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How are you tackling the penguin?

by tallulah31
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Like many others on here, I got hit by the penguin last week. Money keyword down over 100 places.

I'd be really interested to hear what others who were hit by the penguin are doing about it?

Has anyone abandoned their site and started fresh or started cleaning up their backlink profile?

Although I'm not holding out much hope for my site (Google never forgets and all that...), I'm going to let the dust settle a little longer. Going to keep adding some nice unique content over the next few weeks, keep the Twitter and FB engagement flowing and see where I stand then.

I'm not sure how effective cleaning up my backlink profile would be - even if I managed to get some of the lower quality links removed (and I think someone mentioned this in another post) Google would surely smell a rat if the link profile went from questionable to pure quality?
#penguin #tackling
  • Profile picture of the author akazzz
    Your site can still be brought back. It just depends on what links you build to your site before this update. Some people just buy fiverr gigs hoping their site could rank well and lasted every single google update without getting penalized for cheap low quality links.

    As a result, for these cheap links, their site got penalized and now they're scratching their head on what went wrong.

    If you haven't done anything damaging to your site, then yes, your site can still be brought back. Just build high quality links over it and add good content to your site regularly. and don't go and clean your backlink profile, its just too time consuming to start with and the results you will see will be very minimal.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanoryan
    Have you checked your Google Webmaster tools for any warnings regarding links?
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    • Profile picture of the author tallulah31
      Originally Posted by akazzz View Post

      Your site can still be brought back. It just depends on what links you build to your site before this update. Some people just buy fiverr gigs hoping their site could rank well and lasted every single google update without getting penalized for cheap low quality links.

      As a result, for these cheap links, their site got penalized and now they're scratching their head on what went wrong.

      If you haven't done anything damaging to your site, then yes, your site can still be brought back. Just build high quality links over it and add good content to your site regularly. and don't go and clean your backlink profile, its just too time consuming to start with and the results you will see will be very minimal.
      It's an interesting point you make...the logical thing to do is build more quality links that will outweigh the low quality links.

      I guess the million dollar question is whether Google has blacklisted my site to a point whereby it will take a huge number of quality links to get back to where I was.

      I think the issue with my backlink profile is that some of the sites I chose for contextual posts 'sold out' and started adding weak or questionable content to their sites after my article had gone up. Guess I just can't spot a good blog :confused:

      Originally Posted by ryanoryan View Post

      Have you checked your Google Webmaster tools for any warnings regarding links?
      Sure did, no warnings or anything. Never had any in the past either. Although I've heard quite a few people whose sites tanked didn't get an unnatural link warning either.
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      • Profile picture of the author cooler1
        Originally Posted by tallulah31 View Post

        It's an interesting point you make...the logical thing to do is build more quality links that will outweigh the low quality links.

        I guess the million dollar question is whether Google has blacklisted my site to a point whereby it will take a huge number of quality links to get back to where I was.

        I think the issue with my backlink profile is that some of the sites I chose for contextual posts 'sold out' and started adding weak or questionable content to their sites after my article had gone up. Guess I just can't spot a good blog :confused:
        It wouldn't be in Google's interest to blacklist sites for unnatural linking because no one can control who links to their site. It's in their interest to have quality content on the 1st page for searchers although that isn't currently happening.

        It's clear that backlinks can have a negative affect on a site though, but those penalties eventually expire.

        I haven't got a clear plan of action yet. Im going to wait to see what people come up with over the next few weeks.
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      • Profile picture of the author akazzz
        Originally Posted by tallulah31 View Post

        It's an interesting point you make...the logical thing to do is build more quality links that will outweigh the low quality links.

        I guess the million dollar question is whether Google has blacklisted my site to a point whereby it will take a huge number of quality links to get back to where I was.

        I think the issue with my backlink profile is that some of the sites I chose for contextual posts 'sold out' and started adding weak or questionable content to their sites after my article had gone up. Guess I just can't spot a good blog :confused:
        Google doesn't blacklist your site. It just penalizes it causing your rankings to drop e.g: 900 out of 1000 of your backlinks consist of blog comments with 5000 OBL.
        Thats the risk of doing blog comments (which many of the warriors do) as part of your link building strategy as ANYONE can leave a comment on the blog resulting in high OBL which makes google marks the blog as spam & who knows what will happen when Google finds your backlink in that blog.

        I`ll assume you bought blog network services? Buying those services can be a risk cause you never know when the owner of these blog networks will come in and add **** tons of duplicate content to it or putting your anchor text in the middle of a whole bunch of unrelevant content.

        Like Buyer #1 target keyword is LCD monitors & Buyer #2 target keyword is Dog training. The blog network owner might add both of these buyers anchor text together in the same article to save "space" on their homepage where the PR is at.
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  • Profile picture of the author Pyramid Linkers
    If you've been writing quality content, then content is probably not your problem. I think your best option is to build some quality links and try to improve your back link profile. Thats a much better option than continuing to build low quality links or no links at all because you want your back link profile to remain consistent.
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  • Profile picture of the author GodMode52
    Keep adding quality content on your site and keep building quality backlinks. I'm working on a few client's sites at the moment, their backlinks are dropping down daily . Google is deindexing all bmr aln and cheap backlinks. You have to be faster than google. If you are still indexed keep going. I have a client that had most of his keywords drop by 150-200 positions, after two weeks I see pretty nice improvements.
    You need to add insane link diversity, also never point massive blasts to your money site. Be aware of anchor text diversity too.
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    • Profile picture of the author J0N
      Apart from building quality backlinks, you need to closely analyze whether you are providing VALUE over your competitors or not ? If you are not providing any better service than your competitors then even if you managed to grab top rankings your site will eventually fall.

