GOOGLE PENALTIES- RECOVERY GUIDE - Upendra Rana (best books to read for beginners .TXT) 📗

your competitors’ on a weekly basis.

 

You will stay ahead of the game by being able to:

 

 

Make informed Link Building Decisions.

 

Know your risk to be penalized and monitor it weekly.

 

Monitor your competitors’ link toxicity and risk.

 

Monitor your site for Negative-SEO campaigns.

 

 

Some of the most important features of the tool are:

 

 

Automatic unnatural link classification.

 

Transparency & detail on each classified link. (why it is unnatural)

 

Google Disavow Export.

 

Fast Double-Check using the Link Snapshots.

 

Flag & Tag Links. (bulk actions available also)

 

 

Advanced Link profile segmentation using unnatural filters.

 

Can be used both on your site and the competitors’.

 

Ignore Links that are already disavowed or unimportant for the analysis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google Penguin Evolution

 

 

 

2.1. A brief history of Penguin Algorithm

 

 

Google Penguin is a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. It’s main purpose was to decrease search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using techniques involved in increasing artificially the ranking of a different sites. According to Google's John Mueller, Google has announced all updates to the public.

 

The confirmed Penguin updates, as they rolled out, are:

 

 

Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting around 3.1% of queries)

 

Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)

 

Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting around 0.3% of queries)

 

Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)

 

Penguin 5 (AKA Penguin 2.1) on October 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)

 

Penguin 6 (AKA Penguin 3.0) on October 17, 2014 (impacting less than 1% English queries).

 

Penguin Real Time (announced by Google representative Gary Illyes)

 

 

The launch of Penguin Algorithm changed the SEO industry and made a drastic shift to link building practices in particular. In fairness, Google has always pushed forward their guidelines and made a strong warning against spammy tactics in their guidelines.

 

However, Penguin forced the SEO professionals to up their game and find creative link building techniques rather than simply build links that manipulate Google’s search rankings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although Penguin has prompted mostly positive changes in the way webmasters and SEO Professional create their link building techniques nowadays, Penguin brought some negative consequences also:

 

 

Negative SEO attacks have muliplied within the industry.

 

Many controversies have apeared around ”unfairly” penalized sites.

 

Google has been claimed to be slow to update and refresh Penguin.

 

 

2.2. What Does the Real Time Penguin Bring New to the Table?

 

 

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed on Twitter in reply to a tweet that the new Penguin iteration “will be real-time which is a huge change”. It will basically mean that as soon as Google discovers that a link is removed or disavowed, it will process it in real time, and you would be able to recover from a penalty incredibly quickly. If, however, you’re trying to get away with some tactics that are not to Google’s liking, the Penguin will catch up to you really fast and you will not be able to use those tactics for any significant amount of time.

 

Moreover, future updates might not make the headlines like the previous versions did (particularly Penguin 2.0 and 3.0), because updates will become a real-time part of the algorithm. This means, quite simply, that the algorithm will be, in a certain sense, evolving seamlessly, as it will become smarter and at a quicker pace than before, as the search engine will be able to roll out changes as needed as opposed to scheduling one massive update.

What is clear is that this update is not meant to indiscriminately hurt sites left and right, but rather to refine Google’s ability to discern between the genuine and the artificial, between the

natural and unnatural.

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COGNITIVESEO .com/                                                                                                                                                        25

om/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Penguin going real-time, the algorithm will now likely get a lot closer to fulfilling its ultimate goal: catch spam link profiles as quickly as possible and keep low-quality sites from ranking well in the search results. For the moment, let’s take a look at what Penguin 3.0 impacted in the digital marketing world.

 

2.3. Penguin 3.0 Penalties Examples

 

 

We’ve searched far and wide to see the “ravages” that Penguin 3.0 has made in the world of SEO. We will list for you some examples of sites that lost their ranks as a consequence of the algorithm update but we will focus on a website whose activity we found particularly interesting.

 

WeddingDressTrend.com Penalty

 

 

Wedding Dress Trend deals in exactly with what its name indicates: discount wedding dresses and wedding accessories from China. A short look at the linking profile quickly establishes the reason for the penalty. The percentage of unnatural links out of the total number of links is quite staggering: more than two thirds.

 

This site did not even exist before October 2013 and within less than a year it got to a pretty hefty SEO Visibility. Quite the success story, right? Indeed if you don’t care about lasting success.

With three quarters of the links being either unnatural or at the very least suspect, this looks like a linking strategy that was created only for the purpose of quick ascension in the ranking.

 

November 2013 shows an extremely disproportionate relation between the number of links and the number of referring domains, suggesting old-school SEO tricks rather than organic growth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They cover almost every basis of “unnaturalness”: suspect anchor text, low authority links, thin content, link networks etc. What is even more astounding is that until Penguin 3.0 this site enjoyed a growth in the rankings using this strategy.

