Penguin Recovery Tips - think tank part 2

[fred9989]

< continued from: [webmasterworld.com...] >

Let's go back to Penguin recovery tips, of which there are none easy logical ones for an average small business. Except maybe develop more good links where Google found bad ones, quickly and in numbers. Which, apparently, Google dislikes. And at this point black hats are reporting being able to successfully nuke sites at will thru simple linkfarms.

I don't think it's quite so simple. I had / have a number of sites in dmoz, the open directory (remember that!?), whole categories of which were targeted by spammers for some nefarious purpose. End result - sudden gain of hundreds of spammy inlinks to my sites.

While not quite sure what they were up to (possibly testing the idea of nuking sites, if I had to take a guess), and I can't really be bothered to find out, what I know is that of my 5 sites which fell into the category they attacked, Google has treated them differently.

Three were deindexed to varying degrees: one has been completely deindexed, obliterated; another is showing just the url in Google when I look for the domain. A third shows a couple of pages.

The two that survived this attack and appear not to have been affected, as far as I can tell, already had lots of solid links garnered over 12 years.

One possible conclusion is that having solid links already (or a history) gives protection against spam attacks.

[edited by: tedster at 2:34 pm (utc) on Jun 24, 2012]

[gouri]

I agree with what you are saying. The title element is very important and should probably contain the word or phrase that the page is trying to rank for.

Would putting the synonym in the H1 tag be a good option? I currently have the exact phrase in the H1 but maybe that is a good place to put the related phrase.

[fathom]

I can't imagine how anyone could say you'll never recover that keyword after a Penguin hit. There's only been on single Penguin refresh so far. That's not enough history for anyone to know.

Sorry... forgot I posted in this thread.

I'll concede PENGUIN is new but like all Google anti developments... if you have hidden text... and you get devalued for hidden text saying you'll recover because you ignored your hidden text is unlikely... saying when I remove that offense I will recover is the logical course.

In the context of a tripping a filter or passing above a threshold once you tripped or passed you cannot un-trip or diminish the threshold wouldn't some next step... not so long as Google's system works as it does.

So sure... this is still all theory but... here's theory tied to logic.

Natural vs unnatural is like the current political landscape... TWO BIG CLUBS Democrats vs. Republicans or Natural links vs. Unnatural links.

These camps are rigid in their definitions. Unchanging, absolutely fixed.

There is another group that isn't so rigid - they lean and sway (according to PENGUIN) to being acceptable or unacceptable based on the collective patterns they produce as oppose to their individual merit(s) or vote(s).

A single reciprocal cannot be detected, a PAID LINK of ONLY ONE will NEVER be nailed by PENGUIN.

Let's say for the sake of argument Democrats (are Natural links) vs. Republicans (are Unnatural links)... (Google's metaphor is a democratic voting system ;)) and your website leans Republican and you get hit by PENGUIN.

You decide to not get rid of any Republican votes but lean now to the tune of democratic beliefs... that's plausible. I'm going strictly natural links now.

Not sure if the analogy is easily followed but the problem with Natural Links they rarely conform to unnatural link anchor texts. You'll never get enough natural voting power offset the threshold of being detected for specific unnatural link anchors... because natural links do not align to the same building practices... So without removing old links... you alwasy remain above the threshold.

So as I said, you never recover that phrase IMHO... the numbers don't lie. Your website can indeed recovery and acquire 100 times more traffic than before PENGUIN on millions of other phrases but not from that specific phrase... without removing the offenses.

[anteck]

It's all speculation until they do another refresh. It's been near two months since the last... i'm keenly awaiting the next one. I don't think Google are in a hurry - much to the anger of thousands of webmasters who have cleaned up their link profiles...

[edited by: tedster at 6:11 am (utc) on Jul 17, 2012]

[Jez123]

I'll concede PENGUIN is new but like all Google anti developments... if you have hidden text... and you get devalued for hidden text saying you'll recover because you ignored your hidden text is unlikely... saying when I remove that offense I will recover is the logical course.

Unless Google are playing a clever game. What if they are bluffing? They don't actually know as much as we think they do and are waiting to see the reaction from webmasters. I.e we all start panicking - manipulate links that we can and inadvertantly feed information to google?

I am seeing the that my site is suffering due to lots of deoptimisation and link removal where a friend is back to near pre Penguin levels by doing the sum total of nothing. Maybe if I had held my ground and done nothing I could be on the up instead of as I am now, floundering and nearly broke.

[cclayton]

What I dont understand is people announcing "Penguin" recovery's when there has been no refresh since 1.1. I have cleaned up my profile, diversified anchors etc and since zero movement but assume this will change once a refresh is run. As Matt Cutts announced, Penguin is the same as Panda it requires manual refreshing... so the only way to recover from it is to make changes, then wait for the refresh. Or am I wrong? If people are recovering perhaps they were not truley hit with penguin but with something else or there is a mix of Penguin in the always running algo and the one that needs to be refreshed?

