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2Yr old PR4 static site starts blogging massively and loses rankings for ALL keywords.

by nik0 Banned
38 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Strange story, a client of mine that I did some work for about 1.5-2 months ago, has a 2 yr old PR4 site with tons of legit links, at the end of May they decided to start blogging in a pretty diehard style, about 10-15 new 1000 word articles per day for about 2 weeks in a row now.

2 days ago the sites lost rankings for ALL the keywords and the site ranked for quiet a few. The linkbuilding that I've done 2 months ago wasn't that crazy at all really, 5 guestposts, 5 homepage links, and I think 25 or 50 manually made web2.0's so this aren't really the links that penalizes a site I would say.

Any idea if this can have to do with the new blog that is added? The site remians the same, the wp blog is just installed in a subfolder /blog/, the client asks me if it's smart to remove the blog again.

I can't imagine a blog full of unique content can cause a penalty right? I suggested to wait a while to see what happens, maybe it bounces back.
#2yr #blogging #keywords #loses #massively #pr4 #rankings #site #starts #static
  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    Highly unlikely: it's the new content.
    More likely: the 25 to 50 web2.0s.

    Hope you saved the passwords for those sites.

    What date exactly the did the drop occur ? What anchor text did you use?

    April 24th and May 25th are dates to look for with penguin. In addition to this ..which went unannounced sometime in May:

    Better application of inorganic backlinks signals. [launch codename "improv-fix", project codename "Page Quality"] We have algorithms in place designed to detect a variety of link schemes, a common spam technique. This change ensures we’re using those signals appropriately in the rest of our ranking.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by retsek View Post

      Highly unlikely: it's the new content.
      More likely: the 25 to 50 web2.0s.

      Hope you saved the passwords for those sites.

      What date exactly the did the drop occur ? What anchor text did you use?

      April 24th and May 25th are dates to look for with penguin. In addition to this ..which went unannounced sometime in May:
      Nah man, a few web2.0s won't cause a legit good looking site to tank, shouldn't get crazier then that lol. The drop occured 2 days ago and I haven't builded a link for almost 2 months. The site is PR4 and has TONS of links then my 25 web2.0 links will tank it, uhu

      I talked with another seo company last night btw, 80% of his client sites lost rankings 2 days ago as well, I didn't do seo for them btw, and 1 of my own sites that haven't received links for a long time also lost a lot of traffic (well a lot I went from a steady 20-25 visitors a day to 5-7 visitors).
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      • Profile picture of the author retsek
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        Nah man, a few web2.0s won't cause a legit good looking site to tank, shouldn't get crazier then that lol. The drop occured 2 days ago and I haven't builded a link for almost 2 months. The site is PR4 and has TONS of links then my 25 web2.0 links will tank it, uhu
        I wouldn't call 50 web2s a few.

        I'm guessing that since they hired you, they've hired previous SEOs who've created similar links. Maybe your set tipped the scales out of their favor. Regardless of the age of the links they can still come back and bite you whenever Google tweaks their algo.
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
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          Originally Posted by retsek View Post

          I wouldn't call 50 web2s a few.

          I'm guessing that since they hired you, they've hired previous SEOs who've created similar links. Maybe your set tipped the scales out of their favor. Regardless of the age of the links they can still come back and bite you whenever Google tweaks their algo.
          I know you spend thousands of dollars on SEO to do it legit all the way but web2.0s are definetly the safest links out there and especially in the way we do it, I looked it up btw and I builded 10 web2.0's for this site, but even if it were a 100 or 500 it would still been good.

          I have clients who ordered 1000's of customized web2.0s from me, we never had any problems.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
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    [edit]
    Apparently they scraped wikipedia for content, so yeah, it was most likely the content causing problems.
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    It wasn't the content.

    Why are they posting 10-15 new pages per day?

    I would be posting two articles every 12 hours, Google picks up on when you consistently keep posting new pages. I've found that 2 new pages per day is the sweet spot on my own blogs.

    They can make that consistent posting of new pages go a lot further If they drop down to 2 new pages per day. Unless their traffic really needs 10-15 new pages per day?
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      It wasn't the content.

      Why are they posting 10-15 new pages per day?

