How to Recover From Penguin 2.0 Using Free Tools

Most bloggers, web designers and freelancers in general don’t want – nor need – to pay expensive monthly subscriptions for SEO software. That’s not to say that using paid tools would make it that much easier anyway. The Penguin update is notoriously hard to bounce back from.
Many webmasters are still assessing the damage (or windfall) to their Google rankings. We’re in the early days and Google is far from finished. It still has yet to devalue upstream links from link spammers (tiered link builders, take note), which I personally think will be a game changer, especially for competitive niches.
Matt Cutts and the Webspam team are also actively evaluating feedback, so expect more movement in the search engine results page (SERPs) soon. As reports start coming in in the next few months, we will truly see how “jarring and jolting” this update has been (although an early report by the always-insightful Dr Pete of SEOmoz suggests 2.0 had less impact than its predecessor). It is expected to affect 2.3% of English (US) queries to a significant extent.

Why Penguin Was Unleashed

Google’s Penguin first waddled into view in April 2012. Penguin is a filter that sits on top of the regular algorithm and tries to catch webspam or more specifically, link spam. Many people get confused about the differences between the Panda and Penguin updates. Here’s a quick explanation:

• Panda penalizes you for publishing thin and duplicate content
• Penguin penalizes you when other websites with thin, duplicate or irrelevant content link to you

For example, Penguin will penalize you if your links come from a page that looks like this:

As you can see, the content has been spun beyond recognition and the anchor text is completely unrelated to the rest of the copy. It is an exaggerated example, but it serves to drive the point home.

Casualties

At the time of the first coming, Penguin affected around 3.1% of search queries. There have been several refreshes over the past year as Google continues to refine its algorithm.
Here are what sites hit by Penguin 1.0 have in common:

• Over-optimized anchor text
• Links to and from ‘bad neighbourhoods’
• Too many links from irrelevant sites
• Black or grey hat tactics such as comment spam, links from spun content, guest posts from questionable sites etc

The best ways to determine if you have been affected by any previous Penguin updates is to check your rankings immediately after an update or to correlate any drops of traffic with known release dates (you can use Barracuda’s Panguin Tool).

And Then There Was Penguin 2.0

Penguin 2.0 is more comprehensive and goes much deeper. While Penguin 1.0 only looks at the links to your Home page, Penguin 2.0 will look at links to your internal pages as well.
If what we’re reading all over the Internet is correct, Google is trying to reduce its reliance on anchor text as a relevancy factor. Instead, it seems Google wants to give the relevancy of the content of the site linking to your website more weightage (which is a step forward in our book).
We expect a lot of SERP movement in Malaysia, where the go-to SEO tactics (for companies at least) are directory link building and press release syndication.
Google also released the Penguin spam report form. If you’re seeing spammy websites ranking in your niche, you can send them a report. They seem to be acting on it (and quite quickly) so now is a good time to send one.

What To Do If You Have Been Hit

Like we have said before, it’s early days yet so a lot of it is still speculation. We won’t know for sure until there has been a case study of an actual Penguin 2.0 recovery (and that will probably take months). Even then, it may or may not work for you – Penguin recoveries seem to be few and far between.
But if you have been hit, there are certain steps you can take to try to recover. These are:

1. Performing a Link Profile Analysis
2. Removing Suspicious Links
3. Building Penguin-Safe Links

We have to warn you though, it’s not a quick fix.

1. Performing a Link Analysis

The first step is to conduct a thorough backlink analysis. This involves having a look at all the links pointing to your website, both in its entirety (i.e. your backlink profile) and individually, to determine what might be harming you.
Before you start your analysis, we suggest you create a spreadsheet with the following headers:

• Website Name
• Website URL
• Anchor Text
• Email
• Contact Date #1
• Contact Date #2
• Contact Date #3
• Status

As you go along, you can start collecting the contact information for the webmasters you need to contact to remove the links you don’t want. In order to conduct your link analysis, you have to use a backlink analysis tool. While the best ones so far are paid, there are several free tools out there you can use as well.
Here are the tools that we will be using today:

• Google Webmaster Tools and /or Bing Webmaster Tools (both free)
• Ahrefs (limited free use and paid)
• Netpeak Checker (free)

Don’t expect to get comprehensive data with any of these tools, even if you do decide to shell out money for them. Each has its own limitations and will never provide you with the same quality of data that Google has at its fingertips. Your good judgement and experience will come into play as you analyze your links.

