Too many inlinks to the homepage = ban?

[ddzc]

Hi all,

I've read much about Googles recent updates on Panda/Penguin. Nothing was ever mentioned about over-optimization of links to a single page, for example a homepage.

I had an old site which ranked #1-5 for certain long tail keywords for years. All of the content and information provided on the homepage corresponds to that exact search term in google. None of my subpages have anything to do with this exact search term.

My site was dropped from Google 2 months back and has yet to recover, for any of those long tail keywords. I checked up to 100 pages in Google and it's no where to be found. The site still remains on page 1 in Bing and Yahoo...which I don't care about anyway. My homepage is still indexed (+6 sitelinks) in Google and only appears if I search my full homepage url.

Obviously, a penalty has been applied to my homepage for those long tail keyword searches. I have been working on the site since then to recover, with no luck. I have varied a bunch of inbound links I had control over with random anchor texts like my url, site name, click here, etc to balance my backlink profile a bit. I embedded social media like fb, youtube, twitter, etc into my homepage nicely. My backlink profile was already quite diverse previously, but not to this level where I had "click here, visit here" as my anchors. None of these efforts have worked so far.

I manually checked the top 20 pages today and I noticed a few of my subpages are ranking on random pages (pages 10-30) in Google for all of those long tail keywords my homepage was once ranked for. This definitely tells me that my homepage is being slapped for something.

All of my inbound links are pointing to my homepage..as they should be. My subpages are informational pages in the industry and have nothing to do with the longtail keywords which is why I never built any internal links. I have no interest in ranking my subpages, due to the model of my site.

Is it at all possible, that my homepage is being blocked from ranking due to the fact that 100% of my link profile is linking to it? Should I add more links to my subpages or change a few from my homepage to subpages?

What are your thoughts seo pros?

D

[DarrenHaye]

What are your thoughts ?

D

What date did you drop off?

What is your site like for duplicate content?

What is your anchor text like? mostly keywords or..

[ddzc]

Hi Darren,

This is basically what happened.

In Mid April, I was still top ranked top 4. By the end of April, I dropped to #6. On the first two weeks of May, I noticed some weird stuff. It was yanked from Google completely (as it is now) for 3 days, then it was put back up on Page 1 at the same rank. After a day, it was removed again for a few days and put back up for a few days. By the third week of May, it was removed and since then, has never returned.

Absolutely no duplicate content.

During the months of March-May, the only offpage seo which I did was a single link exchange with a site in my niche (trulyhuge.com). I'm in the Bodybuilding niche. I figured it was a high quality link exchange so I did it. The site dropped a day after this exchange but I thought maybe it was a coincidence. I did a backlink report with fresh indexable data on my site that same day and it still didn't detect that link from the exchange. It took a week to come up. I removed the link exchange for over a month that same day, to see what would happen and nothing changed, so I did the exchange again. According to majesticseo, it's my second highest quality link in my profile out of 1,500.

I only have 2 link exchanges on my site and they're both high quality sites. All other links are one ways and they're also very high quality and only related to my niche. All other work on the site was onpage, with content, social media integration, etc.

My backlink profile was diverse, in a way that the keywords were varied but all related to the long tail keywords I was trying to rank. For eg, bodybuilding workout, bodybuilding workouts, bodybuilding workout program, bodybuilding workout programs, etc. I changed a few of them to "click here, site name, site url, visit here".

The only small issue (if it is one) with the backlink profile is that 850/1500 links is using the same anchor text from a single site, because it's coming from a blogroll reference of a fitness blog which is linking to me. That fitness blog is the highest quality link I have, therefore I don't want it removed. I can maybe have the anchor text changed on it to my site name or url. I thought Google is now counting just 1 link in these instances...I recently read that, so maybe I wont have to change anything. Other than that one, all other links are diversified evenly right now.

D

[DarrenHaye]

Hi Darren,

This is basically what happened.

In Mid April, I was still top ranked top 4. By the end of AprilI dropped to #6.

Panda 3.5 — April 19, 2012

Penguin — April 24, 2012

Panda 3.6 — April 27, 2012

Penguin 1.1 — May 25, 2012

Those are the dates of google updates in April/May, any correlate with you dropping off?

My backlink profile was diverse, in a way that the keywords were varied but all related to the long tail keywords I was trying to rank. For eg, bodybuilding workout, bodybuilding workouts, bodybuilding workout program, bodybuilding workout programs, etc. I changed a few of them to "click here, site name, site url, visit here".

