My story / case study of how the Google Panda / Penguin Algorithms affected my websites - hence the title: Cheers, Tears and Jeers The presentation covers everything from: - What I was (and im sure everyone else was) was doing around SEO - What effects the Panda / Penguin Algorithm updates had to my websites - Everything I implemented to try to recover - What finally worked - The results i saw - Key considerations & Take Aways Please let me know if you have any questions, what you have tried in the past to recover and perhaps results you have seen by following the process within.

1. My Panda / Penguin
Algorithm Recovery Story
– Cheers, Tears and Jeers
By Michael Jones

2. About Me

3. 12 years of search engine marketing experience,
worked with many large organisations in Australia
(both in-house and agency side), in a broad range
of industries including: shopping, classifieds and
service websites.
Specialising in SEO, but have experience in:
- SEM - Analytics - Social
- Local - Reputation Management
- Email Marketing
A network of 8 travel websites; managing everything from:
- Search Engine Optimisation - Social Media Marketing
- Video & Image Creation - Content Editing
- Web Programming - Website Building
- Affiliate Marketing - AdSense
- Web Analytics - Keyword Research
SEO Manager – Suncorp Insurance
Head of Onsite / Technical SEO
Major projects have included:
- Technical Audits - Keyword Research
- Link Profile Audit & Removal Campaign
- SEO Strategy

4. Pre-Panda & Penguin
The land of Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows

5. What Used to Work
Exact match domain
Crappy website built for SEO
Low quality, high volume, exact
match anchor text links

6. The Birds were singing…
Traffic was increasing
AdSense income was going up

7. Google Unleashes the Beasts

8. First signs of trouble
July 1, 2011
Even though things were on the up and Panda was initially
thought to be targeting onsite website, I received this…
After initially crapping my pants and then laughing in the
face of danger, I saw that there was no adverse effects
and kept on going... (I probably proclaimed innocence in
there too)

9. Ouch!!!
October 11, 2011… although remaining unscathed by the
previous Panda updates, while doing my regular checks of my
AdSense account, I noticed something wasn’t quite right with
Website A…
AdSense
Analytics traffic by hour
Putting it down as a bad day, I waited for more
data to collect in Analytics and ran a ranking
report… I got hit by the Panda "Flux" (#8)
update

10. Website A – What it looked like
After living in the the land of Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows
for the previous year, this Algorithmic kick in the nuts was only a
sign of things to come…
Daily Search Engine Referrals
Daily AdSense Income

11. Just when things were bouncing back
Daily Search Engine Referrals
Daily AdSense Income
After having a great streak for a few months and thinking Panda’s
curse had finally began to lift, I prepared for a bumper Anzac Day
Public Holiday… a stupid flightless bird had another idea

12. Website A was not alone
Website C’s Daily Search Engine Referrals – Penguin
Website D’s Daily Search Engine Referrals – Penguin
Even though websites B, C, D & E escaped the Panda update of
October 2011, it was only a matter of time before they bombed!

13. And finally…
If the Penguin update of April 2012 wasn’t enough, the Google
EMD update of Sep 27 2012 rolled around and further decimated
website A, taking website B down at the same time.
Website B’s Daily Search Engine Referrals
Website A’s Daily Search Engine Referrals

14. Where Now?

15. What to do now?
After worrying, stressing and pulling out a lot of hair, I decided
that my websites were worth saving and took action to try to get
them back to their former glory.
So after reading many forums, articles, case studies and talking
to other people who got hit, it was time to take action.
Following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and their “guidance on
building high-quality sites”, I set out to go as white-hat as I’ve
ever been…
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

16. Stop crappy SEO & link building

17. Change to new CMS platform
Out with the old…
Dreamweaver PHP template site
In with the new…
Customised Wordpress Site
Not only does the website look a million times better, website
maintenance is now a breeze and the Wordpress plugins
automate a lot of SEO functionality.

18. Get thin content rewritten
Because Panda was understood to focus on low-quality and thin
content and some of my content was quite similar to other
websites, I set out and got a lot of my content rewritten, focusing
less on keyword mentions and more on quality, grammar and
readability.

