How 3 Years of Google Penguin Changed The Life of These 10 SEO Experts is a post from the best Link Building Tools available worldwide.
Google Penguin Shaped The SEO World
On April 24, 2015 it will be three years since Google first announced the codename Google Penguin. Google Penguin was an algorithm update which was aimed to decrease the search engine ranking of websites that violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Artificial manipulation of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) is a major violation and until April 2012 most people got away with it. Google Panda had already punished sites with poor on-page SEO. Now it was time to deal with the off-page SEO. Building backlinks of any quality was considered a standard way of promoting your website. The more links you had, the more money you made, it was a simple formula. Google Penguin severely punished thousands of websites for having unnatural inbound links in April 2012. For many individuals and companies this has meant severe financial hardship.
The Google Penguin update of April 2012 became known as Penguin 1.0 once further updates were released. In 2012 we saw two more updates, Penguin 1.1 in May and Penguin 1.2 in October. The updates got more sophisticated in 2013 with 2.0 in May and 2.1 in October. We waited over a year for the current Penguin 3.0 which rolled out on October 17, 2014.
In this article we look at some personal experiences of individuals who have lived with Google Penguin over the last three years. Read on to find out:
When they first became aware of Google Penguin and what their reactions were
How they recovered from Google Penguin
When it might be worth starting over with a new domain
Their experiences with Negative SEO
Their thoughts about what Google might be planning for the future
Table of contents
Personal Experiences of Google Penguin
Ramón Rautenstrauch
Arda Mendeş
Ashley Turner
Christiaan Bollen
Dawn Anderson
Tom Black
Emir Dervisevic
Rick Lomas
Andy Edwards
Piperis Filippaios
Conclusion
Personal Experiences of Google Penguin
Everybody who has been affected by Google Penguin has their own personal story. We interviewed ten SEO professionals and internet marketers to find out what Google Penguin was really like for them.
Ramón Rautenstrauch
Ramón Rautenstrauch has been involved in the Internet Business since the year 2000 and specializes in Competitive Research, SEO, SEA and conversion boosting for Spanish and International websites.
Although he is German, he runs the digital Marketing Agency "Apasionados del Marketing" based in Valencia, Spain.
Ramón works on customer projects and also on affiliate projects owned by the Agency.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
The first few days after Google Penguin rolled out we (were) in shock. A part of our affiliate marketing websites had suddenly completely disappeared from the SERPs. Google had taken away a quite big part of our income. Fortunately none of our customers was seriously affected by Google Penguin. In these days we were not happy.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
Of course we knew the Google Webmaster Guidelines, but nevertheless we thought that Google was being very unfair. Google hadn’t taken action in the past years and suddenly they changed the game. At this moment we realized again that it’s their playfield and that they make and change the rules. What made us angry (and still makes us angry) is that there were still quite a lot of websites in the first positions of the SERPs that were not affected by Google Penguin and now, three years later, there are still some that are not affected.
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
I first heard of Link Detox at the end of October 2012 when Christoph C. Cemper presented the "Link Detox Revolution", the third update of the tool. Some German SEO friends had been urging me to try the tool, because they thought it was very useful and professional. This is still the most important advantage of Link Detox and all the Link Research Tools: professional tools made for professionals.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
In our agency work we come across hundreds of sites that are penalized and there are quite a lot where we directly advise them to start with a new domain. If the domain is a generic keyword and had been ranking only with toxic links and there is no branding and no good links (and no rankings) we tend to advise to start over.
Every situation has to be analyzed very carefully, because every domain has a different link profile and history, but we are convinced that you should start over if it costs less time and money to start over than to recover the old domain.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
The best Penguin recovery we have seen in our agency is a domain that had lost all the good rankings with Penguin 2.0. They contacted us to recover the domain and after using Link Detox and removing and disavowing thousands of links, it recovered the rankings after Penguin 3.0. This has been a great effort from the domain owner and our agency, but the effort got a rewards: the domain is ranking again in the first positions.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
We have quite a few experiences with negative SEO and that’s why we are monitoring all our customers and our most important projects. When we detect a very fast increase in backlinks we immediately start analyzing and take action. We think it’s very important to have the information as fast as possible (and) being able to react.
