New Domain Name or Keep going - Help not Recovering after Penguin

[AMG100]

Hi Moz Friends

I wonder if you can help me , a while ago we had a Penguin Penalty and lost our Rankings. After Months of work Disavow and Reconsiderations , Google sent me a message in Webmaster Tools to confirm the Penalty had been uplifted.

Since then we havent recovered. I have been working with Bloggers to build relevant safe links, each having a DA of between 10-30. We have developed a Mobile Friendly Website and ios and Android Apps. We have improved Site Speed and moved to a Server within the same Country. We add lots of content and believe we have ticked all the boxes for onpage optimisation.

However our DA and PA seems to have dropped slightly after Moz update today. We seem to be jumping in the serps, one day page 4 for "fancy dress" the next day nowhere to be found.

I'm not sure what to do next.

I'm not expecting to jump back to page 1 for the main keywords but some positive movement would be nice, especially as there are Lower DA Website, not mobile friendly or as fast above us in the serps.

What I am looking for I guess is any ideas from you and also what you think about this idea

A few people have mentioned that we might stand more of a chance using our domain name example.com instead of example.co.uk. example.com has never been used and is totaly clean (no penaltys ect..)

Do we use example.com and move the website and content away from example.co.uk ? if so do we use redirects or would that just pass any hold thats on example.co.uk to the .com version

Ideas Welcome

Thanks

Adam

[MonicaOConnor]

My first question would be, how long ago did you get the message that your penalty was lifted? If there hasn't been a Penguin refresh since then you won't see the improvements in keyword rankings and domain authority until there is a refresh.

I think that if you are trying to improve your link profile you are in the wrong link neighborhoods. You should be targeting a handful of links monthly from sites with DA of 70+, unless you are linking to sources that will provide high amounts of traffic. You shouldn't worry about how many links you are building as opposed to the quality of the links you are building. Links are about **quality. **

I do not believe that changing your domain name is going to give you what you are looking for. If your business is in the UK you should have a ,uk address.

The most important thing to understand is that Penguin penalties aren't going to have rubber band effects. You have to wait it out and continue working hard every month to really see the improvement in SEO. It takes time, you won't see an immediate result. Knowing if there has been a Penguin refresh or not will tell you whether or not the work you are doing is actually benefiting your site. The refresh will give you the instant results you are looking for.

[AMG100]

Hi Monica

Thank you for your reply

On the 03/06/14 - Manual Penalty was Finally Lifted

Hope this helps

Thanks

Adam

[MonicaOConnor]

So then the 10/17 update should have lifted the penguin cloud from your site. In my opinion it isn't the domain name that is holding you back, it is your link strategy. How much new content have you added to the site and how much have you grown your link profile? Do you compare your profile to your competitors? Have you checked your CTR on organic key terms to see if you have any response when you are on page one?

this is where I would start before I change my domain name. It just sounds like your SEO isn't competitive enough to keep you on the first page.

[AMG100]

Thank you. We add Content to the Blog Weekly and have about 6 Years of Content, but the Blog never seems to rank anywhere either. Can you recommend any tips for finding relevant DA 70+ links

[MonicaOConnor]

Videos from Youtube are great. Make sure you embed them with an http and not the standard http. Pinterest is a great link source, BBB if you have access to that.