Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I would ask on the Squarespace forums then rather than here - you are more likely to find others who have had these same issues and if there is anything more up to date, you will find out.

-Andy

What makes it "less of an issue" if the words are within the menu structure? Is there some info you could provide that backs this up?

Google has never really counted what is in the menu as page content. Some mega-menus are huge and carry many more occurrences of words than you have. They are pretty smart in that respect.

One thing you could do, is break the menu up so you have a heading of "Thermometers" and then list the types below that?

As another follow up question, the text uses the singular version 7 times and the plural 10. Would these be seen as the same word in the context of keyword stuffing?

Yes - Stemmed words are seen as the same. If you look in your Webmaster Tools account (Google Index --> Content Keywords), you will see words that are used and the variants of those words. As an example from a client I am working with at the moment.

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• recruitment, recruit, recruiting, recruited, recruits

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I suspect you will see Thermometer and Thermometers as variants.

-Andy

Very unethical. And your H1 doesn't need to just be the same as what is already there - it can be a sentence explaining the page. I wouldn't advise making the page use the same words / phrases all over. Try going for some synonyms for extra punch.

-Andy

Interesting tool I haven't seen before

-Andy

A couple of questions, for folks who are in the know about this penalty, if I may:

A couple?

OK, first one

I've heard two pieces of advice that I don't like 1) scrap the site, or 2) disavow all the links.

If you scrap the site, you are starting from a completely clean slate. It could take you a long time to get back to where you need to be. That said, if you are stuck in Penguin, it could be a while before you see a decent recovery. You won't get out until it is run again.

This penguin update, #4, on May 22nd, was it ONLY because of the link text? Or was it also because of the link quality?  None of the updates before it harmed me, and I believe those were because of the quality?

Well, the anchor text and the link quality kinda go hand in hand a little, but it is open to debate exactly what was the primacy focus. You might be right that it was more site quality focussed and that tipped you over the edge.

Could it be for links linking from my blog to my site?  My blog (ex. www.mysite.com/blog)

No, penguin doesn't focus on internal linking. It is purely an external link metric.

If I get webmasters to change text to just the url or brand name, that's better than disavowing, correct?  As long the linking site has a decent spam score and PA/DA on OSE?

If you feel, after checking the site, that it is worth having the link, but the anchor text is spammy, then by all means, save the link.

Is having SOME exact anchor text okay on these links?  Is it just the abuse that's the problem?  If so, how many should I leave? (like 5 max per keyword?) Or should I just change to the url, or disavow altogether, any and all links that have exact keyword matches?

It's important to remember that Google wants to see a natural looking link profile. I have yet to see a profile that doesn't have a few links that are a phrase rather than just a 'click here' or 'brand'.

If you get a link from a news article in a prominent site, they are very likely to use whatever anchor text sites well within the article to benefit the reader. It is unlikely that Google is going to penalise this link because of the trust level of the source where it comes from.

Make a judgement call for links like this. If the site exists just to seed links, then even if it has a low spam score, Google might either ignore the link or set a negative mark against it.

I've downloaded my link profile from OSE and Majestic, and will do so from Ahrefs (I believe it is)?  Does Webmaster Tools have any section that can help give me insights into the issue?  If so, can you point me in the right direction?

Webmaster tools will give you a list of links, but as with any other source, it is unlikely to be every link. Get your links from OSE, Ahrefs, Majestic and Webmaster Tools and bring them all together in one spreadsheet. You are able to remove duplication at that point and get a more complete view of what is there.

Can I get partial credit, for some work done?  For instance, say a major update, or crawl, happens, and I've only fixed/disavowed 25% percent of the links by then, is there a possibility that I get a small boost in traffic? Or am I in the doghouse till they are all fixed?

No, you can get a partial recovery, right up to the point where Google takes no issue. The trouble is, you won't know when this is because it isn't a manual penalty.

Say I clean/disavow everything up, will my improvement be seen in the next crawl? Or the next Penguin update?  As there may be a substantial difference in time there.

You need to wait I'm afraid. There is no way to speed up the process sadly. Get your link profile clean and wait for the next refresh.

I see AHREFS, has some information on anchor text... any rules of thumb as to percentages of use of a certain anchor text, to see if I'm abusing or not, before I start undertaking all of this?  Thanks!

None at all. You need to be able to fully assess the profile and take a judgement call on whether or not the profile requires a clean. It sounds like it does.

Could the penalty have "passed" altogether, and this is just where I rank?