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
In the future we should see Google updates happening more frequently. Semantic analysis should also become more important, so that low quality content and machine generated content will be less likely to rank. Links will remain important for the next few years, so it’s important to continue making quality linkbuilding J.
Ramón Rautenstrauch
Digital Strategist at Apasionados del Marketing
Arda Mendeş
After working as Head of Operations for SEOZEO, Arda Mendeş currently does consulting for leading companies in Turkey.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
I was trying different link building techniques to understand the best way to improve the rankings. When I was trying to improve one of my micro niche website’s ranking, it punished me!
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
Absolutely no!
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
It’s hard to remember but I think it was June 2013.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
The webmasters or website owners always make mistakes. According to the size of the business they could start over with a new domain as a fresh beginning. But big companies cannot! They have to suffer for a while.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
I’ve seen the best results by using The Orca Technique.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
I think it was one year ago. I was analyzing for a potential customer, I found some crappy links with the adult content anchor text keywords. It was a Turkish website but it had spammy links with English anchors. It looked like it was negative SEO.
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
They will try to serve the users in the best way. The Google Philosophy
tells us everything about what they think!
The aim is to serve best and accurate results quickly to the users. They will update algorithms to serve the best. The focus point must be the users!
Arda Mendeş
SEO Consultant at ardamendes.com
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Ashley Turner
Ashley is the co-founder and head of search at the agency HelloBrave.com as well as owning his own market leading affiliate websites in various competitive niches. Previously, Ashley worked with clients in both the UK and EU corporate world providing strategic search and PR marketing solutions. Client experience includes companies like Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA, Samsung, Virgin, BestBuy, IKEA and the UK Gov Department for International Development.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
My first experience of the Google Penguin was painful on a biblical scale. While I don’t ever use any blackhat SEO on clients’ sites as I don’t like risking people’s incomes to gain fast results, back in 2010-2012 I took this gamble on my own affiliate sites. One of my personal affiliate sites was driving 6,000 sessions per day, held 48/50 #1 positions for the highest traffic terms in the industry and made £2,000 per day in affiliate revenue. Penguin 1.0 was released and it got deindexed. Plot twist: I actually recovered this website using Link Detox and it’s back to 3,000 sessions a day with zero penalty problems.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
If we were to move to the side the personal impact Penguin had on my own websites, I would have to say I sit on the fence with this one. I totally believe in creating natural growth through intelligent marketing campaigns and creative content, if people were gaming the system they deserved to get a red card. What I think is unfair is that the disavow tool did not launch until October 2012 which left total chaos, further to this the Penguin update does not refresh enough to recover quickly. Picture getting hit with negative SEO and a Penguin penalty… then you have to wait 12 months like last year for it to update again – Business can shut in that time.
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
Back in 2012 I adopted LinkResearchTools as many SEOs and business owners did to fix my own backlink problems. Previously, we just combined link reports by running our own Excel spreadsheet macros to filter and build reports that could be manually tagged and loaded into an outreach tool for link removal. Link
Detox provided not only a robust auditing engine, but a platform to launch our own recovery service as an agency that drove growth in many other areas of our business.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
I’ve never been approached with anything I thought was too hard to fix and we’ve worked on well-known brands in tough penalty niches like the insurance, gambling and porn markets. This being said I think the choice to scrap a site would depend totally on the situation and link metrics. Below are sample situations you could be in with a Penguin penalty:
New websites: I think if a site is fairly new and has hardly any natural backlinks it’s safe to say you’ll be better off buying an aged domain or new domain and migrating the content to that and doing SEO the right way.
Networks: By link network I mean real SEO networks or just a bunch of micro sites you’ve built for the sake of holding multiple first page rankings or local listings (doorway pages). If you run a link network like this and it gets blasted, it’s safe to say it would probably cost way too much to fix the damage; Google is on to you, you’re not as smart as you thought you were and it’s probably time to focus on your strongest site.
