Penguin update synopsis

[scottsmith]

Don't worry about Doug, he's just grumpy from having blisters on his hands from counting all his money

 

[v1seo]

Don't worry about Doug, he's just grumpy from having blisters on his hands from counting all his money

Thanks,
Judging by the welcome I got I'll just assume you have problems with spammers here and I caught doug on a bad day

 

[philiporchard]

Sorry, not read every post so this may have already been mentioned

From the tests I have carried out the penalties tend to be more phrase related than page or site related.

I have a site that was ranked in top 10 for SEO and was top 3 for SEO Services.

I deliberatly set a few hundred thousand links at it using those 2 phrases as the anchor and within a fortnight it bombed out of the top 100 even though it still ranks for loads of other phrases.

I cant post links yet but just search for "Too Many Links With Same Anchor" to read about what I did.

Hi Terry,

With the penguin update, from what I can tell, it seems that the relevancy of the page content, that a text link comes from, has a bigger weighting than previously. So less focus on number of links and more focus on high quality links from relevant pages - well, that's the avenue I'm pursuing now.

 

[Blossom]

Hi Terry,

With the penguin update, from what I can tell, it seems that the relevancy of the page content, that a text link comes from, has a bigger weighting than previously. So less focus on number of links and more focus on high quality links from relevant pages - well, that's the avenue I'm pursuing now.

Quality is essential. Relevance is overrated.

 

[v1seo]

Hi Phil,

most of my little experiments were pre-penguin but seemed to point to not having enough variation in anchor text was the biggest problem and bombing the page with loads the same did the damage.

From what I can gather most people seem to think that where penguin differs from other updates is other updates might have just devalued links pointing to a site (so you lost the value of the links)

With penguin the links can actually have a negative effect.

I'm not so sure just having the links causes the problem, I suspect the problem occurs if Google think the site being linked to is connected in some way with the links (as was the case in my experiment).

Only 1 of 100's of theories though :-(

 

[v1seo]

Quality is essential. Relevance is overrated.

Google patented a system called the Delegated Authority Evaluation System
IF they start using this as a a ranking factor Quality and Relevance will become even more important in my opinion.

 

[Blossom]

Google patented a system called the Delegated Authority Evaluation System
IF they start using this as a a ranking factor Quality and Relevance will become even more important in my opinion.

Quality will always be important and continue to increase in importance, as will quantity (and for most sites, in the context of quality).

Relevance has its limits, especially in niches where the only relevant sites 'naturally' linking to each other would be those owned by the same entity or links to/from non-profits.

 

[v1seo]

Relevance has its limits, especially in niches where the only relevant sites 'naturally' linking to each other would be those owned by the same entity or links to/from non-profits.

Strange way of thinking.

If I supply a product, a good, natural, rellevant link is from the manufacturer of that product, from the distributor of that product, from people recommending the product on my site, from similar companies selling similar products but not exactly the same, from other countries selling the same product who don't want to sell overseas, etc. etc. etc.

All good quality, relevant links but not the same entity as me or not non-profits.

Likewise, if I provide a local service in Warwickshire a good natural relevant link is fom someone providing a similar service in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire etc. who don't travel outside their small work areas.

Too many people do link building just for optimisation purposes, to me link building is just a small part of the process of networking with like minded service providers or retailers who don't mind helping each other out.

It makes no sense to me that a small local pest control guy who only works within a 20 mile radius, sees a pest control guy 40 miles away (who also only works in a 20 mile radius) as a rival.

The sensible thing would be they recommend each other if a job is in the others region and link together too. These aren't manipulative links to trick the search engines, but good quality, natural rellevant links.

 

[denchomsky]

I made a concerted effort and spent many hours link building for relevant keywords with one of my sites and it did nothing but bounce around the SERPS, disappearing for months then coming back on page 1, then going again for a month then coming back on page two, then disappearing again.

With more recent sites I have not bothered doing any link building at all, just made sure I used a domain that had naturally good/relevant/topical keywords.

I would say the only inbound links they have are from this forum, I dont even bother checking, and they were unaffected by penguin, and continue to rank high for the keywords that are in the domain name itself, and make reasonable returns.

Of course when building the more stable sites I have made sure the code is of good quality, all the right SEO attributes are present and the relevant keywords are in the copy, without getting obsessed by SEO.

I dont believe in forced unnatural link building, it takes a lot of time, the results are uncertain and I believe time would better spent educating yourself about new technologies, programming languages, web design skills or even mowing the lawn.

IMO if someone thinks one of my sites is worthy of linking to then great, if not then fine, I am not going to spend a week creating manufactured links, signing up on forums just to stick my domain in the sig, and adding my site to directories, it is possibly counter productive, more than likely a false economy unless your time is worthless, and extremely boring.

 

[dougs]

Hi Terry

I have a blog, numerous other sites....I posted all my info here...you could have done the same....instead you told me to go and search in google.

Welcome but please don't just try to drive traffic to your site

Doug

 

[bletchen]

I've yet to read about anyone who has recovered their rankings at all. Apart from using another domain and using a 301 redirect

Do you reckon this is like the Panda updates, where google refreshes the data after 6 weeks and changes only show up then? Rather than a live algo that changes in real time?

I've been getting a few [click here] links to dilute my keyword spammyness, and lowering my onpage keyword density, but maybe this is playing into google's hands? Seeing as this update is to find people who are trying to game Google a bit, if they see dozens of new non-keyword links and de-optimisations, surely that'll be a sign that I'm still trying to game google.