Is Your Anchor Text Over-Optimized?

The first thing you’re going to do is to determine if you have been punished for over-optimizing your anchor texts. This means that the majority of the links pointing back to you are using your targeted keywords as the anchor text.
But how much is too much? While there isn’t a global number, it seems that most SEO thought leaders believe 60% of your anchor text should be branded while only 20% should contain the keywords you want to rank for.

• 60% branded anchor text (e.g. Cloudrock)
• 20% exact anchor text (e.g. seo)
• 20% miscellaneous anchor text (e.g. click here)

However, this will differ from one vertical to the next. Examine the links of the top results for your particular niche. What are their percentages of branded keywords and money keywords (the keywords they are targeting)? That’s a good way to find out the threshold for your niche.

Check Anchor Text Over-Optimization (Ahref)

Next, we are going to use ahrefs’ Backlink Checker (the free account) to quickly show you how to do a (limited) backlink analysis. If you like the product, you should consider subscribing for the paid version.
(#1) Go to ahrefs.com.
(#2) Register for a free account. You get more searches if you register.
(#3) Enter your URL.

(#4) You will see the results page below. Take a moment to study your backlinks. Every analysis you do will count towards your daily limit.

(#5) You then click on the ‘Anchors’ tab to have a look at your anchor text distribution.

(#6) Sort your anchor texts in descending order.

This quick analysis will help you determine if you have a problem with your anchor text distribution.

More Tools

There are other backlinks analysis tools you can use of course, such as Link Diagnosis (free) and Majestic SEO (limited free use). The data you get will differ. That’s not a problem for our purposes because we just want to gauge the relative weights of the anchor texts to see if we have a problem.
You can then start removing low-quality links with exact match anchor texts while building higher quality ones with more diverse anchor texts (from a variety of sources, of course).

2. Identifying Harmful Links

Now that you’re done looking at your link profile, it’s time to find out which particular links might be harming you. Here are some warning signs:

• Is the link coming from an inappropriate website (for example, an adult site)?
• Is the link coming from a link farm (a site created just for SEO)?
• Is the link coming from an irrelevant site?
• Did the link result from your participation in a link scheme or link wheel?
• Did you pay for the links (for example, advertorials)?
• Is it a site-wide link (footer or side bar links)?

We will also be looking at the toolbar PageRank (TPR) to gauge if the link is a good one. Just remember that the TPR is updated only once every few months. This means you won’t know if the site has been penalized by Penguin 2.0 until the next PageRank update, expected to be sometime in June.
It’s fine if you have some links coming in from unrelated sites or niches. Just make sure they don’t make up the majority of your backlinks.

Finding Suspicious and Harmful Links

(#1) Download and install Netpeak Checker.
(#2) Go to your Google Webmaster Tools accounts and log in.
(#3) Click on Traffic > Links to Your Site

(#4) Under the ‘Who Links the Most’ section, click on More. Click on Download this Table.
(#5) Now, open up Netpeak Checker and select the options as the screenshot below. We will explain the options in a bit.

(#6) Click Load; copy and paste the domains you downloaded from Google Webmaster Tools into the box that pops up.

(#7) Click Save and then the Start Check button on the bottom left corner.

Netpeak Checker Parameters

Okay, so now about the parameters you chose for Netpeak Checker:

As of this writing, the last Toolbar PageRank update was on 4 February 2013. If a website has a PageRank of 0 and was created after that, it means that it’s a new website and hasn’t had its TPR updated yet. If it has been around for years and still has no PageRank, then that might be a sign that it’s a low quality site.
A solid sign that it’s a bad link is if it has no pages indexed in Google. This means that it has been de-indexed, and you really do not want a de-indexed site pointing back to you (or vice versa). Now, go through each domain and try to determine which links might be harming you. Add those into your spreadsheet.

The Netpeak Checker has a few other useful metrics you could use but I’ll leave that to you to check it out.

Let’s say you want to have a look at the exact page on the domain where you link occurs. You can use the following Google operator:

• site:exampledomain.com link:yourlinkedurl.com/page

Theoretically, you can use the link: operator to find all the sites linking back to you. But it doesn’t work for us. Let us know if it does for you.

3. Removing Suspicious Links

At this point, you have looked at your link profile and identified the links you need to remove. So let’s get them off your website! There’s an easy way, and a hard way.