Blackhat only: If you’ve got a site that is an aged domain but is stacked with 1,000’s of dirty links and nothing natural, you should probably investigate the cost of migrating the brand.
Whitehat / Blackhat: if you’ve got a mix of good and bad links, you should 100% try to fix the problem. A well-constructed and audited disavow file, coupled with a Link Detox Boost will drive a positive increase in traffic while you have time to actually remove the toxic links and more importantly, earn natural ones!
Whitehat: If you’ve just got natural backlinks, don’t think you’re safe. Put link monitoring in place and be one with the link profile; spotting problems before Google does can save your neck.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
We had one client that had somewhere in the region of 150,000 backlinks – only 500 of these links were natural! We removed 146,000 of these backlinks over an extensive 12 month period whilst submitting multiple disavow files and 2 reconsideration requests. The site recovered and has first page rankings again, growing month on month but it took a lot of work.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
I would say 3/10 clients I take on have got some form of negative SEO applied to their website’s backlink profile. The most common forms I find are scraped websites, scrapebox blasts and link directory spam. The best one I found is where a global insurance company with a turnover of £2,699,000,000 shot themselves right in the foot. They rebranded and bought an aged domain name for a ridiculous amount of money. The new domain’s history was not checked and came pre packed with backlinks from virus ridden fake clothing backlinks (e.g. your traditional fake Gucci / Prada bag stuff).
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
I’ve been putting my money on Google penalising the use of fake social signals for a while, but with the way the landscape of ranking correlation is shifting I now would bet on user metrics.
It’s no surprise that with the release of the ‘mobile-friendly’ algorithm we can see Google is putting a focus on the user (and so they should, being an ad revenue company). In 2014 click through rate and user signals were vital to ranking and I see more bots and on page blackhat tactics coming out to manipulate this. I believe more Google updates surrounding the quality of a website will be released to combat this growing issue.
Ashley Turner
Head of Search at Brave
Christiaan Bollen
Christiaan graduated as Professional Bachelor in Applied Computer Science – Application Development and started working as a software and web developer. During this time he built his own websites. In 2012, his entrepreneurial spirit made him decide to start his own web development company: Boljoro. Christiaan is also a gambling affiliate and learned a lot about SEO in this highly competitive market. He also did search engine marketing and became a Google Partner. Now Boljoro offers web development, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.
When were you first aware of Google’s Penguin?
When the first Penguin was launched I wasn’t into SEO that much yet. I first read about it on the internet.
Did Penguin affect you later?
No, but I did buy domains that had a penalty. With the help of Link Detox I could remove the penalties.
What sort of penalties did those domains have?
Mostly Penguin, they were spammed with links from forums, blogs, Chinese/Russian sites. But the one with the best domain name had a manual spam action.
Did you get links removed or just disavow links?
I just disavowed them because most of the sites were so spammy I never expected any answer. Or the sites were in a language I didn’t understand.
Did that improve the traffic?
Not really, there were almost no links left and I created a new website for the domain. So I almost started from zero. But it was a good domain name.
Do you think it’s better to just start over again sometimes?
Yes. If I did it again today I would just start over with a different domain name. But at the time I was convinced that the domain name would make a big difference. It cost me money to buy the domain name and a lot of work to get rid of the penalty. I think that my rankings would have been similar with a new domain. When I bought the domain name, I was not "smart" enough to test the domain backlinks. I don’t think I knew about LinkResearchTools when I bought the domain.
