301ing to recover from algo penalty - Opinions Appreciated

[tyealia]

Made this poll for people that have done this before because I'm sure random opinions will vary.

Basically one of my bigger sites lost 80% of traffic this past update. I waited a month because I thought it would be rolled back since the content was relatively high quality and it seemed like a mistake. Well, the time has come and gone, my two options are to sit and hope some of this gets rolled back, or be proactive and do something. I have done every technical SEO analysis I can, massive screaming frog analysis 100 on ahrefs site audit, etc etc.

Backlinks look slightly off with a ton of shady blog links I never built so a disavow is also on the table. But the biggest todo is a 301.

I have heard mixed results from people, some saying it helped others saying it did nothing, some stories of it working for 3 months then the penalty returning.

Would love to hear some opinions, because if there's a 50/50 chance, then it may not be worth investing the time and money into a new domain. (Fyi I would use a high quality auction domain in the same niche with a decent backlink profile)

[broken image]

 

[CCarter]

I don't think 1 month is enough time to make a conclusion as drastic as going down the 301 route and starting from scratch.

My one question is, what percentage of your traffic is organic versus other?

 

[LinkPlate]

Wait more time before doing anything drastic and in my opinion doing a 301 redirect is not the solution either. I remember reading this on an SEO blog and also @Ryuzaki mentioned it here in another thread (which I can't find right now), but doing a 301 will pass all the shitty signals over to the new domain.

The solution in my opinion is to wait a little longer to confirm that IT IS an algorithmic penalty. In the meantime, I would read this (kitchen sink method) and fix everything that is possibly hurting your site.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I can't find the thread either but I can summarize the main point, which is that 301's don't filter anything any more. They don't even dampen the link juice flow any more like they used to. It's a one-to-one signal duplicator, including the bad ones.

People used to do this in the past, yes. You could 301 a penalized site and let it slide under the radar until the next big update, when it would tank again, rinse and repeat. But as we all know, the negative side of the link-based evaluations (Penguin) are in the live, constantly active part of the algorithm now. That window of time and opportunity that is the lifeblood of spamming that we could leap through isn't really there any more (not for links anyways).

Google got so good at catching people doing this that they even started catching people duplicating a penalized site (for links or any other problem) onto a new domain WITHOUT a 301 and would still penalize the new version.

I'm serious when I say that every single signal passes through. I've got a friend working on a site with an expired domain that used to be what we would call YMYL now. The new site is not YMYL in topic but it's become clear that the YMYL tag and need for more EAT has followed along and made it harder to rank even on easy-ass, non-YMYL topics.

In your case, I think there's something pretty clearly going on that you haven't caught yet:

This kind of +/- 50% over and over is what it looks like when you're sitting in the gray wasteland between "something catastrophic is going on" and "my site is pristine and perfect". Google's separate core algorithms can't decide if you're high quality or not and are fighting each other.

You can see the actual linear growth at the peaks. You can mentally drag a best-fit-line right across the top of all the peaks except that first big anomaly. That's where you "should" be if there wasn't some issue in the way.

I know you said you've done some audits, but I wouldn't trust tools to find the issue and to tell me about it. Whatever it is, it's sneaky, so it makes me think it's probably a technical SEO problem unless there's something else you're not telling us about (link spam, PBNs, AI content, low quality short content, etc.).

I'd start by checking out my indexation in the Search Console coverage report and making sure it's not bloated all to hell with tags or blank pages or anything else. Then I'd chew through the SEO Kitchen Sink opening posts and see what I could find. This site clearly wants to grow if not for whatever is going on. A 301 won't fix it.

 

[tyealia]

I don't think 1 month is enough time to make a conclusion as drastic as going down the 301 route and starting from scratch.

My one question is, what percentage of your traffic is organic versus other?

All organic. Was going by past experiences with updates, where after about 2 weeks for past years the results have always sticked for my personal sites, at least until the next big update a year later.

I can't find the thread either but I can summarize the main point, which is that 301's don't filter anything any more. They don't even dampen the link juice flow any more like they used to. It's a one-to-one signal duplicator, including the bad ones.

People used to do this in the past, yes. You could 301 a penalized site and let it slide under the radar until the next big update, when it would tank again, rinse and repeat. But as we all know, the negative side of the link-based evaluations (Penguin) are in the live, constantly active part of the algorithm now. That window of time and opportunity that is the lifeblood of spamming that we could leap through isn't really there any more (not for links anyways).

Google got so good at catching people doing this that they even started catching people duplicating a penalized site (for links or any other problem) onto a new domain WITHOUT a 301 and would still penalize the new version.

I'm serious when I say that every single signal passes through. I've got a friend working on a site with an expired domain that used to be what we would call YMYL now. The new site is not YMYL in topic but it's become clear that the YMYL tag and need for more EAT has followed along and made it harder to rank even on easy-ass, non-YMYL topics.

