Changing page URLs? Will that beat penguin?

The Secret · May 17, 2012

Hello,

I own a electronics Web store with 900+ pages. Since penguin my Category pages eg cameras,accessories,cases etc have all been hit pretty hard.
I have a blog installed on my site and all the blog pages are now the pages ranking, which sucks because they are not money pages.
If i was to change the category pages wouldn't that give it a new URL and avoid the penalty? Every new blog post i do seems to be ranking top 10
So if i was to change the category names which would change the URL would that work?

It probably sounds dumb, but what do you think?

The other issue i have is that all my backlinks will now be pointing at 404 page because of the change in URL.

Any help would be great

rippy · May 17, 2012

Actually I was thinking the same.

I have one website that has 50 pages, and 500 incoming links domain wide.
400 of these links go to only two URL's, while other 100 are spread across many URL's.

I am changing two URL's with most links. Then I will put a robots.txt instruction to disallow these two URL's

Hopefully this will erase 400 of incoming links and all will be back to normal

Mortz · May 17, 2012

We changed a few URLs to test it and we see some positive results. The items we changed moved up but still aren't back to where they should be. If you built backlinks to the urls you plan to change then just 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL. We did this and the only products that resurfaced are the ones we changed URLs for. What we haven't tried is letting all of the backlinks die by removing the URL entirely.

Our blog posts are ranking higher for most keywords then the monetized pages as well. Penguin is terrible for eCommerce. We simply can't write unique content every day on our product pages, it wouldn't make sense for the customer.

rippy · May 17, 2012

You cant do a 301, what is the point of changing URL's then ??
if you do 301, all links would be redirected, as well as the penalty

jollymonsa · May 17, 2012

No. the only thing that will beat a penguin is a Whale.

Seriously however no you should check WMt for any messages, if none change the content/site layout completely. The Algo looks for contextual ngram structures, which it found on your pages, and says bye bye. You can copy and paste the same crap all over the net, but they will still view it the same. BTW PM me a link I am viewing a lot of ppls sites that got slammed and honestly...many sites sucked with crap content, crap layout, no visual appeal, and a host of other crap.

Mortz · May 17, 2012

rippy said:
You cant do a 301, what is the point of changing URL's then ??
if you do 301, all links would be redirected, as well as the penalty

I edited the post after reading it so he would know what we tried and what we think. What do you suppose people are doing when they transfer domains and 301 redirect the old domain to the new one? Are you sure it's a penalty or is devalued backlinks? I haven't seen proof of anything.

The Secret · May 17, 2012

Mortz said:
We changed a few URLs to test it and we see some positive results. The items we changed moved up but still aren't back to where they should be. If you built backlinks to the urls you plan to change then just 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL. We did this and the only products that resurfaced are the ones we changed URLs for. What we haven't tried is letting all of the backlinks die by removing the URL entirely.

Our blog posts are ranking higher for most keywords then the monetized pages as well. Penguin is terrible for eCommerce. We simply can't write unique content every day on our product pages, it wouldn't make sense for the customer.

Thats what i am thinking, it is very hard with eCommerce because of that reason. You cannot syay "fresh" with content. All you can do is blog, but blog pages don't convert as much and its not fair that these are the only pages ranking.

The Secret · May 17, 2012

jollymonsa said:
No. the only thing that will beat a penguin is a Whale. Seriously however no you should check WMt for any messages, if none change the content/site layout completely. The Algo looks for contextual ngram structures, which it found on your pages, and says bye bye. You can copy and paste the same crap all over the net, but they will still view it the same. BTW PM me a link I am viewing a lot of ppls sites that got slammed and honestly...many sites sucked with crap content, crap layout, no visual appeal, and a host of other crap.

I am planning on totally changing the contextual content on the pages aswell.

assphuck · May 17, 2012

Don't mess up your internal URL structure as that most likely is not the problem. I recovered a Penguin smacked site in three days, and I can tell you I did nothing onsite at all. Further tests on other sites are currently running, and I hope to post a new thread with my results. Fingers are crossed that this will work for my other sites as well.

