Post Penguin Update Advice Needed. Is My Site Doomed?

[Geeber463]

Ok, so like many, I was slapped real hard by Google and the Penguin Update. This is the first time I have ever been slapped by Google. Panda actually helped me but Penguin sank my site.

I am out of the the Top 100 for 4 keyword phrases that I used to rank in the top 10. I guess I got a little over-zealous of my backlinking, but I truly didn't think I was doing that much.

My question is - Now What?

Is my site doomed? It wasn't de-indexed, but can it ever rank for the keywords again? Should I just start over?

I was going to redesign the site and also add a forum, but now I am putting all that on hold until until I have a better understanding of what is going on.

Thanks in advance for the advice!

 

[azguru]

It depends how valuable that site was to you. I don't think its a longshot to say that you can recover. Recovering from Panda updates is annoying and takes a bit of time, but it is definitely doable.

 

[Geeber463]

It depends how valuable that site was to you. I don't think its a longshot to say that you can recover. Recovering from Panda updates is annoying and takes a bit of time, but it is definitely doable.

Setimentally, it was my baby, lol. It was also gaining traction, visitors and starting to make some money. I had high hopes for it this fall when my niche is busy and a live.

So, how do I recover exactly? Make sure that all backlinks are quality? Do nothing and see if it recovers. Post more new content?

I guess no one knows yet, huh. Gotta let this thing settle a bit first?

 

[cody41]

Million dollar question man, i'm in the same boat as you.

 

[MBW007]

Go ahead and add the content and build that forum. Now is the perfect time to improve your site and let it regain some trust.

 

[Geeber463]

Go ahead and add the content and build that forum. Now is the perfect time to improve your site and let it regain some trust.

Yeah, but now I don't have the traffic to get new visitors and members. I am actually working on a marketing plan to help with membership, but I also need traffic.

I was building a nice list with my video course. My plan to offer the course to forum members instead only those that subscribe to my list.

 

[manny521]

You have asked the million dollar question and we are all searching for the answer right now.

I got hit with Panda 3.3 on Feb 17th and built my SERPS back over a 60 day period and now I just got kicked in the balls again with Penguin.

I think it is too early to say abandon the site as we are still looking for a solution to penguin. There is a solution, but its too early to know what it is.

 

[SuperLinks]

Don't abandon sites, its still FAR too early to make drastic decisions like that.

As manny mentioned, people are still sifting through the data and there is no absolute answer to your questions. Most of us feel that Google will revert back and/or drastically change their latest algorithm update.

Frankly, there's too much garbage that rose to the top and far too many solid sites that dropped from this latest update.

I'm currently crawling through the Webmaster forum to see if I see any similarities/commonalities of sites that took a huge hit. It's one of the best ways to see who was affected by the latest update, as most people on these forums don't share their niches/domains (rightfully so)

 

[azguru]

Setimentally, it was my baby, lol. It was also gaining traction, visitors and starting to make some money. I had high hopes for it this fall when my niche is busy and a live.

So, how do I recover exactly? Make sure that all backlinks are quality? Do nothing and see if it recovers. Post more new content?

I guess no one knows yet, huh. Gotta let this thing settle a bit first?

I know the feeling. If the site was making good money, or simply worth keeping based on its sentimental value, then i think it is worth it to try to get it to rank again.

I wouldnt do anything yet as this change is very very new. Give it atleast a week to see the effects as well as to hear what people think will help rank for this new update.

If you PM me, I would happy to give you some positive ideas for future link building.

 

[blackhatchampion]

I am looking here appropriate solution to my website rank again in Google.

 

[FleshJoe]

This may sound contrarian but IMHO the best way to recover from Penguin is to replace the link juice that you lost. You see, Penguin did *not* slap your site, even though it may look like it. OK maybe the on-site situation was also not good and you did get slapped by Penguin, but the main cause for loss of rank is loss of link juice. Penguin took out a lot of links created by softwares such as xrumer and senuke. After discounting those links, Google recomputed where you should rank and that's the result.

Besides that, as many people say, this is way too early. Google can not compute where every site should rank in one go -- that would simply be too expensive in compute power -- so they will do several waves of updates or maybe even mini-updates of several hundred million rankings at a time. The result is the famous google dance similar to what you're often seeing when you make big changes in your site.

