Dilemma Caused by Penguin 2.0

[Garya]

My home page was hit in the last update.
I have 2 choices as I know why it was hit.

I have a redirect from my old website that has 100 directory links all with the same keyword. These links are from 2002
Current home page has 40 links with the same keyword but newer links.
My site currently ranks 1 & 2 on bing and Yahoo, google somewhere 10+ pages deep.
My dilemma, How can I fix this without ruining my ranking on bing and yahoo?
1. What would you do?
a, Just remove the redirect with old links
b. Work on just removing the 40 new links
c. Combination of a & b
d. ?

[jemois]

I would go for d. Build a new website. Use different and improved content for the second website. This way you wouldn't loose your yahoo/bing traffic. It also depends how high this traffic is. For low traffic....just build a new website with the same content and remove the first one.

[martinacastro]

How many of those links have as anchor text: brand name, naked url, generic anchors (click here, website)?

[luckystrike]

building a new website - easier said than done - so you sacrifice your 2002 website just because google doesn't like it no more? Doesn't sound sensible to me - are we to dance at the whim of google? And what guarantees do you have that google won't suddenly dislike your new website because it is new or it doesn't have a brand or whatever

[Garya]

martinacastro

Most of the links from 2002 website that redirect to the home page have the exact anchor text xxxx real estate
so I could remove the re-direct or use the disavow tool. But not sure how this will effect the anything. I would hate to lose my bing and yahoo results.

[ColourOfSpring]

building a new website - easier said than done - so you sacrifice your 2002 website just because google doesn't like it no more? Doesn't sound sensible to me - are we to dance at the whim of google? And what guarantees do you have that google won't suddenly dislike your new website because it is new or it doesn't have a brand or whatever

I agree. Ironically, Google love brands, yet if we create our own brand that serves people well, we're better off wiping that brand off the face of the earth (that took years to build up) and embark on building a new brand if Google doesn't like the site that represents our brand because of some links pointing to it.

Personally I've got 2 sites that got hit by Penguin 1.0 but get a lot of type in traffic still. One gets 250 hits a day, 90% of the traffic is outside of Google. Google would love me to start again, but I refuse to, and it's a shame that a lot of people will never discover these sites (but will be sent to eBay or Amazon instead).

[luckystrike]

and the thing there is something seriously wrong in the rankings - just type casino or online casino in google [one of the most competitive areas] - some websites there with really shallow content don't deserve to be there. Ironically it seems that [one of the biggest casino brands] has lost rankings with this update.

I say hold on there guys - either they improve rankings or some other competitor will rise and take google. People and us webmasters who put so much work deserve better.

[edited by: tedster at 1:31 pm (utc) on May 26, 2013]
[edit reason] no specifics, please [/edit]

[ColourOfSpring]

and the thing there is something seriously wrong in the rankings - just type casino or online casino in google [one of the most competitive areas] - some websites there with really shallow content don't deserve to be there. Ironically it seems that [one of the biggest casino brands] has lost rankings with this update.

In my experience, Google don't seem to care about (or can't fix) embarrassingly bad SERPs. Quality has gone out of the window - Google have put a band-aid over these bad SERPs with the host crowding of "fall-back" domains like eBay and Amazon. However, these results rarely stand up to any scrutiny or actually give people quality results, but on the face of it they "look right" (recognisable brands) to the casual surfer. Do Google want searchers to keep going to Amazon and eBay? NO. It will follow that many people will simply go to eBay and Amazon directly. Google want searchers to go to Google every time they start their eCommerce search. But in my opinion it's out of desperation that they use these big well known brands to cover up even worse SERPs that would appear - because there's a dearth of quality independent sites that haven't been deemed by Google to be spam. We're all spam these days it seems. The slightest thing can trigger your site to be labelled spam and 5 or 10 years of reputation is wiped out, and you won't recover either (unless you're a big brand that makes the SEO media news and then Matt Cutts personally responds to you and you're ranking again in days).

[edited by: tedster at 1:33 pm (utc) on May 26, 2013]
[edit reason] edited out specifics [/edit]

[atlrus]

Most of the links from 2002 website that redirect to the home page have the exact anchor text xxxx real estate
so I could remove the re-direct or use the disavow tool. But not sure how this will effect the anything. I would hate to lose my bing and yahoo results.

There is no dilemma here, just create a new page for google, maybe xxx_real_estate.html and focus google targeting to it and Bing/Yahoo - to your home page.

[diberry]

Those of you talking about building a new site - are you suggesting blocking Googlebot from the old one, and blocking the other bots from the new one? So only Google sees the new site, but the old one remains intact for Bing and the others?

[Savanadry]

Those of you talking about building a new site - are you suggesting blocking Googlebot from the old one, and blocking the other bots from the new one? So only Google sees the new site, but the old one remains intact for Bing and the others?

That could be a stroke of genius there - would this work?