My steps to recovering from Penguin

13 replies
  • SEO
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A few sites of mine got nailed, a few just dropped by 5-10 positions (sitewide). There's no way to know whether I triggered the algorithm penalty or certain links where devalued. But from what I gathered this plan could/should work either way.

Plan A: Fixing the penalized site.

1- First I've gone through the site and removed what links I could. Lots of links on my sites were from various WF and the other WF vendors. I pulled an updated opensiteexplorer report to find links that looked the worst or were heavy on anchor text and looked through my reports to find the vendors who built these. Then I contacted them and asked them if they could bring the links down in exchange for a small $. I was able to remove quite a few this way.

2- All of my sites were ecommerce so yes lots of content beneath the fold, all of it A+ when it comes to the SEOmoz on page scores. I brought part of the content up above the fold, made the title tags look more natural, and removed keyword bolding and exact match alt tag keywords. This is all just guesswork, not sure yet what Google considers too optimized.

3- Some of the landing pages on my sites had hundreds of links, with way to much anchor text. I fixed what I could, but I also created a new page for these URL's with a slightly different URL and 301'd the old URL. This is totally untested but its possible the 301 will help, I know some people that successfully did this post Panda.

4- New links. I'm focusing on links that can be moved should this site not recover; things like the BBB online, my local chamber of commerce, business.com, a few very authority sites that sell me very natural looking link placement within their sites. The point is here to only invest in links that could be moved, should I need a new domain. I've also done some press releases using prlog and prweb to try to bring the anchor text distribution back to normal levels using things like click here, mywebsite.com, etc.

5- Removed webmastertools. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but hey its worth a shot. In a few weeks to a month I will reinstall, resubmit xml sitemap, etc. In the interim I'm going to try removing it all in hopes of some kind of reset.

Plan B: New domain

1- Using a .net version of the above affected domain as a back up. At least as far as past visitors are concerned my branding and domain ownership will seem unchanged if i need to move the site design over to this URL.

2- I'm putting up a temporary wordpress blog will I try to fix the .com. I'll throw up some fresh content on the URL and a few very basic keywords on the home page and call it a day.

3- I will build a few links just to get it indexed and some PR. Tumblr, pinterist, few local directories, a press release, rss submission, all on a limited scale.


Then the plan is just to wait. Google stated in their recent update that Penguin is not part of their main algorithm. I won't expect my penalized sites to recover until they update penguin again, might be a few weeks or a month or two. If rankings dont recover I will move the main site over to the new site, after I make sure no other sites scraped my content, and after i've given google enough time to deindex everything. Then I'll get as many of the good links from the old site to point to the new one. I won't redirect the old site to the new though.
#penguin #recovering #steps
  • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
    Originally Posted by plsearch View Post

    1- First I've gone through the site and removed what links I could. Lots of links on my sites were from various WF and the other WF vendors. I pulled an updated opensiteexplorer report to find links that looked the worst or were heavy on anchor text and looked through my reports to find the vendors who built these. Then I contacted them and asked them if they could bring the links down in exchange for a small $. I was able to remove quite a few this way.
    Nice tip ... not sure why I never thought of offering a little cash to remove the links. I personally would not try to remove the links ... but if it works, it works. My plan is to focus more on content and moving forward.

    Originally Posted by plsearch View Post

    2- All of my sites were ecommerce so yes lots of content beneath the fold, all of it A+ when it comes to the SEOmoz on page scores. I brought part of the content up above the fold, made the title tags look more natural, and removed keyword bolding and exact match alt tag keywords. This is all just guesswork, not sure yet what Google considers too optimized.
    I think the whole bold, italicize, and underline the keyword were overkill anyway.

    And when it comes to Alt tags, I would make them as descriptive as possible. Remember, these are supposed to be used for text browsers and blind people. The alt tag should be a description of the what the picture really is.

    Originally Posted by plsearch View Post

    5- Removed webmastertools. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but hey its worth a shot. In a few weeks to a month I will reinstall, resubmit xml sitemap, etc. In the interim I'm going to try removing it all in hopes of some kind of reset.
    I personally would never do this. The benefits of webmaster tools (for me) outweigh the ALLEGED conspiracy.
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  • Profile picture of the author socialbookmark
    These steps worth trying. However the best solution is always fixing and having powerful backlinks and contents in my opinion.
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
    I had an affiliate site deindexed it was making around $80 a day in amazon commissions

    I have had to jump through hoops to get it back in the SERPS

    Pretty much deleted all affiliate links and added a rake load of new unique content and not forgetting creating a social media following as well :-)

    Fingers crossed we will be back again :-)

    Danny
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    • Profile picture of the author cooler1
      Originally Posted by Danny Cutts View Post

      I had an affiliate site deindexed it was making around $80 a day in amazon commissions

      I have had to jump through hoops to get it back in the SERPS

      Pretty much deleted all affiliate links and added a rake load of new unique content and not forgetting creating a social media following as well :-)

      Fingers crossed we will be back again :-)

      Danny
      Did you change any of your on page SEO also to get it back in the SERPs?

