[Case Study] Recovery of the Penguin 1.0 + 1.1

This is a case study for my self and others that might have a penguin hit site...
I want to take notes of the stuff I have done to recover and try to see if there is a blue print.

Site:

www.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com (kinda long) 16 characters.

8+ years old

PR 2

6 pages

10 blog posts (these were added after penguin as part of the recovery)





So far, I have bought social gigs from fiverr.com

Bought lots of retweets/facebook posts and shares/ 15K followers/ pinterst repins/diggs etc. etc. Spent around $200

Pre-penguin ranking :



Day after penguin:



todays ranking after adding 10 high quality 500 word posts + buying the social links/signals from fiverr.com and a few high PR links.




Other stuff I have done is on page de-optimization... I have removed the over used keyword(s) on the main page... but density is still pretty high. I believe 3-4% from around 5%. Article on the front page is around 8000 words.

I have also installed a plugin called: qTranslate.

I have translated all of my pages into 5 languages (that was getting in most visitors to my site... you can check the stats with Google analytic I think, however, I used a WP plugin called statpress).

Next plan of Action is to buy 1 or 2 Services that have opened their service in BST after the penguin update.... IMO most of the BST services that were open before penguin are out of date.... (most... But not ALL!).

Subscribe, ask questions.... I will update next week when I have some spare cash to put towards a SEO package from here.

so it looks like your rankings improved some after today's penguin refresh...

manny521 said:

so it looks like your rankings improved some after today's penguin refresh...

Click to expand...

His overall aggregate ranking appears to have dropped further, the difference in power between position 90 and 40 is not even there on most niches.

The ranking has been moving up and down, but over all its improved. Did go down a bit since the penguin 1.1 update that was 1 or 2 days ago...

Subscribed, good luck with the recovery.

I think you might have to do some more On-Site tweaking because from what I've read that's where a majority of the Penguin penalties apply to. I have an interview for an SEO job this Wednesday, Company is #1 on a highly competitive keyword pre and post penguin.

? The SERP listing is a content page of the site ie: xxxx.com/category/keyword_target
? Keyword used only twice on the page (Density < 2%)
? Backlinks is as this (note: This is a HIGHLY competitive term, competition have 300, 000 + backlinks and what not. This is what's beating them)

BLP (Backlink Page): 4,713
BLD (Backlinks Domain): 43, 260 (included this because they optimize for a lot of terms, homepage has no text except for Navigation + Footer; only Flash.)

And here is a MS look at the Anchor text analysis:

[TABLE="width: 501"]
[TR]
[TD]key word target[/TD]
[TD]201[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word[/TD]
[TD]240[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word target[/TD]
[TD]86[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key worder target[/TD]
[TD]29[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key key word target[/TD]
[TD]7[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]best key word target[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word[/TD]
[TD]65[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]target web site[/TD]
[TD]7[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]business key word[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key worder target[/TD]
[TD]11[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word target country[/TD]
[TD]3[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]target key worders[/TD]
[TD]3[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word target country[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word company target[/TD]
[TD]6[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]creative key word target[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name key word[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]professional key word target[/TD]
[TD]7[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]quality key word target[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]target key word[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]target key worders[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]professional key worders[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key word target companies[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]professional key worder[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD]3[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]key worders target[/TD]
[TD]25[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]read more[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name. has well-trained key worder target[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name. employs creative key worder target[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]acquiring potential customers with experienced key worder target[/TD]
[TD]1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name. provides comprehensive process for key word target[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]becoming competitive with clear and clean key word target[/TD]
[TD]4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name. delivers goal-oriented key word target[/TD]
[TD]2[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]company name. as a reliable provider of key word target[/TD]
[TD]1
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

I talked with the guy on Friday to set up our interview, we were on the phone for 30 mins just talking about Penguin, Panda and SEO in general, essentially shooting the shit talking strategy and the changing landscape of SEO. I truly believe that these kinds of methods are the best for improving results, I love the long anchor text for long tails and they literally have minimal text on their targeted web pages which I admire.

EDIT: Included one actual Keyword :O

suscribed .....
do you tell which services you will buy and what are you looking for? anchor diversity ....

Was your page rank affected at all. It started off a PR2 did that change at all.

