focused primarily on promoting their products. I'd like tto offer an article or add an infographic, but am not sure where I would put it? It doesn't seem like the architecture offers a good place to add linkable content. Anyone have thoughts or suggestions?
Link Building | | EricVallee340