Penguin 3.0

[MarieHaynes]

The majority of people in the SEO world believe that if Penguin hits you, it hits you HARD.  But, I don't agree with this.  John Mueller from Google has said that it can affect a site incrementally.  I've seen sites that took a dip with a Penguin update of only a few positions, or perhaps from page 1 to page 2.  With this update so far I'm seeing some sites that improved from page 2 to page 1.

However, it's also possible that your drop is because you've got competitors who are recovering after doing a thorough link cleanup and now appearing above you.

"I'm inclined to simply focus on building better links rather than disavow given the lack of severity. "

Are you building links or earning links?  If you're building links what kind are you building?  These could be the problem.  A lot of what people used to call "natural" is no longer considered natural.  If you've been making your own links then it's possible a disavow is in order.

[mrodriguez1440]

Excellent point!  I didn't even think of that.  So you think such a slight drop is not likely any sort of Penguin penalty, but rather that my competitors received a boost from cleaning up their profiles Hadn't even considered that.

Thank you for your response and for your original post alerting us that Penguin had rolled out.

[mrodriguez1440]

Thank you.

Most of what I have read online regarding Penguin penalties involves a substantial hit.  However, I have seen some folks discussing slight drops.  As Andy said above, that could be due to competitors cleaning their profiles and moving up.  It's so hard to say with a 3 - 4 spot drop, especially when you're still on the same page.

What actions, if any, do you recommend?

By building, I meant earning.

[MarieHaynes]

If you've truly been earning links and not making your own then likely you need to just keep doing what you're doing.  I'm happy to take a quick look if you'd like to pm me your site, just to be sure.  It may not be right away though.  I wish Google didn't update Penguin on the weekend!

[mrodriguez1440]

Hi,

Thanks so much.  PM sent.  I really appreciate it.

[mrodriguez1440]

Hi,

Can you PM me your PM name?  I tried both your actual name and name listed above, but neither worked.

NVM - I figured it out.  PM sent.

[MarieHaynes]

I've responded to the OP in private, but felt it was important to update this question in case it will help others who read this question.

The backlink profile of this site had a lot of unnatural links - low quality directory links, low quality guest posting/articles, and profiles set up for the purpose of getting a link - all anchored with a keyword for which they wanted to rank.  A natural link is one that is not a self made link (with a few exceptions).  If you're trying to figure out whether a link is unnatural, I wrote an article on Moz that may help: http://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines

Is this a Penguin hit?  Probably. It is exactly the kind of backlink profile that Penguin goes after.  Why was it only a few spots and not a few pages?  That's hard to say.  I only spent a few minutes and focused on the unnatural links, so it's possible that there were natural links there that I didn't see.  It's also possible that Google really does want to show this site as the best answer to users' queries and didn't demote it completely.  It's also possible that some of the unnatural links weren't picked up by Penguin as many of the low quality articles weren't on my blacklist.  They may be on a private blog network perhaps. Actually, that's another good point...if you have private blog network links then it's possible that they were affected by Penguin and you have lost link equity from them and perhaps this is not a direct Penguin hit after all. At this point, we are in early days with Penguin 3.0 so it's hard to say what is happening.  But, what I can say is that a link cleanup needs to be done for sure.

[mrodriguez1440]

UPDATE - Cleaned up links and now see rankings restored to their pre-P3 numbers.

Thanks again to everyone who responded.

If anyone has any questions about what/how I did it, feel free to PM me.

[MarieHaynes]

Interesting. Thanks for the update.

Something doesn't make sense though.  If Penguin 3.0 affected you, then cleaning up the links would not make a difference until Google reran the algorithm.  The way that Penguin works is that Google gathers data about your link profile and then takes some time to process that data and then when they run Penguin you see the results of whether or not they trust your links.  So, your recent bounce up is probably not because of your link cleanup because they are still working on the data that was gathered in mid September.

I have seen a number of sites that have been bouncing up and down over the last few weeks.  It's like Google is testing and refining Penguin.  As such, you may see things drop again...or perhaps you may not.

To confuse matters, there appears to have been a big unannounced Panda refresh in the last few days too and many sites saw a big jump (or drop) with this.

Things are definitely very volatile right now.  Let us know if things change but hopefully you continue to do well!

[mrodriguez1440]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm happy to see that my site benefitted from Google refining P3 or that a Panda refresh potentially helped rankings.

Either way, it was a great learning experience that resulted in me improving the back link profile while improving the onsite user experience.

Thank you again for all your feedback.