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I'd like to follow this thread because I've heard similar things about Nitropack being a bit fake.

For me, I installed it on three sites. Three different themes.

On my Elementor/Astra theme, it completely F'd my rankings. Each time I deactivated it, I went back up in the rankings.

I'm not convinced nor sure how helpful it is and would love to hear what others are saying

Agreed... the SEO landscape has changed greatly since 2012.  I'll definitely have to re-invest in new, fresh content and start building backlinks.

But what I'm looking for specifically is a playbook for bouncing back from an algo penalty.  I need a strategy.  I was hoping others have been able to bounce back and have shared their experience.

ps - it's an algo penalty, not manual, so no messages or warnings in GSC unfortunately.

...if yes, how?  Can you share resources / blogs / etc...  I want to reverse my site's rankings.

Here's the gist of it:

• I recently purchased a website that has 600+ pieces of aged content on it.
• Domain was ranking great about 10 years ago  (1M uniques a year)
• It apparently got hit by a G algo update in 2012/2013 (Penguin and Panda?), because the rankings have tanked (10 hits a day)
• In the past two years, the previosu owner published about 100+ off-topic blog posts and it appears been using the site as a PBN. The UX sucks and there's a ton of 404s. (NOTE: I am in the process of removing that content and have cleaned up the 404s).

Domain stats: 20+ years old (1998) and DA 32, linking domains 850+, inbound links of 16k+

What I've done:

• disavow (550 domains),
• fix all the 404s

What I'm doing / about to do:

• remove spammy content
• write new/fresh on-topic content
• update the site UX
• start a backlink building campaign

My questions:

• is it common to bounce back from a G algo update? is it hard / am I over my head / am I a sucker trying to get the site back alive?
• are there articles about bouncing back that you can share so I can learn more about this process? Or agencies / consultants, etc that you recommend?
• what other recommendations / suggestions do you have that would help reverse this 8-year-old penalty?

Hi,

I have some confusion about how our blog subdomain is handled in our sitemap.  We have our main website, example.com, and our blog, blog.example.com.

1. Should we list the blog subdomain URL in our main sitemap?  In other words, is listing a subdomain allowed in the root sitemap?

2. What does the final structure look like in terms of the sitemap and robots file?  Specifically:

**example.com/sitemap.xml **

would I include a link to our blog subdomain (blog.example.com)?

example.com/robots.xml

would I include a link to BOTH our main sitemap and blog sitemap?

blog.example.com/sitemap.xml

would I include a link to our main website URL (even though it's not a subdomain)?

blog.example.com/robots.xml

does a subdomain need its own robots file?

I'm a technical SEO and understand the mechanics of much of on-page SEO.... but for some reason I never found an answer to this specific question and I am wondering how the pros do it.  I appreciate your help with this.

Paul,

excellent response.  thank you so much.

i use Yoast SEO plugin.  Why do you say the yoast image 'redirect' is not the same thing as I am doing?  It seems like the exact same?

Ben

Hi

I learned from a very senior SEO that I must link my images if I want Google to read my alt tag for my images.

I don't believe this though... is it true?

If the answer is not true (which I suppose it is), then maybe you can help me answer this:

1. was he confused or why would he tell me this?

2. i didn't know what i should do so now, whenever i embed an image on my blog posts, i just link them to the blog post in which the image shows... in essence, by clicking the image, the page gets refreshed.

does this sound like a good strategy for images?

thanks in advance!!!

Hi,

+1 this.

Here is the problem in a nutshell as it has not yet been answered:

For those of you with only one domain, it is easy to setup a goal and conversion funnel in GA for a Page URL goal.  You simply type in your goal URL, starting with: /  ...  For example: /thankyou.html

But the problem then occurs when you have mydomain.com AND sub.mydomain.com.

You see, the goals don't work anymore because GA instructs you NOT to put the full URL.

Do you see the problem this creates?  In other words, how do you track goals while also having domain and subdomain tracking?

I am having this problem.  I have already read ALL the documentation on subdomain tracking - my reports are working just fine.

I have searched heavily in Google for this answer and have found nothing.  Nevertheless, my goals still show 0 and I am 100% positive that I have had conversions.

Any advice?

Hi,

+1 this.

Here is the problem in a nutshell as it has not yet been answered:

For those of you with only one domain, it is easy to setup a goal and conversion funnel in GA for a Page URL goal.  You simply type in your goal URL, starting with: /  ...  For example: /thankyou.html

But the problem then occurs when you have mydomain.com AND sub.mydomain.com.

You see, the goals don't work anymore because GA instructs you NOT to put the full URL.

Do you see the problem this creates?  In other words, how do you track goals while also having domain and subdomain tracking?

I am having this problem.  I have already read ALL the documentation on subdomain tracking - my reports are working just fine.

I have searched heavily in Google for this answer and have found nothing.  Nevertheless, my goals still show 0 and I am 100% positive that I have had conversions.

Any advice?