SwedishChef · May 17, 2012

Don't think that will work as Penguin, Panda too for that matter, is a site wide penalty

Mortz · May 17, 2012

SwedishChef said:
Don't think that will work as Penguin, Panda too for that matter, is a site wide penalty

He said he's ranking in the top 10 with his blog posts.

Our site has some buried pages and then some of our pages are #2 and #3. If it's site wide, then how is that possible?

The Secret · May 17, 2012

SwedishChef said:
Don't think that will work as Penguin, Panda too for that matter, is a site wide penalty

Its not site wide. It is only pages that i have ever built links to. Quality links at that, but that doesn't matter.

jollymonsa · May 17, 2012

Unless something unseemly was underway on your site, I think your not going to be in the hole forever. The search algo simply just is what it is and your sites ngrams, kws, and/or a multitude of other items could have pushed it into that grey area the Google decided for that KW was the edge of the planet.

Check this post for some good ideas on making a strong WP page that gets indexed very nicely.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...od-page-structure-wordpress-post-penguin.html

The Secret · May 17, 2012

jollymonsa said:
Unless something unseemly was underway on your site, I think your not going to be in the hole forever. The search algo simply just is what it is and your sites ngrams, kws, and/or a multitude of other items could have pushed it into that grey area the Google decided for that KW was the edge of the planet.

I thought that also, but it is EVERY KEYWORD. I have only ever targeted about 10KWs which is bad i know, but my list of 200+ keywords have all dropped. Its just so annoying that non money pages are ranking high.

jollymonsa · May 17, 2012

Well they counld have hit you with a footprint if your moneypages had something they had sifted from the webz as not acceptable. Also 10 KW's! Well that's not a diversified portfolio at all man

manny521 · May 17, 2012

Mortz said:
We changed a few URLs to test it and we see some positive results. The items we changed moved up but still aren't back to where they should be. If you built backlinks to the urls you plan to change then just 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL. We did this and the only products that resurfaced are the ones we changed URLs for. What we haven't tried is letting all of the backlinks die by removing the URL entirely.

Our blog posts are ranking higher for most keywords then the monetized pages as well. Penguin is terrible for eCommerce. We simply can't write unique content every day on our product pages, it wouldn't make sense for the customer.

I am seeing this exact same thing...It seems that penguin is targeting specific pages on my site and it is NOT site wide penalty...

almost all of my blog posts outrank my money pages...

i have been thinking about just renaming my money pages so they have different urls as it seems penguin does not kill your entire site, only specific pages...

not sure what i am going to do yet, i have a few strategies i am trying right now so i don't have to do this, but if they don't work then i will be doing this....

manny521 · May 17, 2012

SwedishChef said:
Don't think that will work as Penguin, Panda too for that matter, is a site wide penalty

100% not correct...I have over 1000 pages on my site and almost all of those pages rank #1 or #2, only my money pages don't rank and this is where I built almost all of my links...

all of the other pages on my site target super long tail keywords and they all rank #1 or #2...

manny521 · May 17, 2012

The Secret said:
Its not site wide. It is only pages that i have ever built links to. Quality links at that, but that doesn't matter.

100% agree, penguin is NOT site wide...when danny sullivan (searchengineland.com) was interviewing matt cutts, MC would not comment if penguin was site wide or only targeting specific pages....in my experience, its only specific pages...

if you have a different experience, let us know...

one thing i have grown to understand about penguin is that one person observes one thing and then ten other people say this is not the case, so lets here you guys who have been effected site wide...but, don't tell us you have been effected site wide if you have a MNS...

jollymonsa · May 17, 2012

It is hard to tell I bet your pages had been/are crap honestly, not to be offensive but a lot of gen'd content and such. Most things that got das boot had a element of looking beyond cr@p.

The Secret · May 17, 2012

jollymonsa said:
It is hard to tell I bet your pages had been/are crap honestly, not to be offensive but a lot of gen'd content and such. Most things that got das boot had a element of looking beyond cr@p.

dude, my pages had hand written content of over 1000+ words which is extremely hard to do on a eCommerce site. Optimised fine. I know 100% it is offsite related. That is for me anyway. Other people might be different. It is only these product and category pages that i have built links to that have dropped off the map. I have blog posts on my site with only 300 words ranking top 5 for some KW.

Changing page URLs? Will that beat penguin?

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