Contact Webmasters to Remove Unwanted Links

Once you’ve identified the links you think may harm you, your next step would be contacting the respective webmasters and requesting them to remove those links.

• Create a Gmail account specifically for this link removal
• Create a canned email template to save time
• Start contacting the webmasters to remove those links

Some webmasters do not have their contact details on the website. You can look up the domain info using Domain Tools. If that yields no results, well, you could outright guess – webmaster@domain.com is a popular webmaster email address.
Wait a week for a response before you send a reminder. Remember to be polite; there’s no motivation for them to remove the link other than to be helpful (or sympathetic). You might even come across some webmasters who will request you pay a ‘processing fee’ to remove those links.
Never ever pay! Seriously.
You can disavow those links in the next step. And report those webmasters to Google, of course.

Use the Google Disavow Tool as a Last Resort

Google released the Disavow Tool sometime last year after many complaints about the initial Penguin update. What the tool does is to tell Google that you don’t want any of those links counted.
Try to avoid using Google’s Disavow Tool until you have exhausted all other options.

There will be times when you want to use a machete instead of a scalpel i.e. remove all links from an entire domain instead of individually. You can then use the domain: operator.
There are many guides out there that will teach you how to use the Disavow Tool. Here is a great one:

• Google Link Disavow Tool: The Complete Guide

A Note on Footer and Other Site-wide Links

I’m sure there are many web designers here who have placed a site-wide footer links on their clients’ websites. These are a great source of referral traffic. You might have used your company name as the anchor text or you might have used a keyword-rich one such as “Web Design Malaysia”.
As Matt Cutts explains in one of his videos, Google’s algorithm does a good job of discounting such site-wide links. For example, a footer link that appears on every page of a 1,000-page website might be counted as only one link from that website to yours. However, problems might occur if your client’s website is under review and you are using a keyword-rich anchor text.
I would advise you to employ a branded anchor text and use the nofollow tag on such footer links. The nofollow tag tells Google not to pass any PageRank through the link (this is something you HAVE to do for advertorials, by the way). You still get that all-important traffic without the risks. Besides, site-wide links aren’t really much help in getting you better rankings anyway.

4. Building Penguin-Safe Links

Hongkiat.com already has a great beginner’s guide on link building so I won’t go into too much detail here. The important thing to remember about building links in a post-Penguin world is that you have to have a natural (or natural-looking) link profile.
The key to having a natural link profile is diversity.

• Domain Diversity – Get links from many different domains, preferably with different TLDs, rather than a lot of links from a few domains
• Link Type Diversity – Get different types of links (Web 2.0s, in-content, blog comments etc)
• Social Signals – Get social signals back to your site (+1s, Likes, Stumbles etc)

Diversity Wins

Ensure that your anchor texts are also diverse. Use a mix of these types of anchor texts:

• Branded (Cloudrock)
• Naked (www.cloudrock.asia)
• Miscellaneous (visit our website, click here)
• Mixed (Learn more about SEO at Cloudrock)

Of course, the creation of unique, relevant and useful content should be the foundation of any good link building campaign. But that’s another topic on its own.

So Now, Just Wait…

Alright, you have done all you can do for now. That is, unless you want to send in a reconsideration request as well. However, note that the Penguin penalty is an algorithmic penalty. That means you will only be able to see an improvement when the next Penguin update rolls around.
This is unlike a manual penalty, where sending in a reconsideration request is a must. Here’s the link though if you would like to send one anyway. If you do decide to send one, remember to be as detailed as possible and outline all the steps you have taken.
Will you recover your previous rankings? Probably not. This is because your previous rankings were artificially inflated by those spammy links. But it does give you back your ability to rank again.
Original article in hongkiat.com
How to Recover From Penguin 2.0 Using Free Tools

Venice. Penguin. Panda. Are Google’s changes leaving you behind?

Google makes about 500 changes a year to its search algorithm. That’s a lot. And, as a result, SEO advice gets out of date very quickly. Many of the SEO tips you’ll read on the internet are either dated or, worse, just plain wrong. So, here are seven of the most recent, significant changes to Google’s search results and how they affect you.

1. Venice

For many years, Google has personalized its results based on geography.
In February 2012, with its Venice update, Google changed the way it presents its results, so that results for local businesses are now pulled into its main results page.
As you can see here, Google can tell your location from your computer’s IP address.