Christiaan Bollen
Owner at boljoro.com
Dawn Anderson
Dawn is an organic search consultant and owner of Move It. Specialising in technical, database driven, dynamic and architectural SEO.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
I remember it as though it were yesterday. I had just returned home from a family birthday celebration and checked over my daily rank checking tools, which monitor a few thousand terms, to find that the SERPs were all over the place. Not only on some of my projects, but competitors’ sites who also had 100,000’s of links historically and who had made great gains by building them. I’ll also never forget Matt Cutts forewarning that that summer would be one which many SEOs would remember. He was right. I spent 6 months or so poring over links (including the whole summer (and it was hot)), working out ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
At first, yes, because it had affected me quite dramatically initially. All those ‘cheap’ and ‘cheerful’ links which had been built over the years to one of my main income generating sites, suddenly were just ‘cheap’. There was no longer anything ‘cheerful’ about them. Now, I do see that the search results are an improvement over the pre-penguin results generally. The advent of Penguin did mean that we had to step outside our comfort zone and concentrate on the wider aspects of digital marketing and to some extent, PR. The quick and easy wins were not there as before. Painful at the time, but a steep learning curve I’m now grateful for. My main gripe was with the length of time it took Google to push out the latest Penguin update (too long), and the manner in which it was communicated (poorly), to the wider search community by them. The initial results of that update were underwhelming.
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
At a conference in Leeds. Christoph Cemper was speaking and I was looking for solutions to some link based issues. I signed up as soon as I returned back to Manchester and dived into learning how to use the tools.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
I would not do this on an established site. I have seen sites with over 90% disavowed links recover over time – some back to first page for their primary targets. Just a bit of time, patience, finding and fixing, technical TLC, and bringing a bit of respectability to the site seems to heal it over time. On a very young site, I would give scrapping it and starting again some serious consideration. That said, I am reluctant to lose any sites. There is always something to learn from them as search changes.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
A new project which I undertook, whereby the client did not realise that they had a manual penalty and Penguin. The target terms were to go for something which was much less competitive (they had not realised their own potential). Quick check on other engines made me realise that there was something wrong. Once the site had the manual action removed and recovered from Penguin with only 60% disavow (admittedly on over 1 million URLs, so they still had a lot to work with), they were back on page 1 for their primary targets – saving them around £200 per click.
Have you any experience of negative SEO?
Without realising it – yes. Prior to Penguin, I had spotted some rather unusual links with all the same anchor to both one of my sites and to a competitor site. They really were pure spam, same anchor, repeated. At the time, pre-Penguin, I had simply noted it, and it actually appeared to be doing me a favour. When Penguin hit, both my site and the competitor took a dive. I believe that a negative SEO campaign was underway prior to Penguin on that site, even in anticipation of it. Thank goodness for disavow.
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
Google’s ‘brain’ is growing, but not quick enough for them. They are investing heavily in machine learning (they are advertising on Linkedin for machine learning candidates regularly (Machine Learning was the most subscribed to class at Stanford this academic year)). The evolving web of data versus document to me means that everything will be connected much sooner than we believe. Silos will be broken down and those aspects of search which we thought would have no impact on SEO will begin to do so more and more. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of signals that they use to rank sites increases upwards drastically given all this additional data.
Dawn Anderson
Director – Move It Marketing
Tom Black
Tom has a vast experience in the Search industry and has worked on SEO and PPC campaigns in a number of highly competitive industries including web hosting, legal and SEO. His experience includes freelance, in-house and agency work. In his spare time he enjoys spending time boating on the south coast of England as well as on the British Inland Waterways. Currently Tom works as a Head of Search at Bootcamp Media Ltd in Birmingham, UK. Tom specialises in Competitive Research, Link Audits and SEO strategy and is available for consulting.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
The first Penguin update didn’t affect any of the projects I was working on at that time, I guess I was lucky. My real adventures with Penguin started with the 2.0 update in 2013. I have “inherited” a number of projects and some of them had been affected by Penguin 2.0. By the time Penguin 3.0 came out, I was already an LRT Certified Professional and our clients were safe. I’m really thankful to the LRT team and the fantastic community of LRT professionals for sharing all of their knowledge and experience.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
It’s hard to say. Some people have benefited and some people have lost out. One thing is sure, the world of SEO will never be the same again.
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
I think it was at some point in 2013 and it was from the Link Detox site. At first I wasn’t aware of the whole LinkResearchTools suite. I thought it was just one tool (Link Detox).
I must say I was very impressed with the tools.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
Yes. I believe in some cases this may be the best solution. Of course this is not a simple decision and one will need to consider all the pros and cons.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
There are plenty of good case studies on http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/ The LRT Certified Professionals are doing a great job.