19. Removed Spammy Linking
Website Footer
Was primarily used for site-wide exact-match
internal link building (it worked!)
After being hit by the Algorithm updates , I
removed the excessive footer links
Later on, I reintroduced a super-footer, more
focusing on UX and promoting social profiles
Cross Linking Websites
Contained at the bottom of the page, this
was used to cross link my different websites
together… yes, the sites were on the same
IP, with the same whois details.

20. Before:
Reduced AdSense placements
3 x ad units + 2 x link units 2 x ad units (recently added
2 new affiliate search boxes on the RHS)http://insidesearch.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
Due to the launch of the “Page layout algorithm improvement” (and also the fact that
link units don’t work as well as ad units), I reduced the amount of AdSense units on
the page. This not only improved the CTR of the main ad unit, but also assisted in
driving up the CPC of the RHS menu box.
After:

21. Moved More Content Above The Fold
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
Also based on the “Page layout algorithm improvement”, I made some additional
changes to the layout of the page in order to have more content appear above-the-fold
of the page. These include:
• Reducing website header height
• Removed AdSense link unit
• Reduced spaces on header tags
The following screenshots show both versions of the site at the same resolution:
Before Changes After Changes

22. Removed Various Wordpress plugins
http://seobraintrust.com/seo-smart-links-penalty/
Before all the major Algorithm updates of the last 2 years, it was a great practice to go
crazy with internal linking throughout your website. Because this practice was quite
time intensive if you had a lot of pages and are uploading a lot of regular content,
there was many Wordpress Plugins created to automate this task.
Now after the Penguin update and the fact Google is targeting over-optimisation, I did
some research and scrapped using these types of plugins.
I found the following where a website did in fact receive a manual penalty for using
such plugins, and their simple removal was able to get the penalty lifted.

23. Improve Website Engagement
Embed related Youtube Videos
Question / Comment Box
Social Sharing Buttons
Purchase Buttons
One-stop-shop for information
By trying to reduce the bounce rate, improve time on site and boost the overall
website engagement, I implemented the following tactics:

24. Build Social Profiles / Authorship
To plan for the future shifts in SEO and to built an engaged social audience, I have
also invested in building up social profiles for my websites, share the latest travel
news and occasionally post links to my websites, implemented authorship & publisher
tags.

25. OK… What Else?

26. Reconsideration Request – Did Nothing
Now considering there wasn’t much information after the algorithms hit and everything
in the market was pure speculation, a common approach was do to nothing and file a
reconsideration request and…
Plead Innocence and Handball Blame
As expected, this rarely worked

27. Link Removal Campaign
With the large majority of algorithm updates predominantly focussing on the source,
type and anchor text of links, a common activity that should be undertaken on an
established website to reclaim / future-proof your search engine success is undertake
a link profile audit; flagging any links deemed to be low-quality / artificially built and
then reaching out to these websites and asking for said links to be removed.
To do this, you have 2 options:
http://www.linkremoval.com/
If you’re time poor or this process is over your head: Outsource the task
Otherwise, DIY!
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ http://www.majesticseo.com/ http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ http://www.rmoov.com/

28. Link Removal Campaign
Without going too much into detail about the overall DIY process, it is in fact quite time
intensive and incorporates:
• Sourcing all your link data from multiple sources
• Combine all sources and de-dupe the data; removing entries for exact duplicates of
URLs & versions created by www and non-www duplication
• Process data through relevant SEO tools to acquire anchor text, target URL and
really any metrics to determine quality, authority, toxicity and relevancy.
• Using both automated and manual methods, analyse the data and mark the URLs
you determine to be low-quality / artificial looking
• Now based on this data, contact the respective website owner asking for them to
remove your link (this is another large task in itself)

29. Reconsideration Request – Link Removal
After I reached out to these websites via different sources (usually email and contact
us forms), I reprocessed the original list of links to determine what links have been
removed and what still remains.
After I had this data, I filed a reconsideration request using the email sample below,
being honest and listing the domains I was able to get links removed from.
http://www.rmoov.com/google-reconsideration-request-checklist.php http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool
Success!
Manual penalty removed…

