Lost 50% google traffic in one day - panic?

[GeorgFranz]

Hi,

now I've removed a lot of seo onpage tweaks. We will see if this would help something. I will write a detailled report later on.

Best wishes,
Georg.

[Guest]

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[Dr-Pete]

Just want to let people know that I believe this is just an overall quality control form. It's worth a try, but I don't expect they'll take action on individual sites (I could be wrong, but don't get your hopes up, in other words).

[Dr-Pete]

It's hard to tell without seeing your copy, but it sounds like you're talking about internal links within your own site. Google is talking about outbound links. Internal anchor text (linking within your site) is rarely penalized.

[GeorgFranz]

Hi Josh,

thank you very much for your analysis!!!

How do you find out if a page / domain is "spam flagged"? Do they harm our site?

Best wishes,

Georg.

[GeorgFranz]

Hi girls + boys,

after being so frustraded about this penguin update, I've started a blog today: The SEO Stories (@SEOStories)

I will there report my activities to bring my site back to the top rankings. I would be glad about some support...

I hope, you will like my kind of humour...

http://www.seo-stories.com/post/21985421183/google-called-the-25th-april-2012-ranking-update

Best wishes,
Georg.

[randfish]

Hi Dean - not sure we could (or would want to) segment Q+A or the blog/YOUmoz to create a sub-section specifically about sites being penalized by Google spam updates. However, it sounds like some folks in this thread, like Georg below, may take this upon themselves (which is awesome).

Little known story - SEOmoz's more prominent focus on community began in earnest after a large exodus of members from another forum way back in 2004.

[AlanMosley]

You must remember, that those that have been penalized, have been taking ranking from those that have been doing the right thing, If you rankings came from spam tacktics, you may not have deserved the #1 rankings you had.

If you had come to this forum over the last few years and taken the advice given, you may not have been penalized.

If you really believe that you have done nothing wrong, then you need to talk to google.

[GeorgFranz]

Hi Alan,

if it would be that easy...

I will write a blog post about all our seo activities in the past years and the reason why we did this. I would ask you again after you know all details...

@ Rand: Thanks! Well, it took 3h to have a domain, a website and got alltogether into the google index... I wrote a separate blog post about that

Best wishes,

Georg.

[GeorgFranz]

Hi girls and guys,

nothing has been changed so far. But I've written a new blog post:

After the penguin update disaster: Confessions of a bad seo guy: http://www.seo-stories.com/post/22062656569/after-the-penguin-update-disaster-confessions-of-a-bad

@ Alan: In this post I've described the reasons of our activities.

Best wishes,
Georg.

[AlanMosley]

I believe you are right, i think i have a site that is been hit, yet I cant see what couild be wrong.

Maybe i spoke too soon

[dean1986]

HI Rand, I understand where you are coming from as SEOmoz is a white hat community. However, when I started my business and did not know anything about SEO, I used these spam techniques for the simple reason I didnt know any better and thought that was SEO. Does this make me bad? I dont think it does. Since then, 5 years ago I have come a long way in SEO and consider myself a white hat marketer.

I wouldn't want to put my business at risk with dodgy SEO techniques. However, I did when I was clueless. Now I want to fix it. I'm sure many webmasters on this forum are on the same boat as me.

[GeorgFranz]

Hi girls & boys,

today, I've made some on page analysis. I've found out that Google is delivering the "wrong" page from our site at several keywords.

I think this is a very strong signal that onpage optimization is penalized in some way.

But have a look at my new blog post:

Penguin ranking analysis - downgraded due to on page over optimization

Best wishes,
Georg.

[dean1986]

good observation. let us know how you get on. Thanks

[sunny.popali]

Good start at SEO Stories, good place for many affected sites... We have seen all drops everywhere... any front runners ?

[gXe]

I'm an SEO and during our monthly reporting it became very clear that we were effected by Penguin. I did a search on two of our larger clients for 4/23 through 4/27 and it was like a spiral into h@#$&. We don't believe it was from on-page SEO and we are HUGE white hat proponents, but it would appear that our meta tags may be the culprit.

We are being proactive with our clients and telling them about the update and that they are going to notice alot of downward rankings. In the meantime, a lot of sleepless nights rewriting code and content. Ahh, the joy of being an SEO.

Does anyone know if we need to be proactive in resubmitting the sites in Webmaster Tools, or on a waiting game to see if the changes have been picked up in a positive way?

[Guest]

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[diywm]

I took  "simply falling down in the SERPs" to mean that it's preferable to an actual penalty. We are all rising or falling in the SERPs for every keyword every day according to what changes happen in and around our sites and in and around other people's sites.

Google is trying to use a bunch of signals to imply authority and quality and along the way they are bound to judge some well intentioned sites wrongly.   Someone I know has a site full of original and useful content. But he also has a whole bunch of duplicate content pages lying around which he forgot about from months ago, and a long list of duplicated archive pages due to poor use of tags in WordPress.  He's placed a large ad above the fold on every page and has a high code to content ratio on the page. He has poor but not non-existent social interaction on his site and his site as a home-made feel to it - it also looks dis-organised - which I tend to think prevents people from ever engaging with his stuff as they can't see the article for all the surrounding clutter.  He uses GA so G knows about his bounce rate too.   You can't fault him on his content, but in the past when he didn't know better he did some fake link building but he doesn't do it any more.

He lost 75% of his traffic on 24th April.   At least if this a result of  "simply falling down in the SERPs", he can simply climb back up with a  few changes. Except for the bad links.

I'm not sure what anyone can do about those, but then I am (reliably) told Penguin had nothing to do with inbound links.

Liz

[GeorgFranz]

Here is the complete analysis why we have lost our rankings: http://www.seo-stories.com/post/22524770229/how-to-get-back-the-rankings-after-the-penguin-update

Furthermore I've described all our actions so far to regain our rankings after the penguin ate the half of our fish.

[BrianCC]

"...Internal anchor text (linking within your site) is rarely penalized."

I agree that it's rarely penalized, but based on some things I'm seeing, I think a site with exceptionally high percentages of exact match internal anchor text links to category pages can (perhaps unintentionally) be caught in the Penguin net. Not conclusive just yet, but it really looks like this is the case with a site I'm working on.

The term "collateral damage" comes to mind.