In your case, I think there's something pretty clearly going on that you haven't caught yet:

This kind of +/- 50% over and over is what it looks like when you're sitting in the gray wasteland between "something catastrophic is going on" and "my site is pristine and perfect". Google's separate core algorithms can't decide if you're high quality or not and are fighting each other.

You can see the actual linear growth at the peaks. You can mentally drag a best-fit-line right across the top of all the peaks except that first big anomaly. That's where you "should" be if there wasn't some issue in the way.

I know you said you've done some audits, but I wouldn't trust tools to find the issue and to tell me about it. Whatever it is, it's sneaky, so it makes me think it's probably a technical SEO problem unless there's something else you're not telling us about (link spam, PBNs, AI content, low quality short content, etc.).

I'd start by checking out my indexation in the Search Console coverage report and making sure it's not bloated all to hell with tags or blank pages or anything else. Then I'd chew through the SEO Kitchen Sink opening posts and see what I could find. This site clearly wants to grow if not for whatever is going on. A 301 won't fix it.

Thanks for the suggestions RYU, I know tools don't usually find all the issues was just a quick example having 100 on ahrefs. I have also gone through Glen Allsopps course – SEO Detailed Blueprint for technical SEO. IMO has the best technical SEO training and checklist out there today and about 4 hours of technical SEO scans with a screaming frog. As far as I know its as clean as I can get it, unless I'm missing something which can always be possible.

One note, it was an auction domain off odys 2 years ago
Site is 90% info 10% affiliate,created about 200 info article sin past 6 months.
I do see a ton of spammy looking .blogspot.com links that have cropped up in the recent past

I have only ever built about 75ish links using authority hackers monthly plan where low-risk anchor text is chosen for me and links dripped across the pages to look natural, so the massive amount of links could have been negative SEO, perhaps a disavow would be an option.

 

[CCarter]

The problem is glaringly obvious right? To me at least the problem is obvious.

I know you guys don't want to hear this...

No "real" website should be pulling in above 80% pure organic traffic. That's a pure SEO play and is quite frowned up by Google.

Websites should have traffic coming from other website (referring sites), social media, social platforms, email, direct traffic, and even offline traffic typed into your address bar.

All these paths to your "real website" are monitored by Google with Chrome, Google Analytics, and Android mobile operating system.

If Google sees you are only getting traffic from them, how are you a "high quality" website?

I know no one wants to hear this, but you have to marketing outside of just SEO for your brand.

The new reality is TikTok.com has overtaken Google.com as the #1 most visited site on the internet.

Sources:

- TikTok Surpasses Google, Facebook As World’s Most Popular Web Domain

- TikTok overtakes Google as most popular site in 2021

- TikTok overtakes Google to become most popular site on the planet

--

What you guys want to do with this information is on you.

"I don't Google Anymore I TikTok":

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539086442697302017

I talked about this 2 years ago, people aren't using the internet through browsers anymore. Where do you see the future? And that was before TikTok was dominating.

The consumers are doing something which is outside of your peripheral view.

This is likened to the turn of the century when people that advertised in the Yellow Pages thought "the internet is a joke", and "yellow pages will be around forever".

They could never imagine a world without the Yellow Pages or the phone book, just like a lot of you can't imagine a world without Google.

Your brand should exist beyond Google, and Google literally rewards "big brands" for that. With each update you should be noticing less and less amateur websites and more brand in the SERPs.

Short-term: Brand signals are the key if you want to survive in SEO.

Long-term: Multiple marketing channels are the key if you want to survive as a business online, PERIOD.

I know you guys don't want to hear this, but this is the reality of the current environment.

 

[tyealia]

The problem is glaringly obvious right? To me at least the problem is obvious.

I know you guys don't want to hear this...

No "real" website should be pulling in above 80% pure organic traffic. That's a pure SEO play and is quite frowned up by Google.

Websites should have traffic coming from other website (referring sites), social media, social platforms, email, direct traffic, and even offline traffic typed into your address bar.

All these paths to your "real website" are monitored by Google with Chrome, Google Analytics, and Android mobile operating system.

If Google sees you are only getting traffic from them, how are you a "high quality" website?

I know no one wants to hear this, but you have to marketing outside of just SEO for your brand.

The new reality is TikTok.com has overtaken Google.com as the #1 most visited site on the internet.

Sources:

- TikTok Surpasses Google, Facebook As World’s Most Popular Web Domain

- TikTok overtakes Google as most popular site in 2021

- TikTok overtakes Google to become most popular site on the planet

--

What you guys want to do with this information is on you.

