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SEO Expert says my domain name is fried...

by joepipe
19 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello Everyone

I have a loan business/financing domain for many years now. Since 2007, I worked on my website like many of you gathering quality links, sometimes purchasing links, making blog posts , updating content, etc. Rankings were very good for years and I got many quality customer leads from my site. When Panda hit around May 2012 , my site got very badly penalized by the algos. In the last year or so I have cancelled many "suspect" links and pages pointing to my site, I have lots of content updated regularly but it doesn't seem to matter anymore. No matter how much new content I add, it just seems my website is stuck now in the serp mud so to speak.

I talked to a top SEO expert from a top SEO company in my city and he says after reviewing the site, that I have too many exact match keyword anchor links pointing to my site and that my domain name is pretty much an exact match domain, with 2 major keywords in it, which google may be also penalizing. He used the website AHREFS.com to do a review. He says that it will take too long to remove all the exact match anchors that are incoming and that I am better off registering a new domain, without an exact match keyword phrase in it and basically starting a new site, re-writing content getting new authority links incoming. He says that my website has been hit by Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird by google. He is offering to handle the re-launch of my site for about $2000 monthly for at least 6 months and get my site back on page 1 of the SERPS . I think the price is a bit high , but that remains to be seen after I talk to a few more SEO experts and get their quotes.

So my questions are the following...

- Is he correct ? Is the best option to register a new domain? Is my existing domain permanently buried in the SEO grave by google because of incoming links and my domain name having 2 major keywords in it?

- Can I do a 301 redirect of the old domain to the new domain? Or should I just leave the old site running and hosted because many people know it for years and may still visit, but start a brand new domain, new site on another server? Have 2 sites running, but stop all new content etc. on the old site.

- Do I really have to start over again with a new domain and new site/content? Is this the best strategy and is the SEO expert is correct?

Thanks Everyone for your advice, much appreciated.
#domain #expert #fried #google #seo
  • Profile picture of the author ConsultJoseph
    Before I answer your questions, I have a few questions of my own in order to narrow down a perfect answer for this...

    1. How EXACT is your site for its keyword? Like paydayloans.com? That exact?

    2. Is AHREFS his only tool and did not include GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS report?

    3. How bad is the anchor text over-optimization? What is the percentage share of exact anchor texts VERSUS non-exact/brand/organic?

    ANSWERS

    1. There is no permanently buried site. Even major e-commerce sites can recover. The question should be: is it worth going through the hassle recovering? In order for me to answer that, I need to take a look at the site.

    2. It depends on the answer of 1. Best case scenario: new site ranks and you wait for old site to lose keywords for it to recover on its own. Worst case: nothing ranks and you end up paying for 2 sites.

    3. Again, it depends on the answer of 1. It doesn't hurt to have a backup site though but at $2k/month for the next 6 months? Run.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by ConsultJoseph View Post

      but at $2k/month for the next 6 months? Run.
      Run? Really? How can you possibly say such a thing without knowing a thing about the market, competition, scope of the project, etc.?

      $2k/month might be expensive. It also might be dirt cheap. There is not enough info to tell.
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      • Profile picture of the author timpears
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Run? Really? How can you possibly say such a thing without knowing a thing about the market, competition, scope of the project, etc.?

        $2k/month might be expensive. It also might be dirt cheap. There is not enough info to tell.

        That is for sure, I know one fellow who charges his clients minimum of $3K to $14K per month. I would think $1,500 to $2,000 wold be a starting place to even interest any real SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    I would not listen to that "SEO expert".

    Google does not penalize exact match domains, nor partial match domains. They no longer get the same kind of ranking boost they used to, but they do not get penalized. Just Google the word "pregnancy", for example. Right there number 2 is pregnancy.com.

    Just using Ahrefs alone to analyze a site is not going to give anyone the whole picture, or even anything close to it. 3rd party tools are only going to find a percentage of your existing backlinks. So you may not have as high of a percentage of exact match links as he thinks. Or you may have way more.

