Removing an Aglothrim Penalty Experiment

Hi,

I am looking to do an experiment on one of my small sites, which was hit by an algorithm penalty in the latest March algorithm update.

Site information:
1) All the important backlinks have been built, and it's likely I can contact people to change them to the new domain
2) The website only contains about 80 posts
3) Received about 6,000 Google traffic but dropped to 500 monthly
4) Site is informational and contains some affiliates

Reasons why the site may have been hit:
1) Site has 3 articles that have AI images (was experimenting)
2) Site does have articles using stock images
3) Site has 50% of its content human written (by me)
4) Site has 50% of its content lazily human-edited (by me) by using chatgpt 4
5) Site used featured in images that are author based (from my other websites for example the daily mail) - which doesn't link to this website but my main websites
6) Site shared an image that I used on two of my other sites
7) Site has duplicated privacy policies used on my other sites


My experiment would be:

• Take a backup of the old domain
• Unpublish all content from the current domain (I am not sure if I need to deindex these in GSC)
• Buy a new domain
• Host it onto a brand new server
• Upload a backup to the new domain
• 1 by 1 republish the content, adjusting the wording.

Would anyone be interested in following my case study/experiment? - Please like if so.

And are there any experienced SEOs who can give me more advice on things I should also implement into this experiment to avoid getting the new domain hit by an algorithm penalty?

It will take a lot of effort to test those things, good luck!

AI images definitely shouldn't have a negative impact on seo. I wouldn't prioritize images in general as the reason for it, test the other things first.

I heard that you need 3 domains for the penalty to not be transmitted.

You KEEP all the penalized content as is.

You 301 redirect your PENALIZED domain to a BRIDGE domain name.
Once the BRIDGE domain has all or most its pages indexed, you 301 that to your FINAL domain.
Then you change the 301 of your PENALIZED domain, to 302 to your BRIDGE domain.

Keeping your BRIDGE domain to 301 to your FINAL domain.

Keep that setup forever.

Technically bypassing manual and other penalties, while keeping traffic.

Also, you can try to index the FINAL domain way before you 301 anything to it, getting a fresh start, then a boost.

Have you tried to fix the current site? There are some people in the forum who claimed to have recovered from the algorithm update. You can probably do the same as you already know the reasons for penalty.

you're trying to reuse your old content,
it has nothing to do with removing any penalties if the old domain is no longer involved,
good luck with it tho!

ForTheLegacys said:

I heard that you need 3 domains for the penalty to not be transmitted.

You KEEP all the penalized content as is.

You 301 redirect your PENALIZED domain to a BRIDGE domain name.
Once the BRIDGE domain has all or most its pages indexed, you 301 that to your FINAL domain.
Then you change the 301 of your PENALIZED domain, to 302 to your BRIDGE domain.

Keeping your BRIDGE domain to 301 to your FINAL domain.

Keep that setup forever.

Technically bypassing manual and other penalties, while keeping traffic.

Also, you can try to index the FINAL domain way before you 301 anything to it, getting a fresh start, then a boost.

Click to expand...

I have heard mixed things about using a bridge domain. But anyway, this is a small domain, and I don't have any valuable backlinks that I cannot transfer to the new domain.

hideath said:

you're trying to reuse your old content,
it has nothing to do with removing any penalties if the old domain is no longer involved,
good luck with it tho!

Click to expand...

The old content used to rank well. I have tried removing all the content 80%+ for over a month. And only posted re-edited original images, human edited, but still, the website won't rank for anything. And previously this site was ranking after only having 5 articles on it.

So it is definitely about the penalty.

The strategy would be to re-edit all the content before publishing it to the new domain.

Starblazer said:

Have you tried to fix the current site? There are some people in the forum who claimed to have recovered from the algorithm update. You can probably do the same as you already know the reasons for penalty.

Click to expand...

Yes I have tried. I removed all the content and a bunch of the things I mentioned in the post. However I haven't got one ranking back. If you could share a thread that would be great. I haven't seen any informational/affiliate sites recover only service/product businesses (apparently).

IcaroAugusto said:

It will take a lot of effort to test those things, good luck!

AI images definitely shouldn't have a negative impact on seo. I wouldn't prioritize images in general as the reason for it, test the other things first.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I was thinking that AI images couldn't flag the posts as being inauthentic as they are informational and the go-to is original images for the niche.

Situation similar to mine.

I also edit the content, not done yet, this time with much care and 100% manually. I also plan to replace all AI images.

Also diluted backlink profile anchor texts by changing keywords to generic, brand etc...

Also got dozens of new backlinks, mostly without keywords

Told various people to google the brand


Looks like it might be recovering slowly since a few days but didn't really break out of penalty yet. Situation still bad after weeks

At least the downwards trend stopped, but it stopped all by itself a few weeks ago.