Confusing penalties

[brevityworks]

Dear Mozzers,

I've been working on a friend's website that is fighting for pretty competitive keywords (+90,000 gms) and has been relying almost exclusively on $1800/mo of comment spam to rank on the first page.

Now that I've taken over SEO my first priorities were to:

• eliminate duplicate content
• improve site structure
• optimize internal links
• build legitimate do-follows
• add some keyword density
• fix titles and H tags

Essentially just the basics, right?

But since cancelling the comment spam, rankings for their primary keyword have consistently dropped over the last 3 months. I'm using the same strategies that I've used successfully on at least 6 similar websites.

At the moment their homepage is still almost entirely duplicate content -- which is obviously a huge problem, but it seems a little odd that they could have been held up exclusively by that comment spam for so long, doesn't it?

Even stranger, their authority and trust scores are now higher than any of the competition.

Needless to say, my friends are getting pretty antsy and I'm starting to second guess myself. Do you think I should continue to push them to improve content, eliminate penalties, and build legitimate links -- or should I give in and suggest buying links as a short term solution?

Advice is really appreciated!

[AdoptionHelp]

It could be that the comment spam is now being punished, coincidentally after you stopped it. Run the keyword grading tool on your pages to make sure your on-site is as good as it could be, and continue building legitimate links. I would never suggest using black-hat techniques like buying comment spam.

[brevityworks]

Thanks, Ryan. I just needed some reassurance and they wanted a second opinion.

My fear is that their ranking on that keyword was hyper inflated because of the insane amount of comment spam (2 yrs worth) and now that the spam is either dissipating or being penalized, the normal duplicate content penalties are kicking in.

Aarrgghhh...cleanup is always harder than starting from scratch.

[WillQ]

Hey Brevity,

This may or may not be the answer you're looking for but, from my experience, it's the right answer.

Don't think of links in terms of good and bad quality. Whilst there certainly is a difference between a good and a bad link, the first thing you should be looking at is the link profiles of your biggest competitors in the same niche / vertical.

A good way to find these sites is with SEMrush if you don't know them already.

Look at the kind of links your competitors are getting and how the page / domain authority of these links is distributed in their link profile. Eg 90% of their links are on pages with 0-10 page authority, 5% 10-20 page authority 5% over 20.

Now, from my experience, Google doesn't have a model of a "good" link profile, only what's standard in that niche. If everyone else is buying shitty comment spam then you have to do that too. Fight fire with fire. On top of this you optimise the balls off your site and build up more of these high quality links ON TOP of the other links.

I certainly wouldn't just turn off a Linkbuilding method that has already proven it works for your site.

Once this starts getting results slowly wean them off this spam. Think of it like gradually cutting off a smack addict's heroin supply, haha. Obviously comment spam isn't something you want to rely on forever, but its too late now if the ball's already in motion. You just have to slow that baby down first.

[AlanMosley]

i'm with Ryan, you are more then likly getting the wrap for the last SEO's spam.

comment spam would not get you to page one for any keyword worth having.

[MikeGracia]

On the whole, I agree with what Will Quick says.

I do believe that even in niches that others are using comment spam, you CAN outrank them with quality work (I have done it, in fact)... and in the end, you will have a stronger backlink profile that should outlast the spam guys when G- updates roll out in the future (as they always do!).

That said, I strongly agree with Will, in that a sudden change in the style of backlink profile can in fact cause an issue and ranking drop - especially in the mid-long term.

Basically you have just suffered from 1 or 2 things, or both (in my opinion anyway!).

Number 1: You may well be suffering from an inbound link filter/penalty due to the spam. This can be due to spammy links, or over use of a given anchor text (what % of inbound links to the page that was ranking, and also to the domain, use the exact match anchor?).  This could be an issue EITHER becuase of the spam links, OR because of over-optimisation of a set keyword (has the ranking suffered for other pages/keyterms???

Number 2: The link velocity to the domain as a whole, and also to the page(s) in question, has probably just taken a MASSIVE drop (by the sounds of it). Such a drastic change in itself can cause issues and ranking drops (in my opinion!). At least in the short to mid term - That said, continued, high quality SEO work 'should' re-gain you those positions, and build a better foundation for the future (safer with future big G updates).

Now, to fix Number 1, above, may take time. I feel that you need to pull off reports of the current anchor text usage to the domain, and to specific pages, and try to ensure that nothing is too 'over the top'. Try to get some nice brand links to water down any high anchor text usages (to page/domain).

To fix Number 2 may be trickier. You could either:

A) Use spam for a while, and decrease it steadily, whilst increasing the quality work (I do NOT recommend this, but that is just because it is not how I like to work, I feel it pollutes the web).

B) Ride it out! - Gain steady, high quality links via press releases, blogger outreach, articles, web 2.0 work, social media baiting. Also consider an increase in PPC in the interim, to keep the $£ coming in! Done right, this should help to regain positions.

C) Do 'B)', above, but also try to be creative in 'simulating' the sort of link velocity that the spammers, perhps some decent infographics with brand links in the embed code, social media baiting, press release syndication, and at a push, mass article submission (with decent quality articles) is still less spammy than blog comments! (although not ideal for long term tactics, it may help to simulate the link velocity). Basically check the amount of extra unique linking domains that the spam work gained the site, and try to get at least somewhere near that level using non-spam tactics, and slowly reduce the amount to a more realistic monthly amount, but with higher quality work.

I think that you should be open with the client, and tell them that although they may suffer now, it is probably much better to do this now than to wait until they get penalised.

This way, they just need to come up with an intelligent strategy to recover, whereas if they kept up with the spam work, they may well end up in real hot water!

**That is just my opinion anyway, and it is without knowing the exact situation, so should be taken as general opinion, not a well researched tactic! **

brevityworks, best of luck!

[brevityworks]

You guys are amazing. Thanks for the quick and thorough feedback!