    If you do a new domain, you absolutely should NOT do a 301 redirect. Whatever issues your links are causing you will follow you to the new domain.

    John Mueller from Google recently stated that penalties can follow you to a new domain even without a redirect. In most cases, that would be hard for Google to do. In your case, it would be easy. Same business name, same address, same contact info, etc.

    Nope. I would work on fixing the issues with the existing domain.
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  • Profile picture of the author NShankar
    Instead of rebuilding the website for 12,000 $ you can spend around 500 $ or 1000 $ to outsource your job for bad links removal and get them removed and disavow the remaining exact anchor text links. More over you should consider only the back links shown in google webmaster tools. Tools like hrefs, moz and majesticseo will show too many links which were not even considered by google as backlink. There are many reputed sellers here in warrior forum who just do that.
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    • Profile picture of the author joepipe
      Thanks for the replies everyone. I checked google webmaster tools and there is no manual action or penalty. The issue here seems to be algorithims from panda, penguin and hummingbird.

      I still rank #1 for one of the best keywords in my city so I am quite sure the site is not permanently buried by google. I have just lost a lot of rankings for other keyword phrases i use to rank top 3 for. So about 70% of previous traffic is gone.

      I am also concerned that the SEO company just wants my money and is trying to scare me into thinking the domain name is fried and that I have to register a new one, revamp the site content , links , social media , etc.

      $2000 a month gets me a lot of very good leads in my business through other sources, if I dont spend it on my website.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by joepipe View Post

        I still rank #1 for one of the best keywords in my city

        Generally speaking, that probably would not be the case if your backlinks were as toxic as this "SEO" is claiming.
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        • Profile picture of the author joepipe
          thats what im thinking.....
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        • Profile picture of the author ConsultJoseph
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          Run? Really? How can you possibly say such a thing without knowing a thing about the market, competition, scope of the project, etc.?

          $2k/month might be expensive. It also might be dirt cheap. There is not enough info to tell.
          There IS enough info to tell. You know what it is? The guy took a look at AHREFS, went to the anchor text section and told him his site is fried because of that. That is enough info to make you run.

          Originally Posted by joepipe View Post

          Thanks for the replies everyone. I checked google webmaster tools and there is no manual action or penalty. The issue here seems to be algorithims from panda, penguin and hummingbird.

          I still rank #1 for one of the best keywords in my city so I am quite sure the site is not permanently buried by google. I have just lost a lot of rankings for other keyword phrases i use to rank top 3 for. So about 70% of previous traffic is gone.

          I am also concerned that the SEO company just wants my money and is trying to scare me into thinking the domain name is fried and that I have to register a new one, revamp the site content , links , social media , etc.

          $2000 a month gets me a lot of very good leads in my business through other sources, if I dont spend it on my website.
          To begin with, "permanently buried" is obviously a red flag. He is clearly using words which are meant to make you sign that paper.

          Can you share a graph that shows how "over-optimized" your backlink profile is?
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by ConsultJoseph View Post

            There IS enough info to tell. You know what it is? The guy took a look at AHREFS, went to the anchor text section and told him his site is fried because of that. That is enough info to make you run.
            Nope. wrong. The guy knows the anchor text, has seen the links and analyzed them. You didn't so don't have enough info to make that claim.

            To begin with, "permanently buried" is obviously a red flag. He is clearly using words which are meant to make you sign that paper.
            again you don't have enough information to make that accusation stick. If a link removal request was submitted and the OP still hasn't recovered then it might even be the right suggestion. Actually given that in many cases getting some links removed can be near impossible I am not at all sure that starting over might not be the more feasible of the options. however I would try disavowing links first if that were not done.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by ConsultJoseph View Post

            There IS enough info to tell. You know what it is? The guy took a look at AHREFS, went to the anchor text section and told him his site is fried because of that. That is enough info to make you run.
            I'm talking about your comment around the price. The price might be dirt cheap for an SEO to work on this particular project. You cannot say if $2k is or is not a good price.

