In June 2020, we took on a client that was dealing with a double whammy – a major algorithm update pushed them down in the SERPs and they were hit with a manual penalty for unnatural link building.
As a result, the traffic to the site and rankings in Google just plummeted.
The site owner is an expert in the industry with more than a decade of real world experience.
And the site is a hybrid affiliate/informational content model.
We don’t normally offer our HARO link building service for less than 3 months, but we made an exception since we were doing other work for this client.
Before the May 2020 algo update and the manual links penalty, this site was seeing around 20,000 monthly traffic. When we started working on it in June 2020, the traffic was just over 5,000 monthly.
10 New High DR Links To This Site In Just 9 Weeks
For this site, we just did our standard HARO link building. However, the home audio niche isn’t a very popular one on HARO.
So, we had to think outside the box.
Most of the HARO links we landed this client were in the business and careers/employment niches.
We ended up working on this site for 9 weeks.
During that time, we added a total of 10 new referring domains to the site.
- Highest DR: 92
- Lowest DR: 33
- Average DR: 51
A 1.6x Increase In Traffic & Manual Penalty Recovery
Working with a site that’s been hit with a manual penalty is always a challenge, but add in a major algo update destroying it and you’ve got your work cut out for you.
Honestly, we almost didn’t take this site on because I was worried there were too many problems with the on-page and content to see positive results.
But, I’m glad we did because it seems like we helped put this site on the path to recovery.
As of November 1, 2020, this site is seeing a 1.6x growth in traffic as a result of our efforts. No other link building has been done for the site since our HARO links campaign.
This site owner still has a long road ahead of them to reclaim those previous traffic levels, but things are certainly headed in the right direction.
What We Would Advise Site Owners In This Situation
To continue recovering and growing this home audio site, we have recommended a full site audit plus implementation of a Skyscraper link building campaign and HARO content marketing (or both).
Additionally, we suggested that the site owner leverage his considerable industry expertise and create a YouTube channel, and an online course or ebook to further grow the site’s traffic and revenue.
If your site was hit by an algo update or was the recipient of a manual penalty, then we suggest you work on fixing the underlying problems.
- For a manual penalty, Google tells you in the penalty email what’s wrong. Fix that.
- For an algo update, you likely need to do a thorough site audit because there’s going to be more than one problem.
We can help with Google penalty recovery. Email us: hello@skipblastdigital.com
Keep in mind that recovery after an algo hit or manual penalty usually takes a long time and is rarely an instant recovery. And don’t be surprised when you do recover to not see the same traffic highs as you previously saw with the site.
To reclaim those traffic highs, you should focus on growing your site using white hat SEO practices. That’s the best way to build a digital fortress around your sites that competitors cannot breach.
Feel free to reach out to us if you think we can help at hello@skipblastdigital.com