Personally, I still remember the morning after the Penguin 3.0 update. My favourite client, who are in the film and video niche, fully recovered with all their main keywords moving back to page one. We had been working on this project for months using a combination of Link Detox, link removal, disavow and Link Detox Boost. This recovery made a big impact on my client’s business and their pockets. I still remember bragging about it on one of the LRT live seminars https://youtu.be/g9-7TRuhR5A?t=58m29s
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
No, not really. People keep talking about it but I’ve never seen a 100% documented case study of negative SEO. Having said that, I think that link risk management is more important than ever.
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
There is no doubt that links are the key part of their algorithm and I believe they will continue with more Penguin or "Penguin type" updates.
Tom Black
Head of Search at Bootcamp Media Ltd
Emir Dervisevic
Emir started doing SEO and making websites more than 5 years ago. He is the owner of about 20 websites that generate over 1 million unique visits monthly all together, mostly from search engines through SEO efforts.
Emir is currently working for LinkResearchTools as a customer success agent and product specialist. He is also a huge lover of nutrition, psychology and science in general.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t seen all the crying on SEO and internet marketing forums. My sites stayed pretty much the same in regards to traffic. It was only in the second update that one of my sites had a 40% drop in traffic. The other sites were stable and are to this day.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
I didn’t, but a lot of people did. Some people based their whole lives on SEO traffic. That’s usually not a good decision. Most SEOs are just gaming an algorithm basically, so it’s not unfair to stop them, especially since to this day it’s possible to game that algorithm.
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
About 5 months ago when I became a LinkResearchTools Associate.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
Yes. When you’re hit with a very strong negative SEO attack on a weak or new domain. Your backlink profile becomes like 95% bad links from a different theme and 5% your own backlinks, so what else can you do?
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
http://www.jenningsmotorgroup.co.uk that recovered by using 301 redirects and a bit of re-branding.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
Luckily I don’t because I keep most of my SEO-focused sites out of the spotlight and my competition isn’t even focused on SEO that much.
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
To use more and more of the data we give them about ourselves to make more and more money J. If you mean in terms of SEO, I think that mobile friendly sites will get a boost or they’ve already gotten it? And they will continue to reduce the influence of manipulative strategies on their algorithm.
Emir Dervisevic
Customer Success Agent, LinkResearchTools
Webmaster at Zdravosfera
Download: 111 Things you need to know about risky links to disavow
Rick Lomas
Rick is from the UK, but has lived in the French Alps since 2001. Rick built his first website in 1997 when the main search engine was Altavista and the word Google didn’t exist. Since then he has learnt SEO from the ground up and has lived through every update Google has thrown at us. In 2012 his income was decimated by Google Penguin 1.0 and a Manual Spam action. In 2015 he has an SEO business which involves removing Google Penalties.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
In 2012 I was doing SEO work mostly on my own sites, rather than client sites. There was one in particular that was doing really well. It was a lead generation site for a UK based campervan rental company. It was on my birthday, April 7th, when I got a message in Google Webmaster Tools about unnatural links to my site. I had been building crappy links with spun content and SENukeX for years. In fact I had used every black hat SEO technique I knew of. I was worried, but the site was still making lots of money.
Everything changed on Monday April 23, 2012. I had been driving from the south of France all day, heading for England via the Calais-Dover car ferry. When I drove on to the ferry at Calais, I checked the stats on my iPhone. I had made almost no money that day and my site had vanished from Google. The next day the boss of the campervan company called me. He asked me why his sales team were staring at blank screens. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. The following day five sales staff lost their jobs.
I learnt during the week that this was an effect of Google Penguin and a Manual Action. My site limped along for the next two years on traffic from Bing, Yahoo and a few long tail keywords that still ranked in Google.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
At the time I did yes, because I had gone from enjoying quite a luxurious lifestyle to being almost homeless. I noticed spammy looking sites ranking where mine used to be, which felt unfair. I was totally aware that I had been violating Google Webmaster Guidelines for years though. In that respect I was 100% guilty. I was annoyed with myself too for not diversifying my income.