So, even when I’m not logged into my Google account, a search for family lawyer near my house reveals these local results:

As you’d expect, the results Google presents are different in different countries. And for many keywords you’ll see radical changes from one town or city to the next.

What does this mean for you?

Every site offering a service that’s delivered locally - so, say a plumber, hairdresser or a retail chain with stores across the country - needs to have a geographical SEO plan. If you’re running a local business, now’s the time to target local keywords.
And if you operate in multiple countries, it’s essential Google sees you as a local listing.
Here’s how to check Google in different geographies. To see results in a different country, simply add /ncr after the version of Google you’d like to use. For example, you’d use Google.ie/ncr to see Irish results if you’re based outside Eire. Here’s a list of other English-speaking Google results pages:

Using these URLs, you’ll be able to see Google’s listings for other countries.
If you’d like to see results from a different location within your country, just change your search settings here:

You’ll then be able to see Google’s results from your chosen location.

2. Penguin

In 2012, Google’s Penguin update penalized sites that it considered over-optimized. It focused on sites that practiced keyword stuffing and link spamming.
Here’s an example of keyword stuffing:

It doesn’t look great, does it? You can see why Google wants to stop people doing it.

What does this mean for you?

Google’s changes often create a lot of unnecessary panic. Yet, you only need worry about the Penguin update if you’ve been using spammy methods to promote your site, or if you’ve received links from spammy sites.

3. Google’s Panda update

Throughout the past couple of years Google has been cracking down on spammers who have tried to game its algorithm.
Google’s Panda update focused on improving the quality, uniqueness and accessibility of the content it presents.
The majority (60%+) of your content needs to be unique. And it needs to be accessible. So don’t include too many ads at the top of the page (above the fold).
If your site is well designed, with engaging content, you needn’t worry too much about Panda.

What does this mean for you?

Google continues to refine Panda, issuing regular updates. So, if you think your site’s been affected.

4. Personalized Search (historical)

A few years back, everyone who searched with a given keyword received exactly the same results. Yet, this catch-all approach doesn’t reflect our individual needs and interests.
So search engines started personalizing their results. Nowadays, any two searchers can see very different results for the same keyword.
Google uses your search history to suggest relevant results.
So, for example, one of my favorite UK sites is moneysavingexpert.com. I’m a regular visitor. Google recognizes this, and over time, moneysavingexpert.com site has risen towards the top of my search engine results - for relevant queries.
By comparison, when I run an anonymous search (for credit card deals), the results are different. Moneysavingexpert appears lower down the results, and with fewer entries in the listings.

The credit card market can be very lucrative, so that’s a significant change. Particularly for uswitch.com, whose listing has disappeared from the first page of my personalized results.
Even when you’re signed out of Google, you may see personalized results, as Google keeps a 180-day record of whatever your browser has searched for.

What does this mean for you?

Your site is more likely to be near the top of the rankings on your computer than it is on everyone else’s. So, you may get a misleading impression of how your site is performing.
If you use Google Chrome as your internet browser, you can use its Incognito feature to check rankings for individual keywords. This will give you a more realistic impression of your site’s rankings:

5. Personalized search (social signals)

The search engines use social signals - such as Facebook 'likes' and tweets - to determine their results. Google’s own social network, Google+, provides the search engine with clues about which web pages people like and share.
These social signals affect Google’s search results in important ways.
We know that pages that are liked and shared a lot will do better in the rankings than sites that aren’t so popular. Each +1 acts like a vote. Sites with lots of votes rise up the rankings.
In addition, social signals are used to individualize the search listings. Pages that my friends have shared are likely to appear higher in my results.

As we can see, I’ve given a +1 to a Wordtracker page, which helps that page move towards the top of my search results. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the page at the top of the listings has more +1s than any of the others.
Pages that I have visited are also likely to rise up my personal search results.

If someone becomes friends with you on Google+, their recommendations can trump all other ranking factors. A Google+ connection is a powerful connection.

What does this mean for you?

If you want your site to do well in the search rankings you need to get active in social media - particularly Google+. You should be encouraging your site’s visitors to like and share your content.
You’ll find Wordtracker’s guides to social media marketing here:
Google+
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Pinterest
You can read more about personalized search here:
http://searchengineland.com/flavors-of-google-personalized-search-139286
And you’ll find Google’s views on search personalization here:
http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54041

6. Google Instant

Google has been trying to present results more quickly, so users get a better, faster experience.
Launched in September 2010 Google Instant introduced dynamic results that change as the searcher enters their keyword. The results update “live”.
Start typing and you’ll see one result:

Continue typing, and the results change. Google’s guessing what you’re searching for:

What does this mean for you?