"I don't Google Anymore I TikTok":

https://twitter.com/x/status/1539086442697302017

I talked about this 2 years ago, people aren't using the internet through browsers anymore. Where do you see the future? And that was before TikTok was dominating.

The consumers are doing something which is outside of your peripheral view.

This is likened to the turn of the century when people that advertised in the Yellow Pages thought "the internet is a joke", and "yellow pages will be around forever".

They could never imagine a world without the Yellow Pages or the phone book, just like a lot of you can't imagine a world without Google.

Your brand should exist beyond Google, and Google literally rewards "big brands" for that. With each update you should be noticing less and less amateur websites and more brand in the SERPs.

Short-term: Brand signals are the key if you want to survive in SEO.

Long-term: Multiple marketing channels are the key if you want to survive as a business online, PERIOD.

I know you guys don't want to hear this, but this is the reality of the current environment.

Interesting take, haven't heard this side of it ever before, that only google traffic could be a negative ranking signal. I know google has said before openly they don't use browser data or analytics to influence their ranking but with ai who knows if what the ai does is basically doing the same.

I personally have many other sites that purely rely on google traffic and were not hit at all so I don't know if I would agree with this really being that much of a signal. You could probably find it in testing but seems more like causation correlation, ie a successful site that's big enough will naturally have other traffic but that doesn't seem like a reliable signal for google to benchmark since it can be so easily manipulated. I have seen tons of products for flooding clicks to your site, tried these before years back with no real benefits.

google it"

 

[CCarter]

If 1 out of 10 sites drop, okay. But then 2 sites drop next algo update. Then 3, then 4, then 8, then all 10. The question is at what number do you start making changes to fall in line with what the consumers are doing? Because Google is following the consumer.

I can assure you I'm not that blonde chick in the Tweet talking about how she Tiktoks everything. I can assure I didn't influence the world to put Tiktok as the most visited domain on the internet above Google and Facebook.

That is what the consumers are doing. Google is responding to that.

If you Google brands you will see YouTube carousels, Twitter carousels, Tiktok and Instagram carousels, Pinterest... I can go on and on. The consumers expect these channels. Google is supplying the consumers what they want.

I'll also interject- I'm not sure were you got faking social signals as the solution... How did you make that leap? I hope you don't think that's what I suggested.

Once Google associates your brand with your social accounts, you are somewhat trusted. If they go out of their way to add that information to the knowledge graph... I mean - it should be obvious it's important. The consumers seem to think it's important, based on their own activities.

Or you can get stuck in your was like the Yellow Page guys, and one day you look up and all traffic is gone. If you knew how many former SEOs didn't listen to the basics and now are not in the industry cause they got decimated and wish they had...

I honestly hope you guys listen sooner rather than later when it's too late. I gain nothing out of warning you guys, the signs are there.

 

[tyealia]

If 1 out of 10 sites drop, okay. But then 2 sites drop next algo update. Then 3, then 4, then 8, then all 10. The question is at what number do you start making changes to fall in line with what the consumers are doing? Because Google is following the consumer.

I can assure you I'm not that blonde chick in the Tweet talking about how she Tiktoks everything. I can assure I didn't influence the world to put Tiktok as the most visited domain on the internet above Google and Facebook.

That is what the consumers are doing. Google is responding to that.

If you Google brands you will see YouTube carousels, Twitter carousels, Tiktok and Instagram carousels, Pinterest... I can go on and on. The consumers expect these channels. Google is supplying the consumers what they want.

I'll also interject- I'm not sure were you got faking social signals as the solution... How did you make that leap? I hope you don't think that's what I suggested.

Once Google associates your brand with your social accounts, you are somewhat trusted. If they go out of their way to add that information to the knowledge graph... I mean - it should be obvious it's important. The consumers seem to think it's important, based on their own activities.

Or you can get stuck in your was like the Yellow Page guys, and one day you look up and all traffic is gone. If you knew how many former SEOs didn't listen to the basics and now are not in the industry cause they got decimated and wish they had...

I honestly hope you guys listen sooner rather than later when it's too late. I gain nothing out of warning you guys, the signs are there.

I said social traffic rather than social signals (which would be links from social networks). There are services out there offering traffic from any network you can think of for cheap rates to try to manipulate the system and have been doing this for years. I have tried these personally trying to make case studies and they have never worked.

Closest debate for direct traffic I have found is this article - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/direct-traffic/

interesting read, their end conclusion is "
Google does not use direct traffic as a search ranking signal.

It’s noisy, easy to manipulate, and difficult to collect and verify.

Be wary of studies that characterize a correlation between direct traffic and search rankings as causation."

Separate question, with the growth of TikTok are you now creating TikTok videos for your articles? Ex, for informational sites, are you trying to break into TikTok for how to articles hoping that TikTok doesn't go the way of vine and takes over search to hedge your bets?