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
During 2013 I was really suffering financially and I knew I had to get rid of the Manual Action to get myself out of the mess I had created. I think I saw a Link Detox Facebook ad saying ‘Clean up your backlink profile today!’ – I guess that was around November 2013. I made a decision at the beginning of 2014 that I was going to become a Google Penalty removal guy. I got the Superhero account in January 2014 and my Manual Action was revoked in April. I then went on to remove another nine manual actions for clients during 2014. I loved Link Detox and the other tools so much and wanted to know how to use them fully. I did the LinkResearchTools Training and became a LRT Certified Xpert in July 2014; I’ve not looked back since.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
Yes I do, for example sites like the one I had! I had been trigger happy with SENukeX for too long and about 99.9% of my links were total junk. I persevered with it, but in retrospect I think my time would have been better used building a new site and starting again.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
At the end of 2014 I took on a client who had bought an ecommerce website selling self defense weapons in the US. I felt quite sorry for him as he had bought the site in good faith as a viable business. When he installed Google Webmaster Tools he saw straightaway that he had a Partial Match Manual Action.
I ran Link Detox on the site and used Link Detox Boost two days later. I then submitted a Reconsideration Request to Google. Within one week the traffic started to climb rapidly, so I was confident that the Manual Action would be revoked. To my surprise the reconsideration was refused. The initial increase in traffic must have been an algorithmic Penguin lifting as the disavow file took effect. After a second Reconsideration Request one month later, the Manual Action was revoked. The traffic has continued to increase ever since.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
Ha! I have certainly had clients who believed they have been attacked. I usually find it is because they have used a terrible backlinking gig from Fiverr or hired an overseas SEO company who only know ‘2011 style’ SEO. I know it happens, but my clients so far have escaped Negative SEO.
Oddly enough there is an SEO Agency in Briançon, France where I live, who seem to suffer really badly from Negative SEO. I think it is because they specialise in narrow niches which are very lucrative, like luxury yachts. I guess if you only have a handful of competitors and your product is a 500,000€/week yacht charter it is worth fighting dirty!
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
Private Blog Networks (PBNs) seem to be all the rage at the moment with black hat SEOs. I even wrote a case study for LinkResearchTools about how to make a powerful PBN. I think that Google will crack down on these soon by discounting links that never get clicked and sites that do not share many common backlinks with their competitors.
Rick Lomas
Owner of Indexicon
Andy Edwards
Andy is a professional affiliate marketer and has been in the online gambling sector since 2006. He has extensive knowledge of this sector along with gambling related SEO and has been an EGR power 50 affiliate for the past 3 years. He has a number of top affiliates sites and joined Link Research Tools to bring all his SEO for these sites in house.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
After our main site got the dreaded unnatural link warning email, about a month later we lost 90% of our traffic over night
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
Extremely, I think everyone thought this. For years all the SEO practices we were doing (Blog Commenting, Article Submissions etc) that everyone else were also doing helped us rank. So for them to hit us so hard felt personal. Why us, when everyone else was doing the same thing?
When did you first hear about Link Detox?
It wasn’t till around August 2013, as we had employed several different SEO companies to try and remove the penalty but none of them seemed to know what they needed to do. I also knew SEO but I decided to take it up a gear and signed up for the LRT Associate training, as I wanted to fix the site myself.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
Yes, if all you have done is build a basic site with no real content and structure and just thrown 1000’s of Xrumer links etc towards it. Then it would be better to scrap the site and start again, as even after you have cleaned it up it would be like starting from scratch by building new strong links. Easier to build a brand new site with the right structure and links from the start.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
It was on a competitor’s site who I helped get a penalty lifted. They had been the victim of several black hat attacks all targeting specific keywords. Once I had found the links it was a case of getting as many as we could manually removed and then submitting a disavow file to Google. The very next update they came back even stronger.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
Yes, this was one of the many reasons why our main site was so severely hit. We were ranking very high for extremely competitive keywords in our industry and as such this encouraged jealousy amongst some of our competitors. Because they couldn’t outrank us naturally they took to black hat SEO in order to outrank us. We had Xrumer links, bad neighbourhood links, everything you could think of, pointed at the site.