Google Instant favors sites that are at the top of the search listings. Which makes it more important than ever that you establish and reinforce your site’s position as quickly as possible.

7. Google Autocomplete

Google has become much better at predicting what you’re searching for.
Google Autocomplete was launched in August 2008 And I’m sure you’ve seen that, as you start entering a keyword, Google tries to predict what you’re looking for, so you can get to the result you want more quickly.
Google will suggest the results it thinks you want to see.
You’re likely to see search queries from relevant searches that you've done in the past.

And you’ll see relevant Google+ profiles. It’s another good reason to get on Google+.

What does this mean for you?

Google’s suggestions affect how people search. You should try to be aware of what Google’s likely to be predicting.
a post from wordtracker.com
Venice. Penguin. Panda. Are Google’s changes leaving you behind? 

Google Updates and Disavowing Links – Answers to Your Questions

Do you have any pressing questions about the how the Google updates affected your sites?
If so, you will want to read the rest of this post.
I have compiled a list of the top questions from the industry, our Site-Reference readers, and clients with whom I work. Hopefully, I can put to rest some of the myths and ease your concerns about what to do or not to do with your website.
If you are an SEO consultant and you can provide our readers with answers to questions you receive from your clients, I would love it if you could share your wisdom with us in the comments!
Here goes…

Q: I have an EMD…is that why my site was downgraded?

The EMD (Exact Match Domain) update was not an all out assault on EMDs. In fact, the line is often ambiguous when determining exactly which domains are targeting keywords. A keyword can be a brand name and vice-versa. If I was searching for red shoes, I would use the keyword “red shoes”, so should the domain redshoes.com be penalized? The site sells red shoes. What if that was its brand name?
Now if your domain is howtobuyredshoesonline.com, well, now we may have a problem!
But, even then, that domain may not be enough for you to lose rankings. The EMD update removed any positive effect webmasters gained from using EMDs. So if your howtobuyredshoesonline.com domain is accompanied by a solid linking profile, stellar content and a nice following, you should be fine. The sad reality is that the people who target domains like this usually over-optimize for that keyword and other “questionable” strategies often follow such as over-optimization, spun content, low-quality links, etc.
Bottom line: If you lost rankings and you have an EMD, Google wasn’t targeting you directly. But, if the keyword in your domain is all over your linking profile and stuffed in your content, you may have a problem. Look at all of your strategies and remove any incidence of over-optimization.

Q: Was my site hit by Panda or Penguin or EMD?

The easiest way to figure this out it is to check your analytics to see when your traffic plummeted.
The updates occurred on the following dates:
December 21, 2012 – Panda refresh
November 21, 2012 – Panda refresh
November 5, 2012 – Panda update
October 9, 2012 – Page Layout Algorithm update
October 5, 2012 – Minor Penguin update
September 27, 2012 – EMD Update
September 27, 2012 – Major Panda update
July 24, 2012 – Panda update
April 24, 2012 – Penguin update – Initial launch
To see the entire list of updates, click here.
If your site lost traffic on any of these days, you may have an answer to your question as to what update affected your website.
Also, check your site for the following issues…
If you have any of the below, you were most likely hit by Panda…

• Keyword stuffing
• Poorly-written content
• Spun content
• Illegible content
• Duplicate content
• Thin content
• Links pointing to you from sites that contain poor content

If you have any of the below, you were most likely hit by Penguin…

• Over-optimized anchor text (internal and external)
• Low-quality incoming links
• Paid links
• Excessive footer links

Even if you do not know what hit your site, analyze each of these issues and make the necessary changes.
Here are some helpful articles:

1. Recovery from Google Penguin: Tips from the Trenches 
2. Guide to Google Panda and how it Affects Your Website – Part 1 
3. Guide to Google Panda and how it Affects Your Website – Part 2

If you were hit by the EMD update, it doesn’t mean you have to change your domain name. Rectify all of the other issues and you may revive your rankings. You will also have to work a little harder going forward because your EMD is not getting the positive boost it once did.

Q: If my site was downgraded a few pages, was I penalized?

Minor fluctuations are common. They could signify changing competition or shuffling of pages due to updates. Don’t panic.
Continue in your course and check your site for any potential issues. It’s also possible that some of the sites linking to you were affected by a Google update so they are no longer “voting” for your site.

