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Penguin penalty or just devalued?

by deezn
11 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Had a site with a lot of crappy links pointed towards it. Good rankings, I wrote 150 unique pages, good traffic, good (but not great) number of clients from the site.

Panda hits. No problem. Penguin hits, no problem ... until the 3rd mini update. Rankings drop like a stone. Traffic slows, but doesn't die. Lots long tail traffic still. Quality and quantity of traffic down, but not out.

Two targeted keywords. Tougher one I was completely removed from SERPS (or below whatever Serpfox will find). Easier (but still tough one) I would land around page 20. That lasted until P2.0 when tough one came back from the dead, to page 20, and easier one went up to page 5.

No backlinking or other activity recently. Hopeful, I was ready to start SEO on the site. However, easier KW started to slide. Tougher one is holding steady at page 20. Easier one held at page 6-8, then 15, now 20 ...

So. How does one really know? If you don't, well I guess that's a possibility. I can just try to do some backlinking and see if it responds?
#devalued #penalty #penguin
  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
    Originally Posted by deezn View Post

    Had a site with a lot of crappy links pointed towards it.
    That's normally how you know.
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    • Profile picture of the author deezn
      Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire View Post

      That's normally how you know.
      Yes, I know. I meant now. I know it was penalized when it was deindexed for a particular search term.

      But I first thought the penalty was lifted because it re-appeared after more than a year. And my other term jumped 140 spots.

      The site still gets traffic, is still providing contacts, so I'm wondering, if there are any tell-tale signs the site is still on a manual penalty, or if it's off penalty it's just crappy because there aren't a lot of good links.

      If there is no way to tell I just need to build links I guess.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
        Originally Posted by deezn View Post

        Yes, I know. I meant now. I know it was penalized when it was deindexed for a particular search term.

        But I first thought the penalty was lifted because it re-appeared after more than a year. And my other term jumped 140 spots.

        The site still gets traffic, is still providing contacts, so I'm wondering, if there are any tell-tale signs the site is still on a manual penalty, or if it's off penalty it's just crappy because there aren't a lot of good links.

        If there is no way to tell I just need to build links I guess.
        Yeah cool. "They Say" that manual penalties may be removed if you clean up your link profile, or at least disavow the crap you did before. If it was an algo filter, that could switch off at any time the algo changes its filtering rules.
        But your the first case, I've seen that just had a natural recovery without any effort. Lucky you
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        • Profile picture of the author deezn
          Originally Posted by Kevin Maguire View Post

          Yeah cool. "They Say" that manual penalties may be removed if you clean up your link profile, or at least disavow the crap you did before. If it was an algo filter, that could switch off at any time the algo changes its filtering rules.
          But your the first case, I've seen that just had a natural recovery without any effort. Lucky you
          I didn't clean my link profile or disavow anything as I didn't want to contact Google for anything. I have no idea if manual or algo penalty (I see I wrote manual earlier, my bad that was a mistake).

          But it does sound like it could have been an algo filter.

          I did notice in Ahrefs that my link count keeps going down after time. I think the crappy links I bought before are just disappearing on its own. I'm going to stick with this a little longer
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          • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
            Originally Posted by deezn View Post

            I didn't clean my link profile or disavow anything as I didn't want to contact Google for anything. I have no idea if manual or algo penalty (I see I wrote manual earlier, my bad that was a mistake).

            But it does sound like it could have been an algo filter.

            I did notice in Ahrefs that my link count keeps going down after time. I think the crappy links I bought before are just disappearing on its own. I'm going to stick with this a little longer
            Yeah it, could have been the bad neighborhood sites you had spammed, either dropped their domains or cleaned up their onsite spam. Seems to have bailed you out as a result.
            Good Stuff
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  • Profile picture of the author strategic seo services
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
      Originally Posted by strategic seo services View Post

      If your site now has lost its PR and has a "-" symbol when you check the PR, then that usually means your site has been penalized.
      Your confusing,
      Algo Filters
      Manual review penalties
      De-indexing

      All very different things, with very different results. But from what I have seen from most of your posts. You don't really have a clue about SEO.

      If you can't paste copy and click> Run software now. You seem a bit lost in this world.
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  • Profile picture of the author mosthost
    It sounds to me like devaluation, but I can't say for sure. Tweet Cutts and ask him.
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    • Profile picture of the author deezn
      Originally Posted by mosthost View Post

      It sounds to me like devaluation, but I can't say for sure. Tweet Cutts and ask him.
      Why didn't I think of that???
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    • Profile picture of the author Kevin Maguire
      Originally Posted by mosthost View Post

      It sounds to me like devaluation, but I can't say for sure. Tweet Cutts and ask him.
      Yeah, That wouldn't explain the return to previous ranking. If the links where devalued, surely the SERPs return would be too.
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  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    Link devaluation and penalization are going to look the same most of the time I fear.

    If you're using Google Webmaster Tools check under "How your data is linked" and see if the anchor text shows up any more. That will give you your first clue as to what happened.

    But really, only Google knows for sure. It sounds like you feel guilty, so I'm sure your link building has been pretty substandard so far. If you went after low quality links, they're probably be dropped from Google's link graph. See what they say in the tools.
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  • Profile picture of the author prince55l
    well it is kind of weird how site ranking increase and decrease by google
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