surviving panda & penguin - smx jerusalem 2013
DESCRIPTION
Panda and Penguin (in their numerous iterations) hurt many sites for employing SEO practices that were once commonplace. If your site was hurt for link building, this presentation is for you. Learn how to find the links that hurt you--even out of millions of links--and how best to remove them and recover your traffic. From Eli Feldblum, CTO & Founder of RankAbove, and presented at SMX Jerusalem, in Januery 2013.TRANSCRIPT
SURVIVING PANDA & PENGUINThe Power of a Missing Link
SMX Israel, Jan 2013
Panda & Penguin Strike!
• The sites below lost significant trafficand rankings.
• Each penalty—even those that occurred during Panda—were attributed to links.
What Happened?Last Year, I focused on Panda and on-page content. I said that every page needed a raison d’etre, a reason to exist on your site.
This Year, let’s focus on links. The same rules applies. If you can’t justify a link—it was put there naturally, it’s from a partner, it’s a real review—it shouldn’t be there.
More and More, we’ve been seeing sites penalized or hit by Panda and Penguin for links. It started with Panda hits on sites that did nothing wrong on-page, then with sites that got emails from Google, then Webmaster Tool warnings and then Penguin.
Why?• Shortcut Link Building• Fast• Easy• Never really allowed• But they worked!
• What am I talking about?• Seriously, you know. Don’t pretend.• Paid Links• Paid Blog Posts• User Pages on Forums• Automated Blog Comments• Lists of Links• Anything you didn’t work for
Even Good Links…If you have bad links, even your good links will suffer.
FSAStore.com is partnered with many Third Party health care administrators, all of whom have relevant, powerful sites—and all of whom offered FSAStore a banner on their sites.Unfortunately, the links were on every page, came with anchor text below them—and hurt FSAStore dramatically.
FSAStore – Once they implemented nofollow
The Power of a Missing Link
Travel Site – Recovery at first few links removed.
eCommerce Site – Recovery at Removals
Discovery & Analysis
Discovery & Analysis
Single Link
Keyword Anchor (the reversal)
Suspicious Content
Content Mismatch
“Clue” Words
Link Placement
Multiple Links
Anchor Frequency
Content Syndication
Unspun Content
Target Page Frequency
IP/C-Block Frequency
Discovery & Analysis
• Remove as many as you can first, then disavow.• Be liberal. You know which links are bad. If they
hit more than a couple of the above markers, they need to go.
43,268,320 Potential Bad
Backlinks
17,961,317 Removed as not fresh domains
25,307,003 Potential Bad
Backlinks
18,029,062 Belonging to sister sites or
affiliates
7,277,941 Potential Bad
Backlinks
6,108,964 with safe anchor
text and/or safe URL structure
1,168,877 Potential Bad
Backlinks
1,143,638 not live, using
nofollow or on dead domains
25,339 Potential Bad
Backlinks
9,000 redirect
links
Removal
Removal1
6,3
40
Pote
nti
al
Bad B
ack
links 6,970 High Priority
2,371 Removed
4,599 Disavowed4,206
Medium Priority
4,206 Safe Links
Recovery
Plus the keyword recoveries we saw earlier.
Can You Still Build Links?• Of course!• It’s just harder (and isn’t
that the theme of SEO in 2012?)
• And longer• Quality over Quantity, for
real this time.• Creativity is rewarded now.
The playing field is actually a bit more level now.
• Don’t just look at what didn’t work, look at what did.
Go Social!• Alongside links, build social equity. • I’m sure lots of other people will be talking about this today.• Social is a completely new signal.• It really works
