Penguin Case Study

Elearners.com

IntroductionElearners.com was one of the sites impacted by Penguin 2.0, losing close to 60% of their traffic, according to SEOlytics.

What caused this massive decrease in rankings and traffic?

In this case study, I will analyze several link-related factors using LinkResearchTools.com

IntroductionI will compare metrics against Elearners' competitors, and within the site's backlinks, to look for red flags.

As red flags are identified, I will investigate further until I arrive at possible conclusions that explain this massive loss in traffic and rankings.

Looking for insights into Penguin 2.0, we will search for commonalities and ways these factors can affect a website's overall health.

It is my belief that if a certain number of "red flags" are tripped, the site suffers a Penguin penalty. Whether the penalty is automatic or triggers a manual review is a question to which I have no answer.

If we choose to believe Matt Cutts and Penguin 2.0 is an algorithmic penalty, we will assume that the penalty occurs after a certain amount of red flags are triggered, and a threshold is crossed in a variety of metrics. Let's begin.

Step 1

Identify your Competitors

Competitive Overview (SEMrush)

Start by identifying the main competitors in the space

Step 2

Quick Comparison

Backlinks Overview (BLP)

How many total backlinks, and how many from unique C classes?Elearner has 44,271 links found, out of which 7538 are from unique C classes. This means they have a total of 17% of their links from unique C classes.

Quick Domain Compare (QDC)

How does your site compare to your competitors?

When the total backlinks, including links to subdomains, are analyzed there are over 2 million backlinks, much higher than the other domains in the space. This is an instant red flag.

Quick Competitive Overview (CLA)

How does your site compare to your competitors?Elearners has the highest Cemper Power Trust, but not the highest number of root domains, indicating there are too many links from domains with high power or high trust..

Link Stats Comparison (Juice Tool)

How do various link factors compare?Elearners is #4 in terms of the number of unique C class links. Power and Trust is similar for all, minus Walden.edu, which wasn't analyzed further.

Link Stats Comparison (Juice Tool)

How do various link factors compare?Elearners has a normal distribution of Power and Trust.

Link Stats Comparison (Juice Tool)

How do various link factors compare?Elearner has over 14k keywords ranking in the top 20 according to SEM rush. It is number 3 in this list, which should be an indicator of trust, yet you can see the steep decline in traffic.

Notice also the very high ratio of sitewide links, which is definitely a red flag.

Link Stats Comparison (Juice Tool)

How do various link factors compare?In terms of Age, ACrank, PR, and Indexed pages, Elearners has a strong profile, similar to other competitors. By the low TitleRank you can see a penalty. If you type their title into Google, you will see they come out as #10: Online Schools - Accredited Online Degrees - Online College Classes.

Link Stats Comparison (Juice Tool)

How do various link factors compare?

In all of these stats, Elearners is comparable, in fact stronger than most of the other sites.

Link Stats Comparison (Juice Tool)

How do various link factors compare?Are social signals a factor in Elearners penalty? Even though Elearners has fewer than average Facebook likes, shares and comments, this isn't enough to prove significant. They are the 2nd most popular site on Stumbleupen. Social signals didn't prevent the site from contracting a penalty.

Summary

Summary of Findings from Quick Comparisons

After looking at various factors, without looking in depth, no significant findings were made.

Elearners was a little off on a couple of metrics, but nothing that immediately gave us an indication of why it suffered a Penguin 2.0 penalty.

Step 3

Detailed Competitive Analysis

Link Status (CLA)

Are most links followed, nofollowed, or redirected?Elearners has the highest percentage of follow links, showing evidence of contrived links.

Link Type (CLA)

How are the links coded? Elearners has a high percentage of links from iframes. Why are so many links in frames? Why is this number so high compared to their competitors? This needs to be investigated as part of this link audit.

Deep Links Ratio (CLA)

How many of the links point to home vs internal pages?Elearners has a higher deep links ratio. Even though 5% is hardly significant, it simply calls to question why this site is above average as compared to others in the niche.

