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New client with a algo penalty (penguin)

by awj888
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey warriors!

Ive just picked up a new client, yay me

problem is they have a penguin penalty, from the latest update - their homepage was ranking with multiple page 1, all homepage. - so far as I can tell the homepage has pretty much moved down between 200-300 positions across all of them. NOT GOOD!

Fortunatley their previous seo has documented fairly well heres what I have identified so far:

- they had an old site (about 2 years domain), which also got hit, so it was redirected to a new clean domain (now 8 months).
- they had some pretty spammy backlinks on the old site from low quality sources - social bookmarks, blog comments etc
- the old site only got an algo penalty no manual actions

- the redirect seemed to have succeeded in transferring old rankings and because of new links the new domain was doing well

- right around the time of the update before I got the client, they bought a fiverr gig (uh oh!) for social signals - this resulted in about 350 social signals being added to the homepage within the space of a couple days - this is my biggest worry in what caused the penalty. (mix of twitter re-tweets, google+ shares, pins, and some flickr stuff) - they sent the 'report' and it made me cringe..




What I have done so far to attempt recovery:

- Built out the content on the site, added articles/blog posts - put some unoptimised internal link anchors, long tail phrases, generic, naked urls, and brand - only a few posts have been published the rest are scheduled

- removed the redirect of the old site, and just put a single page up there saying the site has moved. This probably removes about 90% of the bad links - and replaced that page to have just 1 outbound link with naked url to the new site (might need to just remove this too or make it no-follow - not sure yet)

- made a full audit of all links to the current new site - so far nothing seems at risk of link penalties - the anchors are very diverse, not too much exact match, some branding, only down site is no generic (click here etc)

- built a few new links from various web2.0s using only generic anchors to try balance the anchor profile a bit more

- started a slower and natural promotion on social media (twitter) sharing mostly posts from the blog to spread the impact from the fiverr blast previously done.

- started a blogger outreach campaign to build very high quality contextual links from authority domains, again only a couple links but they usually have great impact over time.



::::: So far it seems like the downward rankings have stopped, but they remain very low, some new terms are ranking again but still low.



>> my questions:

- 1: how long would this removal of the redirect take to impact the current new site rankings, is this potentially enough?
- 2: does anyone have any experience with social signal blasts causing a penalty - and- if so, how to remove/dissavow those links - I don't want to dissavow twitter and google plus because I think that will do more harm than good -

- 3: should I just go find the spammy social signals and dissavow individual links from those shares?
- 4: will google forgive those bad social links over time, therefore just keep going with high quality links and natural social promotion will be enough?



alright well that was more text than I thought it would be- any help or advice would be much appreciated - i've done what I can and all the other sites I have are doing better after the update so I know that the links I am building are good


cheers
AWJ
#algo #client #penalty #penguin #recovery
  • Profile picture of the author awj888
    if no one has anything to chime in about - then I will keep this as a mini case, and update with what I manage to do - maybe it can help someone else
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    :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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  • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
    My recommendation is to clean up both domains, I mean why not? The new domain was hurt by Penguin likely from the redirect and the new "social signals" they bought. Adding content, removing content, updating content will have zero affect on recovering from Penguin. This algorithm update is all about the inbound links to your clients website. Your client will be pretty upset if they drop a budget for work to be completed that won't have any results for them. Right now time is of the essence, word on the street is a new refresh could be seen shortly after 2015.

    Building more Web 2.0's won't help either, more than likely this will just make matters worse with any more refreshes.

    Also keep in mind that links that you think are good, may in fact be what is causing your issues. I had links that I knew were good, or so I thought. Come to find out those directory links I bought into years ago weren't helping me.
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    • Profile picture of the author awj888
      Thanks for the rec, my plan in removing the redirect is to clean up both domains just have to wait for the old one to be crawled and links to show up in webmaster tools.

      --- does anyone have any advice/experience from dissavowing social signals? - I know I can't get them removed as they are from a whole automated bot accounts...
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      :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Probably have to wait till the next Penguin refresh.
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  • Profile picture of the author awj888
    small UPDATE::

    While nothing major has changed, since removing the redirect of the old domain the rankings have collectively moved up about 30-40 spots. They are obviously still very very low. But on average moved up from the 280-250 range to 220-170 range.