 

Just how shady were the links? They include examples such as anchor texts in blog/forum posts, blog comments with commercial anchor text, anchor text in large link lists and so on. None of these are indicative of an actual SEO strategy, but rather of marketing based on shady techniques and quantity over quality.

 

Penguin 3.0 caught up on that and the results are showing: over a very short period of time in October the site has dropped by 3 000 visibility points in the rankings. Is this something from which it will be able to recover? Potentially, yes, as we are going to see in the following Penguin Recovery examples. But this largely depends on how much

 

 

Wedding Dress Trend is willing to invest in organic growth rather than fast-paced winnings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Penguin Losers

 

 

For a better understanding on what the Google Penguin 3.0 Updates doesn’t really like, we used the SEO visibility chart to find out some other sites that aren’t doing very well for the moment in terms of rankings.

 

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a site that claims to have one of the most comprehensive reference work cataloging of all the world’s known living languages. It seems that Penguin 3.0 didn’t really believe this piece of information, or at least, this is what we conclude giving the fact that it penalized this quite hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The much translated site Giftsngames (we thought it’s worth mentioning the fact that it is translated in 12 languages; this says a lot about the wide audience they have) got hit really hard by Google’s latest update.

 

Enjoying a high popularity in the past year, the site in question has dramatically lost its rankings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t know for sure whether the site below entered in a cleanup process or not but definitely it is facing some serious problems. Judging by their visibility before the drop, it seems like short-haircuts.com had a huge popularity. Unfortunately for them, their drop is equally huge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Penguin 3.0 Penalty Recovery Winners

 

 

What is interesting to mention here is that we find a quite impressive number of sites (we are going to list just some of them here) that follows the same pattern: penalized on the 6th of October 2013 and recovered one year later. There is no need to think at some paranormal activity or anything like that. All the analyzed sites were pulled out of rankings by Penguin 2.1 and looks like Penguin 3.0 was the knight in shiny armor for them. Let’s take a look at some examples!

 

First Penguin Recovery – CostumeWorks.com

 

 

Costume Works is a very typical example of a winning site. It gathers Halloween costume ideas from users all around, hosting a gallery which serves as inspiration to others, as well as organizing an annual costume contest.

More than a year ago, in May 2013, Costume Works suffered a rather severe penalty, most likely at the hands of one of Penguin’s “younger siblings”.

 

A site that had had a visibility score of close to 1 500 at one point suddenly dropped to below 200. It dropped even more after August and for most of the fall and winter of 2013 and spring of 2014 it was almost invisible on the search engine’s radar.

 

 

 

Looking at the linking analysis back then, it was probably well deserved: almost a quarter of the anchor text was commercial. However they became aware of that in the meantime, it worked: they dropped a lot of their links (a lot), but they have a much better outlook now: less than 10% of their links are commercial anchor text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty much everything about Costume Works looks better now. Their link profile naturalness is excellent, with just 6% of their links looking suspect and none looking unnatural.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not simply chance, or luck, but surely the result of intense link building strategy, as evidenced by the link positioning and webpage type analysis. The large majority of their links show up inside blog posts or on forum threads or in the form of short paragraphs of text.

Blog comments, which are usually a flag for shady or unnatural links, do not even add up to making 1%, indicating accidents rather than website-endorsed initiatives. Blogs, forums and personal sites represent 90% of the webpage type makeup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second Penguin 3.0 Recovery – XtremeDiesel.com

 

 

Penguin 3.0 brought good news for XDP (Extreme Diesel Power) a site that commercializes car accessories and gadgets. The same fateful day of October pulled out Xtreme Diesel from Google’s golden list, leaving them to struggle for some rankings for not less than one year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As sweet as the victory might be, it doesn’t mean much if the reasons of the triumph remains unknown. Tormented by the investigator’s

 

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COGNITIVESEO .com/ 34 om/

 

 

curiosity, we did what we know best and run the analysis to check out their website’s profile. Let’s take a look on what we found.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before beginning to analyze the links’ profile, the system automatically gives us a helpful hand in understanding how things are standing, generating a message that speaks for itself: this site has a suspect link profile and should be investigated carefully. There is a high chance that this site might be penalized in the future for unnatural links (if it hasn’t been already).

We don’t know how this site’s link profile looked like before being penalized but judging by the fact that they recovered and still have some (not many, indeed) shady links, leads us to believe that there was a lot of unnatural activity in the house.

 

 

 

 

The “fishy” links they still have around are low authority with thin content, coming mainly from link network and forums. However, as judging outward appearances is not really our thing, we checked out some of their shady links in