      I would be posting two articles every 12 hours, Google picks up on when you consistently keep posting new pages. I've found that 2 new pages per day is the sweet spot on my own blogs.

      They can make that consistent posting of new pages go a lot further If they drop down to 2 new pages per day. Unless their traffic really needs 10-15 new pages per day?
      It was a static site, it never had a blog and existed for 2 years. They found it nice to add a blog to get more longtail traffic I suppose. So in 2 years there was never new content or anything like that, and then 2 weeks ago they started to blog massively, I don't know why so much but guess they don't like to go slow. It's not really blogging, it's more review type of blogging, but I checked the articles and they are unique and non spun and pretty well written.

      So in those 2 weeks they consistenly posted 10-15 reviews a day (no affiliate links in it or anything crazy like that, just txt and a nice image). So in total around 150-200 posts.

      Hmm I checked the content a bit more and many sentences are copied from Wikipedia (100% match) and many others are rewritten in a very slight way. Maybe someone reported the site for borrowing content.
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  • Profile picture of the author Duy Nguyen
    Have you checked the backlink history of the site? Are there any sudden spikes of links coming in? Is there any competitor out there who is good at negative SEO Just my 2 cents.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by Duy Nguyen View Post

      Have you checked the backlink history of the site? Are there any sudden spikes of links coming in? Is there any competitor out there who is good at negative SEO Just my 2 cents.
      Haven't checked, could also be that they bought links from someone else as well indeed like Retsek also mentioned.
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  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Uh-oh, "rewriting" Wikipedia? I get it, so their blog is full of thin, highly derivative content? Google slaps a thousand of those before breakfast. I would lose the "blog". They had an authority site but got greedy, done it myself, paid the same price.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by markowe View Post

      Uh-oh, "rewriting" Wikipedia? I get it, so their blog is full of thin, highly derivative content? Google slaps a thousand of those before breakfast. I would lose the "blog". They had an authority site but got greedy, done it myself, paid the same price.
      Thanks, I just got the wrong sentence one time that I thought it was unique but it's exactly like you say although I am not familiar with the word "derivative" lol, first time I hear that, but I understand you obvious. So yeah, guess so.

      Anyway thanks for sharing your experience, probably the site owner didn't even know it theirselves and just had a bad content writer.
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      • Profile picture of the author markowe
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        Thanks, I just got the wrong sentence one time that I thought it was unique but it's exactly like you say although I am not familiar with the word "derivative" lol, first time I hear that, but I understand you obvious. So yeah, guess so.

        Anyway thanks for sharing your experience, probably the site owner didn't even know it theirselves and just had a bad content writer.
        Yeah, sorry for the long words - all I mean is that the content might not be copied word-for-word, but Google is clever enough these days to spot poorly-spun or "rewritten" content, especially from Wikipedia!

        I would be VERY surprised if that wasn't the problem on this site!

        I am beginning to think even original, regularly-posted but quite short articles (like all of similar length, under 350 words) are even something Google doesn't like these days, as it is quite typical of outsourced content.
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
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          Originally Posted by markowe View Post

          Yeah, sorry for the long words - all I mean is that the content might not be copied word-for-word, but Google is clever enough these days to spot poorly-spun or "rewritten" content, especially from Wikipedia!

          I would be VERY surprised if that wasn't the problem on this site!

          I am beginning to think even original, regularly-posted but quite short articles (like all of similar length, under 350 words) are even something Google doesn't like these days, as it is quite typical of outsourced content.
          Agreed, it even happens to be so that I have a website with 100 articles of 250-300 words, targetting real easy kw's, it isn't ranking anywhere, yeah page 10 and beyond. I didnt do much backlink either, only a few decent links to the homepage, but that's it.

          You would think it would rank somewhere after 6 months lol.

          Oh before people say, someone selling SEO can't rank his own site? Not like that, I didn't build any links on purpose to see how well original content ranks without much help.
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        • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
          My guess is it's the incoming links. Penguin in quite sensitive. Check the backlink profile for signs of low quality spam link building.
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  • Profile picture of the author dennis09
    A while ago I had a conversation with a fellow mastermind group member who was in a situation very similar to yours. His problem had to do with his posting velocity. Instead of slowly building up his daily post volume he chose to jump the gun and post 7+ articles every day. If I remember correctly his rankings did come back after some period of time.