Q: My site was penalized by Google and lost rankings. What should I do?

First, for the majority of people asking this question, only a handful will have actually been hit with a Google penalty.
A downgrade does not necessitate a Google penalty. Unless you received an unnatural links warning in your Google Webmaster Tools account, you most likely have not been hit with a manual penalty.

Q: I received an unnatural links warning. Should I use the Disavow Links Tool?

I suggest first trying to remove the suspect links. If you cannot remove all of the low-quality links, use the tool, but exercise caution. If you do not know how to use it, consult with an expert.
Remember that you only need the tool if you received a manual penalty. In most cases, a downgrade as a result of an update won’t necessitate the need for the Disavow Links Tool. The best practice in this case is to assess your site for the issues and rebuild to remain compliant with Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Conclusion

Hopefully I helped to answer some of your questions.
Do you have any advice to share with our community? Please discuss in the comments.
An article from site-reference.com
Google Updates and Disavowing Links – Answers to Your Questions

Recovering from Google’s Panda & Penguin – A Case Study

Flexiscreens.com is an Australia business based in Tasmania, producing flexible insect screens from premium-grade materials and delivering them world-wide. They’ve been plagiarized and targeted by copycat competitors but have always enjoyed good rankings and resoundingly good client testimonials due to exemplary products and services. The past year has been a roller coaster ride. First they were rewarded by Google, and then they were punished.

• Monthly “Visits” grew rapidly from 12,800 visits in Aug 2011 to 36,000 in Nov 2011.
• From Dec 2011 traffic declined to 17,000 visitors by May 2012.

It was the same content, basically unchanged in that time and its initial wild variations seem to predate the Panda release. In contrast, over the year, the primary copycat competitor now ranks higher than they do, despite having inferior products made from lower-grade components.
There are some peculiar aspects:

• Nov 2011 – at the peak of visitor traffic, 54% of visits were from Australia!
• By May 2012, that had dropped to 17% of visits from Australia!

The website has been hosted in Melbourne, Australia since early 2011. The site appeared in “Search: pages from Australia” so was clearly associated with the Australian dataset. The downward variation in Australian visitors was inexplicable. In June we launched into a major revision of the site, tackling each and every aspect that could conceivably be harming the site’s rankings.

Eliminating Low Quality Content
In looking at the site from a critical perspective, it appeared that the 89 glowing client references might have been an Achilles heel. These were individual posts in a Testimonials category, with a widget that selected one at random and displayed it in the page sidebar.
However, bereft of unique Titles and Descriptions, lacking headings, and with only a couple of sentences and no images, they would certainly appear of very low quality and minimal value!
By way of remedial action, these posts were inserted into a Testimonials Manager plugin, retaining the random Testimonial display in the sidebar, but with a single consolidated page instead of 89 individual posts. 301 Redirection was put in place on those posts, to the new Testimonials page.

Doorway Pages
In addition, there were a dozen or so Authorized Distributor pages, half of which contained nothing other than a State or Country variation and with a standard layout/content format. This may have appeared suspiciously like Doorway Pages, specifically referenced in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
These were all combined into a single distributors page, with an index hyperlinked to State & Country sections, and 301 Redirection applied.

Impact of Initial Remedial Action on SERPs Results
There was a prompt response on the rankings for multiple keyword search phrases:

• flyscreen distributors – jumped up +19 places within a week to #5 on Google.com.au
• flyscreen distributors – jumped up +55 places within a week to #10 on Google.com
• fly screen distributors – jumped up +3 places within a week to #9 on Google.com

The consolidated Distributors page with its larger and unambiguous content definitely gained rapid traction in the SERPs! Unfortunately, since then those gains have been offset by further ranking losses across the board, but traffic volumes have remained relatively steady over the last few months.
Aside from the first round of remedial action on the posts and pages, we’ve also systematically reviewed page content to sharpen the focus, reduce vagueness, and eliminate other potential problems.

Google Says Be Careful about Links
Any external links were converted to NoFollow to prevent loss of link juice, or any suspicion of involvement in link spam activities.

Google Says Avoid Duplicate Content
Tags: all “tags” removed because these were not used correctly, and in the main applied to the 89 Testimonials posts. These tags consisted mostly of Australian state and/or international country, and the window type the reference related to. The consequence of that was dozens of almost identical Tag pages, all bereft of Titles and Descriptions.

