Penguin Recovery Tips - a think tank thread

[bostonyear]

Since the main Penguin Update thread has 700 posts and counting, I'm hoping to start a new thread solely focused on Penguin recovery tips. I have a site that was hit by Penguin and I am trying to work my way out of it.

I think reason I was penalized was my content. I was inadvertently keyword stuffing. This is just the way I have been writing content for years. I have updated the content on my main pages where I have fixed the blatant keyword stuffing. My density levels are much more in line. My main question is:

I have over 80 blog posts that have some instances of keyword stuffing. Do I need to go back and fix all of these pages? Some of the posts are over 3 years old? I also have some really old pages that are buried in my site that may have poor content. Should fixing these old pages be a priority?

[RedCardinal]

@Hissigsid I've been told that any changes you make will first need to be crawled, and then fed into the Penguin process which they are running once a month.

If this is true then I suspect the changes you made on 27 may not have causes the ranking variations you're seeing.

[themaninthejar]

@HissingSid - I've been making similar onsite changes since 19th April. Saw an improvement for a short while (to page 5), but have dropped back from that to previous low position (page 10). I don't think all my changes have been fully spidered yet.

[idolw]

Hi can anyone confirm if Penguin is a penalty or algo?

There are "link profile clean up" solutions all round the web, but if Penguin is the algo, why should one bother with cleaning up backlinks? One should just run to get more good ones.
Where am I wrong?

[crobb305]

I'm pretty sure that what I'm seeing for my own site is a phrase by phrase issue.

I agree that it's phrase-based, ranging in severity from site to site... but I don't understand why some sites are relegated to position 3 or higher for their company name (minus the .tld, with or without spaces). I am trying to understand how the company name is "over optimized" simultaneously with other money terms. Doesn't make sense to me. However, in my case, I am using the domain name in most of the page titles. I wonder if that's causing a problem. It was a branding tactic, but I don't see as many sites ranking in the top 10 with the domain name in <title>. I saw it a lot post-Panda, not so much now.

[crobb305]

I also discovered that two websites linking to me sitewide (over 3,000 pages each) are hosted by my webhost. I really hope Google isn't using hosting factors as a spam indicator. I don't feel like moving hosts. I am not suggesting that it is happening. Just thinking out loud I guess. It bothers me to see those websites linking to me as they do, and hosted by the same host.

[Hissingsid]

I also discovered that two websites linking to me sitewide (over 3,000 pages each) are hosted by my webhost.

Your web host will have a C block range of IP addresses. Google might look for an un-natural pattern and either discount links from the same C block or perhaps apply a penalty.

[fred9989]

I'm pretty sure that what I'm seeing for my own site is a phrase by phrase issue. Having said that, in my serps there are some whole sites that have suffered for all or at least many search terms.

I'm just hypothesising that there is something related to anchor text on and off site and keyword stuffing in certain areas (types of tags like image alts for example) of pages that cause the term by term effect. Anchor text in sitewide links like the big footer on every page with links to "key" pages on the site may also be involved in this.

Then there's a different ssue that affects a whole site that is caused by link buying, hidden back links, links from certain networks etc.

If you have both then Ker-Bam! you're gone.

I see an extremely high algorithmic sensitivity to the combination of -
1) keywords in anchor text
The specific words or phrases in anchor text as a % of the total links into a site now has to be lower than ever; above certain low limits - which are somehow linked to points 2 and 3 below - a site is pushed into what used to be called +950 penalty. And the algo seems to treat related meanings as identical, so several words in different anchors may not protect a site - an example of this would be the words stop, control, prevent, avoid)
2) keywords in meta title
if the title resembles the anchors, or the domain, it's down the hill by 10, 30 or more places
3) keywords in domain name
I begin to think this seems to be the worst crime of all in Google's eyes! In one of my niches, the results show almost no sites with anything like the key words anywhere in the URL, let alone the domain name, except for wikipedia.

I suspect the analysis of these 3 factors is done almost phrase by phrase or at least by very narrow area. Certainly it looks like all the EMDs that have the same keywords in the meta title are gone from my field, a fact at variance with some other commentators' conclusions (that EMDs have not been affected because of the need to keep things like Amazon near the top of the results, assuming amazon is a key word for amazon, if you see what I mean).

I have one site which I have not been optimising for much, with a domain name unlike the subject matter, and non-optimised text, bar the meta titles, which are relevant, which has burst out at the top of the search results.
In fact it astounds me how quickly the site has been indexed, the links picked up, and how Google knows when to return this site for - I think that's very smart...... As far as a piece of engineering about presenting results which are relevant and non optimised I must admit it's very clever. Unfortunately the rest of the sites around it are pretty cr*p.

[Hissingsid]

3) keywords in domain name
I begin to think this seems to be the worst crime of all in Google's eyes!

I'm seeing the exact opposite of this!

[Planet13]

^^ Agree with Hissingsid.

[Wilburforce]

^^ Agree with Hissingsid.

[Leosghost]

^^ Agree with Hissingsid

[indyank]

^^ Agree with Hissingsid

[themaninthejar]

Wants to be on Hissing Sid's side... :-)

[themaninthejar]

Does anyone have an opinion on when the sitewide keyword density gets too dense? 15%...10%...5%...?

[diberry]

I'm also seeing a lot of keyword domains ranking for no other reason I can see. And my own domain name - which does NOT have any keywords for my site - has fallen to #4. Even though people are searching "my domain", clicking me and not bouncing, I'm not what Google is serving on that query.

@tedster, thanks for explaining that Penguin is an algo and not a penalty, because I've found this very confusing and I'm not sure I'm out of the woods yet. I did fill out that Penguin form for one of my queries - after which point I fell three more pages for it and gave up.

