Google Panda and Penguin "Recovery"

[GaryVictory]

We're working with a client who had been hit by Google Panda (duplicate content, copyright infringement) and Google Penguin (poor backlinks).

While this has taken a lot of time, effort and patience to eradicate these issues, it's still been more than 6 months without any improvement.

Have you experienced longer recovery periods?

I've seen sites perform every black hat technique under the sun and still nearly 2 years later..no recovery! In addition many companies I've spoken to advised their clients to begin right from the very beginning with a new domain, site etc.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Have you just gotten rid of all the duplicate content, poor backlinks, etc? Or have you done that and also added quality content and obtained quality links?

- Ruben

[rajeevpanwar]

you can create quality links not quantity and create new fresh content , use Google disavow tool.

[benjaminmarcinc]

If your trying to promote a brand it's hard to start from the beginning. Im wmt I'm sure you know about "links to your site" tab, go in there and see who is linking to you, if it looks spammy, disavow or email them to take the link off.

[GaryVictory]

The disavow tool has of course been used. Some links still appear in webmaster tools. We've also asked the webmaster of each site to kindly remove the links, which some have been kind enough and removed.

I know once a link has been "disavowed" Google adds an invisible nofollow tag to the link. Similar to your no-followed links in WMT.

My client is reluctant to spend money on developing links with relevance and authority until we see some evidence that the penalty has been removed.

It seems we've exhausted all avenues by cleaning up the website. Plus disavowing links should also be used with caution!

Having seen no recovery for such a long time - my question is, will the site every recover if it has seriously abused Google's guidelines in the past?

[BlueprintMarketing]

"My client is reluctant to spend money on developing links with relevance and authority until we see some evidence that the penalty has been removed."

Part of bringing a site any traffic after being penalized is developing a white hat strategy to get visitors via authoritative relative links pointing at your site.

It is like a fighter who has been knocked out. They are down and all the sudden everything changed they no longer are able to stay in contention.

Would you tell some guy who just got knocked out by Mike Tyson get back in there and fight them once he was pushed to his feet?

No you got to train and get yourself feeling better in order to get back to the same level you are at before if you can do that.

If the knockout was too hard you may have to swap out your current expectations with new ones.

How valuable is this domain to the client?

If it is not brought up to snuff there is no need to worry about whether or not will work because no one's will even try it.

Even with a new domain your client is starting at a disadvantage just because of who they are whois and numerous other methods will tell Google to a very small or very large extent exactly who they are.

Maybe they 301 redirect and it is the same deal for new domain

Maybe they start fresh realizing that without putting amazing content out there for end-users that they are just in it sit and complain it is not even worth thinking about unless they are going to do it.

You need to explain to your client that your site is equivalent to worse then a new domain right now most likely or depending on your circumstances possibly better I do not know.

But put yourself in either place you start a site with a new domain would you do?

You get penalized by Google for what occurred you have to really step it up top quality all the way.

You have to show Google that not only are you very trustworthy now and you are essentially sorry that you did what you did but that you are actually a site that is worth something to them and to end users. With the fact that you have had this penalty on your domain means your going to have to work even harder to make up for everything you lost.

If you did a link disavowal I think you took the right measures obviously you had no choice right?

The client has to start looking at search from a different perspective not one that states you can do a couple cool things that might get you a higher ranking but one that looks at their end users and how they can actually serve the visitors to that site the best they possibly can.

That is a pretty tall order and the web is huge so there is outstanding content, including video, text photograph, infotographs I could go on your client not only needs to have a top tier website.

They need very fast load times

An easy to navigate beautiful site.

Links that are being generated by users that like what they see.

Just those three things are not inexpensive in any way.

You want to start get into technical seo it only gets more time-consuming and a lot more expensive.

I do not know the circumstances of their penalty however a new domain might be something that will get your client to actually work on the things that they need to do to make the site a quality website.

I hope that helps,

Thomas

[MarieHaynes]

If you disavowed six months ago then you still haven't seen a Penguin refresh as the last one was October 4, 2013.  So, if you have done the work required to escape Penguin, you may see an improvement once Google finally refreshes Penguin.  No one knows when the refresh will happen but hopefully it will be soon!

I actually have an article coming out on Search Engine Watch this week that lists 5 reasons why people don't see recovery on Penguin hit sites.  To summarize:

1. Not a thorough enough disavow

2. Errors in your disavow file

3. Still waiting for a refresh (probably the case for you).

4. Not enough good links there to support the site naturally.

5. Other issues such as Panda or technical issues.

[GaryVictory]

Thank you to you all for your valued feedback. Marie, please do let me know when this article becomes available. I'd be vary interested to read.

We use Moz to analyse and correct the general health of a website to eradicate errors accordingly.

Panda - I'm aware Panda updates have happened more frequently. All duplicates and the quality of content has been implemented for our client.

Penguin - I have disavowed "all" poor quality backlinks, ensuring good quality links remain. We did this manually checking each link and the referring websites for quality assurance.

**But how do we know when the Panda penalty has been lifted, when it's obvious we have a Penguin penalty in place? **

**Does a business who are desperate to advertise online simply begin creating new "valuable" **content, reach out to industry influencers etc,  to achieve backlinks with authority - meaning waiting maybe months before the penalty is removed, if removed?

Or, create a new site, "completely" separate from the old, and implement our marketing strategy knowing that the spammy practices conducted in the past will not affect my clients new site?