100+ Pages Penalized in Google. How to Recover...
- SEO |
About two years ago I was brand new to building websites, SEO, marketing, etc. I slowly built a classified website that lists homes throughout the US.
Around 1.5 years ago I began learning what I thought was SEO. After starting to receive a decent amount of traffic from Google I started analyzing the MANY pages on my site and found 100 or so that were bringing in the most traffic. I hired an SEO company to create backlinks for these 100+/- pages and they created thousands of links, all with competitive keywords to my best pages.
Traffic to my site was great, but then a few months later, in April 2012 , the Penguin update dropped my traffic to these pages almost to nothing.
In the last year I have slowly managed to create traffic to these penalized URL's from other search engines, forum posting, social media, etc.
But now I am wanting to work toward ranking for the keywords on Google that I used to with these pages. I'm not sure how to proceed though considering I created so much damage to the "link profiles" of these 100 pages. I mean, I have 100's of backlinks pointing to each page from spam sites, almost all with the same anchor text.
Main Question:
I have done very thorough research over the last year on how proper SEO should be done and I want to improve my site, my user's experience, and my Google rankings. But what are my options for rebuilding this large section of my website.
My concerns/thoughts are:
With certain pages of my site being penalized and not appearing in the results at all for "keyword X" - Will ALL pages on my site now have a difficult time ranking for "keyword X" or just the specific penalized page?
Let's say for example my page "www.mysite.com/atlanta-georgia" no longer ranks at all for the keyword "homes in atlanta georgia". Should I create a pages to replace this page?
If I should replace the page "/atlanta-georgia" with a brand new page, let's use "/georgia/atlanta" for example, what should I do with the old penalized page? Would I use a 301-redirect to the new page, 404 the old page, just leave old page - to continue receiving traffic from other sources?
I would really appreciate any feedback you can offer on my questions.
Thanks
Around 1.5 years ago I began learning what I thought was SEO. After starting to receive a decent amount of traffic from Google I started analyzing the MANY pages on my site and found 100 or so that were bringing in the most traffic. I hired an SEO company to create backlinks for these 100+/- pages and they created thousands of links, all with competitive keywords to my best pages.
Traffic to my site was great, but then a few months later, in April 2012 , the Penguin update dropped my traffic to these pages almost to nothing.
In the last year I have slowly managed to create traffic to these penalized URL's from other search engines, forum posting, social media, etc.
But now I am wanting to work toward ranking for the keywords on Google that I used to with these pages. I'm not sure how to proceed though considering I created so much damage to the "link profiles" of these 100 pages. I mean, I have 100's of backlinks pointing to each page from spam sites, almost all with the same anchor text.
Main Question:
I have done very thorough research over the last year on how proper SEO should be done and I want to improve my site, my user's experience, and my Google rankings. But what are my options for rebuilding this large section of my website.
My concerns/thoughts are:
With certain pages of my site being penalized and not appearing in the results at all for "keyword X" - Will ALL pages on my site now have a difficult time ranking for "keyword X" or just the specific penalized page?
Let's say for example my page "www.mysite.com/atlanta-georgia" no longer ranks at all for the keyword "homes in atlanta georgia". Should I create a pages to replace this page?
If I should replace the page "/atlanta-georgia" with a brand new page, let's use "/georgia/atlanta" for example, what should I do with the old penalized page? Would I use a 301-redirect to the new page, 404 the old page, just leave old page - to continue receiving traffic from other sources?
I would really appreciate any feedback you can offer on my questions.
Thanks
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MrMontgomery -
Thanks
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