Been Penalized, Starting from Scratch, Need Advice
-
Good Morning,
We've been penalized for unnatural links on the site : http://goo.gl/JgK1e
After attempting to contact many of the sites with links pointing at our site, and getting no response, we decided to start from scratch on a new domain : http://goo.gl/XUH3f
The first thing I did once the new domain was up was remove all of the unique content (text) from the original site and place it on the new site...
I am still having a difficult time getting the new site to rank in the SERPS.
Can you guys please provide pointers as to what steps should be taken to get the new domain, http://goo.gl/XUH3f a high ranking in the SERPS?
Thanks!!
-
But my site is not SEO related, and it is very hard to find sites that I can get links from in my industry.
-
If your site is seo related, yup (in fact I just left a comment). Also note that these backlinks are nofollow. Why would you think this is a bad place to leave a comment on?
If there were 6817684 comments with shitty, spammy links - I would say no.
-
Oleg,
One of the highest Domain Authorities in my OSE profile is for this site: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ahmed/ultimate-seo-checklist/
Are you saying that going ahead and commenting on this blog with my new domain as the URL is a good strategy? Isn't that part of what got me here in the first place?
-
Before you start building links again I recommend you invest in a 10 year old + domain, domain authority is a huge factor..
-
Thank you both! I will look into this right now.
Also, i'm open for anymore suggestions anyone has
thanks again!
-
Easiest way is to sort by domain authority or page authority and just go down the list. View each page > If the page's content has 1) real content, 2) low outbound links and 3) is relevant to your site, its probably a good link.
You can also write more unique content - although I'd build more links first since you say that your current site is all unique content already.
-
I recommend a link building strategy. You have a good site however it needs to have some authority (relevant quality links). There are many ways to build links to your site: Guest Blogging / Press Releases / Contacting a webmaster and giving some value in exchange for a link. Also take a look at your competitor links for whatever keywords you are trying to rank for. Type the keyword in google and take the top site paste it into OSE and evaluate these links. Are these links relevant? Do these sites have fresh content? Will your site / Can your site add value to the users of these site? If all three answers are yes, do whatever it takes to get those links or similar links.
Build a blog on your site and get others to blog on it using a good blog service (http://myblogguest.com), make sure that you only link to other relevant quality sites (sites that have good linking profiles).
Be sure to keep you link ratio natural (majority of your inbound links anchored with your URL/Brand name)
Create content on your blog that others will be interested in: Cute video of 20 kittens in a plastic bin... 5 reasons why our bins are indestructible... Yogi gets stuck in bin...
Create unique (entertaining, educational, funny) content that others will naturally link to and then share it with niche related people via social networks.
SEOmoz has hundreds of great link building strategy that you can utilize. Simply go to the search in the top right and type: link building or guest blogging or Press Release.
-
Thanks Oleg, but just out of curiosity, how do i know which links are considered good and which ones are bad?
Also, any advice other than building links?
Thanks,
-
Build more links? http://bit.ly/OAhzDI
The previous domain was also more keyword rich so it ranked easier.
Quick tip - go through the old site's backlinks, pick out the good ones, and ask the webmaster to change the URL to the new site.
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 search console: 404 and soft 404 without any back-links. Redirect needed?
Hi Moz community, We can see the 404 and soft 404 errors in Google web masters. Usually these are non-existing pages which are found somewhere on internet by Google. I can see some of these reported URLs don't have any back-links (checked on ahrefs tool). Do we need to redirect each and every link reported here or ignore or marked to be fixed? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
An Educated Eye Needed
As a small video production company, we rely on word of mouth and good Internet placement to generate business. From first glance, what would cause potential customers/search engines to rank our site low? https://episode11productions.com We believe that we have done all that we "know" to do, and are now at a loss.
Algorithm Updates | | e11productions1 -
We are being penalized for one specific key word (and phrases it appears in), how can we figure out why?
Overall our SEO efforts have worked well, slow and steady increases in rankings across the board for all products and categories, EXCEPT for one particular brand name. Key words and phrases for that brand consistently under perform all other key words and phrases. Strategies etc. are the same, and we have not received any notifications about 'manual action' but I'm convinced there is something affecting our ranking on that brand. This has been going on for approximately two years, prior to that we ranked very well for this brand. What sorts of tests can I run to try and find the problem?
