GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 29 - July 2014

Googlepenalties: Somekeyquestions tohelpyouon thepath to recovery By Ed Yates T hisyearhasbeenmarkedbyanew se- verity inGoogle penalties, withman- ual spamactions leavinganumber of sites completelywiped from the faceofGoogle. Penalties doled out by the search engine are nothingnew, but as they've increased in frequency and severity, the SEO com- munity has become far more sophisticat- ed in theway it reacts to them. We recently completed a Q&A session with someof theworld’s leadingSEO au- thoritiesonourblogtounderstandcurrent thinking on penalties and link removal. Theseweremy answers… When isa sitebeyond repair? Is thereapoint at which youare just throwing goodmoneyafter bad? The only sites that I have seenwhich are entirely beyond practical repair are those thatwere intendedtobeso–sitesthatwere onlydesigned to rank for a short space of time, burning brightly before ultimately dying out. I see no reason why anyone would want to exhume and rehabilitate these from thedomainauctiongraveyard. Inmy eyes, any genuinewebsite’s profile can be rehabilitated. As a consultant, it’s aboutmanaging risk andminimizing loss for a client. I tend to set a threshold and consider what’s worth saving: Is it the brand? Is it the equityof link juice/trust? If a removal thresholdgoes to say50per- cent on a fairly largeprofile then I’ddefi- nitely considerwhether it isworthwhile. If the bad aspects vergemore toward 75 percent of the profile, it’s time to ditch thedomain. Todisavowor remove: What ismoreeffective in the long-run? There is no one magic elixir or “fix all” solution – IwishGoogle penalties and al- gorithmupdateswere soblackandwhite. Forme, itdependswhether therearehuge anomalies across a website or in just the performanceof individual landingpages. At times, the type of message found in Google Webmaster Tools (if at all) is ir- relevant; on-site checks, link audits and analysis still need to be performedwhen there isahintoforganicperformance loss. If link removal is required, therearemany methodologies and opinions as to how link audits should be conducted. You could literally write a handbook on the topic, and there are plenty of resources out there tohelp. Google suggests that “you take appropri- ate action.” Ultimately I aim (within rea- son) todisavowanypoor-quality link that candefinitelynot be removed. While I’d always suggest that (especial- ly when under a manual penalty) you should do everything possible to get in touch with these webmasters to remove unnatural links, experiencehas taughtme that the reality of the situation is differ- ent and that these types of sites are often just shells,withno realwebmasterbehind them.My tipwouldbe todistinguishand label thesesites from thebeginning. Ifyou have a largebacklinkprofileyoumust act methodically and use common sense to eliminate thesenegative links quickly. What are thebest tools for link removal? There are a few factors to consider here, themainonebeing:Howbig isyourback- linkprofile? For smaller profiles every step of the process can theoretically be done using Google products (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs) and a trained eye equipped with free tools to detect networks and anchor text rations. For larger profiles, with anything from 1,500 unique linking domains upward you need tools like Ahrefs and Majestic SEO for analysis, aswell as a trusty copy of Excel and a semi-automated outreach tool likeRmoov. Theway Iworkhere isverymuch likeday tradingon thefinancialmarkets. I’m look- ing for instant insights,hunting for telltale signs that indicate forms of fluctuation. Is there anything that signals whether a website linking to you has been penal- ized? I look for indicators that allowme to make an instant decision on domains with utter confidence, so that I can drive more time and resources into evaluating the trickier stuff. Thekey is toharvest im- portantmetrics andmake sure youverify which links are actually live. One of my all-time favorite tools is NetComber, a network discovery tool. This is one of the best tools I’ve seen for finding out more about the site owners that link to you; it is useful for under- standing reciprocal relationships and it wasmadeby an ex-Google spamguy. 14 Google penalties: Some key questions tohelp youon the path to recovery