On
April 24 , 2012 ; Google launched an
update to take down all the websites from results who are using same
anchor text in all the back links and getting low quality back links
from low quality web pages. Google send out around 25,000 messages to
webmasters to solve their bad anchor text links before this update and
this penalty is known as
Google penguin update.
Okay lets start story that how i get this project to resolve the websites from Google penguin penalty, One of my client had done a lot of SEO from some Indian companies and they had build the links using
Article submission
, Link wheel , Blog posting , Profile links, Directory submission ,
three way link exchange , Paul and Angela links , Forum profiles , Forum
posting and Social Bookmarking. I was analyzing their method that what
they have done bad so Google has caught all the websites, So i started
to have a look on all the back links which they have made and I came to
know that they make one unique Article on Each week and submit that
Article to around 20 Article submission sites, 20 blog posting and many
small blog posting. They have created a single account on all those
websites and they were publishing one piece of content to all those
Article sites an just charging to client.
Can you imagine that Indian company have worked on this pattern around 2 years??? :O
I was like
OMG, there were around
10,000
links in front of me which i have to edit. I accepted the project as
challenge because ony WMPU has been recovered from this update yet so i
want to check how we can get the websites back. Everyone on SEOmoz were
writing posts about this new update and how to get websites back but no
one have wrote the real case study of this update. They have written
just steps to get website back but no one has really tested those
methods. so lets see how i get websites back in track !
Analysis of websites
Well, the first step i did was analysis of websites so that i can
make sure that it is penguin penalty. I did not have Google webmaster
tools and Google analytic access at that so i look couple of things to
make sure that it penguin penalty.
- Paste the exact title of Main page on Google and if the website came
on top then it is not effected from penguin update. In my case, It did
come in top 100 pages.
- Checked back links using Open site explorer Paid account and came to
know that all the back links are made with some variation but all the
anchor text looks nearly same.
- Checked the stats using Semrush and Majestic SEO.
In the Mean while, I got the access of Google webmaster tools and
Google analytic, so when I checked Google webmaster tools, There was no
message from Google. so I clicked on next tab and open Google analytic
to check when the traffic got dropped because it was the only tool which
can confirm me that it is Penguin penalty. Google Analytic give me
proof that it is penguin penalty, Here is the snapshot of that website
in the month of April. you can clearly see the decrease in traffic on
april 24th.
Started Removing links
Fortunately, Client had all the Back links reports and most of the
login details were correctly posted in that Sheet (Thanks to Indian
company). I accepted the challenge and start removing back links. I did
removed all the low quality back inks and some of the back links where
good so i just change the keyword to brand name.
There are nearly 20 Blog comments which are done spammy pages or Link
farms. I have no option to remove them so i contacted all the web
owners to remove those links. I got reply of only 2 webmasters and they
removed links from web pages but what about remaining websites? I got an
idea and I send one more message to them Via contact form that
I will give them $10 to remove that link from their website and can you imagine that i got reply of 15 web masters very next day !
“
When you cannot remove any link that you think is suspected and might be the cause for penalization.”
It takes me around 1 month to remove all those links. So now i was
quite satisfied that all the links are removed and website should come
back in search results. I thought to wait for a week and may be website
come back but nothing happened and website traffic was going lower and
lower. I was really worried about the websites.
New content and Inner linking
When checked the blog of website, there were many blog posts which
are just written in simple method, No doubt it has good quality but no
heading and no picture in them and even no Inner linking of website so I
started working on Inner linking of website and link to inner pages as
much as i can.
Changing Complete On page
Well, This was my own thought that previous Meta tags were in Google
crawler so i Changed the complete On page and Meta tags of each post. I
have given each page new Title and Description and then i wait around 1
week so that Google index new Meta tags and I was hoping that I will get
websites back when Google index the new Meta tags. But i was wrong and
after indexing new Meta tags, there were decrease in traffic.
Google Reconsideration request !
So the time has come to tell Google that we have made changes in the
Back links and Complete website so kindly put us back in results. I was
thinking that they will reply to me and will tell to me that Good work
Saif.
I Email to Google that “
We have hired an Indian company before
SEO of this website and they made a crappy links and that cause my
website to get hit by Google update. I did effort to remove all the low
quality back links, but there was no reply from webmaster. There is no
alternative to remove those back links. We have removed back links as
much as we can and have done precautionary measures to do every thing
according to your standards.”
But It was y bad luck that I did not get any reply from them. So i
was really disappoint for next few days. Traffic was getting lower and
lower each day.I thought they will never take websites back and i loss
all the hopes.
Started work on SMM and SMO
As the traffic was going down, I have a lot of pressure of my client
so I started SMM and SMO of all the blog posts and Main posts to give
some traffic to website. Increase Facebook likes , shares , Google plus ,
Google plus shares, Twitter retweets , Digg, Tagza votes , Delicious
and Stumbleupon likes. It gives some good amount of traffic but no sales
because the traffic was just bouncing back. I have lost all the hopes
to get websites back.
Google Panda Update
When i had a look on WMPU so i came to know that they got back in
results after next penguin update. So this was my last hope to wait and
see the next Google penguin update but they did
Google panda update 3.9
few days back. When I checked the website stats using Google analytics
then i was shocked to see a great Increase in traffic from search
engines. I searched those keywords and i found the websites back in
position. here is the Analytics which is taken right now.
I was really happy to see some traffic back on websites as i had a lot of pressure from my client.
So i have learned two things that you can get your
websites back and penguin website will come back after next Google algo
update. I hope you will share this real story with your friends.