How I Fixed A Penguin Slapped Amazon Niche Site - 3 Steps

by JRCarson

Posted: 12 years ago 14 replies

Hey guys,

The Warrior Forum has given me a lot, so I'd like to give back what I can...which is going to have to be in the form of this post!

I'm going to outline the 3 things I did to fix niche site that was buried in Google for months after the Penguin Update.

I hope it can help a few people.

I know that I'm not the smartest person in here when it comes to SEO...but this is what I did, and what I believe are the 3 things that dug this Amazon niche site out of it's hole.

I could be wrong. I'm not denying that.

Background - I did some reverse engineering of the competition in my chosen niche. There were a few niche sites rising in the rankings amongst the post-Penguin smorgasbord of weirdness...

I looked at what they had in common, and then just took the advice of some smart people out there.

I also took a close look at my successful sites that didn't get affected...

Anyways, this worked great for one site and seems to be working for 2 other sites I had hit. I also am hearing from other people (from my blog comments) that it is working very fast for some.

This site has a keyword rich domain (EMD).

STEP 1 - I Created "Exact Keyword" Social Profiles

This may be obvious to some, but for some reason it wasn't completely obvious to me! I believe this to be a big contributing factor.

How I WAS Doing It: I used to set up a social profile in a willy-nilly way. For instance, I would have a YouTube channel called "Golfer-Bob". Then I would link my website there. I would do videos that linked to my website.

What I Changed: I noticed successful people weren't calling their social profiles just anything, they were calling them the EXACT MAIN KEYWORD that their website was targeting.

Plus, they had the name (and the exact keyword) in the domain name for these profiles.

For instance - If the website was called "bestcatsweaters.com", then the social profile names would be...

Google Plus Page Name - Best Cat Sweaters
URL - cannot change

YouTube Channel Name - Best Cat Sweaters
YouTube Channel URL - youtube.com/user/bestcatsweaters

Twitter - @bestcatsweaters
Twitter URL - twitter.com/bestcatsweaters

Facebook Page Name - Best Cat Sweaters
Facebook URL - facebook.com/pages/Best-Cat-Sweaters/78799879?ref...

Those are the 4 I worried about. But you can obviously see the pattern.

It was a personal "DUH!" moment for me.

Trick: You can only change a YouTube URL once per Google account. So you may need to create a brand new Google account (per website).

STEP 2 - I Removed Anchor Text Internal Linking

All of it.

How I WAS Doing It: If I had a website called "bestcatsweaters.com", then I would have each and every post on the website linking back to the home page with best cat sweaters.

I also had secondary posts linking to other secondary posts within the site with Anchor text links.

Think Wikipedia. That's what I was thinking when I made the blog. I've always done it this way.

How I Changed It: I removed each and every incident of anchor text internal linking on the blog.

I made the side bar very easy to navigate between all the reviews and articles, and ALL the content on the site.

I added "Related Posts" at the bottom of some of the posts, then just added the straight URL link of the related post.

Deoptimization - I guess this is just basic "de-optimization" of the site. I figured it could have been a little spammy to Google.

STEP 3 - I Removed Anchor Text Links From Backlinks I Could Control

I first went to ahrefs.com and checked out my back link profile. It showed I had a very high percentage of anchor text back links. That was enough to convince me.

I simply went on a mission to change all the back links I had control over still.

Ezine Articles, I just changed to ONE straight URL link per article (home page, inner posts)

...and so on with all the back links that I could change.

I haven't done a lick of back linking to it since, but when I do, it will be using straight URLs.

The Site Now...

It's doing better than ever, and seems to be pretty stable. We'll see with the new Penguin update coming up.

I hope that helps some people. I don't know if I was digging out of Penguin, or Panda...or a nice combination of the two...but that's what I did!

Thanks.

#amazon #fixed #niche #penguin #site #slapped #steps

brettb

12 years ago

Sounds good.

I've only had one site badly hit by Penguin. It still gets a lot of traffic from Yahoo/Bing, so I'm loathe to touch it.

However, I know that in the case of this site, it was probably POOR CONTENT that was to blame. It was my first site in a niche, and I now realise that the content SUCKS. It's kind of like you would get back from an article writer - there just isn't enough LIFE EXPERIENCE and ANECDOTES etc. etc. that an expert in the niche would write about.

Thanks
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JRCarson

12 years ago

Originally Posted by brettb

Is it converting sales? In my experience the sales pick up with Google rankings...

If it's getting sales from Bing and Yahoo, then I would say you have a green light to try and fix it to rank higher in Google! (just my opinion)

Thanks

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adamcm

12 years ago

Originally Posted by JRCarson

STEP 2 - I Removed Anchor Text Internal Linking

All of it.

How I Changed It: I removed each and every incident of anchor text internal linking on the blog.

I made the side bar very easy to navigate between all the reviews and articles, and ALL the content on the site.

