SEO: In The News
SEO is a moving target at best! And, myths whirl though this industry like no other! We at SEONitro don't believe what we hear, but only what we test. This is where we report and discuss the happenings in our industry as well as our test results. Please feel free to praise, argue, or just rattle on about YOUR point of view. It is all good. :-)
Panda/Penguin Case Study Analysis
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I have been asked a lot about what I think about the state of SEO, what others are saying about it, and if I think blog networks have a future. And of course I do! Now more than ever. Google proved that by the massive de-indexing they did to the public ones. And, I am not alone on that thought.
First, because it is still really early since the recent Panda and Penguin updates, no one really knows "exactly" what to do (except for Google of course) as so many things have changed but there has been some great analytical data done on it in addition to the case studies I am going to share with you below. My personal favorite is MicroSiteMasters Is SEO Dead write-up on the Penguin, deriving at some interesting conclusions from looking at the data they had. (its a must read!) Let's start here..
DID SOMETHING JUST CLICK IN YOUR HEAD? It should of, 'cause the JC Penny thing happened LAST YEAR! I wrote that post Feb 24th, 2011!!And of course that was the Panda 1.0 update and the Article Networks were hit HARD! The SEO community divided on the use of posting articles as a SEO benefit. One year later, Article Network pages still don't appear on page 1 results as they once did, but links are proving to be as beneficial as they ever were in proper link density (more on link density later.) So lesson #1. Deja vu!One year later, the SEO community is taking another beating almost to the day! This time it is blog networks taking the brunt of the hit as everyone turn themselves in when Google sent out those dreaded "Un-natually Linking" emails into webmasters inboxes. We need to remember that THIS is the nature of SEO and not to panic, blame or react until the dust settles. Here is the rundown of the last couple of months as "I" saw it.
And then... May 10, Google's Matt Cutt's makes a revealing admission...
(citation: http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463) Um, "not about bad link networks?" So even though the blog networks took the brunt of the blame this time around, all those notices were not the result of the blog networks? Wow!! But, it actually makes sense. Blog networks traditionally, and if done right, can't take on a massive amount of customers. I had only a little more than 400 in both SeoNitro and SEOLinkvine Elite so I knew "my" networks weren't responsible for 700,000 notices!! I don't know about BMR, HPRS, or ALNs membership stats but I would be surprised if all of us put together totaled more then 5k customers. I had put that 2 + 2 together a long time ago, but it didn't seem to matter, the damage had been done. We (the collective SEO industry) told on ourselves and the unravelment of the incredible blog network ranking machines were thrust into the cross hairs of Google's de-indexing committee, and we did NOT win. But here is the kicker. Not only did they de-index the sites, they demanded that webmasters have their links taken off of those de-indexed sites before any reconsideration would be done. Now, I scratch my head. Why would they demand links to be taken down if these links were on de-indexed sites that were dead, gone, forgotten, virtually rendered useless in the eyes of Google? Except for the tattle tale element, there was nothing really compelling about it, I mean, surely Google is smart enough to know when a link is on a de-indexed site and rendered useless? Right? But the drill continued over and over, until we all blindly followed the piper and we took down links and then finally entire networks. Mistake?Now I would never want to open the can of worms or even suggest that de-indexed sites can still have some sort of relevance in Google. That would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? And I certainly would not want to get in ANY debate over it, I am still incredibly sore from the forum bashing's and hate mail I have received in the last couple of months over the entire de-indexing debacle the moment we launched SeoLinkMonster! Ughhh. But.. I will say, I do have people in my line up that want those links.. de-indexed or not. Strange right? I thought so until they have showed me examples of sites ranking for amazingly hard gambling keywords with the majority of links coming in from BLOGROLL LINKS on DE-INDEXED SITES!! Yeah, that's right, blogroll links!! Forget that the site is de-indexed, if that isn't enough, they were BLOGROLL LINKS!! (I haven't given blogroll links any credence in years, but I saw it for myself.)
