Penguin 2.1 - Our reaction strategy

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I've read a lot of posts on Penguin 2.1 and if it did or didn't hurt you, but haven't found much on what to do it you are one of the 6 out of 10 people reporting negative results, so I'll tell you my two cents and what my team is doing and you can take it for what it's worth. I'll return in a few weeks with results as usual.

Suffice to say we have no existing clients that were penalised, but man do we have a lot of new inquiries since the Oct 6th! I cannot guarantee this is the right strategy, but I'll walk you through our thinking and tell you why we do what we are doing.

1.The first thing you need to do is get the free trial of Link Research Tools. (LinkResearchTools.com) You will be using their DeTox tool. Depending on the number of back links you have (use majestic SEO to determine a close number - Free) and subscribe tot he most appropriate plan. (If you are an Affiliate drop me a line and I'll run one for you provided you don't have over 5000 links)

2.Manually go through each link. LRT will consider a link toxic if it isn't indexed. THIS DOESN'T MEAN IT'S BAD. Check the PR and the site and be sure it's not a directory or other negative site, or a link farm or even in a bad neighbourhood (LRT has a tool for this in their arsenal as well). If none of these are the case, YOU need to get it indexed. Use XIndexer, Pingomatic or even a manual submission through WMC

3.LRT has another tool that will strip the contact details from the sites linking to you but I haven't had much success with it yet. There are several tools out there for this, or you can go to Netsol and get the webmasters contact details. Have a cookie-cutter email ready requesting that the link be removed or the anchor text changed. (You are doing this to get rid of bad links but since you are already doing, or paying someone to do this technique, you may as well add the good links that you would like to change anchor text on and request that from the other good sites and do them as well)

If you believe your site's ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site. You should still make every effort to clean up unnatural links pointing to your site. Simply disavowing them isn't enough.

The problem I have found with these types of comments is that Google does not provide a facility to upload any documents proving your efforts to contact the Webmasters, so how are they going to use this as a factor?

I guess they just look at the number of links that have been recently removed. This opens the door to a lot of questions such as; can I use landing page manipulation to send bad links to a 404? Can I use a robots.txt exclusion? Can I request deindexation/exclusion of a bad URL? Will any of these count as making an effort?

4.Create a Disavow file in LRT. Manually go through the disavow file that this creates. I usually strip out the header information in the text file that it creates. Submit.

I can verify the Disavow file processing time as of last week was about ten days but they say 2-3 weeks. Recently we had a client with a Detox score of 1200. You can't get higher than that. Within 2 months we had them down to 604 and are still working.

This is NOT a one-off task. You will need to do this every single month. Our team already has in in their bi-weekly To-Do list.

So that takes care of the nasty back links for now. In the interim, here are several other things that we are doing, and the reasons we are doing them;

- PROBLEM - On the Wordpress themes we have (we build 1500-2000 website networks for back link strategies using primarily WP) in place are mostly ZAlive or Customizer which take up 2/3 of the "above the fold" area.
- FIX - It was stated a while by Google that as much content as possible needs to go above the fold. No biggie, just change to a compatible theme

- PROBLEM - We run the Link Juice Recovery tool (LRT) and broken links tool and fine lots of both, especially 302's and 301's. The 302's are temporary redirects which Google frowns on. 302 in the past were loopholes for hackers, especially in the Affiliate atmosphere. 301's on the other hand are fine to replace them, but on all existing and 302 conversions we are pointing them at internal pages or consolidation with htaccess files, depending on the site's needs. The theory that we have, based on various forums and comments from Google, is that 301's pointing at your homepage lose all value. They have said to point them at internal related pages.
The other opinion swirling is that websites that redirect their homepage to a different page (I.e. yoursite.com redirected to yoursite.com/cart) is not recommended as you lose a fraction (10-15%) of your PR, or trust and authority, but doing this.
FIX - Take redirects off root url. Change 302's to 301's. Point 301's to related internal pages or posts.

- PROBLEM - Too many sitewide links

- FIX - Reduce front page and template links to under 100. Nofollow non-relevant navigational links in the template that do not benefit keyword search

We are also taking existing posts and adding outbound links to trusted sites where we didn't already, but take the last network we built; 1850 websites optimised on wordpress and 70% unique content. All of these posts had links either to the moneysite (very few though), or they had links to social media or press releases, and an additional link out to a trusted or high ranking non-competitor. The sites are under 6 months old. NOT ONE RECEIVED A PENALTY whether stated or not from Google.

I have an army of ODesk writers that I trained up on Wordpress and basic SEO and they populate the top 10 of the 1850 NETWORK sites with professionally written content. We also bought bulk (100,000) unique and 100% readable content/articles and have written a few custom wordpress programs that auto-populate and do various other tasks.

The last task we are doing is to submit press releases through ABNewswire and PRWeb. These have two links each max. One to the moneysite and one to a high-ranking or trusted site (or even an edu or gov if applicable). This can get expensive but these will create quite a few great links. But be vigilant; many of the sites these services submit to are also high risk sites so use your disavow tool regularly or get the article indexed if this is the reason for the risk. I install the Onlywire toolbar button and take two seconds to submit it through 40 or so social bookmarking sites after it is published.

You can also look at your competitors link profile and make adjustments there. Plenty of information and tools available out there for this.

Again I do not know if these methods will be successful, but common sense says this is what Google is looking for when they say this:

April 24th, 2012;

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfil their information needs

.

