Penguin concerns

[holmesy]

I recently joined a retail company who have been using an SEO agency for a few years.  Having done a bit of link profile analysis i'm more than a little concerned that we're a sitting duck for the dreaded penguin.

My main question is should i focus more on the number of actual links pointing at a page or the number of linking root domains? For example one of our pages has over 18000 links pointing at it but from only 39 root domains (immediate alarm bells!!). Most of the links are exact anchor text fro one particular term.

So far we haven't been hit but i'm not naive to think we're out of the woods yet.

[Highland]

It depends. If the sites linking to you are strong in their own ranks you might not be hit. If they're weak, it seems a lot more likely that Penguin might devalue them or issue penalties.

It also depends on the links themselves. Are these sitewide links in, say, a sidebar or footer? I am beginning to think that Penguin might be seeing them as paid links but I can't say that for sure yet.

[EGOL]

I recently joined a retail company...  So far we haven't been hit but i'm not naive to think we're out of the woods yet.

hmmm..... If I was a new guy and had this situation...  I would think about writing a very clear one-page memo to my bosses explaining... "what is penguin".... Show examples of your spammy links... explain what might happen to your rankings... and say what % of your traffic comes from google... and how that might hit revenue.

I would include a couple links to easy-to-understand articles about penguin by well known SEOs.

You don't want to be blamed for a disaster that occurs this summer that was caused by somebody else.

I would not bad-mouth the last SEO or the methods... lots of people did this stuff and continue to do it... just explain the risk and how to reduce it.

[holmesy]

Thanks for your response.

I've pretty much done exactly what you suggested already. I've managed expectations from the day I joined the company.

I don't particularly blame the SEO agency because i've done the same sort of link building myself during my time in agencies.

[holmesy]

The sites have decent DA and PA but most of the links in question are in blogrolls and sidebars rather than relevant bodies of content.  You or I would pick them straight away as paid links so I don't think it would take Google long to come to the same conclusion.