life after penguin - recovery tips from ian howells

Life After PenguinDiagnose, Recover, Rebuild

Ian Howells@ianhowells

DIAGNOSE

Diagnosis Steps

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1. Confirm the date you got hit

2. Confirm if your hit is site-wide or page specific

3. Find the problem areas

In Case You’ve Been Asleep

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April 24th – Shit got real.

Which Update Hit Me?

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Google’s rolling out multiple updates in a short time frame.

3/19 – BMR/ALN get de-indexed4/19 – Panda 3.54/24 – Penguin4/27 – Panda 3.65/26 – Penguin 1.1

Site-Wide or Page Specific?

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1. Did every page lose it’s rankings?

2. Can you rank a new page for a lower competition term?

RECOVER

Causes

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Luckily, this isn’t all that complicated.

We’re essentially looking at:

1. Over-optimized anchor text2. Lots of low quality, off-topic links

More than 65% Anchor? Good Luck Bro(image via @MicrositeMaster - http://bit.ly/PrEduZ )

RECOVERY EXAMPLES

WPMU.org Recovery

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Ross Hudgens worked with WPMU.org to recover by…

1. Removing 15,000 site-wide footer links from an owned propertya. Matt Cutts says this did it

2. Misc on-site issues like canonical URLs

WPMU.org’s Recovery(image via @rosshudgens - http://mz.cm/MwwveE )

My MFA Test

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I started wondering if the penalty could really just be linked to the URL.

Could I really just paste the content onto a new URL and rank off my content and what’s left of my domain authority?

Sure Can

My MFA Test

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I then tested if a 301 from the “penalized” page will pass the ranking hit to the new URL.

YUP – Vanished 5 Days Later

REBUILD

What We Already Know

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Based on my tests thus far, if your penalty is just on the page level, you can start over with the same domain.

What We Already Know

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Unless it torched your home page.

Then, you might just be screwed – unless you control a huge chunk of your links like WPMU did, or can get them removed.

What We Already Know

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I haven’t seen any duplicate content issue from copy/pasting old content to a brand new page.

What We Already Know

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You can’t, however, keep those links by 301’ing them into your new URL.

Rebuild

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If your home page is safe, start moving your torched pages to new URLs without any 301 redirect and go back to link building.

Rebuild

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For solid links to your old (now dead) URLs – you’ll need to do outreach to get them changed to your new URL.

Rebuild

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The alternative to moving pages would be to find your spam links and get them taken down… and then wait for the next refresh/update.

Rebuild

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I took one look at how much work that would be, and promptly decided that trying that would be reserved for the crazy and desperate.

MORE TESTING

On-Going Testing

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I’m currently looking into theimpacts of…

302 redirectsCanonical TagsAlternate Home PagesCross-Domain 301’s

302 Redirects

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Would a 302 pass (even some) ranking benefit without passing the penalty?

Canonical Tag

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Can you pass some ranking benefit without passing the penalty via the Canonical Tag?

Alternate Home Pages

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If my home page is torched, can I switch my home page to be /index.php or /home/ and use a 302 or canonical from the root of the .com to skirt the penalty?

Cross-Domain 301

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If these 301’s are poison (which they seem to be) – will that hold true if I point to a separate domain?

Negative SEO?

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If the other page is targeting the same keywords that I was, could you use a 301 like this for negative SEO?

An “I’m Innocent!” Loophole?

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If Google’s protecting against negative SEO – can you move your content to a new domain and rank it with the help of a 301 from your torched domain?

I DON’T KNOW YET.BUT, I’LL LET YOU KNOW.

SOON.

Ian Howells

@ianhowellshalo18.com