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?

[backdraft7]

I reported the singular plural issue several days ago. And, no, it hasn't always been that way. I have keyword reports to prove we ranked on all popular plural and singular version of key phrases right up until this mess hit. I'm seeing very slow recovery across 1,000 select key phrases I am now monitoring.
We lost thousands of long tail phrases in this update alone. We didn't just lose traction, rather the wheel's came off. At this rate, it's going to take about 8 weeks to fully recover, (like May Day 2010).
I trying really hard to find what constitute web spam across my site and I'm at a loss.
From what I can tell, Google new "quality" trigger is having one or two paragraphs of thin content surrounded by a galaxy of pop up ads.

[breeks]

Keyword density, so whats a good percentage. On results page where I was ranking number one, and now number 4 - 5 I checked the sites that replaced me and and they all have around 3% keyword density, my page had a little over 5%. Anyone have any theories on a whats a good keyword density percentage post Penguin ?

[tedster]

No theory at all - throw that keyword density metric out the window, it's dead, dead, dead. Just study the SERPs en masse and you'll see sites ranking on the first page with everything from 1% to 24%. As far as I'm concerned, keyword density = red herring

Even thinking like that is half way down the road to a Penguin hit, IMO. For some confirmation from Matt Cutts, watch this videoL Which ranking signals do SEOs worry about too much? [youtube.com]

[indyank]

I agree with crobb305 on seeing ranking differences between plural/singular over a year ago. To be precise it was ever since the site was pandalized. Prior to that, pages were ranking for both singular/plural versions of a keyword. It might be that this happens only to affected sites i.e. sites falling below Google's "quality threshold" loose their authority which earlier helped them rank earlier for singular/plural keywords.

[Planet13]

As far as I'm concerned, keyword density = red herring

Ok, but one has to ask what the differences are between keyword density (a non-factor) and keyword stuffing (which, if I am not mistaken, is something Matt Cutts has said to avoid)?

Or to be more precise, what exactly IS keyword stuffing if it ISN'T inflated keyword density, and is it responsible for recent drops in ranking?

EDIT: After viewing the link that tedster posted, there is a reference to unnatural sounding text. Wondering how much the algo takes proper use of grammar into account?

[edited by: Planet13 at 5:36 am (utc) on May 19, 2012]

[martinacastro]

@breeks you are talking about on page keyword density or keyword density in backlinks?

[breeks]

on page keyword density

[arikgub]

Here is a phenomena I have seen since Penguin was rolled out.

A completely irrelevant and weak by all means site manages to rank on page #1 for a very competitive "blue widgets" keyword just because it has the following piece of code on its home page containing a hidden link

 <script>if(document.referrer!='htt'+'p://reff'+'erer.c'+'om')document.write('<sp'+'an style=\'disp'+'lay:n'+'one\'>');</script> 
<a href="http://bluewidgets.us">blue widgets</a>
<script>if(document.referrer!='ht'+'tp://5g'+'o.c'+'om')document.write('</sp'+'an>');</script> 

The only time the "blue widgets" keyword is mentioned on the page is in the hidden anchor text. The linking site is completely unrelated to blue widgets, weak but looks legitimate and most probably was hacked to insert the link.

Even more ridiculous is that the bluewidgets.us site (the one linked to) that has thousands of links like this, ranks high at #1-#5 spots for this keyword and synonyms - all very competitive.


I've seen this in multiple different cases

[neildt]

Also something that is strange, the pages that we've had affected by the Penguin update and hotel profile pages. They contain photos, content, policy information etc.

However our area pages which are just a listing with 50+ links are still ranking fine. In my opinion, the area pages offer much less quality than the hotel profile pages.

My our site's problem is the anchor text ?

[diberry]

I'm seeing some changes on my site this morning, all positive. Some phrases have recovered to nearly where they were before Penguin, and others have recovered to about halfway between their pre- and post-Penguin rankings. I don't know if this means they've looked at my reinclusion request, or if Penguin is just still shifting around. I tend to think the latter, because of shifts other people in this thread and related ones have been observing.

Whatever the case, I'm up 30% on Google traffic compared to this time yesterday. That's the first time I've seen that particular number budge more than 1-2% since about April 26th.

[Gemini23]

I have also seen a change last night and today... I 'thought' it was to do with changes made...

[Jez123]

I don't know if this means they've looked at my reinclusion request

I thought submitting a re inclusion request was supposed to be a waste of time with this update? Glad you are seeing some positive movement - I'm not

[breeks]

I'm up today almost pre Penguin traffic, not holding by breath, expecting a Google slap down at any minute.

