Is this a Penguin hit; how to recover?
-
Our site is: www.kibin.com
Our organic search traffic has dropped significantly in the last few days (about 50%). Although we don't have a ton of traffic coming in via organic search, this is a huge blow.
We we previously the top spot for keywords like 'edit my essay', 'fix my paper', and 'paper revision'. These kw phrases linked to smaller services pages on our site such as:
We no longer rank for these keywords... at all.
My first question/concern is... is this a Penguin penalty? I'm not sure. Honestly, I know we have some directory links, but we've never been aggressive on the backlink front. In fact, in the last few months we've been investing quite a bit into content: kibin.com/blog
If this is a Penguin penalty, how should I best go about cleaning this up? I'm not even sure what links Google would be considering spammy, and again... we really don't have that extensive of a backlink profile.
Please help, this is a real blow to our business and it's got me a big freaked out.
Thanks!
-
There was a big local shake-up around 10/25 - were you potentially ranking in local markets for some of these phrases (they don't seem like local queries, but just thought I'd ask)? I'd have to agree with Marie that the timing suggest this wasn't Penguin, but Google hasn't been very forthcoming on Penguin data refreshes.
Your link profile looks pretty clean to me, and your site isn't really large enough to have large-scale content issues. Those services pages look a little keyword-targeted and border on thin, but if you're talking about a handful of them, I doubt it's enough to cause you serious problems. If you rolled out hundreds of them that were all just variations on the same core keyword phrases, that would be different.
On the other hand, if those pages specifically target the terms that dropped, it's hard to ignore that fact. Did you do any targeted link-building to those pages. I'm seeing one weird thing - OSE is showing a ton of recent links from Scoop.it - across a large number of pages - but when I check the source site, I'm not seeing any links. It's possible you got a temporary boost from some links that got removed, but that's really hard to track.
-
Hi. If your drop happened in the last few days then it's unlikely that Penguin is the culprit. You certainly can have a dramatic sudden drop with Penguin but it would happen on the day of a Penguin refresh. There was one in October, but it was October 4th so you would have been seeing the loss then.
I don't see anything that obviously sticks out to me as a reason for your traffic drop.
Is it possible that the drop happened in the local listings? There was some type of local shakeup in the last few days.
-
-
Hi, thanks for your response (although the screenshots aren't appearing...).
I'm going to have to disagree with you regarding the May "hit". We're a very seasonal business with the majority of our clients being college students. We see a big drop in our traffic, and general organic hits, after May and throughout the summer. That's simply part of our business cycle.
We're currently in our busy season until about Christmas break. The drop in traffic we're seeing right now is not natural. Yesterday's organic visits were one-third what they normally are on a typical Sunday. It seems to be getting worse.
Furthermore, our site is not that young. We've been around for 3+ years, so I don't think this is a factor right now. Like I said, we were ranking for many of these keywords, often times in the top three spots; now we're nowhere to be found.
I have a feeling this has something to do with our backlinks, but I really don't have the expertise to know for sure.
-
Hi! (please see the screenshots)
Your website seems to be a very young site. Young sites always receive a bonus according to their rankings from Google but they have to prove if they are worth it.
If I take a closer look on your visibility chart (I used searchmetrics) then it becomes clear that your site has suffered from several up and downs. The harsh fall-back im may this year indicates that you were hit by the penguin update.
But the visibility chart also shows that your site has recovered from that very fast. Normally this is not a regular recovery development - this recovery process usually takes longer.
Actually the trend for your site is "up" and as far as I can see within your backlink structure there is no need to do some drastic re-optimizations. It`s very frustrating loosing good rankings but those where not established yet. If your site is a very young site and your rankings start good or even very good, this is a circumstance not a consequence which is carved in stone or on which you can rely on.