Sitewide Links Ratio (CLA)

What is the sitewide links ratio of the inbound links? Elearners has a similar profile as other competitors, with the exception of a slighthly elevated number of linking sites with 1-10 inbound links. This doesn't give us any conclusive information.

Referring Class C (CLA)

What is the distribution of the link popularity of the inbound links?Elearners has an unnatural ratio of links with more than 100K inbound links. While the average is 4%, they have an average of 8% of their links on sites with over 100K links.

Moz Domain Authority (CLA)

What is the distribution of the Domain Authority of the backlinks?Elearners has a similar profile as other sites in the niche for Domain Authority.

Google Author ID (CLA)

How many of the links have Authorship?No significant data found here.

Google Page Rank (CLA)

What is the PageRank distribution of the backlinks?Elearners has an average PR distribution. They have 520 N/A links, one of the lowest of the group, as well as only 70 PR0 backlinks. On the high PR spectrum, they have 2 PR8 links, and 1 PR7 link, which is on the higher end of the average.

By AC Rank (CLA)

What is the backlink distribution by Majestic AC rank?Elearner has fever domains with a 0 AC rank, and more domains in the high AC rank range. This is an unnatural indication of acquiring links with too much power.

Link Velocity Trends (CLA)

How quickly are the sites building backlinks?Elearner's backlinks have a similar LVT as other competitors in the space.

By Retweets (CLA)

How active are the sites on Twitter?Elearner seems to have a similar social profile to other competitors. No unnatural activity is apparent.

By Google +1's (CLA)

How active are the sites on Google Plus?Elearner seems to have a similar social profile to other competitors. No unnatural activity is apparent.

TitleRank Home Page (CLA)

How are backlink sites are ranking for their home page title?Elearners has the lowest number of backlinks ranking #1 with only 669, which is 52% as opposed to the total average which is 63%. They also have the highest number of sites that are not ranking in the top 30 results (31% where the average is 19%). This is a red flag.

Keywords Driving Traffic (CLA)

How many keywords do competitors rank for?Elearner's has a higher percentage of sites that have no rankings in Google. When it comes to sites in the "middle" Elearners has fewer, so they have significantly less than other competitors, who have a greater number of sites with backlinks that have between 11 and 10,000 backlinks.

LP By PR & AC Rank (BLP)

What is the PR and AC rank of the inbound links?Elearner has too many inbound links from sites that are not indexed in Google or have a PR or AC rank of 0. This is disproportionate to other backlinks, as well as to other competitors.

Summary

Did Detailed Comparisons yield Red Flags?We found significant findings in the following areas:

● Too many links in iframes

● Deep links ratio is higher than competitors

● Many of their inbound links have more than 100K inbound links

● High number of high PR links. Both of these indicate high Power in their backlink profile as compared to other domains.

● They have the lowest number of sites ranking #1 for their home page title

● Social Signals doesn't give us any conclusive information

● They have a very high number of pages that are not indexed in Google, but the number isn't significant when compared to competitors

Step 4

Anchor Text Analysis

Keyword (CLA)

What is the breakdown between Money terms vs others? To begin, we have to categorize the keywords into Brand, Compound, Money, and Other. This step can be time consuming but is essential.

Keyword (CLA)

What is the percentage of Money Terms in the Anchor Text Profile? Elearners.com has the highest % for money, and lowest for Brand. This is a red flag.

Anchor Text: Elearners (BLP)

What is the Anchor Text Distribution?

Elearner has too many money keywords in anchor text.

The top 4, 5, and 6 keywords are money terms. This is an instant red flag that this is a contrived link profile with active anchor text manipulation. None of the densities are too high, but the overall density for "Money" terms is too high.

Anchor Text: Devry (QDC)

What is the Anchor Text Distribution?

Notice the word map, how varied it is, focusing mostly on brand terms. None of the money terms show up in the top of the list for anchor density. This appears to be a very natural profile

Anchor Text: Kaplan (QDC)

What is the Anchor Text Distribution?

