Penguin Tactics...advanced users I need your opinion on this

Hey guys,
I am working on a case where a client of mine was slapped by Penguin due to low inbound link anchor diversity done by another IM prior to me...as well as some junk link building.

I have been researching a lot and seems cutting out the pages that were slapped and showing a 404 instead would stop the flow of "negative" link juice that has low anchor diversity etc. That's a sacrifice worth making as site went from top 5 to nowhere right now.

From my ranking report it is obvious that the homepage was hit on the 24th April update.

As a plan I did a complete site redesign...and changed the url paths of all internal pages.

Question in my mind right now is...and I will appreciate your thoughts on which is best in your opinion :

A)
Should I keep the homepage path as is, and launch the new site design with all internal pages on new urls (thus showing up 404 for all old pages of which some were supposedly hit by the Penguin). The problem with this is that all internal pages' link juice will be lost...when I am not certain which ones have been hit and which have not. And other problem is that homepage will still be the core of the structure...when it has obviously been hit the most. Plan is to do as much generic and naker url link building to that page in order to try diversify the anchor profile and hope in few months things will be ok.


or

B)
Should I setup the homepage to be on a different page/path...e.g. www.site.com/home.php and have the old homepage have a 302 redirect (temp redirect) which is supposed not to pass any link juice. In addition I could do a 301 (permanent) redirect on all old sub pages that are otherwise going to be showing as 404 (or ideally only on the ones I am 100% were not hit by Penguin) and point those to the new homepage in order to give it some weight. I will actively be doing link building to all new pages with diverse anchors.

The whole site will be installed in the same root..with only difference instead of index.php users will be 302 redirected to home.php and basically there will be nothing left from the old site.

or

C)
Transfer the whole site to a new domain and do a 301 redirect from all sub pages to the corresponding new sub pages...while not doing a 301 on the homepage? This way site will start almost from scratch.


Has anyone ever tried to tackle such a problem, where the homepage was slapped...and tried to fix the problem while not abandoning ship and moving to a new domain ?

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

301 to another page with in the site will work in this case. Also as this is a problem with homepage, Just make a redesign or temporarily 301 homepage to a blog page with in the site.

linksmaster said:

301 to another page with in the site will work in this case.

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I hear this is only a temporary solution. I've read a lot of case studies that do not recommend this strategy.


To the OP: How many backlinks does the site have? You could just start throwing a lot of generic anchor texts at the site to increase the diversity. This way you keep all the authority that the site once had.

Well the site has e.g. 10-15k links. I have the capacity to output that amount in less than 3 months...however am not sure that throwing out 10k links with generic and naked urls will result in.

Have you tried this ?

0_00_0 said:

I hear this is only a temporary solution. I've read a lot of case studies that do not recommend this strategy.


To the OP: How many backlinks does the site have? You could just start throwing a lot of generic anchor texts at the site to increase the diversity. This way you keep all the authority that the site once had.

Click to expand...

nikolaalx said:

Well the site has e.g. 10-15k links. I have the capacity to output that amount in less than 3 months...however am not sure that throwing out 10k links with generic and naked urls will result in.

Have you tried this ?

Click to expand...

I am in the process of diversifying a bunch of my websites' link profile but it unfortunately is not quick. I have websites with 20k+ backlinks and I've spent months building generic links with not much result. I just think it is the best solution short of creating a brand new website regardless of how long it takes. I've heard when you 301 a penguin-penalized website you will return to your original position for a month or two then re-receive the penguin penalty.

Hmm why not combine the two strategies then.

Do a 301...if that would keep your traffic for a month...keep building generic links to the old and new domains and at one point they should go above the surface?

I havent seen anyone reporting to have fixed penguin through radical generic/naked url anchor placement.

0_00_0 said:

I am in the process of diversifying a bunch of my websites' link profile but it unfortunately is not quick. I have websites with 20k+ backlinks and I've spent months building generic links with not much result. I just think it is the best solution short of creating a brand new website regardless of how long it takes. I've heard when you 301 a penguin-penalized website you will return to your original position for a month or two then re-receive the penguin penalty.

Click to expand...

What does the new site look like? Do you have lots of sitewide opt in forms or elements that are always "above the fold"? Penguin is not just about links, so I'm curious to know what your onsite is like.

The new site is wp based on a template called u-design. With 100% unique text, plenty above the fold and one lead capture form. This is a local web design business....so its a lead capture based site. No ads.

On-page seems to be decent.

On the old design/site on the other hand there were plenty of bolded keywords on each page...e.g. 2-3 bolded keywords and 1-2 in italics. There were also too little images/graphics. I know those could have been a problem which is why I decided to do a complete revamp in the first place.

I am thinking to buy same domain with different extension, then do a complete 301 redirect to the new site.

In the meantime I will begin building generic and anchor links to the new domain. Hopefully traffic will come back immediately and stay like this for a month or so. Then after a month the penalty will most probably be transferred...so 2nd month will be lost.

The bet is on the new generic/brand/naked urls links to kick in around the 3rd month hopefully for a full recovery.

I plan to combine this with social signals. If nothing happens then I will do a 301 from the old site to a new, third domain. I will also do a 301 from the second site to the third site so it inherits all the links. This should provide another month of a buffer before the penalty catches up.

Limitation here is in the domain names. Luckily this particular business is for a client that is non-us based and the slapped site was .com...so there's the ability to switch to the local extension domain for its country.

RightInTwo said:

What does the new site look like? Do you have lots of sitewide opt in forms or elements that are always "above the fold"? Penguin is not just about links, so I'm curious to know what your onsite is like.

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