30. What Changed?

31. What Changed?
In my case…Nothing!
Even though the website in question did in fact receive a webmaster tools warning
and there was confirmation of a manual action being revoked, because of the
algorithmic effects of Panda and Penguin and the fact my website was just that far
gone and relied on these low-quality links 100%, nothing evidently to my rankings.
Having said that, I have personally seen cases where the exact same process has
been followed and the website returned to its previous rankings positions. So I still
definitely recommend reviewing your link profile and reaching out to get anything toxic
removed.

32. What about the Disavow tool?

33. Disavow Tool
http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool
The jury is still out if the Google Disavow tool actually does anything for algorithmic
based penalties - some people say they saw ranking fluctuations after Penguin 2.0,
but there are so many other factors that could have led to the witnessed changes. The
consensus in the SEO industry leads to a NO… For me, it did nothing.
Having said that, if you have received a warning in webmaster tools or you have
completed a link removal campaign, I definitely recommend combining uploading a
disavow file with your reconsideration request to further improve your chances of
getting a penalty revoked.

34. Nothing worked…
What else could possibly work?

35. Last ditch effort… change the domain name?
There were many cases after penguin hit of websites simply changing their domain
name, 301ing all their old page URLs and what do you know… it worked!
http://www.goldcoastpoint.com.au/
http://www.goldcoastthingstodo.com.au/
BUT NOT FOR VERY LONG!!!
Although the new domains had short term success, it was only a matter of time before
the cursed low-quality links followed them to the new website and then they
disappeared from the SERPs again.
So here is my effort of doing it smarter (and lets say better)
BECAME

36. Changing Domain Name Process
Although the overall process is extremely technical in natural and you will need to
have experience in the steps of launching websites from stretch, here is a guide to
changing your website domain (these steps may differ based on CMS / web hosting
platform):
The Techy Parts:
1. Buy new domain
2. Delegate domain name to your web hosting
3. Configure new website / Create add-on domain
4. Using Cpanel’s file manager, simply copy the files from the old site to the new site
5. Using Cpanel, create a new database and user
6. Using phpMyAdmin, copy the old website’s database to the new database you just created
7. Using the Wordpress wp-config.php file and update the database entries to reflect the new
database
8. Again using phpMyAdmin, use the relevant find & replace commands to replace the URLs
references from the old domain to the new domain (also search for branding references you
may need to update)
9. Download the whole website from Cpanel. Now using a tool like grepwin, search the files in
the downloaded website version for references of the old domain.
10. Based on the findings, open the respective files and change any entries in Cpanel or within
Wordpress.
http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/grepWin.html

37. 11. (Optional) Open AdSense and update any referenced from the old domain to the new
12. Open analytics and update any associated profiles to reflect the change in domain name
13. Check Wordpress and ensure that all plugins continue to work (Some licenses may need to
be refreshed. E.g. commentluv)
Now The Important Part (so you don’t pass the penalty across):
1. Similar to the link removal process, use OpenSiteExplorer and MajesticSeo to export all the
links pointing to your website
2. Study the results as per previous methods and make note of the URLs that have natural &
high quality links, and what URLs contain low-quality toxic links.
3. Based on the previous analysis, implement 301 directs on the old website URLs that only
contain natural & high quality links on the old domain to point to the equivalent URL on the
new domain (put these in the .htaccess file of the old site).
4. For URLs that have both natural high quality links and low-quality toxic links, or simply
just low-quality links, 301 redirect these pages elsewhere (an external affiliate code?), but
not to any website you care about.
5. For URLs that have both natural high quality links and low-quality toxic links, I’d
recommend contacting the websites supplying the natural & high quality links and ask if
they could update the hyperlink to point to your new domain
Changing Domain Name Process