And I checked those links and sure enough, most of them are on de-indexed sites. (I can't publish them here to protect the site owner so you will have to trust me on that one.) Then I thought to myself, well it is true.. whenever we suffered partial de-indexing in the past it NEVER correlated with a drop in rankings. Hmmm So what if it wasn't the de-indexing of the networks that made a lot of these sites drop? Hmmm (I was among everyone that thought the ranking drops of blog network users were because of the loss of links derived from the mass de-indexing. I mean, if the site was de-indexed, the link was as good as gone, right?) Well, just what if.. ..what if it was actually a loss of links from the networks taking down links at customer requests in combination with the "exact match" keyword dial down? (the "exact match" keyword dial down had been coming and getting stronger (or should I say weaker) for a while. I had done an entire write-up on it for my seo mastermind back in Nov, 2011 and had been advising customers to make sure they had a large percentage of URL (brand) links to balance their linking profile for years) I then wondered if Google still crawled de-indexed sites?Well one way to find out was to go look at the logs of the network sites that I had that had been de-indexed. And to my surprise... they DO!
WOW! ok.. This made me start digging a into money sites that had recently dropped in rankings. And what I found was that in the sites that "I" looked at, every single one of them had a higher dead link percentage. (IMPORTANT: a dead link is NOT a link from a de-indexed site, it is a link that is no longer there or the site is not available) Average for dead links is running around 20% and anything with 40% or higher was NOT on the first page for their respective keywords and the ones over 70% were not in the first 100 for their respective keywords. Here are three case studies I did for this article. Each of them in a different market and each had used blog networks, some more then others, but they all had dipped their toes into it. You can see the affected sites on the left have a WAY larger % of dead links (in blue) and the two that dropped into the hundreds on the top right have a huge amount of dead links. IMPORTANT: I want to say this again. Dead links are NOT a link from a de-indexed site, it is a link that is no longer there or the site is not available. The tool I used to pull this information does not decipher if the link is coming from a de-indexed site or not just if the link was THERE or not.
So what does all this mean? I don't really know, but if we have a site ranking in the gambling industry that left their links up from de-index sites and sites that have dropped because they took those de-indexed links down, that there might be something here, and Google may have played us big time. So, I am testing it. I have created a case study on one of my own sites that ranks respectively in it's market and have just started a linking campaign towards it using ONLY de-indexed sites. I am linking using industry phrases that I am currently NOT ranking for (top 1000) and if I show up for those keywords, then we know that de-indexed sites do play a role in ranking efforts. If I go down in my established rankings, then we know that links from de-indexed sites can be used to negatively seo a site. If nothing happens, then we know de-indexed sites do nothing. (which I am still inclined to think, but I will finish this out. lol.) Lesson #2: Don't Panic!I learned a long time ago to take what comes out of the mouths of Google's distinguished engineers with a discerning ear. Things may not be as they seem, and then again, they may be, but we won't know for sure until we test it. SEO changes all the time and a quick reaction may do you more harm than good. Now with that said, I don't want to leave here with you thinking that the dead links are the ONLY contributing factor to the above sites loss in the rankings. That was something that was just glaring out at me and had to look into further. But, as I studied theses particular sites and the competition that is currently on page one of Google for their respective keywords, in most cases I found the following post panda/penguin off-page disqualifies.
So lets go into the other 4 points a little deeper. Social FactorsLet's face it, social factors have finally become a SEO factor. For example, here is an example for Case Study #1 with the keyword being "model ships."
We see that even though we are not currently ranking for this keyword (and we were previously #2) our site has the most MozTrust and Linking Root Domains score and has the second best page authority, but is low on social aspects and especially low on "Times Shared on FaceBook" in comparison with the sites now ranking on page 1. On Case Study #2 with the keywords of "moving companies" and "mover reviews" for the example on the left, again our two sites that have tanked are very low on social signals.
While this site out does everyone in Google+ in the group, our Facebook shares and likes along with tweets are the lowest. In Case Study #3 it is important to note this site only dropped to the bottom of page two so the affects of Panda/Penguin were not as severe, but as we all know, going from the top of page one to the bottom of page two is like going to page 1000 traffic wise, so this drop is incredibly severe to the pocket book and worth analyzing the partial drop.
