What to do with former money maker penalized by Google?

by Fiddy6

Posted: 11 years ago 17 replies

I'm wondering what I should do with my former top-performing website that was penalized by Google and could use some suggestions.

Long story short, my #1 earning site that racked in on average an easy $5,000 a month was penalized by Google about two and a half years ago. Google basically hit me with the "unnatural links" penalty, claiming the outbound links on my site didn't appear natural. Overtime, I eventually lost all my pagerank and about 90% of my organic traffic from Google. Profits dropped from $5,000 to $500 a month. I did all I could to "clean up" the site, adding nofollow tags to every outgoing link, removing affiliate ads from the sidebar and giving the site a fresh new look. No matter what I did, Google still found the site to be against its "quality guidelines" after several reconsideration requests. They wouldn't go on to say whether or not the outbound links still appeared unnatural as they claimed they did before, and left it at my site being "against quality guidelines".

All that being said, what should I do here? The site has well over 6,000 posts and was at one time considered an authority site, due to the quality of content.

Should I give up hope and just let the site sit there and collect the little bit of money that it does?

Should I transfer the posts over to a new domain and delete the old domain and wait and see if I can regain some traffic on the new site and hope I can make more money off of it then I do now?

One thing that might be worth mentioning that could play a factor in the decision is that my posts have been duplicated by hundreds, if not thousands, of scrapper sites, most of which are easily outranking me with my original content. Knowing that, is it worth trying to transfer my content over to another domain, or are my posts basically worthless at this point no matter where they stand?

Any suggestions you could give me here would be a big help in deciding my next move.

#google #maker #money #penalized

yukon

Banned 11 years ago

If the content is indeed quality, create a new 2nd domain & duplicate the content on a schedule (two post a day, or whatever).

You already said sites that scraped your content are ranking decent.

What are you monetizing with (Adsense, Amazon, etc...)?

Thanks
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mrehan

11 years ago

I am in sort of a similar situation with one of my sites. Got hit by penguin but did not receive any message from google in the GWTs. Since there is no message from google I have not filed a reconsideration request. Was making about $ 1500 per month before and after penguin less than 10% of that. Making money only thru clickbank. No pages are ranking in google SERP's but google does put my pages on them now and then according to my Google analytics and AW Stats data. Should I use the content on a new domain or is there a chance that this penalty will automatically expire. It has been 8+ months since penguin hit.

Thanks
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Jerry Belcourt

11 years ago

Hey Fiddy6! (Cool handle! lol)

Like Yukon was saying, it depends on what was monetizing for you before.
But, the first thing that comes to mind for me is, what if you were to re-purpose
or repackage all of that content in another format?

Maybe create a series of ebooks and upload them to Amazon?

I would also try another domain or multiple domains, registered with a different registrar(s), possibly hosting and start posting it again in a natural way.

That's a helluva hit from $5,000 to $500! Gotta be something you can do with that much content and some creativity!

I wish you well my friend!

JB

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Fiddy6

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Jerry Belcourt

Turning the content into something like an ebook to profit off is a great idea, but unfortunately, my content isn't made for an ebook. Majority of the content is outdated within a couple weeks. It's hard for me to explain without giving away my site and its niche, but lets just say what I post today, you'll want to read today or within the next couple of days. If you read it weeks from now, you'd probably be mad cause you would of missed out on the chance to buy something that's now sold out and won't become available again for a number of years, if at all.

Now, you're probably asking yourself, if the content is outdated within a couple days or a few weeks, what's the point of keeping the content. Well, even though the content is outdated, it still serves a purpose, sort of like a encyclopedia, letting people know when a specific item came out, where it was available and how much it originally cost.

You're right, $5,000 to $500 is a big hit, and believe me, I've lost plenty of sleep over it. It affected my life in so many ways. Thankfully, I have a regular 9-5 job to keep me afloat and a few other sites that bring in some nice change, and I've been lucky enough to make money online without spending money, so I was able to save quite a bit. I took home close to $80,000 last year from Google and spent no more than $2,000 to make it - which basically consists of server costs.