[Jez123]

I don't know. Some seem to think that you need the refresh to come back others think that's it, deal with it as it's not changing. I personally think (hope) that a refresh will see my site come back to some extent - though I would be crazy to think that it will be as strong as before.

[cclayton]

Initially it might not be as strong as before, but in time you just build it up again... have faith. If I have no recovery after the next refresh then I am moving it all across to a new domain and starting over. Its been 3 tough months now and very few examples of real recovery's and that is because you need a refresh to recover and that hasn't happened. My opinion is that the refresh will be end of July so its been a full 3 months and that will go along with the 90 days penalty they often dish out. After that refresh, I expect the forums to be full of stories of recoveries... or further penalties!

[Jez123]

I think 3 months too. Fingers crossed, eh!

[themaninthejar]

On 25th May I posted the following in this thread:

When doing a site:domain search I have always expected to see the site's pages linked using the title tag of the page. Last week I did the same search and discovered pages being linked in the following format:

Internal anchor text for the page - Site's main two-word keyphrase target - Brand name

I posted this elsewhere on here at the time. I'm reposting now as I just went though the search again and counted 72% of my pages listed in this way (last week I estimated just under half were in this format). I can only speculate about what this means (or even whether it's a recent development as I don't conduct this search very often) and would be interested to know if anyone else can see this with their sites. Is this Google making "notes to self" for the evaluation of anchor text on incoming links?

I have reduced the onsite usage density of my main two-word keyphrase to more "natural" levels and now when I conduct the same search the link for practically all my pages is in the following format:

Title of Page - Brand name

I don't see why this has changed - unless the former format was indeed a Google "note-to-self" to suppress the ranking of the site for the keyphrase that it considered was being spammed...?

Give me a straw, I need to do some clutching...

[tedster]

My opinion is that the refresh will be end of July so its been a full 3 months

Ah, but that would be only two months since the May 26 refresh.

[cclayton]

Ah, but that would be only two months since the May 26 refresh.

Yeah. But I saw that more of a minor update to fix the glaring issues that came out of the initial update, also tweak the algo a little more to hit a few more sites that Google was made aware of after the first update. I didn't see it as a proper one as so few sites would have been able to properly resolve their issues, then have Google pick up these changes all in time for the Penguin 1.1 refresh. We will see... but I still see the one that comes as the "proper" second update as such.

[tedster]

Ah, you're looking for a change in the Penguin algorithm. Then you're right, May 26 was a data refresh and not an update to the algorithm.

[cclayton]

No, I am not looking for a change... I am looking for a refresh, I just think that 1.1 was a bit too early for most people to see improvements.

[gouri]

I have reduced the onsite usage density of my main two-word keyphrase to more "natural" levels and now when I conduct the same search the link for practically all my pages is in the following format:

Title of Page - Brand name

@themaninthejar,

After the link changed to Title of Page - Brand Name, did you see a change in rankings?

[themaninthejar]

@gouri - I only noticed this today, so I can't tell.

[gouri]

What I have found is that shaking up the internal links, matching of title, internal links, description and theme internally as well as inbound links can start to improve sites hit by Penguin.

I have a situation on a website that I am working on where the anchor text of an internal link to a page is the same as the title tag of the page being linked to.

I would like to change the title tags where I have this situation because the way it is at the moment, I think that it is over optimized. The title tags that I thought of that would be different from the anchor text of the internal links going to the respective pages have a difference of a word.

If the anchor text of an internal link to a page and title tag of the page being linked to is Big Green Widgets, I can make the title tag Buy Big Green Widgets. I tried to think of a phrase for the title tag that has a couple of more words than the anchor text of the internal link but the addition of one word, in my opinion, is the best way to describe what the page is about and if I add more, it won’t sound as good.

On the one hand, I think that it is not exact match by adding a word so there is some variation, but then I think that it is a word difference.

So my question is, how do you think that this is viewed by Google? Is this change seen as variation between the two and can it help me to deal with Penguin over optimization?

I have heard that it is not good to change the title tag a lot so before I go ahead and do that, I would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks.

[edited by: gouri at 3:44 am (utc) on Jul 18, 2012]

[tedster]

I would like to change the title tags where I have this situation because the way it is at the moment, I think that it is over optimized.

I would rather change the internal anchor text.

[gouri]

I would rather change the internal anchor text.

Well, the title tags, if I leave it, would be exact phrases that I am trying to rank for and I have heard that for title tags, it may be good to have more than the exact phrase for which you are trying to rank.

Would you still change the internal anchor text instead of the title tag? The change in the internal anchor text, at the moment, would be the addition of a word.