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
Well… we all know about the upcoming mobile friendly algorithm on 21st April 2015, however I reckon between now and then we will see a refresh of Panda and Penguin. Then from May onwards I think there will be a lot of tweaks done to the algorithm like we saw when Panda and Penguin first launched.
Andrew Edwards
Owner and Founder at madaboutbingo.com
Piperis Filippaios
Piperis is the director of Kent based digital marketing agency, Digital Beans. Now working with clients around the world, he first ventured into digital marketing over 13 years ago whilst still in his teens. Piperis is obsessed in turning data into tangible results for his and his clients’ companies.
What was your first experience of Google Penguin?
My first real experience of Penguin was when we received a call from a locally based ecommerce business that had been hit by Penguin. Years of spamming resulted in their several million pound turnover being cut to a 1/3. Helping this company was my first real experience of dealing with a Penguin victim.
When Google Penguin rolled out, did you feel that Google were being unfair?
No, not really. If anything it was a relief to finally see Google do something about all the spammers that were ranking number 1.
Have you used Link Detox?
Yes, we’re regular users of Link Detox and love it.
Do you think there are situations when someone should scrap a site and start over with a new domain?
Yes, in some situations it would be better. The costs and time involved for each scenario need to be considered. In fact the site I was referring to above is a perfect example of this. The site was a badly coded site that wasn’t mobile friendly, with thousands of pages of duplicate product descriptions, no valuable content and hardly any worthwhile links. In these sort of scenarios I think reinvesting in a new site and a content and SEO strategy is far better.
What is the best Google Penguin recovery you have ever seen?
There are a lot of good Penguin recovery stories out there… Not sure I can pick a best. Each has its own merits.
Have you any experience of Negative SEO?
Yes, though not to the scale that others have probably seen. It has mostly been by competitors trying to pull down a site’s rankings with some cheaply outsourced "SEO".
What do you think Google might be planning for the future?
I think a lot of what Google still has planned will follow a similar path to what we’ve seen recently. Apart from improving their Penguin and Panda algorithms, I think a lot of future changes will revolve around usability. The recently tested "Slow" label is a perfect example of this.
Piperis Filippaios
http://www.digital-beans.co.uk
Conclusion
Google estimated that the Penguin 1.0 update affected 3.1% of English search queries. Although this does not sound like a huge percentage, the consequences were serious. Before Penguin 1.0 many people trying to compete in large lucrative niches like insurance, health, travel, finance or real estate thought it was acceptable to influence search results. Nobody bothered to build links to hobby sites or sites that were built for fun, so these were largely unaffected by Penguin. The 3.1% of search queries that were affected tended to be the ones that made money and lots of it.
Google Penguin changed the rules of Search Engine Optimization forever. For the SEO industry this meant that you had to either adapt or give up. For the few who refused to adapt or give up there was now a new, evil and sinister option. They could now use their harmful and outdated link building techniques to penalize their competitors. Negative SEO was born and continues to be a real threat.
So was Google Penguin a bad thing or a good thing? Although the initial reaction was shock and horror, we have learnt to live with it. There is no doubt that Google’s results are better than they were, in risky niches we occasionally see spammy sites ranking, but not often. As businesses decide to spend their SEO budget on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising instead, Google’s Adwords revenue will flourish.
SEO now comes with a responsibility to keep our websites within Google Webmaster Guidelines. We can learn about our niche using tools like Competitive Link Detox (CDTOX) and Competitive Landscape Analyzer (CLA). By understanding what our competitors are doing we can get a very good idea of what Google expects to see on page one. Once we know that, we can safely deliver the right content and acquire the right kind of backlinks without disturbing any black and white animals!
The one thing that seems to stand out from the responses is that prevention is always better than a cure. Now that the Google Disavow Tool is available there is no reason why your site should ever get penalized. With regular link monitoring using Link Detox and Link Alerts we can keep our link profiles natural and sleep well at night.