Trying to Pinpoint Cause of Penalty, My Findings

[learnseo81]

Hi Guys,

Three of my websites are penalized and I’m working hard to get the penalty lifted but no success so far.

For website A I’ve sent 4 reconsideration requests and all the request were denied with a message saying that “some or all pages still violating quality guidelines”.

I’m 100% certain that I’m not linking out to anyone and there is no such thing like link schemes on the website. I had in my mind that it is a back linking penalty since I had shady links but it seems that It is not true as well. In the last reconsideration request, I documented the bad links, the links I got removed and sent the excel sheet URL to Google in reconsideration request.

It seems that from my server logs that excel sheet was not even accessed and I got message that “some pages still violate the guidelines”. I even got this messages on a Sunday morning! Automated?

Here is what makes me think that it is NOT a back linking penalty:

These days Google is explicitly sending messages to webmasters about “unnatural link building”. Lots of webmasters have got such notifications that there are unnatural links pointing to their site. I didn’t receive any message about the unnatural back links, but just that my pages violate quality guidelines.

I talked to some webmasters on other forums and they got the unnatural link building message as well. Now why on earth If I’m being penalized for back links, google will not send me the unnatural link building message? One of my friends added 800 back links to his website and got unnatural link building messages as well and a -50 penalty too.

Is it safe to assume that the penalty is not related to backlinks but on-site content?

Now I’m thinking that for some reason, Google doesn’t like my content. Let me know your thoughts on my observation and I’m going to make my site 100x better before I submit reconsideration.

[trakkerguy]

I’m going to make my site 100x better before I submit reconsideration.

100x better? I admire your enthusiasm :)

It does sound strange that they actually respond to all your requests, and still no luck. I have had a few return after the requests, and more not, but never got a single actual response.

My guess would be to agree with you that there must be some content they don't like. Seems like it shouldn't be that hard to find. How many pages are indexed?

Maybe there is some hidden content you don't know about?

[learnseo81]

I've about 70 pages indexed on the site. My gut feeling is that since I participate in affiliate program, google might be seeing me as "cookie cutter" or "pages with no original content".

Although all pages have the content written by myself but seems like Google has its own mind to determine the "value" of a page.

I'm going to delete all the pages on the domain not caring about how much money I've spent working on them. Start afresh and put something on the pages which is not offered by anybody else on the web.

Let us see what other veterans suggest me to do. I'm just looking to conclude that something "onsite" is hurting me.

[kellyman]

I'm going to delete all the pages on the domain not caring about how much money I've spent working on them. Start afresh and put something on the pages which is not offered by anybody else on the web

Why not start afresh on a new domain rather than delete what you have done already, your basically starting afresh so starting new wont be much different

Personally i would yes start again, but also work on the other site and see exactly where you went wrong and maybe salvage that one by testing various things

[learnseo81]

@kellyman

Appreciate your advice. From my observations, do you also thinking there for some reason google thinks that the content is supoptimal?

YES! There is a penalty for suboptimal content!

[Planet13]

Hi there, learnseo81;

You mentioned you have affiliate links on your site.

Do you have nofollow tags on those affiliate links?

Because if you have affiliate OUTBOUND and they don't have nofollow tags, Google might think it is a link scheme.

[learnseo81]

Yes, all the affiliate links have nofollow tag on them. Reconsideration request is still denied saying that some pages violate quality guidelines.

[Planet13]

Argghhh... That is tough.

I don't know what to say. I have read somewhere on these forums that some people who received a minus 50 penalty moved their site to new domain and then 301 redirected the old site and the new site did not receive the penalty.

But you should research these forums for either OOP (over optimization penalty) or -50 penalty or such.

So I would agree with kellyman.

[kellyman]

Well its really hard to guess whats up without looking at, but look at the basics and you say 3 of your sites are penalized? what do they share in common

Remove the affiliate links
Remove all outbound Links
Remove any other advertising
Do they share the same server (maybe its blacklisted)
Check for rogue redirects

Appreciate your advice. From my observations, do you also thinking there for some reason google thinks that the content is supoptimal?