Be careful with linkbuilding - use a moderate speed and continue with your content in the blog. You have to be patient - not the best answer and maybe not the answer you would like to read but that
s my opinion and it
s based on experiences.**There is one single exception I have to make: your categories under "services" seem to be a little bit spammy according to the density of similar keywords. Some users might say that this looks a bit "too much of everything" and so Google might recognize this as well! Maybe you should think of using a different structure with less of the same (key)words? **
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
-
Home Page Deindexed Only at Google after Recovering from Hack Attack
Hello, Facing a Strange issue, wordpress blog hghscience[dot]com was hacked by someone, when checked, I found index.php file was changed & it was showing some page with a hacked message, & also index.html file was added to the cpanel account.All pages were showing same message, when I found it, I replaced index.php to default wordpress index.php file & deleted index.htmlI could not find any other file which was looking suspicious. Site started working fine & it was also indexed but cached version was that hacked page. I used webmaster tool to fetch & render it as google bot & submitted for indexing. After that I noticed home page get deindexed by google. Rest all pages are indexing like before. Site was hacked around 30th July & I fixed it on 1st Aug. Since then home page is not getting indexed, I tried to fetch & index multiple time via google webmasters tool but no luck as of now. 1 More thing I Noticed, When I used info:mysite.com on google, its showing some other hacked site ( www.whatsmyreferer.com/ ) When Searching from India But when same info:mysite.com is searched from US a different hacked site is showing ( sigaretamogilev.by )However when I search "mysite.com" my site home page is appearing on google search but when I check cached URL its showing hacked sites mentioned above.As per my knowledge I checked all SEO Plugins, Codes of homepage, can't find anything which is not letting the homepage indexed.PS: webmaster tool has received no warning etc for penalty or malware. I also noticed I disallowed index.php file via robots.txt earlier but now I even removed that. 7Dj1Q0w.png 3krfp9K.png
Technical SEO | | killthebillion0 -
Site hit by algorthithmic update in October 2014 - filters and thin content queries.
Back in October 2014 last year, a site we are working with had a significant drop in organic traffic. This coincided with Google's algorithmic update. The side in question uses filters extensively and at the time did not have any canonical tags in place. The lions share of these filter pages had little or no written content just products. The website now has canonical tags throughout and content has started to be added to the top level categories and we will continue to add more, however there is still a large amount of pages with little or no content. Webmaster tools shows that there are large amounts of internal links (for instance 42,000+ to the homepage) which must be due to the filtered pages. I am looking for advice on what is the best way to proceed. Do I edit robots.txt, start adding no follow tags or something else entirely?
Technical SEO | | bfinternet0 -
How to recover search volume after domain name change?
On the 3rd of November we changed our company name and domain. The new site was not changed at all so the 301 process was quite straightforward. The change over was successful, no downtime, all pages redirected correctly (with a few minor exceptions). However, after a few days we started to see more and more links into the new site from the old site. They now stand at over 3 million. And links from the new site to the old site of over 200K. Links from the new site back to the old, were due to us having left a lot of links tucked away on various pages which were possibly causing loops with the 301 redirects on the old site. We fixed these and now there are no remaining links back to the old site, though we are still showing just over 200K links back to the old site. We are also seeing a LOT more back-links on the new site from old junk sites, which are not showing for the old site. A couple of years ago we went through about a year of trying to track down and remove thousands of spam backlinks. We did what we could, got a lot removed, showed Google the evidence, then Google lifted the penalty and said they had made some changes that meant the links were no longer causing the penalty. I added the old disavow file to the new site, but it doesn't cover a fraction of the sites which are being displayed as providing backlinks... many of which are clearly spammy. Is it possible that Google made some manual actions to lift the penalties but failed to associate these changes with the new domain? Changes that were not included in the disavow file? All help appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Exotissimo0 -
Do Com Junct links affect your site with Google and Penguin
We received the dreaded letter from google in reference to "unnatural or artificial links" Our site has affiliate programs through Commission Junction and Link Share and between the two programs we have over 8000 affiliates or advertisers. Our site has been very successful, but our organic search traffic is down as our rankings in the search engines have dropped. My question is do the affiliate links have an effect on our site with Panda or Penguin?
