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SEO Expert says my domain name is permanantly penalized by Google?

Discussion in 'SEO' started by joepipe, Jun 4, 2014.

  1. #1
    Hello Everyone

    I have a mortgage broker / financing domain for many years now. I am a legitimate business owner and mortgage broker in Canada. Since 2007, I worked on my website like many of you gathering quality links, sometimes buying links, blog posts , updating content, etc. Rankings were very good for years and I got many quality customer leads from my site. When Panda hit in May 2012 , my site got very badly penalized. In the last year or so I have cancelled many "suspect" links and pages pointing to my site, I have lots of content updated regularly but it doesn't seem to matter anymore. No matter how much new content I add, it just seems my website is stuck now in the SERPS.

    I talked to a top SEO expert from an SEO company in my city and he says after reviewing the site, that I have too many exact match keyword anchor links pointing to my site and that my domain name is pretty much an exact match domain, with 2 major keywords in it, which google may be also penalizing. He used the website AHREFS.com to do a review. He says that it will take too long to remove all the exact match anchors and that I am better off registering a new domain, without an exact match keyword phrase in it. He says that my website has been hit by Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird by google. So my questions are the following...

    - Is the best option to register a new domain? Is my existing domain permanently buried in the SEO grave by google because of incoming links and my domain name having 2 major keywords in it?

    - Can I do a 301 redirect of the old domain to the new domain? Or should I just leave the old site running and hosted because many people know it for years and may still visit, but start a brand new domain, new site on another server? Have 2 sites running, but stop all new content etc. on the old site.

    - Do I have to start over again with a new domain and new site/content? Is this the best strategy if the SEO expert is correct?

    Thanks Everyone for your advice, much appreciated.
     
    joepipe, Jun 4, 2014 IP
  2. uand.eye

    uand.eye Active Member

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    #2
    It's hard to say without details of the actual domain. Before cancelling it and starting again you need to work out what it is worth, not only in SEO value, but also in terms of the brand value. If you have spent a long time building the company and you have a trusted name, then you can save it if you are willing to spend some time putting right your mistakes.

    Firstly you need a proper link audit. If your SEO expert just pulled a report from ahrefs, then they cannot really be called an expert. Make a full list of all links pointing to your site, highlighting any that may be a problem. If there are links you cannot remove use the disavow tool. Then try to find contact details for all of the sites and fire off some emails asking for the links to be removed. You can also continue to build good links, which will improve your anchor diversity.

    Then take a look at the content on your site. Get rid of any low quality or copied junk content and replace tit with quality. Google's main priority is to provide good quality results. So when they manually review your site you want them to see how good it is and that it should be ranking well.


    Once all that is done you can request a review from Google. Be honest, tell them what you did wrong and how you have put it right. If your site looks good and they can see you have made an effort to improve the quality, then they should remove any manual actions.
     
    uand.eye, Jun 4, 2014 IP
  3. joepipe

    joepipe Active Member

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    #3

    Thanks for the reply. This is my concern , 7 years of domain branding I dont want to lose. I checked google webmaster tools and there is no manual action or penalty. The issue here is algorithims from panda, penguin and hummingbird.

    I still rank #1 for one of the best keywords in my city so I know all hope is not lost. I have just lost alot of rankings for other keyword phrases .

    I will look into a link audit and see what I can find and change.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2014
    joepipe, Jun 4, 2014 IP
  4. opethian

    opethian Peon

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    #4
    joepipe: I had the same thing happen to me with the first site I ever created (also in 2007). I started on the quirky Website Tonight platform bur eventually migrated the entire site over to Wordpress where it is today. The niche for this site is natural-health supplements. For the first 6 years I was ranked on page one of Google for a good majority of my keywords and got very good organic traffic. Like you, I built links over those years doing everything above board. Nothing black-hat at all.

    My site was fine after Panda but got whacked severely by Penguin 2.0 last year. To this day I only have two keywords that even rank in the top 10 pages of Google so my organic traffic from them is essentially gone. I've tried just about everything I can find on how to 'unscrew' my site (unlinking, changing anchor text, disavow) but nothing has helped yet. I can't just switch out domains because my domain name is the name of my product so like you I don't want to waste seven years of branding and hard work. I'm frustrated and feel stuck at this point. Luckily I have other money-making sites but this one was my bread and butter for years and is now earning perhaps 20% of what it once did.

    I started the link audit route but get overwhelmed by the amount of time it takes since I have over 33,000 backlinks to my site. The worst part about doing all this work is theres no guarantee it will even make a difference with Google.

    Does anyone have any suggestions? Or should I just re-brand and start over?

    But mostly joepipe I posted this so you know that you're not alone.
     
    opethian, Jun 4, 2014 IP
  5. smithgreek

    smithgreek Well-Known Member

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    #5
    yes is right Google penalize over optimization and unauthentic Link Building work
     
    smithgreek, Jun 6, 2014 IP
  6. PeterStraw

    PeterStraw Greenhorn

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    #6
    Google penalizes over optimization, too high keyword density. The purpose is to “level the playing field, as they say. SEO helps you to perform better, but optimizing for Google is sometimes really tricky, and you easily cross the line.
     
    PeterStraw, Jul 3, 2014 IP
  7. The SEO Man

    The SEO Man Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Hi, i'm Brett Topovski - SEO Expert / 34 M USA / with 12 years of experience as a web designer / developer and search engine optimization specialist. I would be happy to take a few moments an run a few scans/checks on your website to give you the real answer to the question and request for help posted above.
    • What is the domain name of the website that you are currently experiencing SEO Problems with?
    I'm a very Experienced SEO Expert with many years of experience in finding and fixing problems, just like the search engine optimization issues your site is currently experiencing.

    - Feel free to reply here or just PM me directly with the URL/domain-name of the site to request help with SEO and a free SEO evaluation with recommendations to fix the problems identified related to how the site is currently optimized.
     
    The SEO Man, Jul 8, 2014 IP
  8. jazzyjmnote

    jazzyjmnote Banned

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    #8
    The suggestion would be to evaluate backlinks and disavow undesired ones and then take further steps to physically remove bad backlinks... Another is to start a new website for over optimized keywords and start it as different niche. If you require Professional Service then I can help with complete Review and Optimization and help with content writing part of the website too...
     
    jazzyjmnote, Jul 25, 2014 IP