When a Google-penalized project lands on your desk
In this Google penalties case study, we bring an ecommerce that came to us 4 years ago. First of all, keep in mind that SEO back then is not what it is today, and there were actions and fixes that made sense at the time and that today are either approached differently or simply don't make sense.
Let's dive in: this project had been through several "SEO companies" that had done everything to it under the sun, resulting in a free-fall since mid-2012:
Among the different problems we found when we took it on were:
In short, the project was in the ICU and at this point the client was blunt:
"We're at a point where either we find a solution or we shut down the project, because month after month it's costing us money and we're desperate."
For all of us who work in online marketing, and especially SEO, clients like this land on our desks at some point. It's a tough one where time works against you and you have more to lose than to gain, because the client is nervous, distrusts SEO, is in a hurry, and so on. And we all know that rush and SEO don't mix well.
But in the end, the job is about much more than making money and the satisfaction of being able to help someone and take on a challenge like this was what drew us in, especially after empathizing with the client's situation.
How to tackle a Google-penalized project?
First of all, when a client comes in saying they're penalized, you have to analyse the situation and pull real data that aren't based on assumptions. We've had plenty of cases where clients claim to be penalized because they read it on some blog, are poorly advised, or simply don't rank as they'd like. The reality is that it's not just their assumptions, when you start reviewing, you find everything from botched domain migrations, environment changes or a developer with no SEO knowledge, to SEO strategies that make no sense whatsoever.
For this project, we started pulling out the main shortcomings, the same way we do today: running a full audit of the project. Today, thanks to the evolution of tools like Ahrefs, Safecont, Screaming Frog, Fandango SEO and others, running complete project analyses is much faster than it used to be.
Broadly speaking, in our experience, the vast majority of penalty cases come down to two factors: Content or Links. This project had a bit of both, but the bulk of the problem was a bad link-building strategy.
How did we tackle the link penalty?
It was more than clear that there was a links problem, since we could see a sharp traffic drop (you can see it in the chart above, but it was much clearer in Analytics) paired with a rather SPAM-heavy link profile. All of that pointed to a serious issue in the external linking strategy.
What actions did we take to reverse the penalty?
How do we tackle a content-based penalty?
In this case, the content strategy was very poor, not reason enough for a penalty, but it still needed improvement. It's important to understand that when you have a content penalty, the first thing to do is identify what's causing the problem, what pattern(s) it has, and how to fix it. To do so, we leaned on some third-party tools that make this work much easier and on our own models.
In this specific project, there was a complete absence of quality content, so we started generating content for the main sections, changed their article publishing protocol, and managed to reduce the thin content on the site.
Lack of trust and rushing
After working on the project for a year and going from a free-fall to significantly reversing the project's trend, the client decided to stop working with us. Rescuing the project and taking it to its best moment ever wasn't enough for them, and they decided to switch to another company.
We won't deny the disappointment was huge. When we take on a project we make it our own and get as involved as if it were ours, so when you spend a year going all-in and rescuing something that was dead and get it to its best moment, and then they take it away… it hurts. A lot.
But that's life, and we had the personal satisfaction of a job well done, and were absolutely clear that it wasn't our responsibility. With all of this, the project reverted to its previous trend.
And why did it happen again?
Because it wasn't an easy project and several actions had been left half-done. It's not that at iSocialWeb we do magic, it's that when you've been working on a project for a year with strong commitment and real interest, you end up knowing a lot about how to work with it. You know its strong and weak points, both on the project and the team behind it, and you end up knowing what works and what doesn't for it, because SEO isn't an exact science and depends heavily on the niche. In this case, they also left with our strategy half- implemented, and as we understand it, the new agency that took over started "from scratch".
What if we come back?
Well, the outcome was that after roughly a year with the other agency, they came back saying they had been wrong and fully trusted us. At iSocialWeb we look to work with people who believe in the project and are willing to fight alongside us to grow it, so we decided to pick up where we'd left off (honestly, a bit worse than that). We finally adjusted some of the things we disagreed with from the previous agency's work and kept pushing to grow.
What did we achieve after working on this project?
Well, the title of the article is a spoiler, so let's just show it in an image:
It was a project that wasn't easy to rescue, they had few resources at the start, were carrying a penalty, and were in a big rush for results. Even so, after all these actions we got the project to rank in the top 3 for 80% of its main transactional keywords.
Co-CEO and Head of SEO at iSocialWeb, an agency specialized in SEO, SEM and CRO that manages over 350M organic visits a year with a 100% decentralized infrastructure.
Also behind Virality Media, a company of owned projects with more than 150 million active monthly visits spread across different sectors and industries.
Systems engineer by training and SEO by vocation. Tireless learner, AI fan and prompt dreamer.