My Penguin Recovery Attempt
-
So I have decided today to attempt to beat the odds and try and do a full recovery from the Penguin Update. I am going to create a Google Doc in which I will make public and link at the end of this post for all of you to see.
I am going to meticulously go through a massive back link audit of my site and try to see if I can recover from my loss of some of my main keywords back from April 24th.
I want to clarify that I DID NOT get effected from Penguin 2.0, but I did from 1.0 and have not recovered since. I have to be honest I feel like I have done everything up to now, but I realized I needed to make this a very long journey into a massive audit into my back link profile which contains thousands of back links which I have been honestly avoiding.
I just want to see if I put the work, I will see the results and maybe it can help others
I will document everything I do in detail as well as dates when I do them. I'm sure there will be plenty of coffee fueled nights of Jibber-Jabber...and I apologize for that ahead of time. I hope at the end there is light and can shed some on others.
I am starting with a blank canvas, so keep checking back on my progress. I generally work at night so you will see most changes in the morning.
Here is the link to my Doc - http://bit.ly/11dUkzc
Wish Me Luck
-
I see what you are saying, I was referring to total links. Not domains
-
I think what Marie is saying is that there is a disparity here somewhere. You say you have thousands of natural links, yet you only are showing 125 referring domains... Same thing on OSE *only 79 referring listed there but that's normal for ahrefs to have a more complete vision. Still not a ton of links.. I'm wondering if you would see improvement just by building some great content and gaining new relevant links..
-
I am not competing against those sites, and prior to Penguin I was ranking almost 1st page on some keywords that I lost.
My goal here is to recover the ranking on particular keywords I had that I lost from Penguin 1.0
-
I might be missing something, but according to ahrefs you have followed links from 125 domains. If the majority of those are spam links then there are likely not a lot of good quality links. I would think that to compete against big brand names like Hasbro and Merriam-Webster it is going to take a lot more than that to rank.
-
I do. I have screenshots and stuff already. I will post them soon.
-
Do you know where you were ranking before you started building the spammy links?
-
I have many natural earned links, thousands of them actually.
But I do have spammy rich anchor text links as well that I created years ago.
My goal is to analyze every link I have manually by visiting each one of them. I am going to create a checklist tonight of what process I will determine to detect spam. I do code so I might make a tool for myself that can help me find things quicker.
Like the purpose of this endeavor is to see through all attempts I can come up with to get myself out of the Penguin Hold. I am so determined to do this its crazy
I am willing to spend whatever time it takes even if what I do, does nothing. Then at least I know what doesn't work and move on to the next.
-
YES I am wondering this too. I'd kind of like to see him do it without natural links (or somebody) to test this theory. I hope it's true. It would just mean that we can focus entirely on proper content and link building and forget about poison links altogether!
Since Penguin 2.0 is an overhaul though (right?) it should technically overwrite whatever damage was done from 1.0... by theory? So my next question would be, OP - Did you see any changes at all last night? even bumped up or down a couple spots for targeted keywords?
-
I am trying to decide whether Penguin is really penalizing links or whether it just devalues all of the self made links it can detect. I have a question. For your site, do you have many naturally earned links? If not, removing backlinks may not do anything.
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 Panda and Penguin "Recovery"
We're working with a client who had been hit by Google Panda (duplicate content, copyright infringement) and Google Penguin (poor backlinks). While this has taken a lot of time, effort and patience to eradicate these issues, it's still been more than 6 months without any improvement. Have you experienced longer recovery periods? I've seen sites perform every black hat technique under the sun and still nearly 2 years later..no recovery! In addition many companies I've spoken to advised their clients to begin right from the very beginning with a new domain, site etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Is this traffic drop do to cutting backlinks or Penguin 2.0 (Graphs attached)
I've attached both graphs of the traffic drop. Our website rankings have been steadily declining since May of 2013. We have mostly return customers or our drop would have been much more severe. There's never been any warnings in GWT We cut a bunch (but not all) of our paid links in May of 2013. We didn't have a manual penalty or anything, we just wanted to see what happened if we moved towards being white hat. When our rankings plumited, we quit cutting links. We currently have about 30% paid links. Penguin 2.0 was May 22, 2013 In looking at these graphs, was it our cutting links that caused the traffic drop, or was it Penguin 2.0? I'm looking for people who have experience in diagnosing a "Unique Visits" Google analytics graph for Penguin and have experience with what happens when you cut links. It looks like, in viewing the graphs, that May 23 was more the day that the big drop happened, but you guys have more experience with this than me. Thank you. ga.png ga2.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Site Search external hosted pages - Penguin
Hi All, On the site www.myworkwear.co.uk we have a an externally hosted site search that also creates separately hosted pages of popular searches which rank in Google and create traffic. An example of this is listed below: Google Search: blue work trousers (appears on front page of Google) Site Champion Page: http://workwear.myworkwear.co.uk/workwear/Navy%20Blue%20Work%20Trousers Nearest Category page: http://www.myworkwear.co.uk/category/Mens-Work-Trousers-936.htm Could this be a penalisation or duplication factor? Could these be interpreted as a dodgy link factor? Thanks in advance for your help. Kind Regards, Andy Southall
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Are Links from blogs with person using keyword anchor text a Penguin 2.0 issue?
Hello, I am continuing a complete clean up of a clients link profile and would like to know if Penguin is against links from blogs with the user including keywords as anchor text? So far I have been attempting to get them removed before I go for a disavow. An example would be the work clothing comment at the bottom of: http://www.fashionstyleyou.co.uk/beat-the-caffeine-rush.html/comment-page-1 I am also questioning if we should keep any link directories, so far I have been ruthless, but worry I will be losing a hell of a lot of links. For example I have kept the following: http://www.business-directory-uk.co.uk//clothing.htm Your comments are welcomed!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Post-Penguin 2.0 Gust Blogging
I'm really just curious about everyone’s thoughts on post-Penguin 2.0 guest blogging. Is it still a viable option for link building? Is there anything you should proactively do to make it "safe"? What makes a guest blog post "advertorial" (or would it never be, if it is clearly marked as a guest post with a writer's bio)? Will moderate guest blogging on highly related, top ranked sites ever be a prime target for Google updates? I feel like guest blogging is still a viable way to build links, as long as it is on high quality and highly relevant sites that post content people actually read. Limit the number of links to 1-3 for every post, use generic or branded text as anchor text rather than your "top keyword" anchor text of old, and make the content interesting (educational or funny, not just for the sake of getting links) and completely unique to the site you are posting on. Just my 2 cents. Anyone else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jaredkipe0 -
Penalized by Penguin 2.0
I believe our site has been penalizes by Penguin 2.0. Our impressions in Google Webmaster are down and our traffic in Google Analytics also took a hit. Both of these occurences took place right when Penguin 2.0 was unleashed. What are the steps I need to take to regain my ranking? Is disallowing all the links I think maybe spammy the first thing to do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | joebuilder0 -
How to handle footer links after Penguin?
With the launch of Google's Penguin I know that footer links could possibly hurt rankings. Also too many links on a page are also bad. I have a client http://www.m-scribe.com That has footer links creating well over 100 links on many of their pages. How should I handle these footer links? Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Google Penguin for non-English queries?
Does anybody know if non-English queries were also 'hit' by the Google Penguin update? All Penguin horror stories out there are from sites focusing on English queries, and in some (Dutch) industries I'm monitoring, some sites with spammy backlink profiles are still ranking.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RBenedict0