And as you can see, we have the best page authority and out match in almost every area and even have done a nice job in the social arena, so it may be a hint to why this site only was set back to page two. Link Type DiversitySo, lets stay with this site and Case Study #3 for a moment as we look into reason number three why sites tanked, "Link Type Diversification." We can see that this site did a pretty good job as compared to the other two case studies.
And in every case, sites remaining on page one have a great deal of link type diversity. And I look at a lot of these links, and believe me, they are coming in from "low value sites!" I hear a lot of SEO guru's telling people to try and get rid of these low value incoming links, but I say, the internet is mostly made up with low value links, de-indexed included, so chasing people down to have them stop linking to you may not be the best use of your time. Just sayin'. LOL Lesson #3: Low Value Sites Make Up the Majority of the InternetThe internet is made up with low value links just by being the nature of the internet, so get links from them all, i.e. from article and web directories, forums, sidebar and blogroll (didn't think I would ever say that!! lol) blog networks, press releases networks, social, web 2.0, images, profiles, comments, etc. And yes I want the authority links too, but might be funny if I only have PR5s pointed at me! Anchor TextAnd now we get so anchor text and look at Disqualifiers #4 and #5 as they go hand-in-hand. This is probably the biggest post Panda/Penguin disqualifier as in most sites we will have researched did not diversify their link anchor density and were hit hard this go around with the "exact match" dial down. Sticking to Case Study #3, let's look at the exact match anchor text ratio for the term "logo design" in comparison to page 1 sites.
We find that it is indeed the highest, but not totally out of the ball bark considering that LogoYes.com which is number 1 for the term pretty high as well compared to the others. But the affected site has only 6.60% brand of incoming links (i.e., anything with their name or URL in it) while the other page 1 sites have them into the 26-35%. That says a lot. But also noteworthy is that the affected site IS ranking on page 1 for the two terms that I show that have a lower exact match anchor density. What is really great about the affected site is that it has a lot of onesy and twosy links that are all combined in the "other" category, so they are getting a lot of the "family" terms which we are finding important. Another interesting thing about this case study is LogoMaker has an incredibly low exact match density for the term "logo design" except in the alt tag, which is the image descriptor. Hmm. As we go up to Case Study #2 we find that our affected sites have VERY LITTLE brand incoming links. Ouch! This seems so drastically low that it is probably affecting a couple of the other low-density terms that I point out under site 2.
And look at MoverReviews.com with that HIGH exact match percentage for "Blue Horizon Shipping" where it ranks number 2. hmmm (I would have to look at the other sites ranking for that term to see if that was high or not, but with the nice brand linking they have done, (and yes they rank number 1 for "mover reviews") they are looking in decent shape even though all the other metrics on our comparison charts were low.) Lesson #4: Market/Keyword SensitivityThis just shows me that EACH market/keyword is going to be different and I will have to research each one to understand what it will take to out rank my competition in that arena. Case Study #2 was a little more difficult to do since I had two sites and different keywords, but hopefully it provided value as we look at the case studies as a whole. Which leads us back to Case Study #1 for "model ships" and again our affected site has virtually no brand links coming in.
And again we see a site ranking (modelexpo-online.com) for a term with a trace amount of exact matches for this keyword that it is ranking on page 1 for. But this site has a ton of brand linking coming in and a lot of onesy and twosy links making it a very rounded site. Lesson #5: Link Brand it!It is natural for branded links (URLs) to come into your site, just look how many times I have done it in this article. And from what I just saw in these case studies, it is now become critically important. So, besides the lessons that I pointed out along the way in this article, what are some of the solutions that can be taken for each of these disqualifiers. And this isn't to say that this takes the place of great marketing and creating great content that people want to link to and like! LOL, I know you are already doing that. So if you are suffering from any of our disqualifiers, here is what you can do..
One More Thing....worth mentioning is On-Page factors are back and looking like Latent Semantic Indexing has finally come into play. I have not tested this, but have "heard" about it from a couple different sources (from people whom I consider know what they are talking about) and that this is helping sites that suffered and also ranking new sites at great speed. The idea that is being presented is putting NEW content on your site using nothing but family keywords and synonyms that are used in your market and for the keyword you want to rank for and then linking to these new pages using brand or onesy, twosy types of links, which of course, are family anchors. I also watch a great webinar that Matt Carter did with a guy who has been testing on-page factors related to Panda Recovery and seems to have narrowed it down to..
