Anyone beat the penguin update?

[wickedDUDE]

So it's been a couple of years since the penguin update came out. Unfortunately, my site dropped from #1 for a very popular keyword to about the 3rd page of google, which is worthless.

After hitting rock bottom this year, I finally want to do something about it. I'm thinking about doing a complete site redesign in html5 with less onsite keyword density.

Has anyone been able to reverse the update? Is it worth trying to save an old site or should I just start fresh on a new domain? My domain is very brandable, but I don't know if it's worth trying to salvage what it used to be or start fresh.

 

[vgeek]

Redesign and onpage keyword density would be Panda, not Penguin. If you got hit by Penguin you can disavow all the bad links and try to get back to 80%, or scrap it and start fresh.

 

[charlesmartel]

Try diluting the links with brand and naked links. Have you tried paid advertising or traffic leaks?

 

[EricVonDoobie]

Submit more articles linking back to your money site.

 

[jstover77]

I've recovered quite a few. Pretty sure they release any manual or algorithmic penalties around the 2 year mark, but keep you on a leash there after. Once a whore, always a whore? I think it's better to start over in many cases. You can grow some serious authority in 2 years and have a site kicking ass. Meh...SEO what a fucking waste of time. AMiRite?

 

[andrewkar]

If it's brandable domain name, short and easy to remember (no dashes) I would probably recover it. Get a completely new design (something very fast), new server and new content. I would leave only domain, and build 100% new website.

Disavow all links you can, remove as much of links as possible by contacting webmasters. If your social profiles are "infected" as well (spammy likes etc.) and don't look legit I would get rid of them as well, and build new ones.

Sure, after all those changes (replacing content) and disavowing the site will drop even further (most likely).

Start posting new original content twice a week at least. Promote it heavily via SM. Get some traffic to the site. Don't rush with powerful backlinks too soon.

I would say it's worth a hassle if you can get a real targeted traffic to your site, and build some SM following.

As for KW density on pages, I don't know how it looks right now but don't freak out. You still need some hooks to let Google know what your site is about.

Good luck!

 

[Dwight Schrute]

 

[JulianTrueFlynn]

Just some notes to what's being said and my take on it after doing this for a couple projects:

I've recovered quite a few. Pretty sure they release any manual or algorithmic penalties around the 2 year mark, but keep you on a leash there after. Once a whore, always a whore? I think it's better to start over in many cases. You can grow some serious authority in 2 years and have a site kicking ass. Meh...SEO what a fucking waste of time. AMiRite?

Agree here, I even find my new sites doing really well compared to old domains I purchased. I almost exclusively buy brand-new now.

Try diluting the links with brand and naked links. Have you tried paid advertising or traffic leaks?

Probably one of the most straight forward ways to fix this quickly if ratio is way off. I would check other sites ranking and what they have and get close.

Disavow all links you can, remove as much of links as possible by contacting webmasters. If your social profiles are "infected" as well (spammy likes etc.) and don't look legit I would get rid of them as well, and build new ones.

I'm for and against disavow. I used to absolutely hate the idea but when having to do it for clients sometimes you just gotta to get things back in order. I would only be disavowing if they're homepage links though or key in the URL structure somehow. 9/10 it's easier to just change the url of the page which would kill all the previous backlinks to that page.

The whole idea of removing fake FB likes or whatever fake followers I would say is not doing anything. 1) the whole idea of fake FB likes killing your reach can be fixed just by purchasing fake engagement, 2) FB is actually the only social network I know of that has that has an algo like that where it would hurt you. Google can in no way review that and make a call, I'm 99% sure that was never included in any of their manual guidelines for reviews either (not that it would be the same for penalty process).

 

[avatar33]

They definitely "keep you on a leash" once you've been penalized. Your site will never get back to the pre-penalty state, even with the disavow tool. I suggest moving the content to a new domain and starting over, unless it's an absolutely amazing domain name, then it's worth trying to build it regardless of what Google does.

 

[andrewkar]

Just some notes to what's being said and my take on it after doing this for a couple projects:



Agree here, I even find my new sites doing really well compared to old domains I purchased. I almost exclusively buy brand-new now.



Probably one of the most straight forward ways to fix this quickly if ratio is way off. I would check other sites ranking and what they have and get close.





I'm for and against disavow. I used to absolutely hate the idea but when having to do it for clients sometimes you just gotta to get things back in order. I would only be disavowing if they're homepage links though or key in the URL structure somehow. 9/10 it's easier to just change the url of the page which would kill all the previous backlinks to that page.

The whole idea of removing fake FB likes or whatever fake followers I would say is not doing anything. 1) the whole idea of fake FB likes killing your reach can be fixed just by purchasing fake engagement, 2) FB is actually the only social network I know of that has that has an algo like that where it would hurt you. Google can in no way review that and make a call, I'm 99% sure that was never included in any of their manual guidelines for reviews either (not that it would be the same for penalty process).

I'm all for disavow tool. If bad links are identified it just works (depends on type of penalty...). Yes I know, sometimes after some time and after initial improvement of rankings site will drop again. But what's the point in keeping crappy links if we know that G is getting more sophisticated on a daily basis. If not now, those links will cause problems in near future.

As for FB spam and fake profiles, fake engagement etc. I know that (right now at least) G can't see which FB page is fake or legit. Still pretty useless in long term run in my opinion. I would rather have legitimate page with 100 followers than spammy one with 1000 dead ones. If someone see 100000 likes and dead page, that says spam and doesn't help with getting more legit followers. Same with traffic from social sites, what's the point if this fake engagement isn't targeted? They might cause more harm than good. Now, if that traffic is targeted and behaves on a site like legit traffic that's great (but this is not something one can buy for few $ and hope to get good results).

I would certainly get rid of spammy FB page, and create a new one. If someone is serious about his brand he don't want to look like spammer. Even if this is not affecting rankings directly (right now) it affects audience, and so the brand. On the top of that FB is getting smarter as well.

 

[polofive]

ive been beating google for 10+ years

 

[WorldImpulse]

Penguin is all about backlinks, if you vary your anchor textx, make sure that the top 10 anchor texts have the right number of branded keywords and naked anchors it will surely improve the changes of getting un-banned. Disavow all the bad links on sites which are made for building links like directories, article submission sites.

Also disavow links on sites which appear to be un-natural.

Once all the above is sorted white a re-consideration request to google telling them what all action you have taken and hopefully you should be back in 2-3 weeks.

We have successfully done this for over 100 clients.

 

[Drake]

I am not so sure if a disavow is needed or even a good idea.

Using Cempers Link Detox is good at scoring your links quickly. Then work on the toxic ones first and the most.

RMOOV is good for automating that.

Also try to get a lot of high quality links. I got passed over a few times until I had some good links.

 

[DexterMorgan]

If only we could all refer to a cryptic Cutts video here to help? I'm sure it would clear everything up on all of these algo shenanigans. The Google Webmaster Forums are known for being extremely helpful too. Lots of helpful non-judgemental folks hanging out over there, they're eagerly waiting to help small business owners understand the moral and ethical implications of their website links.

Seriously though, if it is a content-heavy site/personal project I would probably take your content to a new domain if your links were causing you major issues and you're for sure certain links are the real issue. Watch out for OOP (Over optimization penalty) offsite/onsite too: keywords in backlinks vs onpage keyword density percentages, URL structure EMD PMD, navigation menu keywords in relation to keywords in inbound links...