Penguin Rescue! A lead has been hit and I need to save them!
-
I had a meeting today with a prospective client who has been hit by Penguin. Their previous SEO company has obviously used some questionable techniques which is great for me, bad for the client. Their leads have dropped from 10 per day to 1 or 2. Their analytics shows a drop after the 25th, a back link check shows a lot of low quality links. Domain metrics are pretty good and they are still ranking ok for some keywords. I have 1 month to turn it around for them. How do you wise people think it can be done? First of all I will check the on-site optimisation. I will ensure that the site isn't over optimised. Secondly, do I try and remove the bad links? Or just hit the site with good content and good links to outweigh the bad ones. Also, do you think G is actually dropping rankings for the over optimisation / bad links or are the links are just being discredited rsulting in the drop in rankings. 2 very different things. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks
-
This sounds like a plan. Give it a shot and test the results
-
Does anyone care to share their view on my last?
I have ran backlink checks and they have a site wide footer links from 2 of their other businesses. This has created thousands of backlinks with the exact same anchor text. Do you think this could cause a problem?
I'm thinking of reducing it to just 2 links each from the 2 sites.
Other than that the backlink make up looks pretty normal except for the repeated anchor texts.
-
Thanks for all the responses guys. I have taken them on-board. 1 thing I have noticed...
I have ran backlink checks and they have a site wide footer links from 2 of their other businesses. This has created thousands of backlinks with the exact same anchor text. Do you think this could cause a problem?
I'm thinking of reducing it to just 2 links each from the 2 sites.
Other than that the backlink make up looks pretty normal except for the repeated anchor texts.
Thanks
-
I second the time frame issue. 1 month won't be enough time and your work will just benefit the next person this client gets to work on it, while you'll be left with an upset client because of bad expectations.
-
"you need to fix whatever issues are there, wait for the algorithm to process again, and then if you've solved the issues, you should theoretically restore the rankings. That's much easier said than done. You don't know exactly what the issues are, and we don't know when the algo will process again."
I agree with this 100%.
These types of problems can be fixed and then must wait until google reevaluates and then republishes back into the SERPs. Sites that are hit with these types of problems escape in batches - not when things are fixed.
So, you could do great work, get it fixed on 25th day and then google does not reprocess and republish for 60 more days and some other SEO gets credit for your hard work.
I don't think pointing good links into the site will get rid of the issue with the problematic links and clear you of the algo.
Exactly... What are good links? Your "added" links will not be natural.
-
Well, from what everyone is writing about Penguin, it's an algorithmic update. Meaning you need to fix whatever issues are there, wait for the algorithm to process again, and then if you've solved the issues, you should theoretically restore the rankings. That's much easier said than done. You don't know exactly what the issues are, and we don't know when the algo will process again.
I think the timeline you have set is highly unrealistic and you should aim to set expectations with the client that this process can very well take much longer. If this previous SEO company built problematic links, I think you'll have to deal with them. I don't think pointing good links into the site will get rid of the issue with the problematic links and clear you of the algo. I think you're going to have to go through the tedious work of cleaning things up. The good news is that a bunch of people have written about what to look for. Check in WMT tools for sitewide links, check your anchor text pointing into the site. Export your external links from OSE and then upload them to Linkl Detective- http://linkdetective.com/- let it do the hard work for you, classify a lot of the links, and then you need to go through the process of trying to clean things up, doing as much as you can, and then submit a reinclusion request (may help, may not), hoping Google will discard the other links.
Good luck - really try to demonstrate to your client the complexity of the process and extend the timeframe of the project - that's my ultimate recommendation
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
-
Do I need to do 301s in this situation?
We have an e-commerce site built on Magento 2. We launched a few months ago, and had about 2K categories. The categories got indexed in Google for the most part. Shortly after launch, we decided to go with SLI for search and navigation because the native search/navigation was too slow given our database. The navigation pages are now hosted navigation pages; meaning, the URLs have changed and they are now hosted by SLI. I have done 301s for the most popular categories, but I didn't do 301s for all categories as we have to go through each category one-by-one and map it to the correct navigation page. Our new category sitemap only lists the new SLI category URLs. Will the fact that we have not 301'd all of our former categories hurt us as far as SEO? Do I have to do 301 redirects for all former category pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevin_h0 -
Bing seriously hitting our website
Hi I have a strange query, Bing in the last four weeks have been seriously crawling our site, and while at the moment this isn't affecting our servers, coming into the busy time of the year I am just wondering if anyone else is seeing this. They are basically crawling the entire site (including nofollow pages) even though according to Bing Webmaster tools, they know our sitemap. Is anybody else seeing any unusual activity with the Bing bot. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
What is the recommended way to save Image Files in WP?