D

Maybe too much bodybuilding workout in your anchor test.. is "bodybuilding workout" in your domain name?

The only small issue (if it is one) with the backlink profile is that 850/1500 links is using the same anchor text from a single site, because it's coming from a blogroll reference of a fitness blog which is linking to me. That fitness blog is the highest quality link I have, therefore I don't want it removed. I can maybe have the anchor text changed on it to my site name or url. I thought Google is now counting just 1 link in these instances...I recently read that, so maybe I wont have to change anything

Google really doesn't seem to like keyword anchor text site wide links..

I would if possible try and get one link from them with your domain name, failing that 100% get the anchor text changed to your domain name/brand name at very least.

There are a lot of spammy sites about body building supplements and what not, haven't got a lot of links from them have you..

[ddzc]

It looks like I got caught up in the middle of all those updates.

As per my reports...I was completely gone on May 16. Between Mid April to May 16, it shuffles around, got removed a couple of times and put back up and on May 16 it was officially taken down for good.

Yes, that could have been the case with the links. It ranked fine for years with that link profile...I slowly improved on it over the years by gaining more high quality links. A prime example of my domain name would be for example fitnessworkouts.com where I'm trying to rank for bodybuilding workouts. So, the second keyword is in my domain name and the first one is relative in the niche but not the exact word in which I'm ranking for.

Over the past couple of years, I have acquired high quality fitness and bodybuilding domains and either 301 redirected them to this site or built websites on them and one way linked them to this site. They are all stationed at different registrars and they're not hosted on the same server as the site it's pointing to. I doubt this has any influence on anything..

Other than that, I'll mentioned this anyway. Some guy registered the same domain name as mine in January, but .org (I own .com). He spammed the hell out of the domain with over 10k links with all of the same keywords which I was targetting. He was #1 within 1 week, for all of the same keywords I ranked for from January to April and then he was taken down by Google. I seem to over-analyze everything but maybe Google thinks I'm the same owner as the .org and decided to take me down with them as well...I don't think Google is that "stupid", but you never know..

D

[DarrenHaye]

I think for real help it would be best for you to post your site (use a url shortener if you don't want this to be found this to be found via search) and hopefully someone more qualified than me will look into it and give you some advice.

If you don't want to post it publicly you can private message me it id be happy to have a look, but as I said above there are people on here way more qualified than me to help.

[Prof.stan]

Hi ddzc

As per Fathom this update is not any kind of Penalty but it happen because Google wants to increase his Search quality. So if you want to get ranked well on Google for example your target keyword is internet marketing services California then you shall have to get link from internet, marketing, services and California see where your website is ranked. If you get rank on 2nd and 3rd page than get one link with internet marketing services California then you shall get rank on top slot.
And by this way Google penguin algorithm will not track out your website.

And this is not update which devaluate your rankings actually after this update your website is not giving any link juice which are coming through UN-trusted resources and using targeted anchor tag.

Why your competitors shall link your at home page. No one do that and if you get back links from their home page it means you doing some unethical practice to acquiring these links.

You need to review or analysis for back links which you got for your website now maximum no. back links are not giving any advantage to your website.

And I suggest you leave this part work more on your web content. As EGOL says rather than worrying to acquiring links we need to work for building power full content that will generate links automatically or at-least you will reach your targeted visitors.

This is just my suggestions not necessary to apply it in your SEOing. It depends where do you want to spend your time? You want to find out that what kind of penalty your website got or you want work to build killer content for your website.

[Darrin Ward]

... I have been working on the site since then to recover, with no luck. I have varied a bunch of inbound links I had control over with random anchor texts like my url, site name, click here, etc to balance my backlink profile a bit. I embedded social media like fb, youtube, twitter, etc into my homepage nicely. My backlink profile was already quite diverse previously, but not to this level where I had "click here, visit here" as my anchors. None of these efforts have worked so far....

Ahhhhh... and now Google knows you're aggressively optimizing the site based on your reactions to their change.


I have a rule... If a Website takes a hit, don't do ANYTHING different for at least 3 months. Sit back, observe, and only after a cooling off period will I go back in and tweak things.

[DarrenHaye]

I have a rule... If a Website takes a hit, don't do ANYTHING different for at least 3 months. Sit back, observe, and only after a cooling off period will I go back in and tweak things.

