Falling on the wrong side of Google

[defeated]

Hi,
I appear to have incurred some penalties. I believe I know why too. I'm just not sure what the best way of fixing it is.

I have some sites that are all inter-linked. That makes sense for users. However the sites are fairly heavily interlinked and are all on the same subnet.

They also have some very similar or exact copy pages. The reason for this was to get sites up and running fast (write one template and by changing a few string values the text of the whole site changes but the structure and much of the wording is the same).

None of the sites are showing up as they should. Back links from each of the other sites in the group are not showing up in Webmaster tools.

Obviously I have to do some work on the content. What I am really looking for advice on is what to do about the inter-linking. It does not make sense to get rid of the links from a user perspective.

Or have I missed something blindingly obvious?

I noticed that the keyword I used in a banner that is repeated through all the sites actually made the target site fall two/three places for that keyword. I've changed it now to check it out for sure. If it is the case, then that is bad news. It means that any site associated will actually suffer for it.

Going to mynextjob.ie and clicking on the "Job Site LInks" tab will give you the whole network. The IT and Marketing sites have not yet been indexed. My biggest worry is that I had planned on there being over 30 sites like this. I think it makes sense for a job seeker to have niche sites. I also think it is a good idea to have free job advertising.

It was supposed to be a service... but I need some help on getting around getting penalised for it.

Any suggestions would be very very welcome.

 

[link8r]

Neither of these two domains exhibit much sign of a penalty

Google

Google

If they did, your domain most likely wouldn't show at the top, it would show at the bottom or not at all.

They don't seem to have a lot of authority. Lots of low authority sites linking to each other don't have much to pass on.

Also, duplicate content isn't necessarily a cause for a penalty.

SERP's rise and fall. One of my domains has fallen from #2 to =42 twice in the past 3 months for some keyphrases while all the time remaining #1 for one of the top ones.

The more activity in the index/search phrase group, the more likely you are to hop up and down, especially new sites which used to get a high ranking for a while. This is entirely subjective and open to much debate. Have a look for "Google Dance" for example.

I know some very big SEO's in the UK (some are notoriously blackhat). They build and test spam sites with up to 1,000 blogs, videos etc. I'm not agreeing with what they do but its interesting to note they are often able to stay below Google's radar for months, even years with tens of thousands of spam links.

I think you may just be panicking on this and I think you should stick to building a quality site and a quaity network.

Hope it helps.

 

[defeated]

Cheers for that Link8r.
It is quite possible that I am just panicking a bit. The space the sites are aiming at are highly competitive and they are new enough not to have any authority.

They just are not behaving as I expected them to. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that Jackie brown medical should drop for a keyword that it had performed evenly on for over a year at the same time as it was linked to from every page of the new sites with that same keyword. (the keyword was changed before you got to see it and replaced with "jackie brown medical" as it is now).

I don't think that there has been a major effect, but it seems to me like there is some negative effect. Time will tell I suppose.

I had just finished experimenting with interlinking domains. I had a blog on one domain and the rest of the site on another domain. Both sites looked identical and clicking on the blog menu item, while looking like another page on the same site was actually on the second domain. All the menu items for the main domain remained when on the blog domain. This meant that every page of on the first domain was linked to the second domain and every page on the second domain linked to all the pages on the first domain.

The result..
After two weeks of normal/expected ranking for the blog it fell off the face of the earth. The main site has been climbing steadily. I did not do anything odd with the blog. Content was good. It was further from being a splog than any other blog I've ever done. It failed to even register in google results for it's own domain name (but fine in the format "mysite.ie").

I have now moved the blog to the main domain and redirected the old domain to the main one. Just have to wait for google to catch up.

My worry is that I have inadvertently triggered the same response from google with the sites attached to mynextjob.ie.

There seems to be a sub level of penalties. One where sites will show up in first position for searches like "mysite.ie" but be off the radar for any other searches. In other words, minor transgressions will be punished in a less severe way than blatant breaking of the guidelines.

I know that google look out for unusual linking patterns and lots of links suddenly appearing from the same subnet is a bit of a giveaway that there may be some attempted serp manipulation underway. I would have thought that this would result in those links being discredited, but not have a negative effect on any site they link to.

Has anybody else had any experience of sites not performing well when heavily interlinked on the same subnet? It is normal for sites to not perform well for targeted keywords when they are new and have not got many back links established. But to perform this badly is imho unusual.

 

[link8r]

Cheers for that Link8r.
They just are not behaving as I expected them to. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that Jackie brown medical should drop for a keyword that it had performed evenly on for over a year at the same time as it was linked to from every page of the new sites with that same keyword. (the keyword was changed before you got to see it and replaced with "jackie brown medical" as it is now).

I don't think that there has been a major effect, but it seems to me like there is some negative effect. Time will tell I suppose.