38. Helping with the website migration:
1. Regenerate all the XML and HTML sitemap files and check the robots.txt to ensure these
reflect the new domain.
2. Add the new domain to Google webmaster tools, resubmit the XML sitemap files and use the
“Fetch as Googlebot” function, clicking the submit to index button and selecting the “URL and
linked pages submitted to index” option.
3. Change any associated branding on your websites (logos, text mentions)
4. Now go through all your other websites your might own, web 2.0 sites and social profiles and
update the links to the new domain.
5. Contact any high quality websites you may have partnerships with and ask for them to
update their link references.
6. Monitor the search engines and watch as the old domain starts dropping out of the index and
the new site starts ranking in place
7. Close down the old website (deleting the old files and database), only leaving behind the
htaccess file for 301 redirections
Changing Domain Name Process

39. So, What Exactly Did I See?

40. What I saw – Website A
After flicking the switch on my first website (website A) on March 5 2013, the results were
almost immediate!
The website started ranking for keywords that it hadn’t been showing for since the first
Panda hit, and in cases, the new website starting ranking higher than the old for certain
keywords the very next day.
The AWR visibility report isn’t the best metric, but you can definitely see the ranking
success of the new domain was instantaneous and it was a very beneficial activity to
change the domain.

41. What I saw – Website A
What this looks like in terms of ranking positions…
What this looks like in terms of search engine traffic…
Even after the Panda #25 Update in March and the Penguin Update in May, website A not
only remained unscratched by wild animal attacks, search engine rankings and traffic have
again reached their highest point since October 2011.

42. What it all just a fluke?

43. What I saw – Website B
I have to say this wasn’t a fluke considering I was able to replicate similar success over 4
additional websites under very similar circumstances (same crappy link build, same
structure, same SEO, same copywriter, same methodology)
What this looks like in terms of visibility score for Website B…
What this looks like in terms of ranking positions…

44. What I saw – Website C
What this looks like in terms of visibility score for Website C…
What this looks like in terms of ranking positions…
Again, very similar results seen for the website C, making note of the overlap period where
the new domain was crawled and the old one started to fall out of the SERPs

45. What I saw – Website E
Even though website E had little natural links to benefit from when the domain was
changed, the ranking positions returned and I have been seeing continual improvement
ever since. There was a handful of keywords that website E was ranking for previously
which are yet to bounce back (possibly as they benefited from the low-quality links)
What this looks like in terms of visibility score for Website E…
What this looks like in terms of ranking positions…
What this looks like in terms of traffic…

46. What I saw – Website D
The last website I migrated was website D, 2 weeks ago. Overall, the website does have
greater visibility than where it was previously, but considering a lot of pages may have
benefited from the somewhat spammy links of the past, not all of the high rankings
keywords have returned to their pre-change rankings.
I did in fact the delay of the change of this domain until last because it was in fact ranking
highly for a few keywords… but the website would have never grown if it was still penalised.
What this looks like in terms of visibility score for Website E…
What this looks like in terms of ranking positions…

47. Considerations / Take Aways

48. Considerations / Take Aways
By undertaking the process 5 times for my own websites, I have taken note of:
• There might still be a “Sandbox effect” when launching a new domain
• Not all rankings from the old website will transfer to the new
• The old website might simply have been ranking to do some of the low-quality
links it had, so success is not guaranteed if there is no high quality links to re-
launch with.
• Showed that the panda issues of my past weren’t targeting onsite content, but
more focusing on the low-quality spun article content I was sourcing links from.
Even though these didn’t necessarily get my website to recover from the
Algorithms, I highly recommend these are taken into consideration for any
future SEO campaigns:
• Audit your link profile and seek to remove any low quality links
• Going forward, Don’t source links from low quality sources
(regardless of how Panda / Penguin proof the seller claims the links to be)
• Don’t undertake any questionable onsite SEO tactics
• Focus on website UX, engagement and develop quality content
• Create social profiles, grow a fan base and engage with your followers
• Develop a content marketing / link bait campaign to naturally acquire links to your
website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_effect

49. Finally…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_effect
Don’t do or pay
someone to do:
C SEO

50. Thank You – Any Questions?

51. Follow Me
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