I did send a reconsideration request request and got an email "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google."

[breeks]

I'm up today almost pre Penguin traffic, not holding by breath, expecting a Google slap down at any minute.

I did send a reconsideration request and got an email "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google."

[souffle]

I notice that when you google a unique senetence (more than 15 words ) from the penguinized page it does not show up. Does anyone have the same issue?

I have seen this happen in the past but usually the penalized page does not rank for anything. ranking for the main keyword and not a long sentence from same page is unusual.


My website which has the keyword in the domain name has lost its ranking on the 24th of april Pinguinized from number 2 to number 15 in ranking for a semi competitive keyword.



I did hire a company to do directory submisiton and social bookmarking(big mistake) that did not do well. Then i started doing it the right way with quality links untill i reached the top position. Now i think im paying the price for the directory submision and social bookmarking campaign.

[Planet13]

Then i started doing it the right way with quality links...

Can you explain clearly what you mean by "quality links"?

[diberry]

"I notice that when you google a unique senetence (more than 15 words ) from the penguinized page it does not show up. Does anyone have the same issue?"

I'm seeing some of that, but I'm not sure it had to do with Penguin. It was happening before, and I could never figure out what Google had against those particular pages. But Bing blocked some of the same pages in the same way.

Today, one of those blocked pages is finally #1 when I stick in a text snippet - in both Google and Bing. I recently rewrote that page to use a certain keyphrase less - it's a keyphrase that doesn't really have a synonym, so even though I wrote the page naturally I did have to use the term a few times. I managed to eliminate something like 2 out of the 6 usages by restructuring sentences. And now it's gone from oblivion to #1 on both engines. So I'm scratching my head here, LOL.

And btw, the improvements I was seeing have all gone now. Shortly after I posted here, I just all but stopped getting Google traffic for the day. It sounds a little like that throttling thing people have talked about, but I would've thought this site was too small for Google to bother throttling. At its height, it was getting 200k imps per month.

ETA: and just to keep the weirdness coming, LOL, some blog has just sent me about 20 links. They're going through people's sites and creating blog posts that consist of a photo (stock in my case) and the first paragraph of the article. It's probably autoblogging, but it's actually fair use, which is really weird. I mean, I can't file a DCMA request because they haven't copied the whole article or stolen original photos from me. But this is just what I needed, right? Mounds of super crappy, uber-suspicious-looking inbounds, LOL. Sigh.

[crobb305]

ETA: and just to keep the weirdness coming, LOL, some blog has just sent me about 20 links. They're going through people's sites and creating blog posts that consist of a photo (stock in my case) and the first paragraph of the article. It's probably autoblogging, but it's actually fair use, which is really weird. I mean, I can't file a DCMA request because they haven't copied the whole article or stolen original photos from me. But this is just what I needed, right? Mounds of super crappy, uber-suspicious-looking inbounds, LOL. Sigh.

This is the problem with Penguin. Whoever at Google dreamed up this unnatural link penalty/filter hasn't studied the phenomenon of link scraping. That is, webmasters/bots that scrape the web for links to insert into their crap content to make it appear authoritative. I even see .edus linking to me in this way. Unsolicited, unpaid. This problem exists all across the web, especially in competitive industries. I have a fairly new website that has already been scraped dozens of times, with "unnatural links", and I have yet to even ask a single person for a link.

The internet is full of unnatural links, but it does NOT warrant a penalty (particularly for aged, branded, trusted, and verified websites) -- and by penalty, I mean you don't even rank outside the supplemental index for snippets of your own content or in the top 5 for your company name. I gave up trying to have those "unnatural links" removed. It's impossible, particularly those links that appear on abandoned websites, blogs, and in auto-generated content. Emails requesting link removal go unanswered, and one lady asked me to pay for removal. Incidentally, the concept of "natural links" isn't new. For years, people have been soliciting links that don't anchor with money phrases (instead asking for 'click here', domain name, yada yada). Therefore, some seemingly "natural" backlink profiles are, in fact, unnatural (crafted by design). Likewise, some seemingly unnatural profiles, are indeed, natural.

I notice that when you google a unique senetence (more than 15 words ) from the penguinized page it does not show up. Does anyone have the same issue

I see this too. In fact, I see it mostly for content further down the page. It's as if Google stops spidering the page at some point. Content further up is in the supplemental index.

[driller41]

I notice that when you google a unique senetence (more than 15 words ) from the penguinized page it does not show up. Does anyone have the same issue

Nope, my sites were hit by Penguin on the 24th and the first thing I checked was exact text 15+ words - the pages always come up.