Hi, Is there a recommended setting (or even plugin) to use when saving image files on my Wordpress blog?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
Which folders etc. Thanks0 -
Online Store With 4 Products Available in 50 Sizes, Need Tips Categories/Products
I own and manage 2 online stores selling furnace filters. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com and http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ We have 4 different qualities furnace filters and each of them are avaible in almost 50 different sizes. My store is setup with almost 200 different products. ( 4 filtres X 50 sizes) None of them have variable. This was a lots of work to create 200 different products. The reason I did this is because when searching in search engine, vistors will use such keywords: 16x20x4 filter 20x25x2 furnace filter a/c filter 10x20x1 replacement filter online 20x20x1 16x25x5 filter toronto and so on... Must keywords request in search engine will included the furnace filter size. QUESTIONS: all my products descriptions are the same, the only difference is the filter size, is this Duplicate Content? will it be better to sell 4 filters with 50 variables? if my store use variable I don't see how I will rank on Google when shopper search for keyword like mention before in this post. My page name will always be the same. My description page the same and so on... Furnace Filters Canada is on BigCommerce platform and I love it. I'm in the process of moving Filtration Montreal to CoreCommerce. You can have a look at it here http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com I'm very limited in SEO knowledge, the way I have setup http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com I thing is the best way for SEO. What is your opinion & recommendations. Thank you for your help, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Hide H1 tags on pages. Don't chuckle-Need assistance.
I redesigned my companies website and I am first and foremost an SEO person so I know the importance of a well laid out website. Furthermore, I know realistically you should NEVER hide text whether it's with WH or BH intentions but here is my problem. For every page I have all the details taken care of except proper placement of H1 tags. My website is responsive designed VERY competitive industry I have to make sure it is properly developed both design wise and seo wise It's an INC 5000 company so NO BH intentions On phones and tablet devices I have the header images hidden and in the place of header images I have the information as in location, service,etc of whatever that page may be. This makes it look good on desktops and serves up information quickly to people using phones and tablets. My question is: Would it be bad to turn that text seen on tablets and phones into an h1 tag as it's hidden on desktops with CSS but available on mobile devices. My problem is making the h1 tag's work with the desktop versions visually as placement doesn't make since. Any opinions are appreciated. Thanks Ballanrk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ballanrk0 -
Approximate linking root domains we need based on these metrics
Our top 4 competitors for a single term we're targeting has the following metrics: PA 45, DA 89, 6 linking root domains to page, 40,000 linking root domains to domain PA 53, DA 100, 3 linking root domains to page, 1.6 million to domain PA 32 DA 37, 4 linking root domains to page, 200 to domain PA 55 DA 66, 6 linking root domains to page, 3300 to domain All other optimization is about the same, except in (2) they have half of the keyword phrase in the domain and the whole keyword phrase in the URL. Also everybody else has title and meta description with the plural form, and the singular is what I typed in. We have the whole keyword phrase in the domain. The above 4 sites were internal pages, ours is a home page rank. Our metrics: PA 33, DA 22, 30 linking root domains to page, 43 linking root domains to site How tough will it be for us to compete? How many strong linking root domains will it take?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
What is next from Google Panda and Google Penguin?
Does anyone know what we can expect next from Google Panda/Penguin? We did prepare for this latest update and so far so good.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jjgonza0 -
We've just bought a new domain - need advice on the exact procedure to follow...
Hi guys, We've just bought a 3 letter .co.uk domain to replace our current 20 character old domain. Our existing domain is PR5 with quite a few links (that we can modify no problem) We're currently .301 redirecting the new domain to the old domain. I was looking at the procedure in one of the guides but as it's slightly different - is this the correct procedure? 1. prep the duplicate site on new domain and prep the individual htaccess .301 redirects 2. Add new the domain to google webmaster tools bing Webmaster centre 2. On the switchover date - modify all possible incoming links from external sites 3. On the switchover date - apply the .301 redirects and make the new site live 4. On the switchover date - apply the new sitemaps to google & bing 5. on the switchover date - fill out the change of address form in webmaster tools 6. Do the happy dance? many thanks in advance, Tony.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | posh_tiger0