Almost Everyone got hit by Google Panda/Penguin/EMD Updates, How much of you have recovered?

Almost Everyone got hit by Google Panda/Penguin/EMD Updates, we all know that. Even I have heard that many have left this business because of this.

Is there anyone who really got recovered from all these updates without starting a fresh one? Tell me which step actually worked to recover?
and How are you guys gaining ranking in Google these days? Earlier we used to have backlinks to gain rankings.. Are they still working? Sitewide backlinks with do follow? or What type of backlinks are getting importance now?

 

Panda is still kicking ? Took a long break, good to be back at DP

 

Welcome back. Yes because many are still not able to understand these algos completely.

 

I recovered after I had left my site offline for a year. Here is the process, I went through, which would be slightly different if your site is still online. It takes a lot of work. The easiest way to come back from a penalty is to use Google's disavow tool and disavow every suspect link you can find, and wait months and you can get back in, maybe. I took a pro-active approach and it worked.

Here is what I did:

Day 0: I uploaded my old site as it was originally, but with a new design(CSS), updated all the pages with better and newer content, and built links to my "main" pages. -The site was indexed very quickly and I was ranking on pages 10-30 for my keywords. The page structure was the same as the original.

Day 14: I checked to see what pages became indexed and searchable for their keywords. I built more links to pages that were not indexed or searchable.

Day 21: I renamed each file page that was not indexed or searchable. So instead of keyword.html, I changed it to keyword2.html I then did SEO for the new Keyword2.html pages. -I did not redirect the old pages, they all went to a 404 page.

Day 30: All of pages were indexed and searchable through Google. -After this I used the disavow tool and cleaned up the link profile.

Day 60: I achieved all my previous rankings and now let it sit at the top.

Hopefully my experience can help you, it takes time, but the rankings can come back.

 

As far as Penguin goes, a link detox (potentially a very long and tedious process, which is why so many turn to an agency for this) is your best bet. It's not necessarily about how many spammy links you have, though. It's about how many you have relative to the number of quality links. There's still a place for directories and the like, but the good stuff has too far outweigh the "bad".

Panda is a similar story as far as effort goes. No more keyword stuffed content for content's sake. As pactive says above,

good quality content, and some savvy internal linking are a good start. Regular publishing of content "shows" Google your site's maintained and "fresh" - again, why so many companies employ agencies to write their stuff for them, to keep up with demand.

 

We had some sites tank during Penguin 3.0 in October, however they all recovered within 30 days. It seems Google found a new link that it treats as spam (specific type of PBN links that is) and by fixing that the rankings all came back.

 

As much as everyone wants to complain about Panda/Penguin, I think some of the loss in traffic that people have experienced comes from Google's introduction of local search results - meaning that they've started customizing search results according to a user's location (down to the city). So you're starting to see various content appear above your site if it its locationally closer to the user, which makes sense from a user perspective, but hazardous to site owners.

 

My website got hit but has recovered. I took the step below;
Analyzed my backlink profile (Using excel)

1. Discovered bad links. That is, links that has commercial anchor text, from a non-related topical website (with PR NA and 0), and sitewide links
2. I removed those links by contacting the webmasters (those I don't have control over) or removing it my self (the ones I have control).
3. I also used the Link Disavow tool for the links I just cannot get rid of
4. I started building relevant, high quality backlinks using quest posting and broking links
5. I also engaged in link outreach and link baiting
6. I used social media platforms to interact with my audience.
7. I used other methods to driving traffic to my website such as PPC, PPT, and banner adverts (Google loves sites that dosen't depend on them for traffic)
8. After a couple of months, my website bounced back and I gradually began to rank high
9. Now I am ranking #1 in 4 of my keywords and they have lots of competition.

Those steps took time and pains for me. But I did not give up.
Being penalized is not the end of the world. Follow the above steps and it may work for you too.