Kaplan also has money terms at the top of their anchor text profile, except possibly worse as the actual densities are higher. If this was a major issue for Elearners, then Kaplan would've gone down too. However, Kaplan is stronger than ever after Penguin 2.0.

Why didn't Kaplan get hit by Penguin 2.0?

Anchor Text: Kaplan (BLP)

Why is Kaplan not penalized by Penguin?

I started by categorizing Kaplan's backlinks and performing a detailed link analysis.

Although Kaplan has money terms in the anchor distribution, and the anchor density is high, unlike Elearners.com, the distribution between brand and money terms is greatly normalized. 64% of their backlinks are Brand links, as opposed to 34% for Elearners. By having a greater variety and variations of Brand terms in their backlink profile, they are protected from algorithmic penalties. A quick analysis into their backlinks also shows a great number of natural, unpaid links.

Anchor Text: Phoenix (QDC)

What is the Anchor Text Distribution?

Phoenix has the most natural looking profile, with lots of brand, click here, and organic terms. It's obvious that there's been little done to contrive this backlink profile.

Anchor Text: Capella (QDC)

What is the Anchor Text Distribution?

As with Phoenix, Capella has a natural and diverse backlink profile.

Summary

What did Anchor Text Data Reveal?

● Too many Money terms in the Anchor Text profile

● Competitors that have high anchor text density were not penalized, possibly because of high Brand term density

● Anchor text word map looks very contrived for Elearners, with the smallest percentage of Brand Terms

Step 5

Link Detox & Detailed Link Analysis

Link Detox Overview (LD)

What is the Average Link Detox Risk?

According to the system, Elearners has a very low risk of penalty or bad links. The system indicates Low Risk, therefore the bad links are very well hidden, to avoid duplication. We already know the site is penalized. What are the links hiding that could give us insights into this penalty?

Link Detox Overview (LD)

Do any of the links stand out?

Even though only 1% of the links are perceived to be toxic, we still have 36% of the links that are suspicious. These suspicious links may be where the problem is hidden. Now we'll take a look at some of these links individually for further information.

Scan Combined Backlinks (CLA)

Does anything jump out when you sort and scan through te backlinks of the group?

Download the CLA spreadsheet to Excel, and start scanning the backlinks.

I found a PR 8 to Elearners from StudyAbroad, and noticed that it's a"Partners link" at the footer. This is a footer link that's sitewide and available on every page of those 4 sites.

This is an indication of a potential network, leading to negative interlinkage.

Looking at other competitor backlinks, many look natural. Elearners has many educational sites with keywords in the URL, which look unnatural.

Link Detox Overview (LD)

Network alert! Network alert!All of these domains are owned by the same person, creating a link network. This is a HUGE red flag.

Link Detox Overview (LD)

Identical sites on different domainsHere you can see that the sites are almost exactly the same, with almost identical templates and content, but with different domains and color schemes. There are other sites that are not quite as obvious but are part of the same network.

Elearners.com Backlinks (BLP)

If you spot test the links, do they seem clean/natural, or are they acquired/contrived?

First I sorted by PR, deleted all of the N/A's (of which there are a lot!!), and started spot-testing the high quality links. Here are a few examples of my findings:http://randaclay.com/themes/diy-theme/

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This appears to be a paid contextual link.

http://www.mastersinhistory.net/

All of the links end up at Elearners, which is obviously another site that is part of this link network.

So far, all of the high PR backlinks that I've spot tested are either purchased or part of their own network!

Scan Elearners Backlinks (BLP)

Paid Links on USAToday?!

Even a link on USAtoday, which might've been editorial, is purchased! You can see at the top of the page, the link to elearners.com

Summary

Why did the Link Profile look healthy?

Elearners hid their toxic links very well, behind high profile / high quality paid links and link networks.

How can Link Detox identify very healthy, high quality sites as toxic links?