Why wait three months?, most webmasters I imagine don't have the luxury of time if they rely on their website for income and don't have other sites.

If it is penguin, you would want to aim to get everything in order before next refresh so you can hopefully bounce back no..

[Test-ok]

All of my inbound links are pointing to my homepage..as they should be. My subpages are informational pages in the industry and have nothing to do with the longtail keywords which is why I never built any internal links. I have no interest in ranking my subpages, due to the model of my site.

This caught my eye...not saying thats your problem or not.
But if I read you correctly your not linking to the informational content on your sub pages because you have no interest in ranking nothing but your home page?...Huh?...if you have no interest in ranking bodybuilding content, which makes no sense...why would you even waste the time building them in the first place. I've usually try and direct my sub pages for the low hanging fruit and the main page for the stuff on top. And then you might have a good reason why you don't.

[Test-ok]

Ahhhhh... and now Google knows you're aggressively optimizing the site based on your reactions to their change.


I have a rule... If a Website takes a hit, don't do ANYTHING different for at least 3 months. Sit back, observe, and only after a cooling off period will I go back in and tweak things.

I agree and think Google could be keeping track of how many or how often one makes element changes...the more you change certain elements the more your trying to manipulate the system (something google would be thinking)...I usually try and add content at the same time just in-case it's a trigger, hoping the content might neutralize the trigger. But thats nothing more than a theory.

lol...That's a great rule Darrin and it makes sense...But I haven't been able to talk a client into it yet.

[jsteele823]

Over the past couple of years, I have acquired high quality fitness and bodybuilding domains and either 301 redirected them to this site or built websites on them and one way linked them to this site. They are all stationed at different registrars and they're not hosted on the same server as the site it's pointing to. I doubt this has any influence on anything..

How many of these fake websites do you have?

Any forum links?

Heavy blog commenting links?

I'd opt to say that your little blog network got caught. Check and see if these sites are still indexed properly.

[Darrin Ward]

Why wait three months?, most webmasters I imagine don't have the luxury of time if they rely on their website for income and don't have other sites.

Well it's an informal rule... But a couple of reasons... Many times sites come back on their own after a little while. And, if you're rushing to make changes after an update it's pretty obvious you're doing aggressive SEO on the site, which Google doesn't like.

And also, those Webmasters that are relying on a single site and a single source of traffic for their income need to get their s**t together ASAP... because if that's the case then it's only a matter of "when" and not "if". I have been smacked by this very problem many times before, so I speak from experience.

[ddzc]

Thanks for the responses.

From the articles I read...if the penguin attacked, the best method of action was to change or gain more diverse links immediately and hope that the next update will re-rank the site again...basically what Darren stated. I doubt Google is keeping track of my site whether any anchor texts have been changed or altered manually...considering the trillions of links and websites out there. Also, I changed those links around after 6 weeks and not immediately after.

The model of my site may be a bit off...possibly incorrect from the start. The subpages are just for content and I don't attempt to rank them because they won't bring me in a $. Also, even if I did rank them, it would be untargetted traffic...again, I wont make a $. I need 100% targetted traffic to my homepage in order to make a penny.

I have about 10 articles on my homepage as well though but each article is a wordpress post and those posts/urls/subpages are the ones ranking all over Google for my targeted keywords (page 10-20). My homepage has taken a large hit and is unranked right now.

I maybe have a few blog posts in my niche, not many. No forum links. I own about 6-7 niche related sites and all are indexed in google.

I agree with not having a single site and source of income...that's exactly what this is and it's burning me right now. I'm trying to get other sites going but I would love for this one to recover.

[fastreplies]

I have a rule... If a Website takes a hit, don't do ANYTHING different for at least 3 months. Sit back, observe, and only after a cooling off period will I go back in and tweak things.

You’re right and any experienced Webmaster knows that and as a rule is doing nothing
when site’s Index page fails off G’s listing and that the best remedies when it’s happen
is being patient and wait for G’s next DB refresh

This occurrence has nothing to do with what G. is doing lately because as I recall stuff
like that has been going on for at least 10 years. Wise versa occurrence, when only
1 month old site all the sadden appears on page #1 and stays there for 2, 3 weeks before
moving to 100M place.

One thing that may help to know if index page is in G’s DB is WebmasterTools.
Presence of that page says that there nothing is wrong and that soon enough it will be back in SERP

fastreplies