It's very possible. Check the dates of Penguin refreshes and see if they match drops in your traffic.

I'm off for a coffee now

-Andy

A quick way would be to disallow crawling of all pages starting with /?PIPELINE. That will prevent Google from seeing them. You can do this by adding the following into your robots.txt file...

Disallow: /*?PIPELINE

However, you want to get to the root cause, which will be something to do with the system generating these. Ideally, this needs to be fixed.

-Andy

Hi Kathiravan,

Google's view on this is never to hide important information if it is something that you or your visitors rely on.

Lets say that you have 100 words that explain everything a potential buyer would need and then hid a further 300 words, but available after a click, then Google would assume that what is hidden isn't as important. With what you have on the attached image, I would question if you have given enough information there.

I like to look at this as what is best for the prospective buyer and give them as much as they need. Keep the important information high up the page and then depending on what else you need to include, you can decide if hiding it behind a tab keeps the page clearer, or can you add the full content below the fold as a scroll?

There are many factors with eCommerce sites - it's a much bigger discussion.

-Andy

Hi Matt,

In circumstances like this, it is generally down to the fact that your clients company doesn't carry the trust and authority to outrank the ticker. If someone searches for the acronym, I am assuming that most want to find the stock info, rather than your client. Of course, this is something you need to change.

This can only come from building that trust. Google made a change a while back that gave more bias to brands - this is where you want to be.

There is a wonderful article here on Search Engine Land that I suggest you spend some time going through as it will take you through many steps that you would need to take. The same with the article here on MOZ.

-Andy

That must be really frustrating for you Mike.

I am not surprised you can't access them at the back-end as these are almost always a by-product of the e-commerce system. So many don't care about what extra churn the sites produce.

You could always robots out those bad pages? Just something like:

Disallow: /store/pc/www.ocelco.com/*

This should still readily allow everything else to be indexed after http://www.ocelco.com/store/pc/...

Give it a try and then run the site through Screaming Frog and see if these bad pages are then picked up.

-Andy

Have you thought about using Cloudflare? From what I can understand, it can help block malicious traffic.

There is no telling exactly what Google is objecting to - if the site keeps dropping, this could be a major issue.

-Andy

Hi Darren,

This is an easy fix via the .htaccess file. You just need to cluster all the URL types so they point to one main structure.

Add this and it should work a treat:

<code>RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

-Andy</code>

Hi Christina,

Some are better than others, but all tend to be limited in functionality. They are free for a reason. SEMrush is probably the best of the free bunch (personal preference) but there is no substitute for a complete site audit.

Just take what you see when entering your URL as an indicator and use that to dig deeper into the problem. Be careful of those that only look at your homepage, as this can lull you into a false sense of security and not show what is going on with the rest of your site.

Screaming Frog and URL Profiler are my tools of choice these days. They cover everything needed to perform SEO & Content audits.

-Andy

That sounds very likely Matt. As we know, Google is doing a lot more with local results now. We now have to contend with 4 ads and then a local pack. Wait until we get the ads in the local pack as well!

With it only being fairly minimal drops, I think you would have to also take into account that it might not be what you are doing, but what other sites have done. If any other sites have done a big push, it might just have pushed you down a little. Always a difficult call that one though, but I do see it a lot.

-Andy

Hi Jawahar,

The best way to spot a penalty is to look at your analytics and see if any drops coincide with any algorithm updates.

I would echo a point that EGOL made earlier on another post, that daily content in this manner is probably not as beneficial as posting one very high quality article once a week. Of course, it depends what you are writing about, but shorter articles like this wouldn't generally do as much for you.

-Andy

I have shared this question with Dan from Screaming Frog for you

-Andy

No problem at all.

Pop back if you have other questions

-Andy

That's the one - thanks Patrick

-Andy

Hi David,

Spam scores like this are based on algorithms, so without seeing the links, it would be very difficult to advise correctly on this. There are other factors to take into account as well.

Would you like to PM me the information and I would be happy to take a look for you.

-Andy

Hi,

I would be very careful of openly asking for a link because if Google gets wind of this, you could be in trouble as the link was never earned. There are ways to ask without asking.

What you have posted just looks like a CSS class style so I wouldn't worry about that, but I would be looking to build a natural link profile which includes a range of link types.

-Andy

It will certainly get picked up by site crawlers for audit purposes, but would Google object to it? It depends what it is, where it is and how necessary it is. If it's a line of spam (for example) just to add in keywords, then this might cause you issues, but it depends on the quality of the rest of the page and content.

-Andy