Site Had Penalty Ages Ago. Is It Time To Get Back?

[Pjman]

I have a Reference site that I put together in 2007. I admittedly was a member of the founding content-based article link network. Before google took a stance on it. It seemed some what legit, at the time. Submit a 700 word article and you put a link to you in it.

Once Google took a stance the site was slapped in 2009. A bad links notice showed up in my Web Master Tools for it. I basically went on to other projects in 2009.

I just looked at the stats of the site and see that about 10,000 people are visiting and using the site daily. The webmasters tools and links look healthy too.

Do you think given the 9 years since the slap, the site can still grow?

or

Will old penalties still have a lasting affect and limit growth potential?

[goodroi]

There are a bunch of variables you need to think about when evaluating old sites. I like to start by asking myself what is worthy of salvaging? Is there great content? Great links? What about exact match domain? What is the plan to resurrect & monetize it? Is the industry growing or shrinking? How much money will it need to update the site? What is my projected profit?

Simply getting traffic is not a reason to resurrect an old site. I need to have a good chance at turning a profit to justify the work in updating & maintaining another website. A 9 year old site likely needs a new design that is mobile friendly, speed optimized, migrated over to https and that doesn't even talk about the work updating the old content with the new consumer vocabulary that most likely has changed over the last 9 years.

[bwnbwn]

you just noticed 10k were hitting the site? May I ask what type of traffic counter are you using?

[Pjman]

@goodroi

Great thoughts. A lot to ponder. Thx. The content is great and highly valued by searchers still.

@bwnbwn

I used simple Log Analyzer at first. I just installed Google Analytics and it is backing it up, roughly 8-12K visitors daily.