google penalties: the diagnosis & the cure
DESCRIPTION
At the MnSearch Snippet #13 event held at Spyder Trap in Minneapolis, MN on April 30, 2014, Jake McCormick and Peter Quale presented his slidedeck "Google Penalties: The Diagnosis & The Cure."TRANSCRIPT
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GOOGLE PENALTIES: THE DIAGNOSIS & THE CURE
April 30, 2014
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Jake McCormick
• Search Marketing Manager
• Certified in Google Analytics & BrightEdge
• Experience includes B2B, B2C, eCommerce, lead generation, small business, big business, local SEO & journalism
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Peter Quale
• SEO Master Practitioner
• Aquarius
• Likes: Horses, movies, Japanese food
• Dislikes: Musicals,
tight shoes, counterfeit money
• Should message me: If you have any weird stories or questions/thoughts about SEO.
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SO, (MAYBE) YOU’VE BEEN PENALIZED!
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Organic Traffic Plummets. Rankings Disappear.
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Number 1 Rule
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Pre-Investigation Caveats
• Bad SEO ≠ Penalty– Natural selection through algorithm updates
• Search results construction– 7-Pack, Knowledge Graph, One-Box, PLAs, etc.
• All penalties are not created equal
• Document, document, document everything
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Tom Critchlow’s Penalty Diagnosis Flow Chart
http://nhale.co/mnsearch1
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Where to Start: Google Analytics• How much traffic lost? When?• Timeline of known algorithm updates
vs. traffic drops–Mozcast, Algoroo
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Where to Start: Webmaster Tools
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When is it NOT a Penalty?
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OFF-SITE PENALTIES
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No Messages, No Problem?
• Good, but…– A diagnostic dead
end–Manual
notifications give you a starting point, direct contact with Google
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BACKLINK AUDITS:Your Penalty Accountabilabuddy
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Step 1: Backlink Audit Foundation• Historical transparency is crucial– Question 1: Did you pay for links?– Question 2: Are you lying?
• Dredge up all link building documents– Outsourced contracts, strategic plans,
outreach lists, payment receipts, former employees
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Step 2: Backlink Compilation
• Use multiple indexes, filter duplicate domains/pages– Google Webmaster Tools–Majestic SEO– Link Research Tools–Moz Open Site Explorer– Ahrefs– Xenu Link Sleuth
• The more links, the better– A handful of bad links don’t trigger a penalty
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Step 3: Evaluate Backlinks
• Trends in site type– Industry-related, general directories,
Phillipino mommy blogs
• Linking patterns– If possible, crawl links (highlights patterns)– Pages being linked– Link networks– Site-wide links– Reciprocal links
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COMMON VIOLATIONS
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Off-Page Violation 1:
Exact Match Anchor Text
• Ratio of homepage vs. internal pages
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Off-Page Violation 2:
Links-to-Domain Ratio
35-to-1 link to domain ratio
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Off-Page Violation 3:
Irrelevant Content
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Off-Page Violation 4:
‘Low Authority’ Sites
• Thin word count, exact match anchor text
Only content on homepage All external links to
same website
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More Link Patterns
• Cloaked links• Paid links• Comment, forum links• Who do sites linking to you link to?
Who links to them? (What kind of neighbors do you have?)
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Step 4: Link Segmentation
• What “defines” a spam link?–May seem obvious, but not all links are
discoverable via crawler tools–When in doubt, treat as spam
• Organize into spreadsheet– Linking URL– Linked URL– Anchor text– Contact information
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Step 5: Request Link Removal
• Website contact form• Network Solutions Whois Tool• LinkedIn• Facebook• Tweet at them – #publicshaming
Again, document everything.
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Step 6: Disavow Links Tool
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ON-SITE PENALTIES
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Google Webmaster Tools
• Helps identify:– Duplicate titles/meta descriptions
(content)– Keyword patterns– Index problems– Internal link popularity
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Screaming Frog Is Your Best Friend
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Site Crawl
• Identifies:– Duplicate content– Keyword stuffing– Broken pages/links– Duplicate meta tags– Click depth– Crawl directives (index, nofollow)
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Review Every Page on the Site
• Even one page of spam, poor quality or thin content can hurt an entire site.
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COMMON VIOLATIONS
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On-Page Violation 1:
‘Thin’ Content
• Generally < 500 words
• No value to users beyond keyword validation
• What’s the ‘intent’ of this page? Used to be a
link
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On-Page Violation 2:
Keyword Stuffing
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On-Page Violation 3:
Exact Match Internal Anchor Text
“Index, follow” footer links + Hard to read text = Fail
Exact match link on homepage…pointing to homepage
Exact match link on homepage…pointing to homepage
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On-Page Violation 3:
Exact Match Internal Anchor Text
• What to do with exact match internal anchor text?
Get rid of them. All of them. Especially site-wide footer links.– If removal is not an option, then
rel=“nofollow”.
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More On-Page Violations
• Hidden content• Hidden links• Site-wide footer links• Duplicate content• Anything resembling this:– “Thanks for еvery othеr informative site.
Ԝheгe еlse mɑy јust I ɑm gеtting tҺat type of informаtion written іn ѕuch a perfect mеans?”• Sales Training videos in Hindi
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PENALTY-PROOFING YOUR SITE
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Know Your Exact Site Size
• Crawl your site regularly– Screaming Frog–Microsoft IIS SEO
Toolkit
• Compare the results to Google and Bing Indexes
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Know Your Exact Site Size
• Maintain a highly accurate sitemap.xml file.
• Reconcile submitted URLs vs. crawled URLs.
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Best Medicine of All
• Writing better content!
• Never discount the value of a good content strategy guiding excellent writers.
• If you need help:– http://www.hemingwayapp.com – Really
spruces up lousy copy!– https://readability-score.com – Analyzes text
and provides four different test scores
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Writing for Hummingbird
• “How is the searcher asking for something?”
• Expand FAQs and support copy to attract inquiry based searches:–Who, what, why, where and how– Conversational search– Siri, Google Now, MS Cortana
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PRECAUTIONS
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Precautions:
Protect your IP address
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Precautions:
Require a Host Header!
Revenge Domains• CrabbyStewardess.com• AssyAir.com• Plane-Crash-Today.com
Spoofed Exact Match Domains• Best-Detroit-Travel-4-Kids.com• Spirit-Airlines-Air-Travel-Planes.com• SpiritSpiritSpiritSpirit.com
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Precautions:
Blog Spam
• If you have a blog attached to a big brand, make sure comments are NOT open. Comment spamming is the easiest way to attack a site.
• If comments must remain open, moderate them and block IPs from spam offenders.
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Precautions:
Content Scraping
• Do occasional exact match searches on your content to make sure it has not been scraped.
• Especially important for employment listings, directories and blogs.
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Takeaways
• The penalty investigation process is time-consuming, critical, and simple
• Document, document, document everything
• Recovery has no “one size fits all” timetable
• Fix your penalties all at once and as quickly as you can
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NOW, RELAX.
It’s all going to turn out fine.
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QUESTIONS?
Thanks to the great people at MnSearch for having us and thank YOU!
Jake McCormick – @Jake_BrewHoopPeter Quale – @pbq
Art by Danial Ryan - http://danial-ryan.tumblr.com/