Another Penalty Question - Should I Start from Scratch?

[DaveDawson]

I've seen many questions on google penalties recently. Not really sure where to go from here. I realised a year or so we would be living on borrowed time with our link building methods. We have been really successful in the past and are keen to build a site that has a bit more longevity.

We have not received a warning from google but have lost pretty much all of our ranking for everything.

My question is with our backlink profile as it is. Building links from various blog networks for the past 3 years. Is it just worth rebranding and starting from scratch rather than trying to get over a million links removed?

We have a lot of content that I guess could be classed as spam.  Should I really remove all of the content? or leave it running as we are still getting some traffic from other marketing activities.

Or should I just get a new domain and transfer all the decent content?

[Mark_Ginsberg]

Hi David,

When did the drop in rankings take place? After the blog network deindexation? After the latest Panda release? After Penguin?

From the way you've phrased your question, it sounds like you know the answer already. You have a lot of spammy content, lots of problematic links, and want to do things, as you phrased it, for a bit more longevity.

It sounds to me it'll be more cost efficient to start from scratch, do it properly this time, building with long term goals and strategy regarding site design, content creation, and link building, than to clean up everything and work from there.

Hope this helps,

Mark