Has My Website Been Penalised?

[allsystems]

Hi,

I have a website I have been working on for a couple of years. I never did any SEO to it until about 6 months ago where I purchased PBN links from this forum and some Crowdo links. It was ranking number 24 for my main keyword but then it dropped to page 6 and after another week page 10. I haven;t done anything to the website. I was only seriously thinking about investing some money into it again.

I have had a SEO expert analyse the site and he said its low site speed and spammy links. I have increased my Pagespeed score to 98 on mobile and 100 on desktop since then and I have created and uploaded a disavow file.

Is my website finished or can it come out of this penalty?

 

[tazarbm]

your website is safe and - as weirdly as it may sound - you can regain your rankings with even more backlinks. But better ones. By "better ones" I mean backlinks that meet these criteria:

- they come from relevant sites in your niche
- those sites have decent DA (at least 30)
- those sites get organic traffic from google
- those sites don't have many OBLs (OutBound Links, which basically means that those websites are not link farms, awarding anyone and everyone under the Sun links back to their sites)

On top of these, the backlinks you get must also meet these criteria:

- don't have the same anchor text and - even more important - don't have the EXACT same anchor text as the keywords you are trying to rank for (5-10% ratio should be fine)
- are in-content backlinks, not footer / sidebar links (the exception is if you can get your backlinks from the homepage, but... who's gonna give you that? It's hard...)
- come from relevant posts
- don't have the "noindex" / "nofollow" tags attached to them
- the backlinks don't get removed after a certain amount of time (some scumbag sellers do remove your backlinks, so beware!)

Also, make sure you continue posting content while building backlinks, just to look more natural.

 

[chipsie1102]

Is my website finished or can it come out of this penalty?

If the ranking is actually a result of some sort of penalty, then yes of course you can recover! If your post is accurate and the only thing you've done is add those backlinks then I think it is indeed safe to assume that those backlinks have caused the change in your rankings. Like you've already mentioned, you should put all those spammy PBNs into a disavow file and wait for Google to start recognising that those links have been disavowed. Or better yet, try to contact the PBN seller and ask for the backlinks to be removed/nofollowed.

Just a quick side-note for the website speed: we all love fast websites and no doubt webmasters should be thinking about optimising website speed - but from a strictly SEO perspective there is no need to optimise for website speed/core web vitals etc (assuming your website at least has an average load speed) the upcoming speed update is actually only planned to serve as some sort of "tie-breaker". Google will always prefer relevancy over speed. Nevertheless, good work on the pagespeed scores!

 

[allsystems]

I have already contacted the PBN seller and he is removing the links at drip feed 1-2 a day. I have been SEO for 9 years as a full time job so I understand it pretty well. I am guessing its a penalty but how long will it last?

I know you said continue on building links but is it really safe to do so at the time being?

 

[chipsie1102]

I have already contacted the PBN seller and he is removing the links at drip feed 1-2 a day. I have been SEO for 9 years as a full time job so I understand it pretty well. I am guessing its a penalty but how long will it last?

I know you said continue on building links but is it really safe to do so at the time being?

Although I'm sure someone will quickly be on their way to say something like "WAIT 2-3 WEEKS!" unfortunately no one will really know how long it will last - it's an algorithm(s) coupled with machine learning!
Since there's nothing in Search Console it looks like what we call an "algorithmic penalty" (aka not an actual penalty, its just that the Google algorithms/machine learning doesn't like your website at the moment). The main point is you're getting those spammy links removed and updated the disavow file so you're on-track

In terms of building new links, tazarbm is definitely right. As long as you're getting quality links and they look natural (placements, anchors, content, velocity etc.) then it's definitely safe. Just try your best to not fall for the spammy PBN stuff and you'll be alright.

 

[allsystems]

I think I am going to create my own PBN it will be safer and I can use highly authorative domains. Looks like I just need to wait this out though