The date was February 27th, 2019. I woke up to that dreaded email online marketers have nightmares about.
Yup, one of my sites (an Amazon Affiliate site) got penalized for unnatural links.
I'd be lying if I said I was shocked or surprised that it happened. I'll explain why later.
But the site went from getting tens of thousands of visitors per month and earning over $1,000/month, to zero.
In this article, I want to walk you through everything that happened.
I'll go over why the site got penalized, the process I went through to "recover" it, and where it stands now.
It Started With a Niche Site
For those of you who don't know, I create niche affiliate sites, mainly monetized through the Amazon Associates program (like this—not one of mine). The site that this article is about is one of them.
I won't share the name of the site or the exact niche (because it's irrelevant), but it's related to recreational sports.
I grew the site VERY quickly.
I launched it in January 2018 and within a year it was getting over 20,000 visitors per month.
Not only did the traffic grow quickly, but so did the income.
October 2018
November 2018
December 2018 (Got a spike from the holidays)
January 2019
February 2019
As you can see from that last screenshot, the site got penalized at the end of February, and the traffic pretty much went to zero.
We're also not talking about a very big site. There were probably 60-70 pages of actual content on it.
With everything going so well, what in the world happened? Well, there's one thing I haven't mentioned yet.
I made this site to test different PBNs.
How the Site Got Penalized
If you're unfamiliar with private blog networks (PBNs), they're essentially a network of aged sites with good metrics (domain authority, page authority, trust flow, etc.) that you use to send links to other websites to improve their ranking.
PBNs are TOTALLY against Google's webmaster guidelines since you're essentially gaming the algorithm. You can read more about PBNs here.
Some people are strongly against them, while others, like Matt Diggity use them very successfully.
Personally, I have no problems with them as long as you know what you're doing. Just be aware that doing it puts your site at risk. So I wouldn't recommend using them on a site I actually cared about.
Like I mentioned, I have several of these niche sites and like to experiment with them.
So what exactly happened with this site in particular?
Well, rather than using PBNs the "right" way, I bought PBN services from three different people. I won't say who, but just know that these weren't the highest quality services.
To give you an idea, here are the types of sites I got links from:
- A site about tattoos
- A spa site (where the content is completely hidden)
- A restaurant
All were highly irrelevant and there was a lot of EMDs used. Again, I was just running a test. I want to reiterate, I DO NOT recommend doing any of this on a site you care about.
I didn't anticipate the site getting the results it got, and completely stopped using these links as soon as I noticed the site was actually growing.
But in a nutshell, that's what happened. I purchased some irrelevant links from PBNs and eventually Google caught up with the site.
What Happened After the Penalty
When you get a manual penalty from Google, they give you a chance to fix the issue and submit a reconsideration request. So I started that process.
First, I reached out to the people I got links from and asked them to remove them. On top of that, I made a disavow file with all the PBN links and disavowed them in Google Search Console.
After that, I submitted my reconsideration request on March 5th.
This is the only time I've ever had a site penalized and gone through this process, so I'm not sure if I followed all of the "best practices" for getting penalties removed. But that's what I did.
Then, I waited.
I waited for nearly a month, and then on April 4th, I finally heard back.
My request was denied.
At this point, I had two choices:
- Wait for a bit and re-submit the reconsideration request
- Forget about it and move on
I didn't really feel like going through the reconsideration process again. So I was just going to let the site sit and forget about it.
But after thinking it over, I realized this was an opportunity to test something. I wondered, what would happen if I took all the content on the penalized site and ported it over to a new domain.
So that's what I did.
How I "Recovered" A Google Penalized Site
The reason I've been putting "Recovered" in quotes, is because I didn't really recover the penalized site. The content's the same, but that's it.
Here's the exact process I went through.
Step 1: Purchase an Expired Domain
I realized I was going to have to start the site over, but I didn't want to start with a brand new domain. So I purchased an expired domain that already had some domain and page authority to speed the process up.
If you're curious about buying expired domains, you can check out this post from Matthew Woodward.
The way I got my expired domain was through Fiverr. Here's the gig I bought. I got he "Niche Relevant" service because I wanted a domain that was in the same niche as the penalized site to improve the relevancy.