[tedster]

Let's forget about SEO ideas and theories for the moment and look at the intended, natural functions for the title element and anchor text. There's a good reason to keep what is natural in mind. The further a website bends what is natural, the more it's profile looks like too much SEO.

The title element of a page should announce to all users, human and bot, the topic of the page in a relatively short and sweet fashion.

Internal anchor text is naturally within the content of a different page. As such, its exact content is specific to the readers of that page. It's much more common for this text to vary, since the reasons for referring people from one page to a different page can vary. At the very least, some change in grammar and syntax would be common in order to make the sentence flow naturally.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

The title element of a page should announce to all users, human and bot, the topic of the page in a relatively short and sweet fashion.Internal anchor text is naturally within the content of a different page. As such, its exact content is specific to the readers of that page. It's much more common for this text to vary, since the reasons for referring people from one page to a different page can vary. At the very least, some change in grammar and syntax would be common in order to make the sentence flow naturally.

I have arrived late to the party but I am not so sure that this is right? If I have a page about Brown Leather Widgets I would use this as its title (short and sweet). If I also had a page about Black Leather Widgets then logically I may want to link to the Brown page using the same anchor text as its title?

For example, at the bottom of the brown page a link may say, "You may also want to have a look at our Black Leather Widgets, with this being the natural anchor text. I can think of no more appropriate text in this instance?

I would say that if G is classing this as spam then it has it wrong.

[themaninthejar]

@BDW - How about "Available in other colours; Black, Brown and White."

[blackpixel]

The more I analyze the more I think that there is various levels of Penguin. Some sites that got hit really hard are even omitted for a phrase in "" taken from homepage. And doing search for 'site:mydomain.com main keyword' homepage is not even listed in the first pages of site: results. Anyone seeing the same or similar issues with their penguinized sites?

[blackpixel]

Also search for homepage title in "", my site only showup when I include ommited results. I'm outranked by #*$! and other whois service sites also proxysites and other spammers.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

@BDW - How about "Available in other colours; Black, Brown and White."

That would also be valid but we should not have to think about this when what we are doing is natural and logical. If this is what is happening then google is wrong.

[gouri]

Internal anchor text is naturally within the content of a different page. As such, its exact content is specific to the readers of that page. It's much more common for this text to vary, since the reasons for referring people from one page to a different page can vary. At the very least, some change in grammar and syntax would be common in order to make the sentence flow naturally.

I agree with you, but for this page, and for the other pages on the site, the internal link is at the bottom of the page (after the main text in the body text) and links to the next page. For this reason, there is no change in grammar and syntax as you would probably see if the link is in a sentence, so there is no naturally occurring variation. The anchor text of the internal link and the title tag of the page being linked to are both the same (short and to the point), and I have to decide which one to vary.

At the moment, I am thinking that the title tag would be the one to change? Would you do the same?

[tedster]

No - but it's your site and you don't have to agree with me. In a situation like you described, I would not worry about duplication at all. I've got sites with patterns like that and they haven't seen any trouble.

[islandcoli]

For all those saying they are hoping for a recovery at the 90 day mark - Don't algorithmic penalties only get lifted once the problem has been fixed?

[diberry]

Penguin isn't a penalty. It's affected both penalized and non-penalized sites, so those of us without penalties or unnatural link warnings are just waiting on updates with no idea whether we've "fixed" the problem or if there even is a problem we can fix.

[gouri]

No - but it's your site and you don't have to agree with me. In a situation like you described, I would not worry about duplication at all. I've got sites with patterns like that and they haven't seen any trouble.

@tedster,

Thanks for the advice.

If you have sites with the patterns that I am describing and they haven't been affected, then I think that it is possible that another factor is affecting me.

One thing that I was thinking about, the sites that you have that have this pattern, is this pattern on a lot of pages or only on a small number of them? Do the sites have a lot of pages? If you had to think in percentage terms, about what percent of the pages have this pattern?

The sites that I am working on that have this pattern are not very big and have the pattern on many of the pages. It would be on over 50% of the pages.

[Kelowna]

As Matt Cutts announced, Penguin is the same as Panda it requires manual refreshing... so the only way to recover from it is to make changes, then wait for the refresh.

Where did you read anywhere that you had to "wait for the refresh" before your site will come back?

I "think" you are assuming something. Would not a manual running of the bird just be for catching new offenders? I have never heard of this refreshing as being for releasing sites, only the opposite.

If I am wrong then please post where you heard of this as I believe it will just time out like every other penalty...

Yes I said penalty as that is really what it is in every sense.

pen·al·ty
Noun:

1. A punishment imposed for breaking a law, rule, or contract.
2. A disadvantage or unpleasant experience suffered as the result of an action or circumstance.