It’s ok what I did?

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jyciap11

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I have one website 3 years old hitted by Google update. I let it die, so I don't know if it was penalized or google just stopped going through, I passed from 500 daily users from Google to 20 daily users.
I changed all content, added some new fresh text, changed some external links with no follow and add new internal links.
I also added Facebook page and modified a bit my kw density in the posts.
After this I redirect 301 to a new domain .it, so passed from a .com to a better tld .it and I created new GSC for the new domain. Added sitemap, robots etc.
I did all correctly?
 
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Looks like a mess to me. Good luck though
 
if you're penalized and then you 301 you're going to transfer the penalty to the new site. Why is it so hard for you, people, to understand this??

Anyway, changing the content can help (when it's a content-related penalty), but are you sure that it's a content-related penalty? Did you really audit your site correctly?

And what do you mean "changed links with no follow"? Do you mean that you've replaced some of your DF backlinks with nofollow ones? Because this might be a bad idea if you've nofollow'd the good links...

Last but not least, changing the TLD to a ccTLD might mean further decrease in traffic since now you're telling google to localize your domain... .com TLDs rank worldwide, but .it usually only ranks in Italy and, if that's your target market that's fine. But if you want to rank worldwide but you've changed to .it... well... you can figure out what will happen :)
 
tazarbm said:
if you're penalized and then you 301 you're going to transfer the penalty to the new site. Why is it so hard for you, people, to understand this??

Anyway, changing the content can help (when it's a content-related penalty), but are you sure that it's a content-related penalty? Did you really audit your site correctly?

And what do you mean "changed links with no follow"? Do you mean that you've replaced some of your DF backlinks with nofollow ones? Because this might be a bad idea if you've nofollow'd the good links...

Last but not least, changing the TLD to a ccTLD might mean further decrease in traffic since now you're telling google to localize your domain... .com TLDs rank worldwide, but .it usually only ranks in Italy and, if that's your target market that's fine. But if you want to rank worldwide but you've changed to .it... well... you can figure out what will happen :)
Click to expand...
I only target IT, so .it I think it’s the best.
I changed some CPA link with no follow and before redirect I disavow many spam backlinks
 
jyciap11 said:
I changed some CPA link with no follow and before redirect I disavow many spam backlinks
Click to expand...
but did you figure out why your site tanked? Until you do this, you're just going to shoot in the dark and blind-guess what the problem could be. Nofollow'ing CPA links is good, but I hope that you've cloaked them too...

Disavowing can help too, but you should have waited until the changes happened before 301-ing...
 
tazarbm said:
but did you figure out why your site tanked? Until you do this, you're just going to shoot in the dark and blind-guess what the problem could be. Nofollow'ing CPA links is good, but I hope that you've cloaked them too...

Disavowing can help too, but you should have waited until the changes happened before 301-ing...
Click to expand...
I don’t know why I got hit, I tried to do some change. One domain penalized I did some change without redirect, and this domain I changed with redirect.
My cpa link are masked, because from my main website I redirect to a clear domain with nofollow with a download button (in this domain where I redirect) that redirect to cpa link.
 
jyciap11 said:
I don’t know why I got hit
Click to expand...
well, the changes you make then are shots in the dark, like I said.

When did your traffic drop? On which day / week?
 
tazarbm said:
When did your traffic drop? On which day / week?
Click to expand...
I don’t know, I leave this website since last year, no change, no update, nothing I leave because the traffic was good and I didn’t touch or update anything, but this was not a good choice lol.
So I tried to did some change, better text, update Wordpress, plugins, disavow spam backlinks, changed external and internal link and then redirect to a better specified domain for the country I target. I’m trying to tell Google “hey, I’m back”

So I don’t know if this is a penalty, or only abandoned website
 
jyciap11 said:
I don’t know
Click to expand...
well, check it :)

Check the impressions + clicks graph inside of your GSC for the last 12 months and you should see either a sudden and obvious drop (in which case it's a penalty), or a slow, gradual decrease (in which case it's usually a sign of website dying due to lack of activity). Post a screenshot of the last 12 months impressions + clicks please

jyciap11 said:
So I don’t know if this is a penalty, or only abandoned website
Click to expand...
which is why you don't shoot in the dark. If you've changed / deleted the content that was good now you have to work twice as much to bring it back (and even this is not guaranteed)...

