Starting fresh on a new url after serious Penguin update down rank

[Silasrose]

Hi friends

My site www.acupunctureclinicvictoriabc.com was recently hit by the penguin update and i dropped to page 5 of local searchs for my key words.  A while back I had some bad link building done and now paying for it:(

I thought the disavow tool (used 4 months ago) would deal with this issue but apparently not

The current url is feeling like a lost cause.

My question is if I start fresh on a new url, can I use my old content (or even clone the site and move it to a new url) without being punished for duplicate content on the new site?

Any recommendations for starting fresh?

I really appreciate any thoughts on this matter, as I am feeling a bit lost and bummed about this issue

thanks!

[AlanBleiweiss]

First of all, that web address is not working so there's no way for anyone here who might have guidance, to be able to review anything.

Beyond that, if you're in a worst case situation, and you absolutely believe a new domain name is called for, yes, you can migrate the content of the old site over.  However if you perform "301" redirects from the old site to the new site, some people have made anecdotal claims that doing so carries the bad link signals.

In that scenario, when the new site launches, the old site needs to be blocked from indexation to prevent duplicate content issues.

The other major issue I have found is sites are more likely to take a major hit for any high level flawed SEO if other aspects of SEO are also severely flawed.  So for example, if the site was already weak on-site or over-optimized up to the edge of acceptability on-site, that site is more likely to have been nailed in a Penguin type update.

So that then begs the question - is the content you want to retain truly high quality and strong enough outside of the off-site signals? From topical focus to topical depth to internal linking methods and so on...

[Silasrose]

HI Alan

thanks for your post and sorry for the false url - it is actually -  www.acupunctureclinicvictoriabc.ca

In regards to content, I definitely made mistakes with key word stuffing in the past, but thought I had corrected this issue

based on the reports from SEOmoz

Grade A for on page and 31 for site authority

I did get 29 crawl errors (most due to duplicate content) and 91 crawl warnings (related to missing meta descriptions)

The issue seems to be with the bad links.  There are currently 141 pointing to the site, I disavowed a bunch already

Based on me fixing the issues mentioned an focusing on natural link building from here on in I might recover over time?many thanks!Silas

[Njave_MCP]

Well first ask yourself this question: Are the links leftover after disavow tool was put to use quality ones? I mean, people always say their disavow tool hadn't worked and they haven't fully recovered. It is almost always the issue of the leftover links not posing any relevance to move you up in rankings. Nothing more.

Honestly I wouldn't scrape that site by any means. Your PageRank 3 is still good, means you do have some good links coming to your site and doing rash decisions just a short time have passed after a major algorithm change is never a good thing to do. This means your rankings may improve later on when all things settle down.

But the biggest question still stands. Are you having a good amount of high-quality and healthy links, natural links, pointing to various aspects of your website? Or are you now leftover with just a few good links when you disavowed all the bad ones? Thanks!

[Silasrose]

Thanks Vanja

yes I think you are right about letting cooler heads prevail

Do you think that I need to hunt down those bad links or will google forgive my sins over time?

I am not clear wither bad links put you on a permanent s$#t list

cheers

Silas

[Njave_MCP]

My idea is always do one thirds of everything - one third of time to contact spammy website owners to remove them, one third to have a fresh list of disavowed links and one third of building quality, healthy and great links through user help, great content, excellent services and such. Third part is the most important! I've seen from some cases on the web where websites had 300-400 spammy link domains pointing to them, algorithm penalty, rankings dropped, website owners and webmasters taking a complete turn in content creation, service creation, where the sites recovered and ranked on top pages for several keywords later on.

My thoughts are always make a website for human beings and provide a useful product, service, article, idea or whatnot. It will then help a great deal to make a website which garners tons of healthy and natural links since people find your site helpful and amazing. Nothing else is needed.

A link portfolio of a few hundred spammy links is what most sites come with these days. Unfortunately how ever Google and a ton of experts say negative link building is not that common, it really does get around in some highly competitive niches. Google has released the disavow tool just for that and it should definitely be used if you experience problems.

But bear in mind, Google devalues some spammy links with their ongoing daily procedures. When a website has 10-20 healthy links and 100-200 spammy ones which get devalued, rankings drop. Not just because there's a penalty, but because there simply aren't that much high quality links to start with.

Hope it clears it up somewhat. Thanks!

[Silasrose]

Hi Vanja

yes I think i have learned my lesson from this experience

I am still confused on how to get natural links, I do have some good content but this is a topic I will have research more

thanks for your thoughts

Silas

[Njave_MCP]

Since I've been a webmaster at several sites, some of them got hit by spammy links. Not going into why and how, the simple solution was always content for us! Getting a good article on why is acupuncture great, getting an article about real life help scenarios, you know, anything and everything an average reader would like to know about your service. If you provide a helpful article, it will get shared on other sites and blogs, social media and get the healthy link number up in a certain period of time. There are sites with 400-500 spammy domains pointing to them, but they aren't affected. Bear that in mind.

[Silasrose]

That is encouraging for me, thanks Vanja.  Ill get busy on the content end of things

even with the hit I still seem to be getting some inquiries,

all the best

Silas