Thanks
1 reply

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Trent Brownrigg

11 years ago

If you truly do have quality, original content then what I would do is copy all the content over to a new domain plus add more content to it once you have the old stuff copied over. Then, 301 redirect the old domain to the new one. I have heard in many cases that will recover a site and I have even seen in firsthand in one case. However, there are a lot of people also saying it didn't work for them, so it could go either way.

Thanks
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Fiddy6

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Trent Brownrigg

I have heard that a 301 redirect from a penalized site can redirect the penalty to the new site, and that it's best to leave no footprint from the old site to the new site. Do you know if that is true, or just hearsay?

Thanks

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GeorgR.

11 years ago

Originally Posted by mrehan

Should I use the content on a new domain or is there a chance that this penalty will automatically expire. It has been 8+ months since penguin hit.

I am in the same boat with (at least) two sites which had #1 ranking for YEARS.

I did some analyses and also used some 3rd party advice - usually, in such cases the sites might suffer from anchor text over "optimization" (from the times where you could still rank using blog networks with "keywords")...which would make it more reasonable to start over from scratch on a new domain.

If you have 1000s of links and they consist of 80% of keywords which are now bad for SERPs, it will be extremely difficult to "fix"this.

It doesn't even need to be a "penalty" in that sense, simply the algorithm kicking in after penguin, seeing the screwed up link profile...means there is no penalty which can be "lifted"...the problem is the link profile!

But then I cannot exclude a manual "penalty" as well, we know that Google does manual reviews..what if such penalty exists? The all the "fixing" on the same domain would be useless too.

Bottomline: New Domain!!!

I was told there was really no point in trying to "fix" anything, even the "copy content to a new domain" idea doesn't sound optimal. It would be a halfa$$ solution in my opinion to just copy/paste the content over - UNLESS I would have confidence it works...but with dupe content? Otherwise I would have done that long ago...but I just dont see it as a good solution to use the same,e exact content...

Thanks
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yukon

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I was told there was really no point in trying to "fix" anything, even the "copy content to a new domain" idea doesn't sound optimal. It would be a halfa$$ solution in my opinion to just copy/paste the content over - UNLESS I would have confidence it works...but with dupe content? Otherwise I would have done that long ago...but I just dont see it as a good solution to use the same,e exact content...

So you would waste hours & hours of work just because you heard you can't recycle the old content?

Exporting content from one WP site to another WP site might set you back 1/2 hour, plus a $10 domain, & some low cost hosting.

People scrape sites all the time & out rank the original sources/pages, still happens today.

Thanks
1 reply

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mrehan 11 years ago

What I don't understand is that why would google occasionally show my site in the 1st page SERP's if it was penalized? (....... my site was affected the day Penguin came to town. Panda never troubled my site.)
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Fiddy6

11 years ago

Originally Posted by mrehan

Sorry that you have encountered the same issue, but you might want to start your own thread to seek help for your problem.

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Fiddy6

11 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

I believe the content is quality, but that's just my opinion. Google considered the content quality at one time too, since they gave it authority status. The posts on the site are short, only between 80-100 words each, but they touch on all the key aspects and provide readers exactly what they need to know, without the added fluff you find on most sites. Some have argued that the length of my posts might be the issue here, but I can't see that being so since other sites in the same niche have content that's even thinner and haven't had a problem with their rankings, if anything, they've seen their rankings go up since I was knocked off the map.

And yes, sites that are scrapping my content are outranking me like crazy. If you search the first sentence of one of my posts, you'll find 2-3 pages of scrapper sites with my content, with my site being the last one listed, if listed at all.

What you're suggesting is that I slowly publish the content on a new domain, while leaving the original site up and running with the same content?

The site made its money through AdSense, eBay and paid advertisers.

If I were to create a second site, would you suggest not placing my AdSense codes on the site since it would basically be a "scrapper site"?

