My Private BLog Network was penalised by Google

[miracure1]

I had a very successful Affiliate Marketing business running but unfortunately it got penalised by google. I am sure it was hit as I was promoting a few different niches and all the rankings disappeared at the same time.

Even if the blog network is penalised the pr of the domains stay the same. What do you do with these domains ?

Another question I was looking for more advice on how to avoid leaving a pbn footprint ?


I had about 30 sites in my pbn
all on different hosters
all wordpress installs
different themes
variable widgets
my approach was 150 word article reviews about the website I was linking to with variable anchor text links ( very mixed,
using brand, url , keyword , longtail keyword, brand keyword)
I limited it to 2 links per article, with a maximum of 10 posts on the home page
all content 100% unique

It could be that all the article layouts and styles were too similar ie all reviews of websites


Please let me know what you think caused the penalty and how to avoid this in the future ?

Also once a blog is hit what do you do with the blogs would you use them again or once a penalty leave it and buy new domains


Thanks

Marc

 

[Aty]

My guess is that one of your competition reported your site. In the future I suggest you block ahrefs, opensiteexplorer, majesticseo, so they can't check your backlinks.

 

[alvin.orrt]

150 word articles and 2 links? that's not good. 150 word articles means low quality content - try adding some longer content, at least 350 words but ideally over 550 words and you should see a change.

And what exactly do you mean by penalty? did you get a manual penalty? did you pbn blogs get deindexed? or it was just that your rankings dropped?

 

[miracure1]

all the rankings have practically disappeared?

How do I know if got a manual penalty - checking site://url the sites are all still there

all the pr ranks are still the same of the blog sites.

 

[Gyuman82]

Are you talking about your money site or network?

If your site tanked, that doesn't mean your network is no good any more.

It is likely your network will still work for a different site/niche if you choose to rebuild.

You're really only f##### with a network if the whole thing gets de-indexed.

 

[PlopPlop]

I limited it to 2 links per article, with a maximum of 10 posts on the home page

Every article has 2 links to your money website ? If yes, look no further, if no were you careful with anchors ?

 

[ContentWriter]

It looks like you were manually audited. Then, they saw those very short posts.
I'll make a guess. Those were spun content?

 

[miracure1]

my main sites lost all their rankings but they were not de-indexed.

Why is 2 links too much ? What do you recommend ?

the posts were not spun content 100% unique content

 

[Joak]

my main sites lost all their rankings but they were not de-indexed.

Why is 2 links too much ? What do you recommend ?

the posts were not spun content 100% unique content

Well I think he meant to say that 2 links per 150 words looks kind of spammy, especially because they're affiliate links. Most people use 500+ articles on their money sites now if not more. But 150 words seems a bit too little. Were those 150 words actually of high quality? Or just leading the user to click the affiliate link?

 

[pixeltech]

There may be a common thread running through all of the domains which you are using if you run a WHOIS query for each one.

 

[miracure1]

they were a good quality review of the money site.

my other question is if my pn has not been de-indexed can I still use the pbn if I remove all the links to the penalized websites and just improve the pbn and start linking to new websites ?

obviously with less of a footprint ?

or should I start again ?

 

[alvin.orrt]

Your PBN is fine. Your money site got penalized for low quality content, that's as clear as it gets. Google said it was going to penalized affiliate sites with skinny content and probably that's what happened to your site as well.

The links are probably fine, you just need to change your content.

 

[orangerier]

If your PBN has not been de-indexed, your loss of rankings could be due to anything really. How long has it been?

 

[miracure1]

Your PBN is fine. Your money site got penalized for low quality content, that's as clear as it gets. Google said it was going to penalized affiliate sites with skinny content and probably that's what happened to your site as well.

The links are probably fine, you just need to change your content.

how can that be that all 20 money sites in different niches got penalized at the same time

 

[dlane1987]

Do you have google webmsters? if you do you can check if its had a manual action there. IF not get it and check. You can probably contact Google and sort out any issues.

 

[Lalalaenhund]

how can that be that all 20 money sites in different niches got penalized at the same time

If that's the case then your blog network probably did get penalized. You can easily test this by getting a fresh domain, changing the links and see if it ranks.

Maybe you got a manual review because someone outed your network? For the fear of this I try to build all my network blogs to look like real websites.

Do you have google webmsters? if you do you can check if its had a manual action there. IF not get it and check. You can probably contact Google and sort out any issues.

Just send Matt an email! Lol.

 

[mseostrategy]

My guess is that one of your competition reported your site. In the future I suggest you block ahrefs, opensiteexplorer, majesticseo, so they can't check your backlinks.

Well said how to block ahrefs, opensiteexplorer, majesticseo?

 

[dlane1987]

If that's the case then your blog network probably did get penalized. You can easily test this by getting a fresh domain, changing the links and see if it ranks.

Maybe you got a manual review because someone outed your network? For the fear of this I try to build all my network blogs to look like real websites.



Just send Matt an email! Lol.

Yea that would be well funny. But no. If you look you can contact google and they will be able to help you resolve any issues. Alternatively if you have a manual action google will tell you and you can resolve it and then contact google so they can re check your site hopefully removing the manual action. This is all done in Google Webmasters - Dashboard - Search Traffic - Manual Action

 

[kumbhak11]

Did you used Chrome to log in to all blogs of your network one after another? or did your posts were published all at the same time? Or had you used gmail for any kind of linking in blogs.

 

[rschmitz]

You said you had 30 sites? If all of these sites link to all of your money sites, that leaves a massive footprint. Did you use whois privacy on everything? Did you link your money sites together? Were all of your plugins the same? How about your login credentials? 150 word articles with two links out per article is also going to leave a footprint. At 30 sites you have to really put in the time to make everything look natural and even consider splitting up your network so not everything is hit at once. I hope this works out for you and your network is intact