    The more I think about it though, its not too surprising that a few year old dormant site suddenly mass posting content would set off some type of alarm bell. Even if it is a false one. Almost like hibernating and then having someone throw you in a tub of ice. Then again, its late and I could just be thinking too much into it

    Yukon gave you some solid advice there. Something they should consider perhaps?
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by dennis09 View Post

      A while ago I had a conversation with a fellow mastermind group member who was in a situation very similar to yours. His problem had to do with his posting velocity. Instead of slowly building up his daily post volume he chose to jump the gun and post 7+ articles every day. If I remember correctly his rankings did come back after some period of time.

      The more I think about it though, its not too surprising that a few year old dormant site suddenly mass posting content would set off some type of alarm bell. Even if it is a false one. Almost like hibernating and then having someone throw you in a tub of ice. Then again, its late and I could just be thinking too much into it

      Yukon gave you some solid advice there. Something they should consider perhaps?
      Yeah not a bad idea indeed, but then with better content, I will pass it on to my client and tell to take a better writer.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeraldNitram
    I've had a pretty similar spurt back then, but it died down somewhere along the way. It's pretty hard doing 10-15 posts a day. Back then, I realized that it would be better if I just did one on some of the days of the week and do that consistently. Have you considered blogging using titles like Freebie Friday and just do those on Fridays, or something?
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
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      Originally Posted by GeraldNitram View Post

      I've had a pretty similar spurt back then, but it died down somewhere along the way. It's pretty hard doing 10-15 posts a day. Back then, I realized that it would be better if I just did one on some of the days of the week and do that consistently. Have you considered blogging using titles like Freebie Friday and just do those on Fridays, or something?
      Thanks, I will forward it
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  • Profile picture of the author Astrageeks
    It looks like the drop in the ranking is because of the new 10-15 post that they have done. I would suggest adding 1-2 post per every 12 hours in the web 2.0 sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
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      Originally Posted by Astrageeks View Post

      It looks like the drop in the ranking is because of the new 10-15 post that they have done. I would suggest adding 1-2 post per every 12 hours in the web 2.0 sites.
      Is there an echo in here?
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Run the blog through copyscape to see how much of that content is copied word for word. The answer might be much simpler than you think.

    And yea, it wasn't the web 2.0's. Slow down with posting in the future - once or twice every 24 hours is plenty.

    Also, what does their structure look like right now? WP, while it's definitely an amazing CMS, can be pretty bloated sometimes. If they added 200 new posts and some of them are copied content, you could be looking at a few hundred pages filled with duplicate content (depends on their setup obviously).
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
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    The setup was taken care of reasonable, okay they used tags and category pages, but the posts showed up their with the read more.., so not duplicated duplicate content on the same site

    I just talked with the client and it was indeed all duplicate content with a little rewrite here and there (not spinned). Client deleted the whole blog section now, let's see if it's an alghorytm thing and if the site will regain it's rankings.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
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      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      The setup was taken care of reasonable, okay they used tags and category pages, but the posts showed up their with the read more.., so not duplicated duplicate content on the same site

      I just talked with the client and it was indeed all duplicate content with a little rewrite here and there (not spinned). Client deleted the whole blog section now, let's see if it's an alghorytm thing and if the site will regain it's rankings.
      All you have to do is add a Canonical tag in the header of the Category & Tag pages pointing at the original content page/post & Google will see which of the 3 pages (post, category, tag) is the important page you want displayed in the SERPs.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        All you have to do is add a Canonical tag in the header of the Category & Tag pages pointing at the original content page/post & Google will see which of the 3 pages (post, category, tag) is the important page you want displayed in the SERPs.
        Yea, but if your content is copied from Wikipedia, that won't do much.

        Seriously, why didn't they get unique articles for the blog?
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
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          Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

          Yea, but if your content is copied from Wikipedia, that won't do much.