I have AdSense on the original site now. That's where the $500 comes from. Is it a bad idea to leave my AdSense account active on the site since its been penalized and its content duplicated, making it look like a scrapper site?

Thanks
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paulgl

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Fiddy6

I believe the content is quality, but that's just my opinion.

Google is not a judge of quality. It's a huge, out of control, algo. But, no matter.

You also mention "outbound" links.

Outbound links on sites are now affecting PR, and I presume, other "things."

A lot of people missed that. Links that are sold for PR, if "detected," will
lower your own PR. Also, too many people are using cloaking, nofollow,
affiliate junk, and garbage techniques to abuse outbound links.

Nope. Not saying that's what you did. Just a word of caution to people
going crazy with affiliate junk, cloaking, redirecting, nofollow, etc. A sure
sign that your site deserves to go downhill. Well, maybe deserves.

Paul

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Fiddy6

11 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Google originally claimed that my site was in violation of the quality guidelines due to "unnatural outbound links" that they suspected were being used to manipulate Pagerank for other sites. I admit at the time that none of my affiliate links had a nofollow tag. After receiving the message from Google, I went back through every single post and added a nofollow tag to not just my affiliate links, but to every outbound link since even though they were affiliate links, they could appear to be so since they linked to webstores where items could be bought, which were no different from my affiliate links.

Even after nofollowing my outbound links (every post contains one), Google still claimed my site was in violation of the quality guidelines. At this point they wouldn't go on to say whether or not outbound links were still an issue.

Could it be possible that adding a nofollow tag to all my links is negatively effecting my site?

If so, how is one suppose to avoid the "unnatural link" penalty for outbound links when in fact they'll all natural and serve a purpose. Without linking to other sites and giving credit where credit is due, our site would be pointless. How can we be a buyers guide without linking out?

I've never cloaked links, used redirects or anything against Google's quality guidelines, aside from mistakenly not adding a nofollow tag to my outbound affiliate links.

Thanks

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stephenwaldo

11 years ago

Unfortunately the best you're going to get from anyone here is a potshot guess.

In the end your only real option is to redirect to a new domain, unless you can think of something creative to do with your content. As others have said, it is actually pretty easy to clone and redirect a Wordpress site, so it shouldn't take more than a few hours of work, if that, to get everything set up. However, there is no guarantee whatsoever that rebooting on a new domain will actually do anything... It just has the highest likelihood.

One thing I will recommend wholeheartedly is... Start building an e-mail list!

Even though I don't know exactly what your niche is, I am assuming it's some sort of daily deals-esque website, which is the perfect type of site for email marketing because literally every subscriber wants to be a buyer. So, even though you may not be able to get your rankings and/or traffic back overnight, by building an e-mail list you should be able to build something more sustainable and Google-proof over the long haul.

Whatever you do, I wish you the best of luck. While I've never experienced a loss of income quite THAT severe, I know what it feels like to lose sleep over Google's endless antics and frustrations.

Thanks
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Fiddy6

11 years ago

Originally Posted by stephenwaldo

Thankfully, i did build an email list and have around 30,000 email subscribers. I'm still able to make money through my list, which I'm thankful for.

I know nobody can give me a sure fire way to turn things around and that basically everything I try is a crap shoot.

I hate to see this site go cause I've been building it for years and its name is extremely brandable. So much so that I paid thousands to trademark it in several categories with the USPTO. I was able to turn the site name into a keyword that was searched for thousands of times a month. It still is searched for thousands of times a month, but now my site doesn't even appear until you hit the 2nd or 3rd page of results.

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lutherlars 11 years ago

If its making u $500 per month, why not just leave it and move on? Nice chunk of change each month for no work.
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yukon Banned 11 years ago

You could leave the original site active & then build 2-3 smaller sites to rank for the major keywords that were bringing in the most traffic. You said you have 6,000 post on the original site, so take 200/300 of the old content/pages & build 2/3 new smaller sites. This way you leave the old site intact, nobody will miss 200/300 pages from a 6,000 page site.
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