Google Penguin Problem

[fathom]

Ahh i just read your "800%" comment. If this is the case would it not be easier to start off with a fresh site with a fresh, more natural linking approach? I could spend 6 months (for example) recovering a site yet could spend 3 months starting a new one and getting it ranked as well as my initial site, pre-penguin?

Whatever you do on a new domain you can do on a PENGUINized domain... unless you plan to develop inorganic links that is.

[markhincks]

Whatever you do on a new domain you can do on a PENGUINized domain... unless you plan to develop inorganic links that is.

Ok but would it take a longer period of time to recover the penguinized domain as opposed to starting out with something new but being very sensible with the back link profile?

How is my time best spent (ignoring factors about history of the penguinized domain etc)

Not sure if that is even an answerable question, sorry.

Basically i have 2 options:

1. Rescue

2. Start again

Which will be the quickest?

[fathom]

Ok but would it take a longer period of time to recover the penguinized domain as opposed to starting out with something new but being very sensible with the back link profile?

How is my time best spent (ignoring factors about history of the penguinized domain etc)

Not sure if that is even an answerable question, sorry.

Basically i have 2 options:

1. Rescue

2. Start again

Which will be the quickest?

I think I know what concerns you... but it is the same thing either way... the only difference is your perception.

An analogy... you have a 3 hour commute to work going the speed limit at 65/mph (195 miles).

You get a radar detector and you first start going 70/mph thus save 15 minutes on the commute.

You then try 75/mph and save 30 minutes, 80/mph and save 45 minutes, 85/mph and save an hour and then 90 and finally 95 but the police stop you and because you are 30/mph over the posted speed limit you end up in jail for 30 days.

After you get out you have 2 choices:

1. drive at 65/mph or
2. attempt to shave time off your commute by going faster and risk getting caught (even at 5 mph over the posted speed limit).

Getting caught a second time though has more severe consequences than before.

Back to your specifics... PENGUIN does not harm you, it does not cause you to lose anything that is legitimately yours e.g. organic links produce organic results and you will never lose them... you have that whether you got nailed by PENGUIN or not.

The only difference between your two paths is... preceived development time which is 100% the same unless you decide you can only acquire ranks via manipulation practices. But never assume you'll keep your results for very long and as Google updates PANDA each month making it better, and better, and better... don't think that PENGUIN granularity will afford you a consistent amount of manipulation room forever, it will be less tomorrow, next month even less and next year less even still.

[Ocean Feather]

If there is no confirmation from webmaster tool than there could be a possibility of Panda penalty Many of above discuss about Penguin but none about Panda.
Duplicate Content,
Keyword Stuffing,
Exact Domain Match
I believe that none of the websites recover completely after hitting by Penguin update.

[markhincks]

I think I know what concerns you... but it is the same thing either way... the only difference is your perception.

An analogy... you have a 3 hour commute to work going the speed limit at 65/mph (195 miles).

You get a radar detector and you first start going 70/mph thus save 15 minutes on the commute.

You then try 75/mph and save 30 minutes, 80/mph and save 45 minutes, 85/mph and save an hour and then 90 and finally 95 but the police stop you and because you are 30/mph over the posted speed limit you end up in jail for 30 days.

After you get out you have 2 choices:

1. drive at 65/mph or
2. attempt to shave time off your commute by going faster and risk getting caught (even at 5 mph over the posted speed limit).

Getting caught a second time though has more severe consequences than before.

Back to your specifics... PENGUIN does not harm you, it does not cause you to lose anything that is legitimately yours e.g. organic links produce organic results and you will never lose them... you have that whether you got nailed by PENGUIN or not.

The only difference between your two paths is... preceived development time which is 100% the same unless you decide you can only acquire ranks via manipulation practices. But never assume you'll keep your results for very long and as Google updates PANDA each month making it better, and better, and better... don't think that PENGUIN granularity will afford you a consistent amount of manipulation room forever, it will be less tomorrow, next month even less and next year less even still.

Excellent thanks Rod. I'll continue with the penguinized site. thanks for explaining all of this so well.

[markhincks]

One more thing Rod.....what are your thoughts on the dissavow tool? What effect if any does it have, does it work at all?

[fathom]

One more thing Rod.....what are your thoughts on the dissavow tool? What effect if any does it have, does it work at all?

From my vantagepoint, there is no reason to use the disavow tool if you only have a PENGUIN problem... PENGUIN disavowed all your inorganic links for you already whether you desired disvowing them or not.

[Doodled]

I would add one more piece to the jigsaw. You can breath life back into your inorganic links. We've done it. Here's an example.

One of our test sites had several thousand links containing 'keyword A' only. It was ranking at position 17 for 'Keyword A'. It got hit just before Christmas and sent to position 200. We changed all the links so they no longer contained 'Keyword A'. It now ranks at position 20 after a slow and steady recovery.

