Download - How to escape from a Google penalty
HOW TO DETECT PENALTIES AND WAYS OUT
Who am I?
• Since 2000 : freelance webmaster, researcher, teacher…
• 2006 – 2009: Google Search Quality and Google Analytics teams (Dublin, Ireland)
• Since 2009: SEO in France. Founder of the SEO Agency Woptimo
• 2011 : Co-founder of Search Quality Alliance
AND I AM NOT GOOGLE
GOOGLE’S MISSION
Back to basics : Google Mission
Let’s analyze this mission from a SEO point of view.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Useful information
Relationship between users and content is at the heart of Google’s approach.
What is a useful information ?
Google should judge it depending on:
- User’s feedback ( is it useful ? )
- What it brings to the table (is it a new information ?)
Accessible
In other words: Kill the middle man !
Accessible : what do they really mean?
Do not put any useless steps between actual information and Google
Organization
Google needs to know as much as possible about every domain.
And now, let’s organize all that…
Diversity = NO to SERP crowding
GOOGLE’S WEBSPAM ISSUES
Mafia wars
Big spammers with high velocity. Big network with porn & malware
Bad Javascript, Gibberish, strange spike of traffic…
Automated network
Satellite sites, automatic comment, automatic link exchange Often created by X-Rummer, Sick Submitter, LFE…
Quite easy to spot. Google spots one, and kill everything…
Protecting index integrity
Every technique not considered as « useful » for the user can be impacted:
Link buying, abusive crosslinking, abusive press release and directories, link exchange…
Manual review needed to avoid collateral damage
Infrastructure protection
Any type of penalty or anti-abuse process can cost millions in CPU costsGoogle’s velocity is crucial. Penalties should be applied at the right
moment (indexing, ranking, display …)Since Google Caffeine, Google seems to have much more freedom
NEW: Communication
Google is less and less secretive
Every webmaster alert is true but not always accurate and actionable
There is more good than evil out there !!!
TYPES OF PENALTY
Manual penalty
Usually, Google prefers automation. But user experience can’t be accurately measured with an algorithm.
Local and manual Quality Review to penalize websites
What is Search Quality Team looking for?
Some of these questions can be tricky. Any decision is reviewed by several persons before being pushed.
All the websites are under the radar.
• Is there any hidden text or cloaking? Or is it a legitimate technique?
• Is it pure affiliation? Or is there an added value?
• Is this link legitimate? or has it a SEO/spammy intent? Has it been bought?
Automatic Penalty
Based on traffic quality, indexing speed, targeted keywords, code snippets, neighbourhood…
May be really harsh or … quite harmless
Blacklist
Very rare nowadays. Used for parked domain or very very bad sites…
As a warning for bad behaviour such as hidden text, cloaking…
Nothing in site:
Semi-blacklist
You don’t rank for your « brand » name and domaintools sites are before you
Or you rank only for your domain name but not with your home page title
Up and Down
You suddenly lose 50% of traffic from one day to another
Some recovery sometimes with no apparent reason
Ranking slowly decrease
For a bunch of commercial keywords only
For all you keywords slowly
WHY ME?
Traffic quality
Do you have mostly syndicated content, ads or affiliation?
Do you actually care about user’s experience?
Inbound links quality
How did you create your links? An intern, an agency, a software, yourself?
What techniques did you use ? (yes, even 5 years ago! )
Why not other websites?
Are you sure you’re the only one?Are you sure you’re better than them? … Seriously?Anyway, their time will come… In the meantime, spam report, if you feel like it…
GOOGLE ZOO
Google Panda
This is a way to promote websites with good user experience
This is NOT:
- Duplicate content filter
- Overoptimization filter
- Cloaking filter
Google Panda
Don’t try to hide, don’t try to guess how Google knows…. But he knows…
Google has a lot of user data from:
• Internet Explorer toolbar?• Chrome?• Search history?• Internet Service Providers?• Search Quality Raters?
Google Panda
Websites that are between Google and the actual information.
Filter about user experience
Pushing down websites that don’t reach a certain standard
• Price comparison• Thin affiliate• News aggregation• Directories
Google Penguin
Several Penguins, at least 2 algorithms in 1 push
Could be automatic penalty, but better for communication
On-site Penguin
Quick Fix on pages can actually help really quickly.
Overoptimized pages:
• Not in any menu• Too many times the same keywords• Same keywords in title, H1, content, url• All pages look the same• Competition has better pages…
Off-site Penguin
Penguin is mostly a big link clean-up pushed all at once.
After 5 years of linking review from Search Quality team
Google has a good understanding of what is a good and a bad link
If a website has many outbound links. Why keeping it in the PageRank process?
If a website has always the same kind of spammy inbound links, why not deactivating all these links?
OK, LET’S GO BACK ON TRACKS
Is it a penalty for real?
Make a quick SEO and Analytics check before panicking
• Better competition• Bugs in your tracking (now or before)• Indexing issues• 404 issues• Content changes…
Re-think your business model
« If your main target is affiliation and your main source of traffic is SEO, you may be in serious trouble »
Redesign your strategy
• Make him stay as much as possible on your website and make him leave to useful resources (NO, not ads)
• Make your content likeable and shareable
• Make your website popular (For real)
Link cleaning
The worse it is for indexing, the hardest it is to catch, the strongest penalty will be.
By order of priority:
• Spam comments• Automatic Link Exchange• Satellite sites network• Abusive widget links• Off-topic footer and Blog Roll links • Obvious Bought links
Disavow links
No reason why Google would not use this data No reason you would not clean your link profile if you want to move
forward… Yes, use it …. Cleverly !!!
Reconsideration request
Negative answer is not the end of the world…
Positive or neutral answer is not always the end of trouble…
Only when you have cleaned or disavowed every spammy techniques
• Mention all you efforts
• Show why you are worth your ranking (articles about you, super services…)
• Mention that you have added value and content for the users
MAKE
LOVE
NOT WAR
GOOD CONTENT
THANK YOU
@smonnier
french-seo.woptimo.com
@woptimo
International SEO – International Linkbuilding – International PPC