Google Penguin 2.1 Penalty - Recoverable?

[reidsteven75]

Hello,

I have a client that was hit very bad by the Google Penguin 2.1 update. He mentioned he did an intensive link analysis and removed all the bad links; however there were a lot of them (around 6000).  His domain has a decent sized domain authority of 30/100.

I'm wondering if it's worth it to try and save his domain, or start fresh from a new one. Due to the high number of links I'm not 100% confident that all the bad links were taken care of, and I've heard that even if you remove the links Google won't lift the penalties.

What would you do...get a new domain, or risk the next couple months trying to save the existing one?

[Travis_Bailey]

Have you looked at his disavow file? There might be a problem with it and the disavow never actually went through. I know it seems pretty basic, but I've solved a lot of problems by asking a prospect if they've checked their robots.txt configuration. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about.

Perhaps you're right, perhaps enough bad links weren't removed. Though I've heard of recoveries taking up to one year, without new links earned or more old links removed, even though the disavow was thorough. Draw on multiple link sources and check again. I've manually plowed through thousands of links in a few days. Sometimes you just have to dig in, but it would be wiser to see if the disavow was properly formatted and submitted first.

If it was properly formatted and submitted, then you have to make a decision based on the client's business. At what point does time and money intersect at $0? Can you rebuild that traffic/profit faster than that by starting over? It's risky either way, but if you can find something went wrong in the first round there's still a fighting chance.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Beyond what Travis communicated I'll add this:

If a site was "artificially" ranking due to bad links, and those links are being removed, why would it somehow rank again after they're gone?

Think of it this way: You have a house built on a foundation made out of wood.  Building codes require your foundation be built out of concrete.  Take away the wood.  Why would the house remain elevated at that point?

Without replacing the "artificial" signals with new, more trustworthy signals, a site isn't going to recover.

That then begs the question - how does the site get those new signals?  More questionable links? Not advisable. Better to expend energy to generate higher quality reasons for ranking.

And that then leaves us with Travis' question about cost / worth effort considerations.

[MattAntonino]

THIS.

Until more people understand what disavow actually does, it's going to be rare that we hear good recovery stories. Disavow gets rid of the rotten wood - it doesn't build you new foundations.

So if the disavow is done correctly and thoroughly, go build a new foundation.  You can do that on the current site but yes, sometimes a new domain is the fastest & easiest way.

[asbchris]

AMAZING HELP!!! This is good stuff here. I am in the same boat, and already started taking these steps before I even read this. I will say this is all working for me.

[Christy-Correll]

Glad to hear it, Chris, and welcome to the community!