1/9/18
Original Poster
Brinley WilliamsIt's lonely on the last page of Google
1 Recommended AnswerIn May lat year I combined 4 of my websites into one on a new domain (as suggested by John Mueller in one of his hangouts). The old websites had a number of bad back links to them so I decided to disavow them all with the aim of starting from scratch. I did 301 redirect all the old sites to the new one.
The new website, in my opinion, is well optimised and I have worked very hard at building quality relevant links to the new site.
Anyway gripe over - if anyone has some positive advice from a similar experience or can shed some light on any of this it would be greatly appreciated.
Light at the end of the tunnel and all that.
Cheers
Brinley
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Recommended Answer
1/16/18
JohnMuIt's good to see a lively & friendly discussion on topics like this; I think it shows some of the challenges around being active on the modern web: there's no single & obvious solution to every problem :-).
I see a few points of confusion that I wanted to clear up along the way:
- You've made considerable changes with the collection of sites, some of the domains redirect, not all of them do though. This kind of site-merging will always take time, but you make it significantly harder by not doing the merge consistently or cleanly. Redirect them all, set canonicals, crawl all of your old domain URLs to check, etc. A clean migration takes time, a hacky migration with an attempt to get short-term advantages will just take much longer. Aim for the final result.
- There are almost certainly low-hanging fruits to work on with your website. I don't know if it would be enough to get it to rank competitively, but simple things like putting headings in text rather than in images can really help. The community here is great at spotting these kinds of items, get their input on that. Individually, most of these things won't have a visible effect -- but collectively they can be pretty big.
- The niche you're in is competitive, there are big players who have spent a lot of time & effort on this. It won't be easy even with a clean website. One piece of advice I tend to give people is to aim for a niche within your niche where you can be the best by a long stretch. Find something where people explicitly seek YOU out, not just "cheap X" (where even if you rank, chances are they'll click around to other sites anyway).
- The disavow file works fine, for links to your site that you want to take out of consideration by our algorithms. Removing the link target page is also an option in some cases, but not in all (for example, you can't really 404 your homepage).
- Cleaning up these kinds of link issue can take considerable time to be reflected by our algorithms (we don't have a specific time in mind, but the mentioned 6-12 months is probably on the safe side). In general, you won't see a jump up in rankings afterwards because our algorithms attempt to ignore the links already, but it makes it easier for us to trust the site later on.
Whew, that's more than the little bit I had planned :-).
Hope this helps & good luck with your site!
John
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1/9/18
barryhunterFrom what I understand, Google doesn't really have 'algorithmic penalties'. They just 'neutralize' the benefits would get. So rather than 'deducting 10 points' for say having some bad links, they just 'ignore' the bad links, so the contribute nothing to the ranking of the site. zero.
This is a subtle difference, but may help focus your attention. Rather than worrying about negative effects. Should think about what you missing out on.
So dont worry about what 'bad' links may of had in the past, focus on getting new 'good' ones. (just dont be tempted to get them illegitimately!)
1/9/18
Original Poster
Brinley WilliamsHi Barry
Hmmm! Not sure about Google not having an algorithmic penalty - John uses the "6-12 months to get back on track" term quite often and I have first hand experience from 2013 when one of my keywords got hit by the first Penguin Algo and it remained out the rankings for exactly 1 year.
1/9/18
Rich BarrettI have worked very hard at building quality relevant links to the new site.
I am quite worried by this statement, building links is against Google guidelines - Google doesn't typically apply a penalty (except for egregious examples) but it can and will just ignore your links if it thinks they were not gained organically.
1/9/18
barryhunterHmmm! Not sure about Google not having an algorithmic penalty - John uses the "6-12 months to get back on track" term quite often
Maybe an analogy would help :)
... an 'penalty' would be like a gorilla sitting on your chest, preventing you getting up.
... whereas actully been sick, and have become weak, so just can't get out of bed due to lack of strength.
Rather than waiting (or persuading!) for the Gorilla to leave. Just need to work on increasing strength so can get up. The Gorilla is imaginary.
(ok not a great analogy, but best could think of).
And as I mentioned I have worked really hard at acquiring lots of good quality relevant links
As mentioned thats concerning.
But there is much more than just links.
1/9/18
Original Poster
Brinley WilliamsHi Rich
Not really feeling the love it has to be said. I am more than aware of Google guidelines - this knowledge is standard when you spend ages trying to figure out why your site has tanked.
To clarify - the links I have "acquired" are from standard stuff like Gust Posts I have done, from Blogger who have done product reviews, online articles and I have even written a Ebook which is free to read on the website. 63 MORE
1/18/18
Rich Barrettit's not a problem as of such - Google just can't read that text on your image so it's not seeing what you have written
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