[/COLOR]

Hey, great post!

I am curious with the step above. The theme I uses shows all of my wordpress "pages" in the header for navigation purposes. This would in turn create an exact match anchor text for every single post + page on the site (similar to a sidebar). Is this an issue? Should I try removing these links from the header?

Thanks
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JRCarson

12 years ago

Originally Posted by adamcm

Thanks Adam!

I'm not counting the sidebar as exact match anchor text links. I was just worried about getting rid of the text from within the content.

I just assume Google can see that the anchor text on the sidebar is for navigational purposes and they treat it as such.

Thanks

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WinsonYeung 12 years ago

thanks for sharing. So basically the method is to de-SEO optimize your website and remove anchor text and place naked link on it. I'm planning to build backlinks just to my naked link as well
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abking 12 years ago

Thanks Carson
I am going to apply this to my site right now!
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cooler1 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing your strategy.

When did you see recovery exactly? Many people are saying that you need to wait until each Penguin refresh to see any recovery.

I've changed the anchor text internal linking for my site, but it hasn't seen any recovery from Penguin.

How far down did your site get moved down the SERPs exactly?
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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

OP, you know your site better than anyone else & I realize some folks might not believe this, but. Sounds like you updated/edited every single page on the site, I know from experience that updating pages does change SERP position (for better or worse) in Google SERPs.

I do this on a regular basis (updating old/existing pages).

Right now I'm doing manual edits, but I have plans to automate the task of updating pages on over 2,500+ pages, consistently (non-stop). Not spinning, but split-testing, non-stop on the SERPs.

[edit]
Something most people probably don't know is, If you have a page ranked (ex: position #7 in SERPs), then you do an edit & the page moves +\- in SERP position, then revert back to the old page/content, Google keeps your old SERP position in memory (they don't forget your old SERP position).

Now I realize all SERP competition is different, so depending on how tough competition is will always play into how Google reacts when reverting back to old content/pages after editing content. Still, my own results are very consistent when editing pages & watching the SERPs for my keywords.

Thanks
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JRCarson

12 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

OP, you know your site better than anyone else & I realize some folks might not believe this, but. Sounds like you updated/edited every single page on the site, I know from experience that updating pages does change SERP position (for better or worse) in Google SERPs.

I do this on a regular basis (updating old/existing pages).

Right now I'm doing manual edits, but I have plans to automate the task of updating pages on over 2,500+ pages, consistently (non-stop). Not spinning, but split-testing, non-stop on the SERPs.

[edit]
Something most people probably don't know is, If you have a page ranked (ex: position #7 in SERPs), then you do an edit & the page moves +- in SERP position, then revert back to the old page/content, Google keeps your old SERP position in memory (they don't forget your old SERP position).

Now I realize all SERP competition is different, so depending on how tough competition is will always play into how Google reacts when reverting back to old content/pages after editing content. Still, my own results are very consistent when editing pages & watching the SERPs for my keywords.

THAT is a very good tip! Thanks for sharing! It's always scary to try and "improve" content, because you know it's going to move. Good idea to keep the old.

Thanks

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nik0 Banned 12 years ago

Interesting thread, personally we were a bit less lucky with this, changed tons of anchor txt's from existing links, did some on page changes, added some strong links later on.

Nothing helped.
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mrtrance

12 years ago

Originally Posted by JRCarson

STEP 3 - I Removed Anchor Text Links From Backlinks I Could Control

I first went to ahrefs.com and checked out my back link profile. It showed I had a very high percentage of anchor text back links. That was enough to convince me.

I simply went on a mission to change all the back links I had control over still.

Ezine Articles, I just changed to ONE straight URL link per article (home page, inner posts)

...and so on with all the back links that I could change.

I haven't done a lick of back linking to it since, but when I do, it will be using straight URLs.

The Site Now...

It's doing better than ever, and seems to be pretty stable. We'll see with the new Penguin update coming up.

I hope that helps some people. I don't know if I was digging out of Penguin, or Panda...or a nice combination of the two...but that's what I did!

Thanks.

So I went to ahrefs to check out the anchor text for some of my sites that got hit by Penguin and I'm seeing percentages of 35%-60% as far as using the same anchor text (same keyword as EMD). Is this now to excessive and I should try to dilute the anchor text now by using naked urls, LSI keywords, click here, etc.?

Thanks
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JRCarson

12 years ago

Originally Posted by mrtrance

I have no clue. :rolleyes:

Thanks

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cameronf 12 years ago

how would you fix 400 links with one anchor text if you had to un optimise your response
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- JRCarson 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by cameronf
  
  how would you fix 400 links with one anchor text if you had to un optimise your response
  
  One at a time if I could. Or I wouldn't if I couldn't, and move on.
  
  Thanks
  
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How I Fixed A Penguin Slapped Amazon Niche Site - 3 Steps

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