Which seems to go hand-in-hand with what I am discovering with my off-page tests. It is a very good webinar and I recommend you watch it for more on-page guidance. He does sell a product at the end but don't let that keep you from getting the goods he is delivering on the call. I hope this study was helpful for you. If you liked it, please pass it around. I could use some coveted shares, likes and tweets! :-) And, if you would like to spend a weekend with me going over this type of stuff in addition to learning how to build your own quality link network, then head on over here and reserve a seat. I also have packages where I will build your private link network for you so you can have FULL control over your linking. "A private blog network is still something very powerful if used correctly. Building one does take some time but once you have a few high pr blogs that you can use for link juice (and you are the only one who’s using it) chances are you will not get de-indexed as the site in your network won’t look any different from any other website on the internet." cheers, Dori Friend p.s. don't forget to comment below and let me know if you know of anything working or not working post Panda/Penguin as we are ALL interested. :-) p.s.s. get on the update list to find out if Google did indeed make a fool of us when the test results come back from my de-indexing site valuation. |
Comments
Hi Dori,
I'm on way too many email lists but have never dropped yours for reasons like this fantastic post!
Some of my sites were destroyed with P & P and I have been looking for the best info on how to understand what it all means and take action to fix it.
You have over-delivered once again... and always!
Thanks so Much!
Bill
very good post with genuine description.
India's No 1 Local Search Engine
QuestDial
Dori,
Thanks for the insight… seems like you know more than most as to what is going and but more importantly admitting if you don’t know…
This is from the mouth of a non techie… an old school brick and mortar retailer reinvented.
I built an e-commerce site to the best of my ability to sell products for board game fans plain and simple.
In the words of the Cyber God Google I did no evil … yet after Penguin I lost 60% of my traffic .. with it a huge chunk of revenue. I did nothing to “spam” my customers etc…
I thought Google was all about the “customer experience” I have 1000’s+ testimonials from customers that had a “great experience” yet I got the crap slapped out of me…
There are very few people that I will listen to… you are obviously because you are reading this (well maybe reading) …. However I am beginning to think that nobody really knows what is going on…
As a rookie I heard “get links” “write articles” “get a social presence” “think about your customer” “don’t spam” be a good boy and eat your vegetables… things I did… yet I got slapped.
As a rookie I heard “don’t spam” “don’t auto blog” “don’t buy from link farms” “wear a white hat not a black hat” blah blah blah … none of the things I ever did…yet I got slapped.
Do no evil?? Pfft give me a break … Okay I will dismount from my soap box and stop whinning… the bottom line I have to fix this mess… which is a real challenge because I don’t even know what I did wrong.. I did not get a “you are a bad boy” message in my Google webmaster account.
All the past updates (until Penguin) had no effect on my sites in fact they rose in rank ….
Thank you for this space to vent.
@Steven, I did read it and OMG I SO feel your pain!! Thanks for sticking on my list! I hope some part of this helps you! :-)
Yes Dori it will help... as a Seolink Monster member would it make sense to edit the anchor text on articles already submitted or leave them alone? Of course all future content will have a different anchor text strategy...
Steven Barnhart:
Great post. I feel your pain, too. You deserve to vent -- and it didn't come across as whining either my friend.
My main money site had its traffic drop by exactly 40.9%. The loss of income is approximately to date 1/3rd. It's been devestating. My AdSense income has dropped by 50 to 55%. It's been shocking to say the least.
You hit upon something very key to what's going on now. You said, "...which is a real challenge because I don’t even know what I did wrong." I know exactly what you mean. This long article, which I read in its entirety is a good start toward resolving Penguin hits.
Thanks Steven,
GR
Dori thanks for this article. It makes a lot of sense.
I was actually part of your Seo nitro and had links removed.
I also did a lot of social hits, branded anchors and diluted the optimization.
After I removed your links I immediately dropped even more than before.