And 301-ing a penalized site to a new domain will harm the new domain, too and you'll never rank it and you'll keep wondering why.
 
If you redirect the penalized site to the new site, it will affect your new website for sure. You can check the search console for the penalty issues. Updating the content and changing the links will help.

But it needs some time to see the effect. Wait and track the website performance.
 
tazarbm said:
well, check it :)

Check the impressions + clicks graph inside of your GSC for the last 12 months and you should see either a sudden and obvious drop (in which case it's a penalty), or a slow, gradual decrease (in which case it's usually a sign of website dying due to lack of activity). Post a screenshot of the last 12 months impressions + clicks please


which is why you don't shoot in the dark. If you've changed / deleted the content that was good now you have to work twice as much to bring it back (and even this is not guaranteed)...

And 301-ing a penalized site to a new domain will harm the new domain, too and you'll never rank it and you'll keep wondering why.
Click to expand...
Check the screen, traffic started drop when I stopped update website
 

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jyciap11 said:
Check the screen, traffic started drop when I stopped update website
Click to expand...
so, March.... According to this page there were 2 updates in March, a spam update (which usually refers to backlinks), and a core update (which can mean anything from content quality to technical SEO, mobile friendliness, etc)....

https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history

Unfortunately, I can't delve deeper into your issue (it would take a lot of time, and I'd have to charge you anyway), but look up the threads about the 2 March updates on the forum and see what solution people have reported.

Alternatively, check out these SER and SEJ blog posts for more details about the core update, as this was the bigger one and it was covered in more details... and maybe you can figure out what the problem is so you actually know what to fix instead of randomly changing content and nofollow-ing backlinks :)

https://searchengineland.com/google-march-2024-core-update-things-you-need-to-know-438370
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-march-2024-core-update-37003.html
 
jyciap11 said:
I don’t know, I leave this website since last year, no change, no update, nothing I leave because the traffic was good and I didn’t touch or update anything, but this was not a good choice lol.
So I tried to did some change, better text, update Wordpress, plugins, disavow spam backlinks, changed external and internal link and then redirect to a better specified domain for the country I target. I’m trying to tell Google “hey, I’m back”
Click to expand...
I would have also done the same as you... Sometimes, it is better to start fresh when our thoughts and plans are evolved significantly. You have done the SEO things like changing the TLD, setting up search console, analytics, updating sitemaps and making redirections etc. correctly. Now you must make a plan for further updating this website continuously as I think the reason for your old website was that gradually when you stopped checking it and updating it, its content got outdated and so it was not getting much attention of users and search engines. Now for the new website, you need to make sure that it stands with time and keep providing quality content and information for users to stay engaged with it.
 
People don't seem to understand that SEO is about reputation as much as it is about signals.

That is why it is important for people to host their website in an environment where other websites are currently not penalized for doing nefarious activities.
If your website was penalized, then you do not want to connect it with the new website.

That means no 301, and preferably a different IP if it was dedicated.
 
iMartin said:
People don't seem to understand that SEO is about reputation as much as it is about signals.

That is why it is important for people to host their website in an environment where other websites are currently not penalized for doing nefarious activities.
If your website was penalized, then you do not want to connect it with the new website.

That means no 301, and preferably a different IP if it was dedicated.
Click to expand...
I think you can easy mask the ip with Cloudflare..
 
Why do you think the website is penalized? Is the website ranking anywhere in the top 100 for a bunch of keywords? if yes, it's probably not,
It will be much easier to recover a tanked website over a penalized one,

If your website/pages are ranking anywhere in the 1-10th pages of SERPs,
You need to make sure that you're matching the user search intentent, having non-spammy content/link/anchors and have enough authority to rank,

Forget about "good content" or "i've made the content better" kind of statements, that's not simply the way,
That could influence the long term SEO, but not meant for bots or algorithmic effects (good or bad)
 
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