RankGeek
Senior Member
- Jul 11, 2012
- 1,124
- 132
Howdy!
I've been reading several strategies posted by people whose sites got hit by Penguin, and I thought I should share this case study here. It isn't a completely 'new' strategy, but it worked for one of our clients, and if this could come in handy for anyone reading, we'd be delighted!
We've been running tests on Penguin Rescue for over 2 months now, and the first paying customers came in the door about a month ago (Sep 23rd to be precise). This particular client sent us a mail saying "I optimized the one page website http://nxxxxxxxxxxxxt.org and was #1 or #2 on page 1 of google for almost two years then a few months ago my site disappeared from google search."
This was a site in the financial niche - credit repair, and did not have too many exact searches for its two primary keywords - a few hundred exact searches each. But in addition to ranking on top for its exact keywords, it was also ranking well for various other keywords in the niche, a few of which had a couple thousand searches. The site was a simple one page deal, with data collection being its primary purpose. There were a few more pages of content inside - blog style.
The budget the client had was $100 per month, and we signed him up. We first ran the site through a few tools like Woorank, and Raven, and gave a few on-site tips to the client. Then we picked two ancillary keywords which had even fewer searches, and started off on them - both long tail keywords. On 24th Sep when we began, the site wasn't ranking for either keyword - in the top 200.
What we did for the client was -
- We wrote 15 articles in house - ranging from 150 word SEO centric articles to 300 word blog posts, and 400 word press releases
- We submitted the shorter articles on niche web 2.0 properties we have inhouse, and onto our own internally hosted wiki sites with one link to the client site each
- We used 3 blog posts we wrote for submission onto high page authority Blogs (we bought them from a provider we regularly work with here on BHW)
- We submitted the Press Release to both paid (SB Wire) and free PR submission sites - 5 links.
- Ran all links through Lindexed.
Thats it. A week ago, we sent the client his monthly report, and his rankings were
The #5 and 58 were for the ancillary keywords we actually worked on. However, surprisingly, one of his main keywords came up to #31.
And yesterday, we checked again, and found that the primary keywords moved up further!
In order of listing on the screenshot above, the keywords moved to #5, #72, #7, and #112 respectively. Now, the client is only interested in the last two keywords - those are what this particular site is for. And he's moved to #5 for his main term! He's mighty happy, and has renewed for this month too. In the coming month, we're changing the strategy slightly and are buying a few blog posts from high authority guest blogs again, and are augmenting his backlinks with some manual blog comments, and high value Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo and Hub pages. We're also getting a few sponsored tweets and FB posts in addition to a couple of videos.
Will keep you posted about the progress in the coming month, but this same result is being seen on another client who also signed up for the same Penguin Rescue package with us about 3 weeks ago. Working on long tail related keywords is helping bring the site back for the primary keywords as well. Do share if you've had similar findings also.
Thank you for your time
And hope this comes in handy to atleast one penguin-hit webmaster!
I've been reading several strategies posted by people whose sites got hit by Penguin, and I thought I should share this case study here. It isn't a completely 'new' strategy, but it worked for one of our clients, and if this could come in handy for anyone reading, we'd be delighted!
We've been running tests on Penguin Rescue for over 2 months now, and the first paying customers came in the door about a month ago (Sep 23rd to be precise). This particular client sent us a mail saying "I optimized the one page website http://nxxxxxxxxxxxxt.org and was #1 or #2 on page 1 of google for almost two years then a few months ago my site disappeared from google search."
This was a site in the financial niche - credit repair, and did not have too many exact searches for its two primary keywords - a few hundred exact searches each. But in addition to ranking on top for its exact keywords, it was also ranking well for various other keywords in the niche, a few of which had a couple thousand searches. The site was a simple one page deal, with data collection being its primary purpose. There were a few more pages of content inside - blog style.
The budget the client had was $100 per month, and we signed him up. We first ran the site through a few tools like Woorank, and Raven, and gave a few on-site tips to the client. Then we picked two ancillary keywords which had even fewer searches, and started off on them - both long tail keywords. On 24th Sep when we began, the site wasn't ranking for either keyword - in the top 200.
What we did for the client was -
- We wrote 15 articles in house - ranging from 150 word SEO centric articles to 300 word blog posts, and 400 word press releases
- We submitted the shorter articles on niche web 2.0 properties we have inhouse, and onto our own internally hosted wiki sites with one link to the client site each
- We used 3 blog posts we wrote for submission onto high page authority Blogs (we bought them from a provider we regularly work with here on BHW)
- We submitted the Press Release to both paid (SB Wire) and free PR submission sites - 5 links.
- Ran all links through Lindexed.
Thats it. A week ago, we sent the client his monthly report, and his rankings were
The #5 and 58 were for the ancillary keywords we actually worked on. However, surprisingly, one of his main keywords came up to #31.
And yesterday, we checked again, and found that the primary keywords moved up further!
In order of listing on the screenshot above, the keywords moved to #5, #72, #7, and #112 respectively. Now, the client is only interested in the last two keywords - those are what this particular site is for. And he's moved to #5 for his main term! He's mighty happy, and has renewed for this month too. In the coming month, we're changing the strategy slightly and are buying a few blog posts from high authority guest blogs again, and are augmenting his backlinks with some manual blog comments, and high value Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo and Hub pages. We're also getting a few sponsored tweets and FB posts in addition to a couple of videos.
Will keep you posted about the progress in the coming month, but this same result is being seen on another client who also signed up for the same Penguin Rescue package with us about 3 weeks ago. Working on long tail related keywords is helping bring the site back for the primary keywords as well. Do share if you've had similar findings also.
Thank you for your time
And hope this comes in handy to atleast one penguin-hit webmaster!