No idea without seeing the site

But by just deleting the content and starting again is like formatting a pc when you get a problem, now if you can fix that problem and what what caused the error it would be so much better

Pm the site ill take a look

[learnseo81]

Hi Kellyman,

PMed the site to you. PM me your suggestions. I appreciate your time.

Anybody else reading this thread, If you want to give me a helping hand I can send you the site via PM. Not only you'll help me unwind the penalty but I'll keep this thread updated will all the changes I'm making so that It can be a future reference to the guys in the same boat as me.

Google is getting smart and we also need to help each other :) I'll document everything here. I've lost everything I was making and I'm back to a big ZERO incomewise. Still I don't want to give up because I must be doing something wrong.

[kellyman]

Had a quick look, i believe you have been hit by panda, the only text on your home page can be found on around 40 + sites basically the site is about the wonder-share DVD ripper, the rest of text are links

Looks like the sitemap is still active in your WMT but deleted from your site and all those affiliate links have a 302 temporarily removed status (Regnow)

you have Canonical issues with your site and /index.html

TBH and i don't wish to offend you but how can you not see that within your own site, there is not i piece of unique content on the homepage

Inner pages at a quick glance pretty much the same, just copy past from the descriptions

Google doesn’t like my content. Let me know your thoughts on my observation and I’m going to make my site 100x better before I submit reconsideration.

In my opinion you site is a typical site that would get hit by panda, there is nothing unique, all just copy and paste

you have some serious work to do rewriting those pages Titles and description, everything i see on the site is found in at least 15 pages before i found yours

Sorry for being harsh but you can keep those blinkers on as long as you like, the issues are obvious and need resolving, i would do what you originally suggested is delete the whole content and start again, by rewriting the pages in your words,

Good Luck

[learnseo81]

@kellyman,

Thanks for your feedback. I'm going to do a complete rewrite of the site. The site was not hit by panda but there was a manual penalty applied to the site.

In WMT, It got message that "some or all pages violate quality guidelines". I'm going to improve all the pages to maximum extent.

Everything is not copy and paste and some pages are completely unique but I know there is a lot more I can do to make the site better. My homepage is extremely bad and I'm going to improve it a lot, believe me :)

I really appreciate you opinion. I'm sending you another PM with my plan.

[kellyman]

I think Rather than the PM keep the messages here so people with issues like yours can see what you are going to do and if what you did helped out.

without posting your exact PM, i believe making your site like another site which is doing well is wrong and wont help in the long run.

To make a site unique using some of the sites that has done well will work much better for you, with any product trying to make the manufacturers description different is going to be difficult but get your keyword count up so as to dilute the manufacturers description or takeaway the description from the home page so as the homepage is absolutely unique, product reviews are great if unique

I wish you well with the project

[learnseo81]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

[tedster]

Yes - please do not use posts in this forum as a touch point for private analysis - it is rather offensive to the thousands of readers who look to these threads for guidance.

If anyone wants a deeper analysis of their own website by members, they can become a Paid Supporter here and make use of our Review My Site [webmasterworld.com] forum.

[tedster]

i believe you have been hit by panda

It's certainly possible that Panda has devalued the rankings - but there is also the matter of direct messages from Google saying that the site still violates some guidelines. So even if Panda is in the rankings picture, there does appear to be a penalty applied that goes beyond a normal Panda re-ranking.

[walkman]

learnseo81, buy the product you're reviewing and really review it ;) . Fill the page with screenshots, videos etc to make sure it looks genuine.

[Planet13]

...there does appear to be a penalty applied that goes beyond a normal Panda re-ranking.

Would it be likely that there would be a penalty for content that is scraped / borrowed / stolen from other sites? Or does the original poster have to look in another area to see why the penalty is applied?

So while the content should be improved, and a mea culpa has been given for the crappy back links, what OTHER area should they focus on to discover why there is a penalty?

[walkman]

Planet, IMO it's the site model itself, google can forgive the links after you try removing them. You need to go the extra mile in some areas.