Is my domain tainted or just hit by Google update.

[bernard]

I'm struggling to understand what I'm seeing in the SERPs for my kitchen equipment site that I started in August 2020.

I bought an expired domain that used to be a wine bar / restaurant and repurposed it into reviews of kitchen machines and the like. The domain has links from a bunch of trustworthy sites, newspapers, airbnb and more, though not high DR, only in the 10s.

The problem is the site was parked for a long while and there's still these indexed pages from that time with autogenerated crap for various offers indexed. Only a few left now, but they don't go away despite being 404 for 6 months and me having requested them to be removed in GSC. I'm a little worried this autogenerated offer page crap has made Google put the site in some kind of bad neighborhood filter.

I really put a lot of effort into design, structure and content. Probably my nicest looking site yet in terms of branding and design. Content is at least on par with competition.

It just won't rank. My "best product" articles are ranking page 5 or worse, which is very low for me usually and only above those sites that don't have the keyword in the title. It ranks below objectively shitty pages.

It did seem to get hit with the latest update which muddies the water, just as it seemed to begin to gain some traction.

How would you go about determining if the domain is tainted or just bad luck?

I've gone ahead and bought myself some links to try to get going and then I'll try to promote this with some social media stuff.

I'm considering jumping ship and moving to another domain if it doesn't improve in 3 months time, which begs question number 2. Would a 301 to another site bring along the eventual bad karma?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I bought an expired domain that used to be a wine bar / restaurant and repurposed it into reviews of kitchen machines and the like. The domain has links from a bunch of trustworthy sites, newspapers, airbnb and more, though not high DR, only in the 10s.

In my personal experience, I would say that the two domains are relevant enough to each other for the relevancy to not pose an issue. Unlike something like a domain for bicycles being 301'd to a domain about wedding dresses. That creates confusion on Google's side for sure and hurts all rankings. I've done this to myself and see people doing it all the time.

The problem is the site was parked for a long while and there's still these indexed pages from that time with autogenerated crap for various offers indexed. Only a few left now, but they don't go away despite being 404 for 6 months and me having requested them to be removed in GSC. I'm a little worried this autogenerated offer page crap has made Google put the site in some kind of bad neighborhood filter.

Having just a few of these left is no problem. I have a site where the damn FTP username and FTP password were the same combination as found in some hacked database from forever ago and I got like 1200 adult content pages uploaded to the site. The site never tanked or was hurt. Took me a solid 6 months to get 95% or more out of the index. There's still like 50 left. What has hurt me was having that many blank pages indexed. That was way worse, because it totally tanks your Panda quality score. I think you're okay here.

But the real question is whether or not the domain was burned in some other fashion. Have you tried creating a Search Console account for it and seeing if any manual actions pop up? It could have been cloaking pages from Google's eyes or any number of other things.

It just won't rank. My "best product" articles are ranking page 5 or worse, which is very low for me usually and only above those sites that don't have the keyword in the title. It ranks below objectively shitty pages.

You know, the kitchen products niche is pretty damn stiff, especially the "best product" keywords. I feel like, especially once you move up to the top 2 pages, everyone has more than good enough content and it really becomes a battle of links (and tech SEO of course). Those shitty pages outranking you might be sitting on domains with a lot of sitewide authority based on links and possibly have a decent number of links direct to the pages too, even if the content is shittayyy.

Have you taken the time to dig into the backlink profiles, even generally just looking at the list of how many they have, for the pages ranking above you for those keywords? I was looking at one recently and it was like KD35 or so, semi-stiff competition. Front page was dominated by stuff like MSN, CSpan, The Spruce, and other big sites.

Would a 301 to another site bring along the eventual bad karma?

Yeah. I wouldn't 301 it, myself. But Google also can understand that a site moved domains without a 301 and could still pass the problem over (so they say, I've never personally seen this happen). But it makes sense. It stops people from building out immaculate sites and then churning and burning the domains only with spam links, re-using the same site over and over.

 

[bernard]

Search Console is clean. No issues there.

You know, the kitchen products niche is pretty damn stiff, especially the "best product" keywords. I feel like, especially once you move up to the top 2 pages, everyone has more than good enough content and it really becomes a battle of links (and tech SEO of course). Those shitty pages outranking you might be sitting on domains with a lot of sitewide authority based on links and possibly have a decent number of links direct to the pages too, even if the content is shittayyy.

Yes, I am beginning to discover that kitchen products might be a tough one. A lot of people are into food, lots of passionate people in this niche. I'm just not that into food.

I was worried about this when I started the site.

I was beginning to make headway ranking like page 3 in November, which is about month 3. That would be reasonably normal if considering a tough niche. Keep in mind this isn't the real internet, but my local pond. There are usually only like 4 pages or so of serious competitiors. Then I got hit by the update.

I think, I will go ahead and create some more supporting content and build some links and see if it regroups its losses. If it doesn't move in 3 months or so, I will just sell it. Even without much income, someone should be interested to at least regroup my investment. I might run some PPC to test how it converts.

Thanks for the help.

 

[bernard]

I'm recouping some costs on this project by selling links to get back 75% of the intitial costs.

One of the main "best product" keywords I'm targeting just jumped in at 50. That being after 8 months.

That's very far out of the norm compared to other sites. It should be around low 2nd page if normal. There's clearly some issue here, that is beyond difficulty.

As mentioned earlier, the site was parked for a long time and had a bunch of Discount autogernated pages on it. I believe it might have been penalized by some Panda like algo before I got it.

I also tried to earn from it with PPC and I couldn't make that happen either, which is because the vendors are bad and have low EPC.

Which is why, I am going to let this one sit now and not spend more money on it, until I see it jump characteristically following an update. I've seen that happen before, can take a year or more. It's a shame, because it's a pretty site and I put a lot of effort into it.

So.. selling links to regroup most of the costs (maybe 10 or so links).

Not the best if it does recover, but:

"Know when to hold em, know when to fold em".

 

[secretagentdad]

Lol

We should make a scraper value formulae

Lots of people talking about half dead projects with marginal value.