            Yes, this particular SEO seems like a bad idea, but not because of the pricetag.
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          • Profile picture of the author paulgl
            Originally Posted by ConsultJoseph View Post

            There IS enough info to tell. You know what it is? The guy took a look at AHREFS, went to the anchor text section and told him his site is fried because of that. That is enough info to make you run.
            ROTFLMAO! Not sure if that's a joke, or other intentions, but it sure would make me run...
            from that particular SEO guru, that is.

            Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author nettiapina
        Originally Posted by joepipe View Post

        I still rank #1 for one of the best keywords in my city so I am quite sure the site is not permanently buried by google. I have just lost a lot of rankings for other keyword phrases i use to rank top 3 for. So about 70% of previous traffic is gone.
        There's always the change that competition is just getting ahead of you. Have you tried to see how far have you dropped, and what kind of pages are doing better than yours? This might be the case especially if you've kept the site unchanged for a long time.

        It's also possible that changes to the site are the culprit, but it has to be something fairly big to affect multiple keywords.
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        Links in signature will not help your SEO. Not on this site, and not on any other forum.
        Who told me this? An ex Google web spam engineer.

        What's your excuse?
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  • Profile picture of the author Edmonton website designer
    It's clearly stated here everyone has his/her opinon. I wouldn't mind go and see your website, Joe.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    OP did say the niche was business/financing which most likely means tougher competition as far as the overall niche. I'm sure easy to rank keywords in that niche are slim.

    Maybe it's the on-page that's over optimized, hard to say without a URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
    Throwing away a domain like that and a previous link campaign as the "SEO expert" suggested is silly.

    Chances are he'll cause more damage to your wallet in the long run by attempting to rank a new domain in a competitive market like that. What's to stop him telling you he can get you to page 1 in 6 months for $2k/mo. Then, 6 months later you aren't anywhere and you've just wasted that 6 months and $12k.

    There are many link removal services that can help you get your backlink profile back to normal. I would recommend going down the repair path than the starting over path. It will notoriously take longer and you'll be throwing away the brand and previous link equity that is still good.

    Up to you though.
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  • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
    Hey OP,

    If you're still around shoot me a pm. I had the same thing happen to one of my sites around the same exact time. Except it was July 2012. I got smashed by the update and lost exactly as you said, 70% of my traffic.

    I was told by many people to scrap the domain.

    And in a way I did. I started a new domain and got it reranked for some of my primary terms.

    But what's interesting is my older site that was penalized back in July - 2012, about 2-3 months ago I noticed it on page 1 of Google. I had to get behind icognito to make sure. And sure enough out of nowhere, after I completely stopped link building, the site just showed up on page 1 again.

    The downside? The site is now ranking nationally, and not locally lol. Like it use to rank for "our service nj" and many relevant variations. Not it just ranks for "our service" variations withOUT the state.

    At first I was excited. But needless to say we started getting calls from Florida, New York, California, South Carolina... and very few calls from our own state (New Jersey).

    Either way I'd be curious to look at your site. Because your situation sounds very similar to mine.
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  • Profile picture of the author joepipe
    From talking to a few individuals and reading the posts on here, it seems my domain name is not permanently dusted by google, I just need some on page seo work and better off page strategies to tackle the google algo changes, etc.....

    Can anyone recommend a proven, reliable SEO service provider in the warrior forums? I'd like to interview a few over the next few days... Please PM me their username or ad link....thank you, much appreciated.
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  • Profile picture of the author DizenSounds
    Don't ditch the domain. That's just a lazy SEO that wants to make money doing his same routine over and over again.

    You can easily fix the links and the issue entirely. Sounds like you may need to ditch this SEO expert as well.
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