However immediately i also replaced the lost link juice with high pr authority links (branded and naked anchors) and my long tail revived instantly...
The main keyword penalized is still down but I will follow your advice on the brand and junk anchors.
Thank you very much for this study.
Dori, Thanks for the article, it provides information that everyone can use. That said, and I hate to say it but, I was reading this with the question in mind of what should I do with my SEONitro subscriptions... use them, cancel them, or let them lay while you revitalize the effectiveness/safety?
Let's look at your site and see what it needs and if SeoNitro is the right solution for you at this time! e me at support. :-)
Fanfreakintastic! That's all I can say Dori. Truly awesome. You are a testing machine!
i dont know what is pabda, etc cos all sites still working like magic and no links at all..
Great Article Dori
I like what you said. No one knows, so many people are coming out with courses and wso's ..I think shooting in the dark. Another thing I like you said ..do nothing to existing. My sites stayed good. Quality over quantity and give google what they want. And yes blog networks work..I belong to one .Dont know the name(wink,wink) but they watched closely what is put on. Some of those that got deindexed let garbage and gibberish go on. Maybe they deserve it.
So I give google what they want. You tube videos,Google news press releases. Doc sharing sites and lots of secret sauce.
But i keep doing this with the social..think google +, that is what google wants and bing wants Facebook.
Spread the net wide. except google properties go heavy.
I dont think deindexed as much as devalued. Like before you got 100 points now 40 points a 60% drop so if you were heavy there a big drop. But if you were light you may not have moved because the other held you up and others went down.
Last year Article Directories,this year blog networks. But i dont believe google will ever deindex or devalue You Tube Videos especially embed them. Google +, google news.
EMD still hold but maybe devalue. So if you lose 39 points go do 4 videos that more than make up for it.
I have been doing the same as Don stated minus the youtube videos. Perhaps I better get on those as well. I have terrific content and continue to try and spread the net like Dori suggested. My exact match domain still ranks for that I am glad but most of my other main keywords tanked. Thanks for the great article Dori!
David
Dori - excellent post, and pretty much what I've been suspecting for a while.
Now if only someone would build a tool that would analyse all the top competitors for a specific term, spit out the stats for keyword percentages, type of link percentages and social percentages, and give you a ballpark to aim for...!!
Dori,
I always love your articles as they are always very insightful. I would actually like to check run some of the same tests that you did in a few of my niches. My question is what are you using for your back links metrics? I know i get very different results using SEOmoz, Open Site Explorer, Majestic, etc... Which one are you using, so I can start checking the dead links on my competitors?
Your article is much more useful then you will ever know. BUT please lock yourself in the room again real soon, as you are one of the best researchers that I have found 
she uses Link Detective here. If you're looking for a great tool go check out SEO Spyglass, the free version is good, paid for $99 is great but if you want the real deal (including a reporting function that will show all of this easily) it will cost $297. I have the $297 and worth every cent.
Dori - near on THE BEST WRITE UP I have read, far above anything else. I have many sites, some down in rankings, some up in rankings and I am doing some pretty heavy testing to. Funny thing is, I'm now going back and using linking methods I thought were useless and dead, seems after this many of them are not...
Thanks from everyone
Yep, I used Link Detective to run that data, but this data came from Open Site Explorer as that is what Link Detective calls for. I use MajesticSEO however for most of my other research as I find they have a higher indexing rate. But, I LOVE the OSE interface and the competitive charting!!
Dori -
Great research and information. Many of my sites have been creamed with P&P and your article sheds some light as to why.
Thanks for all of your hard work. It's much appreciated.
I appreciate your work. I never thought about those "dead links". Thanks for pointing this out!
I found this article pointed out in warrior forum. Nice read, but I have one question for you, maybe you can help me. Do you know where I can get extremely private blog networks? I mean those which wont get de-indexed. Any hints 
?
Great post Dori,
Indexing or not, we've always been able to rank our sites regardless. Remember in 2009 when profiles would not get indexed but would rank like crazy?
On-page SEO is very important.
Brand Name / Author anchoring a must right now.
Cheers!