I get hit with an unnatural penalty and it took me down from a PR3 down to a PR0 and because it's a newsite, it doesn't rank quickly for the hot topics like it used to. I wasn't sure if my loss of page rank was penguin related or something else.

-Capp

congrats mate. hope we all can get our rankings back!!!

just a question, did you made social votes for your homepage only or also for new posts?

abrigado said:

suscribed .....
do you tell which services you will buy and what are you looking for? anchor diversity ....

Click to expand...

I will post a link to the service I think is best.... I will contact the providers and see what they say and will go with the one I think will help me recover best!

bigg_capp said:

Was your page rank affected at all. It started off a PR2 did that change at all.

I get hit with an unnatural penalty and it took me down from a PR3 down to a PR0 and because it's a newsite, it doesn't rank quickly for the hot topics like it used to. I wasn't sure if my loss of page rank was penguin related or something else.

-Capp

Click to expand...

My site was not effected in the PR department. Its been a PR 2 for about a year now. Not really built quality to the site in the past ... but I just may have to.... Coz the main fish in the niche is a PR 6 I believe. If I want to complete with them, I will have to match their PR power.


Did you buy a dropped domain?? Some times when you get a dropped domain with PR it losses it after 2-3 months.

Mubashirshafi said:

hmm, sounds cool.

Click to expand...

psytrance said:

congrats mate. hope we all can get our rankings back!!!

just a question, did you made social votes for your homepage only or also for new posts?

Click to expand...

Thanks for subscribing.


I have bought votes for pretty much all posts. But the main front page is the one that has the most votes.

The PR of your site does not have much weight as to where you will rank, at least this was true in the past...

@dubious

Good luck with the job interview

I think I may have to get the density down, but the problem is that the content on the front page is a sales page and the text does not read as well without the product name.

The anchor diversity looks about the same for my site....

Don't they have any generic keywords (click here, more info, the link... etc.).

Oh btw.... I have been using raw URLs and generic terms for these fiverr.com campaigns so I could dilute the over-optimized anchor texts.

I have like 5 keywords that I was using 90% of the time! I think that's whats behind my penalty.

manny521 said:

The PR of your site does not have much weight as to where you will rank, at least this was true in the past...

Click to expand...

Many people say that, but I think it does help to have a site with High PR domain.

You will rank higher and quicker with links coming from a authority page with high PR than a normal site with no PR. So if a link from a site with high PR help you rank quicker, then logical tells me a site having a high PR would help you rank easier.

Terry from traffic planet, I think, would agree (from what I have gathered from his posts).

Thats wonderful of you to post this case study. Case studies are always a great help

IamNRE said:

Don't they have any generic keywords (click here, more info, the link... etc.).

Click to expand...

Well, I saw 1 read more. Then again this was from Market Samurai Anchor Text analysis for the specific key word, there's 4700 back links for that page so I am guessing that wasn't the whole lot. Interesting note: They have 222 pages indexed, though there's only like 30 pages or so on the website that is navigated.

They are clever with creating content pages in which you can never get to / category as it directs the user to category/ keyword_target, but category/ longtail_1 cannot be navigated to, only reachable for weak term. Each longtail page in the category links to the money category page.

interesting stuff.. keep us posted

Just had another 3 gigs delivered over the weekend from fiverr.com


http://fiverr.com/amithak50/give-yo...ne-25-facebook-like-25-fb-share-genuine-votes

http://fiverr.com/kazalbdmd/do-10-d...plus-1-for-your-site-or-blog-or-youtube-video

http://fiverr.com/iamrohit/give-you...like-for-your-any-websiteblog-or-youtube-link

etc.

(I did not necessarily get those 3 delivered to me... but very similar to them).

-----------

Rank update:

Hey, sorry for the off-topic question but which rank tracker program do you use? Thanks

Th3T3chGuy said:

Hey, sorry for the off-topic question but which rank tracker program do you use? Thanks

Click to expand...

Hey, its all right, im using a free program called Traffic Travis 3.

Its shared on the forum.

And im taking screen shots with another free program called paint.net.

I have gone with the heavy package from this service:


http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...ackages-become-immune-all-google-updates.html



I will update the thread in 1 weeks time about my SERP movement.

I had 800 hits yesterday and now im out of the SERPS!