This differs in statement I recall in the past...the old "Content is King" has always been around, but I think Google is looking for other triggers now such as outbound, followed links to reputable, trustworthy and high-ranking websites.

We're actioning all of the above and in different formulas so we can see what is and isn't working, and what combinations work the best. We'll be sure to post the results asap.

GaryTheScubaGuy

[RacingJim]

Great post, very helpful and I'll keep that in mind when link building and looking at my link profile. I haven't been hit and haven't overdone link building, but it's always good to know this stuff in case the worst happens.

[Muppet]

- PROBLEM - Too many sitewide links

- FIX - Reduce front page and template links to under 100. Nofollow non-relevant navigational links in the template that do not benefit keyword search

What the? I completely disagree with this interpretation.

It is clear from the penalty description that Google is telling you that they think that you are selling OUTBOUND links on your site. You have a penalty that applies to the entire site - i.e. "sitewide match". It has nothing to do with sitewide links and no amount of messing around with internal navigational links is going to make a difference to that.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

We all have interpretations. I didn't ask you to agree, hence the title - Our Reaction Strategy. You do what you think is right. At the end of the day there is a matter of link volume on every page regardless of where it's linking.

The point is every link doesn't point to a relevant page or rank you so adding nofollows and funnelling link juice is still a viable strategy and works, they just call it "siloing" now.

Oh, and don't sell links.

(BTW - this site, and a few dozen others were not selling links so unfortunately this was Google's interpretation of the existing links, therefor the only recommendation as well)

[Muppet]

My "interpretation" is based on exactly what Google has clearly told you with that penalty message. It is not an ambiguous message so I can't see how it could be interpreted it any other way.

I can think of many reasons why Google might mistakenly think that links have been sold on a site, even though they were not. So I do not doubt you on that point. However I have a hard time trying to think of a reason why they would apply a manual penalty for linking to outbound sites based on the number of internal links on a sitewide menu pointing to pages on your own domain. That doesn't make sense at all.

Also, I'm open to learning so if you do have a good explanation as to why or how you have connected those dots I'm all ears.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

I guess it would be Google saying more than 100 links anywhere isn't good off of any page to anywhere.

...And Muppet...this doesn't come from guesses, I have 5 clients in this scenario and I only speak from experience, not conjecture

Just trying to get some fb if anyone else is here

[gamblerscompendium]

Interesting a is know there are some saddos out there who have negative seo campaigns against websites surely google should find a way around this too as its jsut not fair.

its hard to keep up with some backlinks as once your sites been around a while it seems to leave a footprint everywhere especially when ppl are looking you up with seo tools etc

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Yea it's a shame it's not a fair world void of vindictive business practices. Can't we just do a better job for less money? hmmmmm

If you want to play by their world though here you go: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xD6-r1qRkH.../s1600/bhs.png

Yea, it's a shame, but it's a big dog porch and your competition doesn't play fair...ruff ruff

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Good looking site btw - http://www.gamblerscompendium.com/

[thebookiesoffers]

Yea it's a shame it's not a fair world void of vindictive business practices. Can't we just do a better job for less money? hmmmmm

If you want to play by their world though here you go: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xD6-r1qRkH.../s1600/bhs.png

Yea, it's a shame, but it's a big dog porch and your competition doesn't play fair...ruff ruff

If that is a real link to a firm that does negative seo that is one of the worse posts I have ever seen on here!!!!!!!!

especially someone who's supposed to be an seo mod on here

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Bookie - you apparently have a bone and are looking for a fight eh? Well I'm not up for it mate.

Just because you don't want to see or hear it doesn't mean it isn't happening. If you want sugar coating there are plenty of places for you...here I prefer to let everyone know exactly what's going on and how it's being done.

There are 3 kinds of people in this world; those who watch it happen, those who make it happen, and those that wondered what happened.

Whether you agree with it or not, don't throw stones at someone trying to help you...your burning bridges, I am simply telling you what your competitor may or may not be doing...and posting a link is far from deserving your disrespect, especially in a public forum.

Pick your battles more carefully.

[thebookiesoffers]

Bookie - you apparently have a bone and are looking for a fight eh?

don't talk wet, I just think that is a really stupid post and there is no need for it here. If people want to use that sort of **** service fine, but don't make it easy for them eh

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Yea it took 1/2 minute and a search to find that mate. I want to know anything and preferably everything my competitors are doing - it's a dog-eat-dog business. Negative SEO has been around forever. If you take the time to read through my original post here you'll see I tell you how to kill negative SEO.

I think you have me confused mate - I give everything away - good and bad, and I do both. We can paint pretty blue skies with rainbows and all, but at the end of the day if your competition is killing you by buying a ton of bad links through Backlinks.com or TextLinks.com there is little you can do about it right? Except when someone like me comes along and tells you HOW they are doing it, and HOW to kill it.

SENuke? GScraper? HRefer? Do you not know about these?

Ignoring the problem won't make it disappear. Reread my original post Mate - I'm not teaching BH I'm lighting the beacon so you, or other members, know how these idiots are doing it and how to combat.

Don't kill the messenger and certainly don't throw ugly stones at someone trying to help.

As I said - pick your battles. this isn't one of them.

[thebookiesoffers]

As I said - pick your battles. this isn't one of them.

What you on about 'battles'? I stand by my first comment, I think it's a stupid thing to post. I asked the admins to delete the link earlier I think it's that stupid, up to them whether they do or not, but get this bone and battle thing out your head mate, I don't know you nor care who posted it, if it was some of the people on here that I know personally and like I would posted exactly the same response

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

run with that