Epic content. Thanks for your work! A couple of edits:
1.) In the screenshot saying 'not showing in google's index' just after the page text 'And to my surprise... they DO!' .... the two screenshots show different domains. The first is vulolx.com and the second is vuolux.com. Not sure if this was intended.
2.) Link to Directory Maximizer is not working... may want to check it
Love the article as a former SEOLM customer. Excellent analysis. Thanks for all your hard work!
Thanks!
David
Typo!! And Ohhhh that could of been embarrassing. Here is today's screenshot spelled correctly. lol
But the dang html editor is not displaying the graphic. I will change out up top tomorrow when Google's logo comes back. Right now it is the keyboard. loll">http://dorifriend.com/images/vuolux.png[/img] But the dang html editor is not displaying the graphic. I will change out up top tomorrow when Google's logo comes back. Right now it is the keyboard. loll
This was GREAT Dori. Thanks for all of the info. If I find any "tricks" I will definitely let you and the network know!
Wow....I'm going to have to read this article again and again, it's got so much amazing info and references in it!
I just started building sites, and doing backlinking and got my 5th website to #2 & #3 for my top two keywords, both with 6600 searches per month for exact match. I was PUMPED! Got up to about 75 visits per day, and Friday May 4th was my Penguin SLAP!
I was down to 0 hits per day. I am still indexed, all pages, but don't rank for any of my keywords anymore.
Luckily from me being devastated, I did NOTHING to the site further. I just walked away, but in retrospect, I think that doing nothing was probably the best thing I could have done.
In the past 5 days, I've noticed I started coming back a very little bit. I'm ranking for some really off keywords, and ranking well!
So this article is going to be my guideline to see if I can get back up in the SERPS.
Thanks so much for your attention to detail Dori!!!
This was a great read. I really learned a whole lot. I wanted to comment on the case study regarding twomenandatruck.com. It looks like they are very aggressive with on page optimization. Their keyword density is extremely high for 'moving companies.' Also, with your reference to model-expoonline.com. This site has a high density of the keyword "model" throughout the site with LSI keywords. It almost looks spammy. This leads me to believe that on page optimization, done correctly may allow you to completely go away from exact match anchor text at the same time make your link profile look natural.
Any chance we can see what these sites in the case study used for the 'other' links in their profiles. I think this would be telling and may help us have a better understanding on why they are ranking so well.
You can get that data by doing the same process as I did with Link Detective. :-)
Hi Dori,
this is by far the best analysis of the PP updates I've seen. However, forgive my naivety here, I'm not that green honestly, but what in the name of God are onesys and twosys? I know you provide an explanation towards the end of your post and even cover how you select the anchor text to use for them...but why onesys and twosys?
Another quick question...am I missing something but shouldn't the link diversity graphic have a legend because it can't surely use the same one as for the Links by type graphic at the top of the post.
Please feel free to ridicule me (Google has been doing it to me for years!)
Onesy and Twosy? LOL I dunno, it just popped in my head as how to describe getting links a wide variety of links that are not duplicated often. And I never could spell well! lol
About the graph, it uses the same "type" of legend but the colors would be different. They are different on every site I run as it all depends on what has the highest percentage of whatever I am analyzing. I just wanted to show the diversity that was still coming in. Perhaps I should of just made them two color graphs that showed Dead Links vs. Live Links. :-)
Great article Dori - this must have taken you hours to do, so thanks very much for taking the time to share it with us
We have been very lucky in these updates so far but this info is pure gold to help us to understand what we need to be doing to stay were we currently are. Dori you are a star this is great content
Shitz, that was a long post, but a very good one. Thanks for the study and the topic of dead links makes a lot of sense. It would have been my first guess to the drop if I hadn't been distracted by everyone screaming blog networks to high hell.
And no need to beat a dead horse with questioning the honesty of Google. We all know that they are always holding a knife behind their backs for us marketers. Smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors.
Here's to an honest search engine coming out of this mess. One that isn't following the business model of an anti-virus company. lol
I never thought I will read a post like this not with the confusion which arose after that "Bird". I have to admit that I also panicked and did a few of the things you mentioned here such as taking down links.
I have been spending almost 15 hours daily looking for answers and never found such a convincing and well documented facts such as this one.