What's confusing to me is that the form says

If your site was affected by the "Penguin" webspam algorithm update

and we've been told Penguin is about spam/aggressive SEO. Well, spam has always been defined as actions a webmaster or service engaged in, so a site penalty was the usual response. Is Penguin treating spam as something that just sort of happens, page by page? Or is it trying to work out relative spamminess on various queries, which would explain why one page from my site might fall but others rise - because the one was relatively spammy for that query, but the other were relatively less spammy for their queries, even though they're probably all equally spammy (or not) in terms of on-page SEO, since they were all created by the same webmaster.

Hope I'm making sense there?

[FrankTheRank]

3) keywords in domain name
I begin to think this seems to be the worst crime of all in Google's eyes!

Agree with hissingsid (UK based) EMD's are as strong as ever and not a factor in this update imo, however I have had some that were hit for over optimised offsite anchor text and links from known blog networks.

I have a site in financial services that was No1 for popular two kwyword search. Dropped to page three and only showed the contact page (which i'd no followed sitewide!) on the 24th april.

i removed all the onsite keyword navigation like #*$! insurance to just #*$! and its back on the front page, 1 week later.

It didn't reappear after the 1.1 which makes me think that rollouts are ongoing phrase by phrase, and anchor text over-optimisation penalties apply by page by page both on and off site.

[ibeau]

This morning I've noticed that my results have disappeared for longtail keywords/product names. I was ranking in the top 1-5 spots for over 100 products and now nothing. My company isn't even coming up on page1.

I submitted my site after the last penguin update and I received back "No manual spam actions found". Could this latest refresh have something to do with it?

[themaninthejar]

removed all the onsite keyword navigation like #*$! insurance to just #*$! and its back on the front page, 1 week later.

Do you actually mean "all"? I'm working on reducing the incidence but am shy of removing all...

[Hissingsid]

With regard to phrase by phrase. If you add UK to the end of the most affected 2 word term in my niche you get much better results that are almost identical to the pre-penguin and in fact pre-panda serps. What I mean by better is that most of the top 10 are micro specialists that I would consider to be real world competition.

There is still one site that has been heavily penalised that isn't in the top 100 for <<search term UK>> and there is still one that is a happy accident for someone who has pushed all of the right buttons and unexpectedly got into the top 10.

[Wilburforce]

If you add UK to the end of the most affected 2 word term

...then there isn't a single .com in the top 40 in my niche.

[FrankTheRank]

@wilburforce and hissingSid

Just added UK to my two word search term on Google.co.uk and apart from my site which is No2 and has UK in its domain name and moneysupermarket there are no other .coms in the top 100!

Looks like they've turned up the dial on the geographical front!

@themaninthejar - yep I removed every incidence of the word insurance which massively reduced each pages keyword density and god knows avbout anschor text links

[Hissingsid]

The .com thing isn't the point I was thing to make. Simply adding UK to the end of the top $ 2 word search term in my niche seems to switch off Panda and Penguin and what is returned is 90% what I would have expected for <<search term>> and <<search term UK>> before Panda.

The point is that it is a term by term, phrase by phrase thing.

If you have been affected, unless you have nothing to lose, I would go softly softly. I certainly wouldn't remove a word from one of my sites entirely. Also if I wanted to reduce the density of a particular word I would favour changing it for a range of synonyms or close semantic match words rather than remove it altogether. I don't buy that Google is now adding up synonyms and the search term and penalising for the cumulative.

[HuskyPup]

If you add UK to the end of the most affected 2 word term in my niche you get much better results

I have noticed this for quite some time for my UK widgets.

For instance keyword1keyword2keyword3 shows nearly all Chinese and Indian directory sites with a couple of genuine original widget manufacturers, however adding UK myself and .co.uk sites suddenly appear.

When I realised this awhile back I left my main .com site as was and doing well globally BUT not in the UK, upped my .co.uk sites and now they're pulling in more traffic.

What I do not understand is why G has done this solely to the UK SERPs since my .com has been registered and hosted in the UK since 1994 but now seemingly has no relevance for the UK results whereas Chinese and Indian directory sites do.

Oh, and a US .com who has no chance in hell of supplying the UK also features in the UK results.

[Wilburforce]

If you add UK to the end of the most affected 2 word term

I had already noted that effect with adding other words (i.e. it breaks any exact-match effect). UK, however, seems in addition to filter out almost everything that is not .co.uk.

[Hissingsid]

Plurals seem to be the same. For me <<widgets services>> puts me where I belong, at #1, for the 2 word term <<widget service>>.

Plurals have had this effect for ages so the effect is not what is at issue here it is the fact that they have not been affected whereas the real, singular, 2 word term has been.

[backdraft7]

I was searching Google this morning for instructions on how to tie a hangman's knot...fortunately I couldn't find any useful results.

[textex]

I really am surprised that they have not lost users. Anyone remember Alta Vista's black monday? They were done very quickly after that.

[Hissingsid]

I only stopped using Altavista when they redirected to Yahoo ;)

[themaninthejar]

instructions on how to tie a hangman's knot

I know how to tie those, should your need become desperate...

[Martin Ice Web]

although I diidnīt wonīt to spit in the same can I have to say itīs a shame for google.
Whenever they say searches are up is due to the fact that nothing canīt be found anymore. Simple searches are ending up in non relation to the query or it is only once mentioned on the site. Not helpfull. At least google was able to find BING at once ( and on first position! ) and BINGs second result is fine to me.


@backdraft: maybe you have to wait a little bit, till goomazon has scrapped all infos about hangmanīs knot and will show it in goog graph.