What does anyone think - should we be deoptimising ready for a refresh in a few weeks,
or just carrying on like normal with a few subtle changes :-/

 

[philiporchard]

I've yet to read about anyone who has recovered their rankings at all. Apart from using another domain and using a 301 redirect

Do you reckon this is like the Panda updates, where google refreshes the data after 6 weeks and changes only show up then? Rather than a live algo that changes in real time?

I've been getting a few [click here] links to dilute my keyword spammyness, and lowering my onpage keyword density, but maybe this is playing into google's hands? Seeing as this update is to find people who are trying to game Google a bit, if they see dozens of new non-keyword links and de-optimisations, surely that'll be a sign that I'm still trying to game google.

What does anyone think - should we be deoptimising ready for a refresh in a few weeks,
or just carrying on like normal with a few subtle changes :-/

Don't try mess too much - just build quality content and focus on obtaining a few quality links.

If you have a page on your site about 'Pink Widgets in London', then ideally you want a link to it from couple of pink widgets companies who are in London with various links to do with pink widgets and London.

Knowing what to do is the easy bit - getting people to link to you requires that your site offers something really useful about Pink Widgets - or another compelling reason for them to link to you...

 

[addz123]

I've yet to read about anyone who has recovered their rankings at all. Apart from using another domain and using a 301 redirect

Do you reckon this is like the Panda updates, where google refreshes the data after 6 weeks and changes only show up then? Rather than a live algo that changes in real time?

I've been getting a few [click here] links to dilute my keyword spammyness, and lowering my onpage keyword density, but maybe this is playing into google's hands? Seeing as this update is to find people who are trying to game Google a bit, if they see dozens of new non-keyword links and de-optimisations, surely that'll be a sign that I'm still trying to game google.

What does anyone think - should we be deoptimising ready for a refresh in a few weeks,
or just carrying on like normal with a few subtle changes :-/

Like I said before, I think just starting again on new domain or doing a 301 is the best solution at the moment.

I think this is probably a data refresh like Panda, just because of the scale of it and the number of sites that were affected.

I'm also taking some links down from my blog as an experiment to see if it comes back (AffiliateFYI.com). Everything else on my blog is great (user metrics, content, loyal followers, excellent links) but I bought a lot of spammy links from digitalforums over the last few months which I think penalised me. Hence, I'm removing them and seeing if my blog comes back as an experiment.

Whether this is a data refresh or rolling algorithm though, I still think it will take time for any changes to be reflected (e.g. 2-3 months). Not to mention, if your site was hit then Google probably has good reasons to consider you spam so while I think removing links might help, I doubt buying more links is going to have a positive impact.

 

[v1seo]

The drops I'm seeing may have nothing to do with Penguin or Panda, but they have all the hallmarks of the -30 penalties which were big news in 2004 2006.

Hope it's not the same, as one of my sites that got hit by a -30 in 2006 took over 3 year before it would even rank top 10 for it's own name

With that site I just mothballed it and moved on.

 

[vizzo]

Don't know if this helps but I have a site that does seem to have recovered.
It's not a great site, about 2 months old and was ranking well for exact match, near match and variations for a decent paying, low traffic, little competition keyword.

It had gradually risen to position 2 for its keyword.
April 24 it disappeared.
May 3/4 it's come back to position 2

I ASSUME it was hit by Penguiun.
It's stayed at position 2 for several days now (but not wanting to tempt fate!)

What did I do?
I de-seo'd my title, desc and h1 tags - still kept some keyword relevance but much less intensive. Removed an internal copyright link from all pages that linked back to the homepage.

This could just have been a non-penguin glitch, a fluke, or something else all together, but thought I would share.

 

[chippyb]

wasnt the penguin update on the 29th? and on the 24th there was a panda updat?

 

[max99x]

Hmm interesting! i may try this on the long tail page i have which i feel may be seo'd too much

Thanks for the post

Don't know if this helps but I have a site that does seem to have recovered.
It's not a great site, about 2 months old and was ranking well for exact match, near match and variations for a decent paying, low traffic, little competition keyword.

It had gradually risen to position 2 for its keyword.
April 24 it disappeared.
May 3/4 it's come back to position 2

I ASSUME it was hit by Penguiun.
It's stayed at position 2 for several days now (but not wanting to tempt fate!)

What did I do?
I de-seo'd my title, desc and h1 tags - still kept some keyword relevance but much less intensive. Removed an internal copyright link from all pages that linked back to the homepage.

This could just have been a non-penguin glitch, a fluke, or something else all together, but thought I would share.

 

[vizzo]

wasnt the penguin update on the 29th? and on the 24th there was a panda updat?

Panda was 19th, penguin 24th

 

[dougs]

17th another update

We believe this was a link penalty.....and this penalty is still being applied.Matt says a parked domain penalty that was fixed, but we have seen this on established sites but only for certain keywords

Doug

 

[retired_member36]

My update:

Ok so as per my previous posts, site dived down to page 28.

I added some extra content to home page, changed all my anchor text (removed my keyword from it), Changed my page titles.

The site jumped to page 12 and was dancing around there for a few days.

I removed some alts and played a little more with page titles, just checked then and was at the bottom of page 3. Fingers crossed it keeps moving.

Anyone else reporting any positive changes?