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
Need Advice - Google Still Not Ranking
Hi Team - I really need some expert level advice on an issue I'm seeing with our site in Google. Here's the current status. We launched our website and app on the last week of November in 2014 (soft launch): http://goo.gl/Wnrqrq When we launched we were not showing up for any targeted keywords, long tailed included, even the title of our site in quotes. We ranked for our name only, and even that wasn't #1. Over time we were able to build up some rankings, although they were very low (120 - 140). Yesterday, we're back to not ranking for any keywords. Here's the history: While developing our app, and before I took over the site, the developer used a thin affiliate site to gather data and run a beta app over the course of 1 - 2 years. Upon taking on the site and moving to launch the new website/app I discovered what had been run under the domain. Since than the old site has been completely removed and rebuild, with all associated urls (.uk, .net, etc...) and subdomains shutdown. I've allowed all the old spammy pages (thousands of them to 404). We've disavowed the old domains (.net, .uk that were sending a ton of links to this), along with some links that seemed a little spammy that were pointing to our domain. There are no manual actions or messaged in Google Webmaster Tools. The new website uses (SSL) https for the entire site, it scores a 98 / 100 for a mobile usability (we beat our competitors on Google's PageSpeed Tool), it has been moved to a business level hosting service, 301's are correctly setup, added terms and conditions, have all our social profiles linked, linked WMT/Analytics/YouTube, started some Adwords, use rel="canonical", all the SEO 101 stuff ++. When I run the page through the moz tool for a specific keyword we score an A. When I did a crawl test everything came back looking good. We also pass using other tools. Google WMT, shows no html issues. We rank well on Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. However, for some reason Google will not rank the site, and since there is no manual action I have no course of action to submit a reconsideration request. From an advanced stance, should we bail on this domain, and move to the .co domain (that we own, but hasn't been used before)? If we 301 this domain over, since all our marketing is pointed to .com will this issue follow us? I see a lot of conflicting information on algorithmic issues following domains. Some say they do, some say they don't, some say they do since a lot of times people don't fix the issue. However, this is a brand new site, and we're following all of Google's rules. I suspect there is an algorithmic penalty (action) against the domain because of the old thin affiliate site that was used for the beta and data gathering app. Are we stuck till Google does an update? What's the deal with moving us up, than removing again? Thoughts, suggestions??? I purposely, did a short url to leave out the company name, please respect that, since I don't want our issues to popup on a web search. 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | get4it0 -
Hummingbird Advice
We are looking for actionable insights about how to recover from hummingbird. I read the post that suggested checking the Google Webmaster Tools "Manual Action" tab for a notice about unnatural links. I did this and there was no notice. So what other steps can we take to troubleshoot?
Algorithm Updates | | larahill0 -
Impressions & Traffic WAY Down. Where to start?
Beginning around November 1st, I began to notice a continual, gradual drop in impressions and traffic. During the holiday season we typically see a decline in business so I initially passed it off as that, but there has been no rebound and I'm really confused on where to begin looking to figure this out. Daily impressions have now dropped from 20,000 all the way down to 5,000 and it has taken a major toll on the business (see attachment for graph of this). Some Background Information: My Site has been very static for the past 8 month's (since April '12). Admittedly Overly static with very little other than a blog post here and there added. However, during these 8 month's traffic jumped 30% so we were riding that wave and feeling confident that our past efforts built a great foundation. I'm not aware of anything even remotely black hat that has ever been done. Everything is very much on the up and up and done with the user in mind. I'm unable to track anything to a Panda update due to the consistent, gradual nature of the decline. However, with some important search queries completely falling off the map, it feels to me like we are being penalized or affected by a permanent algo change. In GWMT that are a variety of important search queries that show a change of -100%. These terms do show an average position, but when I manually search for them they are no where to be found in Google search results. This is very strange to me. It feels like we've been blacklisted for some of our more important keywords. We had a major site relaunch on January 20th (a week ago). However the downward trend was in place well before this. The site is www.mycreativeshop.com To sum it up, I'm extremely confused and very concerned with what this drop is doing to the company. I've never been in this position as we've worked very hard to lay a solid foundation and have always seen a continual, positive traffic increase. It then seemed to just start turning downward one day and won't stop. If anybody has some suggestions of how to try to get to the bottom of this and learn what is really taking place it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, -J Wdab7Sk
Algorithm Updates | | cre80 -
Where do we know that citations are needed?
Hi, there, I 've read much about citations and that there are very good for local SEO. I also watched the webinar about them in SEOMOZ. My question is where does the information that citation are needed and help in Google ranking? Is there a proof from Google or just it is found by seo specialists? I've never heard about it just 1-2 years ago so I am interested where this information comes from?
Algorithm Updates | | vladokan0 -
Do practitioner listings for the same business need to have different categories?
I'm trying to figure out an issue with practitioner listings, and I wanted to ask more about this because in this Q&A thread ( http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-businesses-at-the-same-address-avoiding-google-places-trouble ) it was stated that each listing needs to have a different category. Sorry if this question is redundant, I just wanted to make sure I have a clear understanding before proceeding.... I'm managing local listings for a senior healthcare center that has 4 locations, and multiple practitioners at each location. I'm trying to figure out how to best handle the multiple practitioner listings, most of which appear to be scraped. I was going to claim, verify and begin managing them. However, they all fall under the same category, "practitioner." What I've gathered from the response in the above Q&A thread is that I need to have a different category for each practitioner to please Google Places, despite the fact that "practitioner" is the best/most accurate category available in Google's pre-set categories. Is my interpretation correct? I'm confused because Google's guidelines say you can create a separate listing for each practitioner, which to me implies that it would be ok to use the practitioner category for each one. But then again, I want to make sure before proceeding. Thanks, Kim
Algorithm Updates | | TECHSEO35
#TECHSEO Account Manager0