          Seriously, why didn't they get unique articles for the blog?
          I don't know, you want their email?
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
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        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        All you have to do is add a Canonical tag in the header of the Category & Tag pages pointing at the original content page/post & Google will see which of the 3 pages (post, category, tag) is the important page you want displayed in the SERPs.
        Thanks, how do you change the category and the tag pages in Wordpress, I mean where do we find these? I think have to do it in ftp right, but I have no idea where they are.
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        • Profile picture of the author markowe
          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

          Thanks, how do you change the category and the tag pages in Wordpress, I mean where do we find these? I think have to do it in ftp right, but I have no idea where they are.
          All-in-One SEO fixes that AFAIK. And it lets you "noindex" archive pages too, so that should fix that.

          As for stuffing their blog with scraped content, whatever possessed them..?
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          • Profile picture of the author Intrepreneur
            Look..

            IF the content they are posting is useful and relevant and they plan to cotinue posting content.

            They can ADD as many pages and content to their site as THEY WISH.

            GOOGLE does not judge content frequency as bad.

            Only under manual review or if the content is easily detected as duplicate.

            Just keep adding the content and be consistent and the site WILL return.

            Also if you have webmaster tools, check for any messages.

            In the mean time, stop worrying what the problem is and continue as normal.

            The ONLY time to worry is if webmaster tools warns you or if the site becomes totally deindexed..

            i.e. site:sitename.com shows no results.

            IT WILL RETURN IF THERE IS GOOD USEFUL CONTENT AND THE SITE IS NOT SPAMMY. SO JUST KEEP WORKING ON IT. < simple answer.
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            • Profile picture of the author markowe
              Originally Posted by Intrepreneur View Post

              IT WILL RETURN IF THERE IS GOOD USEFUL CONTENT AND THE SITE IS NOT SPAMMY. SO JUST KEEP WORKING ON IT. < simple answer.
              I'm not sure you read the whole thread because you might have concluded that the content WASN'T good and useful but copied from Wikipedia.
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              • Profile picture of the author Intrepreneur
                Originally Posted by markowe View Post

                I'm not sure you read the whole thread because you might have concluded that the content WASN'T good and useful but copied from Wikipedia.
                That's the answer then.
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          • Profile picture of the author nik0
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            Originally Posted by markowe View Post

            All-in-One SEO fixes that AFAIK. And it lets you "noindex" archive pages too, so that should fix that.

            As for stuffing their blog with scraped content, whatever possessed them..?
            I don't know, guess 200* 1000 word article will be quiet expensive, the client bought 2* one time fee packages and then later on mentioned they were gonna add a blog and I said: "Oh great idea". Then didn't hear much up until few days ago when the site completely tanked.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
              Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

              I don't know, guess 200* 1000 word article will be quiet expensive, the client bought 2* one time fee packages and then later on mentioned they were gonna add a blog and I said: "Oh great idea". Then didn't hear much up until few days ago when the site completely tanked.
              Hey! How come you told me to email them with my questions, but then gave markowe a full explanation of what happened? I'm deeply, deeply insulted.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Well there you go, it was duplicate content.
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  • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
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    Google is just leveling the playing field so that those sites that don't want to consistently post fresh content on a daily basis can have a chance too.
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  • Profile picture of the author CBM Christian Writers
    Go figure ... Google is ever changing.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
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    What was the point of copying Wikipedia (because they can?)?

    Obviously they didn't copy the wiki content for traffic & apparently they don't understand how much wiki builds internal links, because I doubt they'll trump wiki in the SERPs with wikis own content.

    I would trash the blog & start over with unique content/pages.

    I missed the wiki comment earlier, that's why I'm now saying trash the blogs scraped content. They'll be lucky If they even end up in supplemental SERPs (which is useless).
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
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    @Bnetwork: MarkOwe had more thank you's

    @Yukon: I will forward the question nah, I guess they didn't see wikipedia as a competitor so perhaps they felt save getting the content from there. The blog is trashed indeed and let's see what will happen now. I suggested to file a reconsideration request when they don't get back within a couple weeks.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
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      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      @Bnetwork: MarkOwe had more thank you's

      @Yukon: I will forward the question nah, I guess they didn't see wikipedia as a competitor so perhaps they felt save getting the content from there. The blog is trashed indeed and let's see what will happen now. I suggested to file a reconsideration request when they don't get back within a couple weeks.
      As long as the site isn't banned from the SERPs the blog can be fixed, just depends If they want to do the work.
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