[giggity]

I'm sure you do have a mix but PENGUIN targets links that are inorganic in nature and the way you tell those are repetitive use of keyword phrases purpose-built to rank pages.

So without looking I can say your mix is lopsided.

Ask 1000 people to link to your domain and don't say anything about the link anchor text... what do you suppose you'll get as anchors?

Start there.

I am not sure I have read your view on this yet... what else, apart from anchor text, do you believe that Google uses within the Penguin algorithm? Perhaps some examples, link velocity, Pr of link, linking page's links, linking page's content... etc.?

Would love to know your opinion on this.

Thanks

[fathom]

I am not sure I have read your view on this yet... what else, apart from anchor text, do you believe that Google uses within the Penguin algorithm? Perhaps some examples, link velocity, Pr of link, linking page's links, linking page's content... etc.?

Would love to know your opinion on this.

Thanks

I generally don't like to speculate a whole lot because people is a hurry to fix their catastrophe won't accept your post as pure speculation ... they will use it as noted fact and propagate a myth which eventually takes on a life of its own.

EXAMPLE:

We theorized early on that you needed to wait for a re-RUN of PENGUIN to recover (Google didn't hint one way or another) but that was debunked before the second PENGUIN re-RUN and yet even today people still wait for a re-RUN to recover (which never occurs).

As for insight ... I found it odd early on that DIY SEO projects appear to be 90+% of affected domains (not full service SEO companies)... you don't see alot of "my SEO company ****ed me with PENGUIN". That's an interesting oddity don't you think?

[giggity]

I generally don't like to speculate a whole lot because people is a hurry to fix their catastrophe won't accept your post as pure speculation ... they will use it as noted fact and propagate a myth which eventually takes on a life of its own.

EXAMPLE:

We theorized early on that you needed to wait for a re-RUN of PENGUIN to recover (Google didn't hint one way or another) but that was debunked before the second PENGUIN re-RUN and yet even today people still wait for a re-RUN to recover (which never occurs).

As Penguin is a discount of links, rather than a penalty. So the only way to recover is by rebuilding your link profile organically? Unlike Panda which is a sitewide penalty.

As for insight ... I found it odd early on that DIY SEO projects appear to be 90+% of affected domains (not full service SEO companies)... you don't see alot of "my SEO company ****ed me with PENGUIN". That's an interesting oddity don't you think?

Hmm interesting.

[corlif]

it mite be on google jump or your ste.

[fathom]

Unlike Panda which is a sitewide penalty.

That isn't true either unlike you have a sitewide "THIN" problem.

This is a little TOO simplitic but:

If you have a page 1 like:

Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

If you have a page 2 like:

Search engine marketing is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEM may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

If you have a page 3 like:

Search engine promotion is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEP may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

If you have a page 4 like:

Internet Marketing is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. IM may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

...and you also did this for web marketing, online marketing, search engine positioning, search engine ranking, website promotion, etc., only these pages would be impacted by PANDA... they made also be where 99% of your traffic comes from which makes it seem like a sitewise issue... but it only seems that way.

In reality, PANDA is much more sophisticated in that if you aggregate pages with the same reoccurring facts (as noted here Matt Cutts and Eric Talk About What Makes a Quality Site ) that is the target of PANDA.

[giggity]

That isn't true either unlike you have a sitewide ...

Thanks Rod. I have read what you've said before about Panda and how a great link profile can disguise the problems related to thin content.

So you have had great success in recovered Penguinised sites. When doing so, do you pay any attention to the links that are already in place, such as ensuring any new links do not contain similar anchor texts to those that were probably responsible for getting your site Penguinised? Or changing the anchors of your already in place links like Doodled suggests?

Or do you just forgive and forget them?

Also, I know that you say that Penguinised sites don't need a re-run of Penguin to recover, but what about if the Penguin algorithm changes in such a way that 'at the margin' cases find themselves recovering ranks because Google has slightly changed how they judge links.

Or dead links are dead full-stop.

[mikeef1]

I've got a question, apologies if a similar question has been answered already. I was ranking number 1 for a few main keywords for over a year. In November last year I started to drop, now I am below the 4th page. I've been told that this is due to Penguin & a of lack of anchor text diversity, and this makes sense since most of my backlinks have keywords for the anchor text, and also from non-relevant sites.

So, would you recommend I continue building links, but focus on a very low or zero percentage of anchor text with keywords to try to create natural diversity?

Also, a domain which I built nearly 9% of my backlinks on has been down for almost a month. Would this harm my rankings, and if so what should I do?

I used to have linkwheels built, is this practice acceptable or black-hat?

Cheers

Mike