Since I don't have anything more to lose, why not? I will take your suggestions and THANK YOU DORI!
Thank you also Brad Callen (if you read this) for sending me the link to this post.
I sent it to Brad! Thanks! :-)
Thanks Dori for that. I have shared this post with my friends on facebook, Linkedin, twitter and wrote a post on one of my blogs. Have also sent mails to my subscribers to read this great post of yours. It is quite a relief after the shock we all got. Panda then Penguin, I hope Google will not force people to start to hate animals. A joke there.
Nice work! Dori
I am first time ever replying to anyone post.i am a freelancer on odesk and was very confused after google penguin and panda update there was nothing which i can tell my clients then i read out some updates on google and from my different sources.
In short i want to say thank you did a great job and now i have solution and reason for my clients.
Very informative and helpful
Thanks again!
great write up. I have one site that got hit pretty hard, traffic is down about 60% but I still rank for a number of decent long tail keywords (which is a relief.) The funny thing is, a site which was in position 9 has moved up to position 3 for a fairly competitive keyword and their link profile is just absolute junk. I'm talking real crap here and they are benefiting from it. It amazes me that people are being rewarded for some of the most low value linking out there, and the worst part is I am now grabbing and using some of those links...
Totally! I mean my eyeballs popped out when I saw all those blogroll links on de-indexed sites ranking that guy for an amazing gambling keyword! lol
Crikey what a long post - this has so much detail I shall have to reread this another day and make notes. What I gleaned thus far is very very useful and it confirms what we have been doing instinctively is what we should be doing - phew. Please continue to keep us updated like this it really is very much appreciated Dori
Great article Dori. This is exactly what I needed to read after Penguin - the results of real testing, rather than the over-reaction, horror stories and ill informed comments that are flooding the forums at the moment. I certainly intend to adopt these suggestions on my sites and will hopefully regain my top 3 rankings soon.
Dori
I agree. Lack of branding links must be an obvious disqualifier for Google to go for. Just visualize the classic spammy made-for-adsense-site. EMD, no real branding, just a very high proportion of contextual links using the exact match domain keyword.
I was at first incredulous that de-registered pages could still be passing link-juice, but that (and G's pressure to get us removing unnatural links) is in a way quite logical. To prevent a standard bot from re-registering link-juice after a manual site wide de-registering each time it visits every site on the whole web, just in case there was a manual de-registering active, would presumably take masses of parsing against a master list each time and a big server load, for a relatively tiny number of positives.
Contrast this with the much lower server overhead from just parsing a list of manually penalized blogs to make the "site:mydomain-com" function in the SERPS show the message "zero data available" when anyone (usually the site owner) checks their indexed pages.
Yes, Dori, I think that as always, you do really have some great insights here.
One of my money sites got wiped out in the Penguin update and it was from using things like seo linkvine elite and seo linkmonster. One thing it will do for sure is make you less reliant on Google and more reliant on other sources of traffic and income. Also, more and more people are starting to rebel against google. I made bing my standard search engine recently and only use google as a last resort. 
Those are both my networks lol and they *did* suffer from de-indexing, but you may want to look at some of the things I pointed out in the article to make sure you have all your other signals aligned. :-)
This is an excellent article. Thank you very much for sharing your research! I'm going to run over to LinkDetective right now and see what I can discover.
Great article. I am also a long time member of seolinkvine (4 accounts) and seolinkmonster. This articles has convinced me to sign back up. I never wrote any hate mail, but I'm sorry I doubted you and left! LOL
I have a question. What if the exact match anchor is identical to the keyword I want to rank for? Is Google able to identify it as a brand anchor text or an exact match keyword? Is it considered spamming? For example if i owned LasVegas.com, I would always use LasVegas.com or Las Vegas for my anchor text as well as repeatedly mention LasVegas.com over and over onpage of my site as well. Is it better to have mention of my name like without spaces like LasVegas.com so Google can more easily I am not spamming but simply referring to my company name as well as domain?
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Great Article Dori!!!! Testing testing testing - you are so committed to keeping things right with your customers and for all of us SEO people
Thanks for all your hard work!