Extraneous / Boilerplate Text
At some point not too long ago, the owners had inserted 3 lines of H2 and H3 headings into the top of EVERY page! That was what amounted to a Unique Selling Proposition and a Call to Action, but of course it severely diffused the effectiveness of the real first headings & first paragraphs across every page on the site. All iterations of extraneous text were replaced with an image on the bottom of each page, with a relevant link title & image alt text.
Further vague first paragraph content occurred in the About Us page which had been topped with some “warm fuzzy” content that had little to do with their Products / Manufacturing / Distribution. That extraneous content was displaced downward by something a little more useful.

Google Does Not Like Low Quality Pages
The informational pages needed to be there, but contributed little to defining the site’s genre, products or services. All non-important pages were set to NoIndex using the “Ultimate Noindex” WordPress plugin, including Login, Admin, Logout, Author, Search, Privacy, Terms etc.

• Gallery: this comprised three pages of various insect screen formats, but there was zero explanatory text. A picture may well be worth a thousand words in some circumstances, but not to a search engine! A preliminary paragraph of explanatory text was added, and the owners are preparing more to boost the intrinsic value of these pages.
• Headings: additional supportive sub-headings in H2 or H3 added on pages as appropriate.
• Images: all illustrative images had relevant explanatory Alt text inserted.
• Text Emphasis: A significant amount of non-relevant BOLD text was reverted to Regular to prevent emphasis confusion. As a general rule, Bold should only emphasize important page content, not entire paragraphs!
• Header Tags: All Titles, Descriptions & Keywords were revised to be within recommended length parameters, and made relevant to the specific page/s.

The Google Rollercoaster
Those who have engaged in close-quarter combat with Google’s relentless algorithms will understand that during the past 6 months ranking charts look like an 8.5 earthquake graph. Between Google’s tweaking, and our own remedial efforts, it was sometimes hard to ascertain if what we were doing with the website was making things better or worse! However, with the objective of “good content” firmly grasped, we persevered.
By and large, the efforts that were taken resulted in significant Google.com.au ranking improvements, sustained as Google’s algorithms have stabilized.

Local vs Global Search
For US-based readers, this is an issue that many SEO’s won’t encounter. However, if you are located elsewhere on the planet, it seems Google has drastically altered the way in which it rewards websites within their local market, at the cost of their global prominence.
Referring back to the “visitors from Australia” issue mentioned previously – as things have settled out, Google HQ, rankings across Google.com.au have improved to 2011 levels. The volume and percentage of visitors from Australia has increased back to ‘normal’ levels. Sadly, as global rankings have declined, the diversity of international visitors has faded.
Prior to 2012, Flexiscreens drew many of their clients from around the world due to good global rankings. In the past year, monthly visitor traffic (Webaliser stats) has declined from the 2011 high of 36,000 to a low of 8,700. October 2012 shows a modest improvement to 10,600 visitors.
In all other respects, rankings have clearly responded to ministrations on the website aimed at meeting Google’s Quality Guidelines. This is a family business, totally dependent on remaining prominent in global SERPs, and its fall from grace has been sudden, and painfully expensive. Recently, the company decided there was no option but to resort to Google AdWords to gain some additional exposure in targeted international markets.

The most striking aspects in the year of Panda and Penguin have been:

• the inexplicable downturn to 17% of visitors from Australia by June
• the equally inexplicable upturn in Australian visits thereafter, to 54% by October
• the total loss of international rankings

The more cynical amongst us might consider this is a Google “carrot and stick” strategy, giving local business better results in local markets, but beating those who need international exposure into the AdWords corral.

The New Normal
There does seem to be an across-the-board improvement in search relevancy. Google seems to have worked hard on ensuring that the search engine results pages give prominence to the source site of a business name or brand. As an example, a search for a Bed & Breakfast or hotel by name is now far more likely to show the specified business in first place. Previously, it would have been buried under a pile of B&B and hotel booking sites, all creaming commissions off the legitimate business owner / operator.
For that we can be grateful and I guess we can accept that we are now living in the ‘new normal.’ It’s not perfect but overall, it’s getting better!

The Bottom Line
If your business website was badly affected by Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, it is possible to recover fully from the impact. In fact, it’s usually a straightforward process of improving the website’s content, structure and functionality. Results of such improvements are invariably positive, rapid and enduring.

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Ben Kemp, Post from: SiteProNews