301 Penguin Recovery Success

I agree. I have switched out my content with 1000+ words and keyword density below 1%. That alone has made me jump a few pages.

Some other theories I have are removing affiliate links (using php direct), remove meta tags, remove image alts, remove ahref title alts, and removing keywords on internal links.

It's just a theory, but a valid one.

Fair point, I'm going to try a basic static HTML site with nice mark-up, not over optimized, a few inbound links and a 301 redirected high PR and aged domain.
 
I agree. I have switched out my content with 1000+ words and keyword density below 1%. That alone has made me jump a few pages.

Some other theories I have are removing affiliate links (using php direct), remove meta tags, remove image alts, remove ahref title alts, and removing keywords on internal links.

It's just a theory, but a valid one.

Hey mate, can you please tell how to do a php direct. Really interested about this one.
 
I would try first changing your current site and wait a while. I have done so with few adsense sites and they have been crawling back. \

r7nhY
 
you may also use SEOQuake add-on for Firefox, fast easy and free. Also it will show PR, age, obl and bunch of other seo things.


Is there any plugin, or website to check keyword density ? I would like to see mine, if it's above 3% thats why my site went in bricks
 
It's pretty early to say it works to recover from penguin using that method, as I did the same right before penguin (Mid April) with a panda affected site (PR6):
301 redirected to a new location. It went straight back to #1 for all its keywords pre-panda. Awesome, I thought, but then
after 1-2 weeks the algo re-added the filter or whatever it is and the site dropped back to the pre-301 positions.
 
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Hey mate, can you please tell how to do a php direct. Really interested about this one.

Just replace "URL HERE" with affiliate url and make sure the file ends with .php.

PHP:
<?php
header('Location:URL HERE');
exit;
?>
 
I am considering doing some internal 301 redirects as a few of my internal pages seem to target the home page keywords. I know that this is a different thing to what you describe, but in your opinion could this have positive effect on getting my home page ranking higher?
 
I am considering doing some internal 301 redirects as a few of my internal pages seem to target the home page keywords. I know that this is a different thing to what you describe, but in your opinion could this have positive effect on getting my home page ranking higher?

301 directs for ranking is new to me and never tried it for ranking purposes.

My guess would be it would give you some improvements, but only for a short time. It could also leave you getting a penalty when Google picks up on it.

Personally, I would stay away from it. It's not a good long term strategy.

If you were 301 directing from an old site to a new one, or doing what I am with affiliate links, thats ok.
 
If you were 301 directing from an old site to a new one, or doing what I am with affiliate links, thats ok.

That's exactly what I've done. New site to old Site. 301 means a permanent redirect.

As for people who think that the 301 carries the penalty over, do you have any proof? No, of course not because it's just like everything else in SEO, theories without proof.

If your SEO methods got you a penalty and then after a 301 redirect you got another penalty then maybe it's your SEO methods that are causing the penalty?? It's really hard to say.

All I know is my old site is gone and I have a brand new clean site with content that has been deopitmized and a very clean backlink profile which I'm building slowly using different methods.

If the rankings tank in a weeks time I'll definitely let everyone know.

Right now though it's making me bank!:)
 
I am very happy that you are seeing progress and am grateful that you are sharing in detail the 301 case study. A thread like this is a like a shred of light.

I however think you are being wrong by saying your site has very clean backlink profile. As we all know 301 transfers all of the link juice from old pages to the ones of the new site. With this being said, yes your site has now a clean profile, but in few weeks when the process of transferring is complete, all old links will be carried out to the new site.

So my assumption is that the chronology of such a trial will go:

1. Immediaate relief with the 301 as its practically a new site
2. Short boost of some pages as there is not even a sandbox during the first 10-15 days on newly launched sites. This in combination with the 301 adds up
3. Old Links being carried over to the new pages (possibly old penalties as well)
4. Site is being reassesed with all major algos once all data is being transferred (Penguin, Panda etc)
5. SERPS being updated after all algos are done

If you go through 1-5 without losing your SERPS again its likely that the on-page changes that you've made could have solved the problem and not the 301. The 301 can theoretically speed up the whole process.

I hope this is not discouraging, It's my pure assumption. Please keep us updated. I hope I am wrong and I am crossing my fingers for you mate.



All I know is my old site is gone and I have a brand new clean site with content that has been deopitmized and a very clean backlink profile which I'm building slowly using different methods.
 
