Option 2: spammy links elsewhere pointed to my site.
And I do mean spammy, as in pure spam. Almost all came from foreign language sites, and would be in the form of mysite.com as the link and Louis Vuitton|Fancy Watch Brand|Viagra|Etc as the display text. At no point was my site ever compromised.
The kicker is it's unknown if these links were actually helping my site at some point, and the penalty was simply a reflection of the links being devalued.
@vdaniuk - Totally with ya, but I've actually done that already. In fact, a 301 actually transferred the penalty from the old site to new back in 2012!
I'm literally the worst SEO ever, but in my defense I used a 301 to create a smooth transition for my existing users (which number in the thousands). I had no idea that a 301 would be used against me like that.
I guess from my point of view then, the objections to changing brand/identity are:
a. My brand is something I work hard on, and changing it is confusing for my users, and difficult and time-consuming from a business standpoint (SSL, taxes, etc). What's more...
b. My deepest apologies if I'm wrong on this, but I've heard that even if I do change brands, Google has actually made it clear they may follow webmasters who've been penalized, not just the domains they ran.
Now it potentially becomes this bizarre cloak and dagger world of hiding from Google, something I'm simply not comfortable with. I'm proud of my past.
c. There's been, and I hate that I know this stuff but I do follow the topic closely now, but I've heard that new web site remain in something called the sandbox for much longer now. God I hate that I even said that as I deplore SEO stuff, but starting a new site simply is no guarantee that rank will be restored. Not to mention the aforementioned costs of setting up a storefront, building the site, possibly being targeted for a new penalty for who I am, and so on.
But yes, at some point it may very well come down to starting a new site...again.
And I do mean spammy, as in pure spam. Almost all came from foreign language sites, and would be in the form of mysite.com as the link and Louis Vuitton|Fancy Watch Brand|Viagra|Etc as the display text. At no point was my site ever compromised.
The kicker is it's unknown if these links were actually helping my site at some point, and the penalty was simply a reflection of the links being devalued.
@vdaniuk - Totally with ya, but I've actually done that already. In fact, a 301 actually transferred the penalty from the old site to new back in 2012!
I'm literally the worst SEO ever, but in my defense I used a 301 to create a smooth transition for my existing users (which number in the thousands). I had no idea that a 301 would be used against me like that.
I guess from my point of view then, the objections to changing brand/identity are:
a. My brand is something I work hard on, and changing it is confusing for my users, and difficult and time-consuming from a business standpoint (SSL, taxes, etc). What's more...
b. My deepest apologies if I'm wrong on this, but I've heard that even if I do change brands, Google has actually made it clear they may follow webmasters who've been penalized, not just the domains they ran.
Now it potentially becomes this bizarre cloak and dagger world of hiding from Google, something I'm simply not comfortable with. I'm proud of my past.
c. There's been, and I hate that I know this stuff but I do follow the topic closely now, but I've heard that new web site remain in something called the sandbox for much longer now. God I hate that I even said that as I deplore SEO stuff, but starting a new site simply is no guarantee that rank will be restored. Not to mention the aforementioned costs of setting up a storefront, building the site, possibly being targeted for a new penalty for who I am, and so on.
But yes, at some point it may very well come down to starting a new site...again.