      My affiliate sites were also affected by Penguin and im using SEO Pressor so im wondering whether to deactivate it. Although it sounds like Penguin is more likely down to over optimization of backlink anchor text than on page SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
    Well before I got slapped I had over 2000 posts all from reviewazon and I had then manually wriiten about 10 proper reviews which were about 1000 words long which is where all of my sales came from.

    I have now deleted all the posts except the 10 that i wrote and I am now adding about one new article every couple of days along with still building links and I dont have any affiliate links on my site anymore.

    One thing you do need to do though is link to authority sites in your niche as I have found this to help know end when it comes to better rankings :-)

    If all else fails I have another ddomain that I can jump on to get the income replaced :-) I am not too worried though :-)

    Danny
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
    my site is not back in the serps yet.... but I have been getting a far few mails from google and based on my other aff sites things will work out well in the end :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author seoed
    An interesting technique. However, should you recover from your ranking drops you will not be able to tell which of those 5 methods really helped you or helped you most.

    But at least you could do all these steps on other sites too if we expect that these will have the same effect on the other sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Red Eagle
    Instead of bowing before Google, why not focus our efforts on eliminating Google as a monopoly? Google has abused their power, plain and simple. Google has made this latest update personal, rewarding people and businesses all this time for doing what they have now decided to punish people for.

    Google thinks they are so powerful they can now be evil and there is nothing anyone can or will do about it. Tell your congressman or congresswoman to break up Google's monopoly now.

    Monopolistic corporations like Google have come and gone throughout history. But, Google is becoming too big and powerful. If we don't act soon to stop Google, they may become too big and powerful to ever stop. And, their line about just wanting to show the best search results for the user is a crock. Google wants their search engine to primarily show search results which maximize their corporate and shareholder revenue, period.
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    • Profile picture of the author MaroshIS
      Originally Posted by Red Eagle View Post

      Instead of bowing before Google, why not focus our efforts on eliminating Google as a monopoly? Google has abused their power, plain and simple. Google has made this latest update personal, rewarding people and businesses all this time for doing what they have now decided to punish people for.

      Google thinks they are so powerful they can now be evil and there is nothing anyone can or will do about it. Tell your congressman or congresswoman to break up Google's monopoly now.

      Monopolistic corporations like Google have come and gone throughout history. But, Google is becoming too big and powerful. If we don't act soon to stop Google, they may become too big and powerful to ever stop. And, their line about just wanting to show the best search results for the user is a crock. Google wants their search engine to primarily show search results which maximize their corporate and shareholder revenue, period.
      Don't worry they will go just like Kodak and many more corporations, but it's perhaps not the right time now. BTW in many countries they are not anymore #1 search engine. But in fact they are still #1 advertising company in the world.
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      • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
        As you've been doing - the best thing to do is to remove the spam links and get authority links pointing to your site. Penguin is an algorithm that reacts to spam links - get rid of the spam links and you should see improvement.

        Many people have mentioned SEO Pressor etc - i'd delete this. Do you really want your content to have 4% KW density, one keyword underlined, one keyword bold, one keyword italic, the keyword in the Title, Description and URL etc etc. This is just not natural website development.
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        • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
          Originally Posted by scottmacair View Post

          Many people have mentioned SEO Pressor etc - i'd delete this. Do you really want your content to have 4% KW density, one keyword underlined, one keyword bold, one keyword italic, the keyword in the Title, Description and URL etc etc. This is just not natural website development.
          You don't have to delete it, just tweak it. I have a similar plugin, and I removed the bold, underline, and italics part, and well as lowered the KW density to 1% - 2%.

          You also have to remember that you don't need 100% on all your posts, you just need the plugin as a reminder on what your content should include.
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          • Profile picture of the author CatherineMay
            I'm bumping this thread that's about six days old, because Danny Cutts said a few posts up that he removed all affiliate links from his Amazon site. I just don't get how you can have an Amazon site without affiliate links. :confused:

            Is there some terminology I'm not understanding?
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    He's simply taking it out of the equation to get back in good graces. Of course it will go back eventually.
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