Technical SEO | | Statrak0 -
Hit by a penalty? But which one?
Hi guys, First off, thanks for reading my post! My site, www.doctorloanusa.com suffered a massive drop in Google rankings and traffic on September 27. For the past 4 years, I've ranked in spots 1-3. My main keywords are physician loans and doctor loans. I had a competitor copy almost ALL my text. In early October, I filed a DMCA takedown and had the infringing site removed from the SERPS. I also made text changes to my site. I thought this duplicate content was the problem, but I have yet to see any improvements 2 months later. My site isn't particularly deep content-wise, but it's competitive with others in my niche. I have relatively few links but others in the SERPS have very similar link profiles. I tried to clean up a few questionable links and used the disavow tool. I have used the SEOmoz on-page tools to grade my site. Typically, I receive grade A reports. I still rank for my website URL, and still rank 1 in both Yahoo and Bing. My bounce rate is 43%. If anyone could provide insight, I would be very grateful. I need to get this site ranking again, as this property is my main source of income. Is the site over-optimized? Is it my anchor text profile? Thank you very much in advance!
Technical SEO | | Cary_Forest0 -
Local SEO and Penguin
All, One of my client's sites was hit by Penguin. The business has lost almost all of its organic rankings but is still holding on for a handful of local searches for some of its satellite offices. We've built a new site and are slowly building domain authority. My question is this: at what point do I swap out the new site's location URL for the old URL in Google places? I don't want to risk the existing local placement which is all they have left for the time being. Thanks, John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
Do I have a chance to recover from penguin?
Hello All, I am an internet retailer www.giftbasket4kids.com hit by Penguin and have made many changes to my site since first being hit on May 2011. It seems I lost my ranking in some keywords on the two following landing pages. I am OK on my other keywords /landing pages. http://www.giftbasket4kids.com/shop-by-category/gift-basket.html keyword “Gift Basket Ideas” http://www.giftbasket4kids.com/pages/birthday-gifts.html Keywords “Birthday gift for kids, boys, Girls, Children” it seems all keyword that includes “Gift, Gifts” and “birthday”. Note: sometime most of the lost keywords come to 2<sup>nd</sup> page for a day or two then they disappear again I received a Google notice first week of August that there are unnatural links pointing to my site. There was couple of paid banner advertising. I stopped the links and request reconsideration. A week later I got response that there are still unnatural link pointing to the site. I request for reconsideration again and asked Google to let me know which links are in question.it is over 3 weeks I did not get answer yet as I suspected. I have optimized most of my product (80 fresh content well optimized product pages) and added a lot new content. I am making links differently. I am using Squidoo lens to promote my products. I do not know what else I can do. I have been told maybe I should restart new site! All my other keywords are ok . I do not want to start over. Can I make new landing pages and promote them? Would it work or the site is penalized for those keywords? I appreciate your advice in advance. If anyone knows of recoveries of a site like mine? I am looking for an SEO who has experience with relates to sites like mine. Do I have a chance to recover from penguin?
Technical SEO | | giftbasket4kids0 -
Strategy for recovering from Penguin
I have a web site that has been hit hard by the penguin update. I believe that main cause our problem has been links from low quality blogs and article sites with overly optimized keyword anchor text. Some questions I have are: I have noticed that we still have good ranking on long tail search terms on pages that did not have unnatural links. This leads me to believe that the penalty is URL specific, i.e. only URL with unnatural linking patterns have been penalized. Is that correct? Are URLs that have been penalized permanently tainted to the point that it is not worth adding content to them and continuing to get quality links to them? Should new contact go on new pages that have no history thus no penalty, or is the age of a previously highly ranked page still of great benefit in ranking? Is it likely that the penalty will go away over time if there are no more unnatural links coming in?
Technical SEO | | mhkatz0