I had just finished experimenting with interlinking domains. I had a blog on one domain and the rest of the site on another domain. Both sites looked identical and clicking on the blog menu item, while looking like another page on the same site was actually on the second domain. All the menu items for the main domain remained when on the blog domain. This meant that every page of on the first domain was linked to the second domain and every page on the second domain linked to all the pages on the first domain.

The result..
After two weeks of normal/expected ranking for the blog it fell off the face of the earth. The main site has been climbing steadily. I did not do anything odd with the blog. Content was good. It was further from being a splog than any other blog I've ever done. It failed to even register in google results for it's own domain name (but fine in the format "mysite.ie").

I have now moved the blog to the main domain and redirected the old domain to the main one. Just have to wait for google to catch up.

My worry is that I have inadvertently triggered the same response from google with the sites attached to mynextjob.ie.

There seems to be a sub level of penalties. One where sites will show up in first position for searches like "mysite.ie" but be off the radar for any other searches. In other words, minor transgressions will be punished in a less severe way than blatant breaking of the guidelines.

I know that google look out for unusual linking patterns and lots of links suddenly appearing from the same subnet is a bit of a giveaway that there may be some attempted serp manipulation underway. I would have thought that this would result in those links being discredited, but not have a negative effect on any site they link to.

Has anybody else had any experience of sites not performing well when heavily interlinked on the same subnet? It is normal for sites to not perform well for targeted keywords when they are new and have not got many back links established. But to perform this badly is imho unusual.

Penalties are penalities. A penalised domain is penalised full stop. It doesn't show. New domains can show for anything. The authority on some search phrases may not be high enough on others. So what if they appear on the same subnet - thats largely conjecture. There aren't minor penalties. There is a penalty and thats it. If you're not ranking, its because Google believes other pages are the better result. Age could be a huge factor in this, even over backlinks. I have sites with 2-3 backlinks but are 9 years old and just will not shift.

During the SEO competition last year, I registered a new domain that had previously been subject to a penalty (prior to my registration - it was a dropped domain). As such, I decided to stick with it as an experiment. I posed similar questions to much bigger forums (much to some peoples delight) and the crap and nonsense as to why that I got back was hilarious. Nobody did a penalty check.

Google webmasters will be a good place to start.

Firstly you have made so many assumptions. Why do you expect that they should rank? I dont think the sites have what it takes, so I wouldn't expect. I would understand that you hoped but not expect. Just because they did, doesn't mean they will. Just because you rank for "SEO IReland" doesn't mean you should rank for "SEO" or "Online marketing".

Google can't judge content - whether its good bad or indifferent. People do. Thats why the public are so important and unpredictable part of SEO.]

You're blaming a penalty that I dont think exists based on conjecture you would rather believe, maybe because you feel you've done everything it takes to rank and I think this is flawed.

You're talking about on-site SEO - which is easier to talk about and which is probably why there is so much of it on the web.

New sites with low backlinks have low authority. Age is probably more important than many things. SERP's aren't permanent, ranking algorithms change and so do positions. Check to see where 123.ie ranks for "car insurance", "cheap car insurance", "car insurance for men" etc

 

[defeated]

Good points well made!

I guess time will tell... and better content. Sometimes its hard to face up to the idea that you may have to do some work!

 

[paddy12]

I am not much a fan of interlinking sites to one another.If you really wish to do this just do it in one direction like A site linking to B site and B site linking to C site and C not going back to link to A.This minimizes the obvious that they are just one site at all.Also, they may be traced if they are hosted on the same site like Godaddy, hosted on the same IP as well.If you are not doing this then no reason to panic. Rise and fall in Google is just a normal thing.

 

[defeated]

Jackie Brown Medical rose again with the keyword removed from the links. Going to put the keyword back in to see if it falls again. Oh what a fun life we lead!

 

[link8r]

I am not much a fan of interlinking sites to one another.If you really wish to do this just do it in one direction like A site linking to B site and B site linking to C site and C not going back to link to A.This minimizes the obvious that they are just one site at all.Also, they may be traced if they are hosted on the same site like Godaddy, hosted on the same IP as well.If you are not doing this then no reason to panic. Rise and fall in Google is just a normal thing.

I would imagine it depends on the scale. Godaddy is a registrar - I can't see a penalty if you have 3 sites that you own link to each other. It makes sense. For example, what if you have 4 sites in 4 different languages and you link them that way? I've done this many times and it works well.

 

[link8r]

Jackie Brown Medical rose again with the keyword removed from the links. Going to put the keyword back in to see if it falls again. Oh what a fun life we lead!

Age is key to this but its a very competitive index - rise and falls to be expected! When you look at your keywords - what is the % of traffic this phrase brings? where do you rank for all the others?