The reason Google is gunning for paid links is because:

A. They WorkB. They are Difficult to Identify

As you can see from this analysis, these paid and network links can easily avoid detection.

This is the reason they are applying HEAVY penalties for link buyers and sellers.

So what gave Elearners away, and caused the Penguin 2.0 penalty?

Conclusions

Here's a summary of my findings:

The X's are the number of strikes. Could it be that after a certain amount of strikes a site automatically incurs a penalty? Or could it trigger a manual evaluation, resulting in a slap?

Conclusions

So why did Elearners.com get a Penguin 2.0 penalty?Too Many Unnatural Ratios

After analyzing about 20 factors, we found red flags in about 10 of the different items.

Too Many Paid Links

Given that many of their high PR links are paid links, these may have been identified by the algorithm or a manual review, resulting in the penalty. By penalizing Text Link Ads and their network, Google is making it clear that they have no tolerance for people buying or selling links. Spot testing their backlinks shows many paid links, with just a few examples below:

http://www.pandc.ca/http://www.romingerlegal.com/http://www.superscholar.org/blog/ (one of theirs)http://animalcorner.co.uk/animalnames.htmlhttp://blog.charitynavigator.org/

Conclusions

So why did Elearners.com get a Penguin 2.0 penalty?Elearners is part of a Link Network

Many of their inbound links are part of the same network, many registered by the same person, others hidden behind different registrars, even more hidden behind private registrars. Upon inspection it's fairly obvious that they're owned by the same company. It's likely the network started years ago with them buying high PR links, which earned them visibility. This visibility led to some natural links, including links from some .gov and .edu sites. From this authority and pagerank, they continued to create more sites to create a large link network of sites, all interlinked or randomly linked. This network includes hundreds of niche sites, each focusing on specific degrees. By linking within the network using footer links or iframes, all of those sites gained high pagerank. By looking at the BLP backlinks and investigating each of these network links, many of them retain pagerank, titlerank, and SEMrush keywords, therefore the entire network hasn't yet been popped. Many of the sites continue to thrive and feed the main site, elearners.com

Too many links with Money Terms in their Anchor Text

Their anchor text profile shows a large number of money terms, higher than other competitors in the space. Simultaneously, the number of Brand terms is lower than other competitors in the niche. Looking at their anchor density word map also shows that there are few "noise" keywords, thus showing a contrived backlink profile..

Protect your site Against Penguin!

So what does this Penalty tell us about Penguin 2.0?Watch your Ratios!

Keep an eye on all of your ratios, as evidenced by various fields in this case study. If too many of your ratios look unnatural as compared to others in your niche, these red flags may result in a manual review or penalty.

Watch the number of Money Terms in your Anchor Text

It's not enough to just watch your anchor density - you also have to watch the percentage of money terms in your anchor text. Study other competitors that have healthy, natural link profiles and emulate them. Or, better yet, follow their same tactics to acquire natural links.

Use Brand and Noise Terms in your Anchor Text

Try working on link building without contriving your anchor text. Allow people to link to you however they want, to result in natural looking links.

Protect your site Against Penguin!]

So what does this Penalty tell us about Penguin 2.0?Don't Buy Links!

Buying links worked for years, but Google knows this is a weakness in their algorithm and by using Penguin, with a combination of manual reviews, they are now able to penalize sites that are buying links. You may buy links and get away with it for a time, but eventually it's possible that your link buying may trigger a penalty, causing your site to tank in the rankings. And, as many people know by now, once you have a Penguin penalty it's very difficult, almost impossible, to recover.

Avoid Link Networks

It's very tempting to buy into a link network, or to create your own network of niche sites. Many people do it by buying expired domains, or by finding established networks and joining. This may work for a time, but eventually some of these ratios will be triggered, and the network will be found. Once you catch the tail of a network, exposing the rest is fairly easy. Network builders try hard, but there are always footprints left to find, and with the sophistication of Google's algorithms, you better believe the network will be identified and penalized.