Wait and see, or replace the lost link juice with high quality links. Far too early to abandon your sites.

 

[toysonline]

are they done with it? or they are still patching this penguin updates? i know there are still some weird sites ranking on top of serps, which they should not be.

my sites are also hit by this update, all i can do now is wait and see till the water calms down. then see what needs to be done base on other's best suggestions.

for now, i'll try to build more quality links.

 

[gerryboy]

keep building sites. never stop. it's like going fishing with more than 1 fishing rod. never quit until you are dead

 

[Geeber463]

This may sound contrarian but IMHO the best way to recover from Penguin is to replace the link juice that you lost. You see, Penguin did *not* slap your site, even though it may look like it. OK maybe the on-site situation was also not good and you did get slapped by Penguin, but the main cause for loss of rank is loss of link juice. Penguin took out a lot of links created by softwares such as xrumer and senuke. After discounting those links, Google recomputed where you should rank and that's the result.

Besides that, as many people say, this is way too early. Google can not compute where every site should rank in one go -- that would simply be too expensive in compute power -- so they will do several waves of updates or maybe even mini-updates of several hundred million rankings at a time. The result is the famous google dance similar to what you're often seeing when you make big changes in your site.

Wait and see, or replace the lost link juice with high quality links. Far too early to abandon your sites.

That is the thing though, the one page that I lost my ranking for, I didn't do any type of SENUKE, XRUMER, etc. I did use one service that built a blog network. I stoped using them months ago and their sites were de-indexed by Google. I know many people saw loss of ranks last month when Google de-indexed all of blog networks, but do you think that might be my issue.....maybe now I am seeing the fallout for having links on those de-indexed sites?

I am working on a plan to rebuild links and such, but I won't be working on it for about a week or so. Not so much that I want to wait to see the dust settle as there is another, unrelated project that I have to complete this week.

Flesh, if you are right and this is just losing link juice, this won't be half as bad as I thought. I newer site of mine is already starting to climb with minimal linking. If it keeps up, I will have my blueprint....as long as the devalued links don't hurt me.

 

[MarkWW]

One of my sites moved from spot #3 to page #3

 

[Rua999]

This may sound contrarian but IMHO the best way to recover from Penguin is to replace the link juice that you lost. You see, Penguin did *not* slap your site, even though it may look like it. OK maybe the on-site situation was also not good and you did get slapped by Penguin, but the main cause for loss of rank is loss of link juice. Penguin took out a lot of links created by softwares such as xrumer and senuke. After discounting those links, Google recomputed where you should rank and that's the result.

It's not about this, all my sites were using high pr unpaid for backlinks and not part of a blog network and all with links from pretty much exact same pages. All but EMD's tanked, and EMD's down a place or two

 

[moondoggy]

Penguin was an on page update. There was a Panda refresh a few days before, which has confused a lot of ppl. I know it might sound like semantics, but if your site didn't tank til Tuesday it's probably more to do with on-page factors, rather than your links. Important distinction.

 

[Geeber463]

Penguin was an on page update. There was a Panda refresh a few days before, which has confused a lot of ppl. I know it might sound like semantics, but if your site didn't tank til Tuesday it's probably more to do with on-page factors, rather than your links. Important distinction.

This is complete conjecture. You don't know that for sure. Matt Cutts speaks about we spam as the target of this update. It is hard for me to believe that all of ours sites are spam sites. Cutts has eluded to that linking from and too I relevant sites is concidered spam. The idea of receiving links from none elegant sites goes against on-page SEO.

Google is calling this an algorithm update. For what I am seeing and hearing, I think it is all inclusive and inckudea both on-site and offsite SEO. Cutts' own example on his announcement of the update shows a keyword stuffed article with anchor text that made zero sense. That example shows link spamming, and most likely off-site SEO. But it probably also penalized the site for which the article appeared.

My site is far from over-SEO'd. I write for people not search engines. I don't try to stuff keywords in my site. I think it is naive to believe that this update solely focused on one aspect such as on-site SEO. However, that is conjecture on my part.