      To get to the TOP and to STAY THERE you need to provide VALUE.
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      • Profile picture of the author mosthost
        Originally Posted by J0N View Post

        Apart from building quality backlinks, you need to closely analyze whether you are providing VALUE over your competitors or not ? If you are not providing any better service than your competitors then even if you managed to grab top rankings your site will eventually fall.

        To get to the TOP and to STAY THERE you need to provide VALUE.
        Very true. Let's face it: most pages people are making ARE NOT unique or compelling content. They make mediocre pages and then concentrate on 'promoting' those pages in Google using backlink spam.

        This is the method that has been preached by 'gurus' for years. The reality is, almost everyone can make their website better, which could also help improve the user experience and rankings.
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        • Profile picture of the author tallulah31
          Originally Posted by GodMode52 View Post

          Keep adding quality content on your site and keep building quality backlinks. I'm working on a few client's sites at the moment, their backlinks are dropping down daily . Google is deindexing all bmr aln and cheap backlinks. You have to be faster than google. If you are still indexed keep going. I have a client that had most of his keywords drop by 150-200 positions, after two weeks I see pretty nice improvements.
          You need to add insane link diversity, also never point massive blasts to your money site. Be aware of anchor text diversity too.
          So Google are deindexing blog network and cheap backlinks? That's interesting, if they're doing that then maybe the negative link juice people are talking about isn't a big factor after all. I mean, if the links aren't indexed, surely Google wouldn't count them = low quality links to a site ignored = no negative link juice.

          When you say link diversity, I assume you've still been targeting sites that are relevant to your clients industry and are diverse in terms of page rank?

          Originally Posted by DeMango25 View Post

          Spot on! quality content + anchor text diversity and 4 tiered link pyramids (add insane link diversity here + social bookmarking) with only a handful links directly to your money site... it's how I'm doing it and so far haven't even noticed the penguin... below is a screenshot of one of my newer authority sites, kw has about 14600 exact local searches (image itself is hosted on a personal blog, not the site I'm talking about)
          That's a nice graph! All organic traffic? EMD?

          Originally Posted by akazzz View Post

          Google doesn't blacklist your site. It just penalizes it causing your rankings to drop e.g: 900 out of 1000 of your backlinks consist of blog comments with 5000 OBL.
          Thats the risk of doing blog comments (which many of the warriors do) as part of your link building strategy as ANYONE can leave a comment on the blog resulting in high OBL which makes google marks the blog as spam & who knows what will happen when Google finds your backlink in that blog.

          I`ll assume you bought blog network services? Buying those services can be a risk cause you never know when the owner of these blog networks will come in and add **** tons of duplicate content to it or putting your anchor text in the middle of a whole bunch of unrelevant content.

          Like Buyer #1 target keyword is LCD monitors & Buyer #2 target keyword is Dog training. The blog network owner might add both of these buyers anchor text together in the same article to save "space" on their homepage where the PR is at.
          To be honest I have tens rather than hundreds of blog comments. Some will no doubt have high OBLs on them by now. You're completely right about the blog network problem, at least one I used has 'sold out' since I used them.
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          • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
            Originally Posted by tallulah31 View Post

            That's a nice graph! All organic traffic? EMD?
            I'd say 80% organic traffic and 20% referral (thank god for stumbleupon) and it just keeps on rising, tested a lot of techniques to get to this exact process.

            URL is main kw + "info".com and atm 4th on 1st page in google... the graph was when I was 9th , also been working on making a lot of 700-1000 word posts focused on related kw's that have about 880-1600 local exact searches and being backlinked as I type, will pull in a buttload of traffic when I'm done with this one
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    • Profile picture of the author DeMango25
      Originally Posted by GodMode52 View Post

      Keep adding quality content on your site and keep building quality backlinks. I'm working on a few client's sites at the moment, their backlinks are dropping down daily . Google is deindexing all bmr aln and cheap backlinks. You have to be faster than google. If you are still indexed keep going. I have a client that had most of his keywords drop by 150-200 positions, after two weeks I see pretty nice improvements.
      You need to add insane link diversity, also never point massive blasts to your money site. Be aware of anchor text diversity too.
      Spot on! quality content + anchor text diversity and 4 tiered link pyramids (add insane link diversity here + social bookmarking) with only a handful links directly to your money site... it's how I'm doing it and so far haven't even noticed the penguin... below is a screenshot of one of my newer authority sites, kw has about 14600 exact local searches (image itself is hosted on a personal blog, not the site I'm talking about)

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  • Profile picture of the author rahulsamiflabs
    do quality work in SEO, submit it to high PR and high authority sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author StevenJones
    Unique content, and keep building a diverse backlinking profile. Make it look as natural as possible.
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  • Profile picture of the author brettb
    My only site that got hit was over reliant on HubPages links.

    What I'm doing now is to build my own membership site. I'm buying members through AdWords. It's only costing me $0.30 a member, and this seems a better investment than article marketing or buying fake fans or buying a pile of rubbish from Flippa.

    1000 real members on my site and things start to get interesting.
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  • Profile picture of the author ewebguy157
    Google Penguin actually harmful for black haters, are you one of them? cool then don't worry, keep it with good work. Google said through penguin never go through over optimization or spammy links or copy content.
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