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Penguin 2.1-- feel like I understand it pretty well (at least how it affected my site)

by Rebel24
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'm not going to use my exact keyword, but say it is "car accident"
And my site was the equivalent of caraccident.com

I was ranking for a variety of key words
"car accident"
"car accident statistics"
"car accident prevention"
"safe driving tips"

Note that I had virtually no anchor texts for "car accident prevention" it merely ranked that highly because of EMD and using the keyword "car accident"


This is what happened.

Before penguin 2.1 I was ranking:
4 for "car accident"
2 for "car accident statistics"
10 for "car accident prevention"
125 for "safe driving tips"

After penguin 2.1-
74 for "car accident"
72 for "car accident statistics"
75 for "car accident prevention"
125 for "safe driving tips"

So my site as a whole wasn't penalized becacuse the "safe driving tips" keyword which I never optimized for, didn't move.

Only the keyword containing "car accident" EVEN WHEN I didn't optimize for the whole tail (in my case "car accident prevention"). It is clear that just because "car accident prevention" included "car accident" it was penalized.




So my idea solution is to build a lot more links, with completely unrelated keywords.
Apparently having 50% or so your links including a certain keyword had that keyword or anything including that keyword penalized. I think 10-20% of your links for your target keyword would be the sweet spot now. 10% to be safe. What your guys' thoughts?
#21— #affected #feel #penguin #pretty #site #understand
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Originally Posted by Rebel24 View Post

    Apparently having 50% or so your links including a certain keyword had that keyword or anything including that keyword penalized. I think 10-20% of your links for your target keyword would be the sweet spot now. 10% to be safe. What your guys’ thoughts?
    Thats an incomplete analysis that may very well get you into even more trouble. Sure the site you did not build links to stayed put but that hardly means it was just anchor text percentages that got your other keywords slapped.

    It could be because of the kinds of links you used with those anchor text links. From what I have seen the nature of the links themselves have tanked a ton load of sites regardless of anchor text.
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    • Profile picture of the author Make Money Ninja
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      Thats an incomplete analysis that may very well get you into even more trouble. Sure the site you did not build links to stayed put but that hardly means it was just anchor text percentages that got your other keywords slapped.

      It could be because of the kinds of links you used with those anchor text links. From what I have seen the nature of the links themselves have tanked a ton load of sites regardless of anchor text.
      This.

      Your analysis is missing the types of links you have. From my analysis i have seen people with super diverse anchor profiles still get penalized from the last update. So i find it hard to believe its as simple as anchor dilution.
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      • Profile picture of the author Rebel24
        Originally Posted by Make Money Ninja View Post

        This.

        Your analysis is missing the types of links you have. From my analysis i have seen people with super diverse anchor profiles still get penalized from the last update. So i find it hard to believe its as simple as anchor dilution.
        ya thats probably not the whole picture, but that's definitely a part of what the algorithm changed.

        for the keyword "home invasion" about 50% of the links were private blog network links, and about 50% were blog comments, I only had about 50 target keyword links and saw that massive penalty to all searches including those keywords (but not searches including other keywords-- and at which I have about 400 other blog comment links pointing to my site(which didn't affect it, even thought this is almost the only kind of other link pointing to my site).


        My point is that my site and the SEO that went into it was so basic, it's clear to see what very likely caused the penality for my site.
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by Rebel24 View Post

          My point is that my site and the SEO that went into it was so basic, it's clear to see what very likely caused the penality for my site.
          Believe what you wish its no skin off our backs. Since you admit to sending blog comments to your money site then we would have to know what was the setup with the rest. The last update took out some poorly constructed blog network links as well. So whats clear to you to see is not clear to anyone else. The algo has scores of things it looks at but alot of people base their opinions on one site or set of sites and jump to conclusions after every update.

          Point more blog comments at your other sites with better anchor text diversity if you wish but my bet is you will be crying very soon for those as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author DPM70
    I'd love to say that there doesn't seem to be any place for any kind of keyword anchors any more. But I keep seeing them dominate the SERPs. Maybe just the churn and burn sites, but exist they do. I'm still seeing 95% heavy anchors buying places in the serps. We all know that aint the way to do it, but it still goes on.
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  • Profile picture of the author GyuMan82
    OP there are a couple of things wrong with your analysis.

    1. It is too early to make assumptions yet. There are still a lot of fluctuations going on in the SERPs, and I anticipate that will continue to be the case for a while.

    2. Your sample size is too small.


    It is great that you are sharing your experiences but I would suggest waiting until more data comes out, especially before making any drastic changes.
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    • Profile picture of the author danparks
      Originally Posted by GyuMan82 View Post

      OP there are a couple of things wrong with your analysis.

      1. It is too early to make assumptions yet. There are still a lot of fluctuations going on in the SERPs, and I anticipate that will continue to be the case for a while.
      We've all been through this before. After a significant Google algorithm update many sites have keywords that tank, and then within a week or two are back to pre-update positions. And many sites have keywords that tank, and never recover. It's only been a couple of days since the update was confirmed. It's fine to speculate about causes, but he's right - one really has to wait a bit to see if a drop is permanent or just part of the huge fluctuation as the algorithm change "settles in."
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Rebel24 View Post

    So my idea solution is to build a lot more links, with completely unrelated keywords.
    Relevancy is what Google is all about.

    IMO your plan looks like a shot in the foot.

    If your paranoid about anchor-text use a plain URL with relevant plain text surrounding the plain URL anchor-text. At least that plain text URL link ties the external web page to the web page on your site. Have something in common on both web pages.
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