Penalized by Penguin 2.0

[joebuilder]

I believe our site has been penalizes by Penguin 2.0. Our impressions in Google Webmaster are down and our traffic in Google Analytics also took a hit. Both of these occurences took place right when Penguin 2.0 was unleashed.

What are the steps I need to take to regain my ranking? Is disallowing all the links I think maybe spammy the first thing to do?

[TakeshiYoung]

First of all, assess all your external links with a tool such as OSE or Majestic. Identify all the links coming from low quality/spammy sites, as well as the anchor text that is being used for the links. Greater than 30-40% exact anchor text links can get you penalized.

Then, go through the links and remove all the links you are able to. Use the disavow tool in webmaster tools on those you aren't able to remove. Then file a reconsideration request.

Note that because you are removing all these links, you will need to build new links to get your traffic back to the level it was previously at.

[cbielich]

Side Note: You only need to submit a reconsideration request if you have been "manually penalized"

You will know this by getting some kind of message in GWT, if you DID NOT get any message then its the algorithm that got you and that means clean things up and Good Luck!

[Dr-Pete]

I just want to add that this is a difficult and even potentially dangerous process. There's no way to know exactly what Google didn't like, so it's easy to cut too deep. On the other hand, if you don't cut deep enough, Google may actually take that as a negative sign (don't just keep removing 5 links and then submitting a new disavow).

We don't know much about how Penguin 2.0 differs from 1.0, except some hearsay that it's targeting the page level now (and isn't just a sitewide action). So, I think the first thing you need to do is really pin down which keywords lost ranking and which pages those keywords target. It's possible that you've been too aggressive with links to a specific page or with anchor text using specific terms. If you see a pattern, then you can focus on just those links.

Also, keep in mind that, if the vast majority of your link profile is low quality, there may not be much left after you disavow. In other words, you may remove the bad links and still not recover. So, as Takeshi said, it's important to both address the problem and build for the future at the same time.

[cbielich]

The only thing that kept me scratching my head was the comment Matt Cutts said about "Penguin 1.0 primarily focusing on the homepage only"

[Dr-Pete]

Sadly, we can only speculate. I think it's reasonable to think that Penguin 1.0 may have acted sitewide, whereas Penguin 2.0 could be more targeted, but that's not so much an issue of where the links are pointing as it is of the impact of the penalty. The original Penguin did seem a bit all-or-none, in some cases. The update may be more nuanced. I think Google waited a long time for this roll-out because the collateral damage was just too high in testing. So, it's likely they found ways to make the action more targeted.

[cbielich]

Well I know is I did something right since 1.0 because I'm back baby! 

[joebuilder]

We did not receive a message in GWT.

[joebuilder]

Our home page was unaffected, so I believe 2.0 is targeting the page level.  It is only getting pages for certain keywords we have targeted heavily in the past.

[jhinchcliffe]

What did you do?

[cbielich]

I stuck with certain rules

• Rewrote Content
• Only added keywords to Title, Description, H1 and First paragraph (long tail)
• Added Sitemaps
• Contact Us Pages
• Increased Social Media
• Added Mailing List
• Added more quality backlinks

And the most important (that I felt) was leaving the disavowed tool alone.

I never received a manual penalty for any of my sites, I simply dropped in ranking after Penguin 1.0. Because of this obviously Google did not see anything sneaky with my back links so I most likely suffered simply a devalue of some of my back links from other sites which brought me down. So I figured I needed more quality back links to build myself back up. Took a while, but that seemed to fix it because I am ranking for keywords I have not seen since Penguin 1.0. I'm not as high as I was before.

Also I studied all my back links and the keywords used. I figured that since I ranked for those terms at one time, I tried to figure out which back links devalued and what keywords were used and tried to replicate it. If some were to spammy then I just branded them, otherwise I created new links (quality) with similar anchor text

[jhinchcliffe]

Wow great job! How long did that take you? What kind of quality links did you get and how did you get them? I'm a bit frustrated because I've been doing some quality links, even got two from 2 different pr7 .gov links, and still haven't recovered yet :s

[jhinchcliffe]

Our home page was affected, so I believe it's a little on the home page, more so on the targeted page level.

[cbielich]

Its all about relevancy IMO. The closer you can get to the niche with that particular page the better. Remember the entire site does not necessarily need to be related to your niche (of course it does help if it is) as much as the individual pages do. The reason I say that is I have a hard time finding full site related niches who are not my competitors. Of course I am not going to be able to get a link on their sites, so I have to find those 1 pagers (usually news, blog and such) that happen to be perfect for my niche.

So if you are going to place that link on a particular page, try and make sure the relevancy is a perfect match (The higher the relevancy, the higher the impact). I have learned that when links are placed at the end of content they tend to not have as much of an impact (especially in forums, blog comments, etc...) the only reason I say this about the end of content is because I no longer will place links at the end of anything, only in the middle of text. Of course make sure that its relevant and helpful to the readers and make sense. You don't want to place links just to place them.

Also remember that Google still loves anchor text (yes even post penguin :)), but you really have to evaluate how you are placing that text in the link. Try and take yourself out of the SEO mode (I know I have too) and really think how you would link to that page and with what anchor text. Be as natural as possible when writing and make sure it makes sense. I tend to write my content first then I pick the most relevant text to highlight and place my links there.

Many times people make the mistake of thinking about the link before the content. Write your content whether its a blog comment, forum post or whatever and make sure the comments relates to the question. Then after you have answered the question ask yourself if a link is really necessary. If not, then don't place a link. Which I know is hard to do sometimes, but honestly that's what spam is all about. If anything most profiles have the ability to place a link to your homepage to them. Just make sure that's in place and leave well enough as it is.

I personally don't place percentages to my anchor text to my brand name. I just write the content and look at the best place to place my link and do that. Naturally it tends to be my brand term, but sometimes it's text like

• this article
• about this site
• check this link out
• freakin awesome tool

Yes even misspelled words, because naturally I will write them like that and I know that Google understands that too.

If I learned anything its that because of the amount of SEO I know I tend to gravitate to keywords and subconsciously tend to use them too much OR it causes me to write content that can be somewhat un-natural. I don't mean to do, but it just seems to happen. What I started doing was asking friends of mine to write my content for me. I tell them the subject of the page, verbally tell them the keyword without letting them know that's the keyword and let them write something for me. 99.9% of the time, it will be extremely natural flowing content