[dougwilson]

Anybody blocking scraper sites? Like the ones listed in GWT's "links from other sites".

[breeks]

I'm seeing a slow recovery, a few hundred more visitors each day, still down about 40%. I've done so many things not sure if any of them worked :)

[backdraft7]

The only common denominator I can see in my niche is that the top listed sites are big name how-to / answer pages with extremely thin & useless content. Their also are surrounded with plenty of ads, up to seven from different sources. It's disgusting. I won't throw more ads at my users in an attempt to regain traction in the serps. I think any self respecting, sane user would agree that less ads is always better.
So this begs the question, if Google is so about "quality" user experience, why are they pumping me to throw more ads up? My Adsense account if full of notices telling me to put up THREE ads blocks per page.
Sorry, if that's the qualification to list at the top...I'm out. Ridiculous!

I'm going to sit tight and let the defecation hit the oscillation. Then we'll see some changes.

[seoArt]

I am pretty sure we got hit from Penguin because of too many kw phrase anchor text links from loosely related websites.

Since penguin hit, I have filed a reinclusion request, which I know probably won't do any good, but it probably wont hurt - just in case we did get some type of manual penalty somewhere along the line.

I have also been diligently sending link removal requests, and to my surprise, I have gotten many of the questionable links taken down.

The problem is, my site is old (2003), and it has tons of incoming links, most of which are natural. I just hope I can tip the scales back in our favor.

I will post an update if anything changes.

[Planet13]

The problem is, my site is old (2003), and it has tons of incoming links, most of which are natural.

I see that as being the OPPOSITE of a problem :)

[crobb305]

The problem is, my site is old (2003)

I think the older the site is, the greater probability that it has unnatural links, assuming it has had good visibility the entire time. We're hearing about a lot of old sites that have been hit by Penguin. Scrapers will link to high-ranking sites to boost their own authority and will link to you with money phrases. People will also link using the title of your site. Now, if a site is old but was not ranking well for the past few years (poor visibility), there is a smaller chance of scraping, and I've seen some very old websites suddenly start ranking because they still have a "natural" link profile, where "natural" is defined by someone at Google on a whim. Google needs to study the issue of link scraping in competitive markets as a function of age and visibility and they will see that it is a phenomenon beyond the webmaster's control. If you've over-optimized on-site elements (over linking to commercial pages using commercial terms), that can be reduced/controlled.

[edited by: crobb305 at 3:14 pm (utc) on May 21, 2012]

[Jez123]

I think the older the site is, the greater probability that it has unnatural links, assuming it has had good visibility the entire time. Scrapers looking to link to high-ranking sites to boost their own authority will link to you with money phrases. People will also link using the title of your site. Now, if a site is old but was not ranking well for the past few years (poor visibility), there is a smaller chance of scraping, and I've seen some old websites suddenly start ranking because they still have a "natural" link profile, where "natural" is defined by someone at Google. Google needs to study the issue of link scraping in competitive markets as a function of age and visibility and they will see that it is a phenomenon beyond the webmaster's control. If you've over-optimized on-site elements (over linking to commercial pages using commercial terms), that can be reduced/controlled.

I think that what you have described is exactly my problem. Surely I am not going to have to start again with a new site am I? This is just so ridiculous.

[seoArt]

Right, a lot of these old links are from sites that just linked to us because we were at the top of the search results for the "money phrase" and of course, they linked using the money phrase.

Scrapers seem to be a problem as well. I am not wasting my time trying to get those links taken down. I'm starting off with the "low hanging fruit" so to speak.

[seoArt]

If I don't see very positive results in 3 months, I will probably be moving to a new domain name.

[crobb305]

If I don't see very positive results in 3 months, I will probably be moving to a new domain name.

Yeah, I was going to say I'd give it longer than 4 weeks. But, maybe get a domain name bought now, and get a link to it. :)

[Hissingsid]

@Tedster

As far as I'm concerned, keyword density = red herring

I've just been looking carefully at a site that has leapfrogged me over night for a 2 word term. Their KW density on the page overall is slightly higher than mine but in link anchor text they have half as many repeats and and half the density of my pages on page anchor text. Could link anchor text KW density be an issue?

The specific page has about 20% more external links than me but 50 times as many internal links. 70 vs 3500. For the domain as a whole they have about 160 more linking root domains but 50 times as many backlinks.

In our niche I just don't understand where they have managed to buy hundreds of thousands of links and got away with it.