Did you have any other sites to compare against whether, long term, it was the 301 that fixed the rankings or the drop in keyword density? One thought is your new site conformed with post-Penguin and the 301s essentially forced a clearing of the cache, giving you the rank your new setup deserved.

Meaning that if you'd fixed your onsite in exactly the same way without getting the new site & 301ing it, when google next recrawled your site, would your rankings have come back?

I only had 1 site hit by Penguin, so I can't do a proper comparative analysis.
 
As for people who think that the 301 carries the penalty over, do you have any proof? No, of course not because it's just like everything else in SEO, theories without proof.

Have you ever changed domains for a site using a 301 redirect? At first the new domain has no pagerank, but after 2-3 weeks the new domain magically has the same pagerank as the old domain. That is because the links used to calculate pagerank are transferred to the new domain from the 301 redirect. Good and toxic link juice will pass through the 301, and any positive or negative impacts from the old domain's backlink profile will be applied to the new domain. This is pretty much common knowledge, but you can draw your own conclusions and determine if this is enough "proof" or not.

Penguin is so screwed up that it is too early to know if the old rules, as noted above, apply. So earn while you can. :)
 
If you have webmaster tools installed on your site, do you update the old site inside of webmaster tools to reflect the 301 direct?
 
Great insights, thanks for that! I've had the same problem: got hit by the Pinguin. I've been playing with the thought for a while now whether I should wait and be patient like many people advise or simply redirect immediately. On the one hand, my website had a well-established brand name and I would preper to not 301 it. However, I don't know if the ranks will ever come back. On the other hand, it is said that 301s word miracles at the minute. The question is: for how long?

If you don't have a brand name I would recommend a 301.
But if you have a brand name I would rather take my time to do it right because if you start to rank your site you will at least know which method is the right one for your site.
If you do a 301, there is a chance you do something wrong and get punished heavily again next update.
How many times can you 301 before starting to lose your customers?
 
I had content penalty on my site and after some time i 301 redirected to a brand new domain..
About 1 month it was working well but a week ago i again received the content penalty message again..
 
Who knows.. The rankings are holding at the moment and I'm making some nice bank!

It's still hard to say whether penguin got me for bad links or for being too heavily optimized. Time will tell!!
 
301 directs for ranking is new to me and never tried it for ranking purposes.

My guess would be it would give you some improvements, but only for a short time. It could also leave you getting a penalty when Google picks up on it.

Personally, I would stay away from it. It's not a good long term strategy.

If you were 301 directing from an old site to a new one, or doing what I am with affiliate links, thats ok.

Thanks for the reply. Here is what I am thinking. I have a site designed like this (by the way its a EMD)

It sells Widgets, and I have pages:
widgets.com/blue-widgets
widgets.com/green-widgets
widgets.com/red-widgets
widgets.com/buy-widgets

I have completely lost rankings for "Buy Widgets" from 3rd position with the page widget.com/buy-widgets

Reading the content of my site and being honest with myself, if someone was searching to "buy widgets" they would want to see my home page rank and not a sub page. I think Google as applied the over optimisation penalty as the home page is targeting only 1 keyword "widgets" and the sub page targets "buy widgets". When in reality both "widgets" and "buy widgets" should bring up the home page.

So, I am thinking about 301 redirecting widgets.com/buy-widgets to the home page widgets.com and then building some backlinks to the home page using "buy widgets" as the anchor text (as well as other anchor text to be safe)

I also have site wide links in my footer pointing to:

widgets.com/blue-widgets
widgets.com/green-widgets
widgets.com/red-widgets
widgets.com/buy-widgets

My gut feeling is that this is an over optimisation penalty. Would be interesting to hear others thoughts about this
 
Hehe, looks like it worked for you too.

I have partially recovered too thanks to this method.

Btw @OP where did you get this idea ? :p
 
I had content penalty on my site and after some time i 301 redirected to a brand new domain..
About 1 month it was working well but a week ago i again received the content penalty message again..

That's very disheartening man.
 
Hehe, looks like it worked for you too.

I have partially recovered too thanks to this method.

Btw @OP where did you get this idea ? :p

When I was first starting out I had over 70 sites deindexed because of interlinking and using too much wprobot. I ended up 301ing all the the sites to one aged domain to make one super site.

This one site earned me a lot of cash until panda. Just recently I started to redirect some of those pages back out to new niche sites as a way to diversify things a bit.
 
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