The next day, the seller sent over the domain he found. Here's a look at the metrics:
- Page authority: 19
- Domain authority: 11
- Citation Flow: 10
- Trust Flow: 14
Coincidentally, the domain name was almost the same as the penalized site, except one word.
Before agreeing to it, I looked at the backlinks in Ahrefs and didn't see anything alarming. Always make sure you look at the backlinks of an expired domain before you buy it!
I accepted the order, then purchased the domain and set it up with my web host. I used a different host than the penalized site.
Step 2: Port the Content to the New Domain
The penalized site had over 60 pages of content on it. And the content was added with Thrive Architect, so copying/pasting each page wasn't an option.
I've never ported over content from one domain to another, on a different host. And since this isn't something I don't plan on having to do again, I didn't really want to invest the time to learn how.
So I hired a freelancer from Upwork on April 8th to do it for me. It only cost $30 and he took care of it in a day, so it was well worth it.
Another thing I did was change the theme of the site. I used GeneratePress, and created a much better looking homepage.
I kept this new site "Under Construction" and unindexed for now.
Step 3: Take Down the Penalized Site
Before I could make the new site live, I had to take down the penalized site so they didn't both have the same content.
I forgot to mention, that before step two, I had no-indexed all of the pages on the penalized site so that Google could start de-indexing it.
On April 9th, I deleted all the pages on the penalized site, and deleted all the files for the site through my host. I wanted to send as many signals to Google as possible that the penalized site no longer existed and get it de-indexed.
On April 13th, I got a notification in Google Search Console.
So, over the next couple of weeks, I checked Google daily to see if the penalized site's pages were being de-indexed. I just did a "site:domain.com" search.
Once I noticed the majority of the pages were gone, I set the new site live.
Step 4: Launch the New Site
On May 1st, I set the new site live, added it to Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Then, I just waited. No link building or anything. I just wanted to wait and see what happened...
The "Recovered" Site's Traffic & Revenue
This is what you've been waiting for. How's the new site doing now?
Here's what the traffic numbers look like since the launch:
Month | Traffic (Users) |
|---|---|
May '19 | 28 |
June '19 | 203 |
July '19 | 457 |
August '19 | 884 |
September '19 | 1,357 |
October '19 | 2,570 |
November '19 | 4,249 |
December '19 | 8,099 |
January '20 | 6,728 |
February '20 | 6,133 |
March '20 | 7,259 |
And here's what the revenue looks like. This is from Amazon Associates.
Month | Income |
|---|---|
May '19 | N/A |
June '19 | 0 |
July '19 | 0 |
August '19 | $3.04 |
September '19 | $15.60 |
October '19 | $69.06 |
November '19 | $64.00 |
December '19 | $223.52 |
January '20 | $84.78 |
February '20 | $106.66 |
March '20 | $125.42 |
I put N/A for May because there's income, but it's residual from the penalized site. June was the first "real" month for the new site.
The site isn't doing the kind of numbers the original penalized site did, but it's doing a lot better than most new sites that start from scratch.
What Now?
As you can see, the site is doing pretty well. So for now, my plan is to just let it sit and grow. If anything, I might add some new content. I haven't added any new content to the site since it launched, so some new articles might give it a boost.
I'm expecting to see a nice income boost during the holidays, since it's an affiliate site that's primarily buying guides ("Top X Product").
If I had to do it all over again, I can't say I would've done things differently. I mainly use my niche sites for fun and to mess around with. It was a fun experiment and it allowed me to see what happens if you put content from a penalized site onto a new domain.
One thing that I do now though is divide my sites into two buckets:
- Real: The serious sites that I actually want to grow and sell. I don't mess around with any "blackhat" tactics on these.
- Play: These are sites that I have no problem doing anything to. If they go down the toilet, it doesn't matter.
If you have a penalized site and either got your reconsideration request declined, or you just don't want to deal with it, I'd recommend the process I went through as an alternative.
And if you want to do any potentially "dangerous" SEO experiments, don't do it with a site you care about. Again, the only reason I put the penalized site at risk was because I didn't really care about it.
Practice Safe SEO everyone.