    All in all, I would think its more likely due to continued SERP fluctuations and stabilising from the recent update.
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    :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I don't know why people over complicate this:
    • Build a new easy to rank longtail keyword webpage on the problem domain, build fresh links to the new webpage.
    • If you can't rank an easy longtail keyword, odds are you can't rank a tough competition keyword on the same domain.

    Follow that simple plan & there's basically no guessing involved. Either the easy keyword/page ranks or it doesn't. Work your way up from an easy keyword to the tougher competition keywords. Repeat...
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I don't know why people over complicate this:
      • Build a new easy to rank longtail keyword webpage on the problem domain, build fresh links to the new webpage.
      • If you can't rank an easy longtail keyword, odds are you can't rank a tough competition keyword on the same domain.

      Follow that simple plan & there's basically no guessing involved. Either the easy keyword/page ranks or it doesn't. Work your way up from an easy keyword to the tougher competition keywords. Repeat...
      Penguin 3.0 penalties are often limited to page level, so building a new page isn't always going to proof things. In many cases the penalty seems sitewide but definitely not always the case.

      Sure you could try to build a new page for the main phrase but that doesn't always work out well either. I've did that quite a few times in the past and then the keywords ranked for a while but it never lasted longer then a few weeks/months.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        Penguin 3.0 penalties are often limited to page level, so building a new page isn't always going to proof things. In many cases the penalty seems sitewide but definitely not always the case.

        Sure you could try to build a new page for the main phrase but that doesn't always work out well either. I've did that quite a few times in the past and then the keywords ranked for a while but it never lasted longer then a few weeks/months.
        What your missing is page level slaps are still going to be based on links which goes right back to what I said earlier, build fresh links pointing at a new webpage.

        Either way, the new easy longtail keyword/page ranks or it doesn't. Doesn't take very many days to prove/test.

        Obviously If the entire site/pages are deindexed things aren't looking good for the domain, that's the first thing I would check. Still, you never know without testing easy keywords first, that way it removes competition from the equation (one less thing to deal with during testing).
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  • Profile picture of the author awj888
    At first I thought you were stating some obvious SEO knowledge but I actually hadn't considered this idea - homepage got tanked other pages are ranking just they don't rank so high, as they never did - il optimise those see if they move -

    and your advice is if they don't move for easy keywords - start fresh domain?
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    :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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  • Profile picture of the author FranksToys
    You two options:
    1) Remove redirected domain and never consider that domain again for your client. It's dead.
    2) Fix both domains

    The second options likely the best bet because that first domain probably has branding the client wants to keep and more than likely good links pointed to it.

    Removing the crappy links from the domain gets it in a position to rank again and more importantly rank well for a long time.
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    "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this - that it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
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  • Profile picture of the author awj888
    @yukon i get what you said mate, and fortunately the site is indexed very well, ive put some additional content which also has been indexed quickly. Im just waiting for the redirected domain to be re-crawled after it dropped from the 301.

    The new domain site went all the way down from WMT showing around 200 queries to 0,

    now its coming back up with some long tail keywords, and 20 queries, mostly from the homepage which tanked before as well as some internal pages - fingers crossed that my clean up and removal of the old redirect will help.

    my strategy now is to replace the juice lost from the redirect with some quality links, and also to optimise the internal pages of the site so that rankings are spread and not all dependent on the homepage.

    @nik0 i think the comment was rather - if it won't rank for a super easy keyword then it going to struggle going after something more competitive at which point it becomes a different question - to continue with that domain or pursue a new site all together... no point flogging a dead horse is the phrase that comes to mind.

    However my backlink data etc that I am looking suggests that it is worth working on, I am continuing to clean the backlink profile, and because of losing a lot of juice from bad links (they still have some impact!) I need to build something much better to counteract and push this site up - il post on how that goes

    thanks for the tips guys!

    @frankstoys - im cleaning up both, and to answer - the older domain doesnt really have any good links, it was kind of on brand - but the client is mostly concerned with traffic and rankings - im cleaning both as I may be able to at least get a good backlink from the old domain once its cleaned.
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    :: AWJ of Thinking Creativity :: My wifey is a photographer, check out her work @ OLEXIE ::

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