Penalized?
-
In late November, our site experienced a dramatic loss in serps across several pages. Since this time, we have been trying all sorts of recommendations that included adding the +1 button, adding Facebook like button, differentiation link types and so on. At the time that all of this happened we also noticed a few problems in GWT concerning inaccessible pages, pages not found and other problems. We have come really close to fixing all of the technical problems, our pages load quickly and have even added the +1 buttons. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any improvement. Now people are saying that when our site was built, about 5-years ago, the url's had keywords stuffed into them. Admittedly, they are long but from what I have read making a series of redirects may not be an optimal solution and will take a long time to see any potential benefits.
All of the listed url's in the image below have been on the first page in google for the listed search phrase. While they are still indexed, they are very difficult to find.
I would like to solicit the help from people with real world experience in diagnosing a problem like this one? Is this an offsite problem, onsite problem, hosting issue or something else?
Thank you
-
It wasn't really all or nothing. Most of these were near the top of the second page or somewhere near the middle of the second page. They all sort of entered the first page one after the other. I'm not really sure if anything was done off page to cause this sort of penalty. We do try to build links but I don't know if some of these were looked at as bad links or if some lost a lot of value. I know that at the time the drop took place we did have some technical problems with our site that took a while to fix. I can't say for sure if those problems cause the penalty either. Aside from doing a lot of SEO in-house we also have a low cost provider and they assured us that all of their activities were legit.
I know we have some bad links that were mostly due to scrapers who stole some of our content, re-wrote it and left a portion of our URL on a page. I think this sort of thing happens to all sites. The vast majority of our links should be good though. WMT tools shows that we have a little over 220,000 links to our pages.
-
For starters i would suggest redirecting those very very very keyword spamming url's to more user friendly urls:
french-translation.html or something.
From you analytics picture-> all out of nothing your visitors dubble and out of nothing they drop? Something you did prehaps?
-
@serge: does a high keyword density penalise your rankings? I used to make sure i was at 2-5%....
-
That would be great!
Thank you
-
Jenadams,
I see some issues from the beginning but I don't see that they would drop traffic like that. I can take a closer look next weekends when I have some time. If it helps my skype is in my profile.
Regards,
Serge
-
Here is a link that still maintains good positioning.
-
Here is a link that still maintains good positioning.
-
By the way, THANK YOU for helping. What else do you think it is? I realize Panda had a freshness update, but the other sites that we compete with never change their content. We had some technical problems but for the most part, they have been fixed.
-
We have a lot of other pages that still maintain top 5 listings. Here is one example:
-
I don't think that the problem is only in url.
What do you mean only several pages were affected?
graphs.php?domain=themarketinganalysts.com&db=us&type=1&w=300&h=200&lc=e43011&dc=e43011&l=en
-
But is this is true then why aren't all of our pages affected? Furthermore, the seomoz tools for suggest that the French page earns an "A". Furthermore, from what I have read, it doesn't make much sense to change up a URL because the improvements are very substantial. Any thoughts?
-
Don't worry about facebook or g +1's, you have a major problem with website. It looks like your traffic droppped big time right after one of panda's updates.
You have a lot of duplicate content pages, links are very long, some pages have very high keyword density and so on.
I would suggest to order a full technical and seo audit from professionals.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
HELP! Google is penalizing me and I can't figure out why.
I've come to the conclusion Google is definitely penalizing me for the keword "sensaphone" and I cannot figure out why. I've checked back links etc. and I don't see anything that would raise a flag. We rate very well in Bing etc. for the same keyword, but in Google SERP's will be on the 3rd or later page. Our domain is - www.absoluteautomation.com - any ideas?
Link Building | | absoauto1 -
Does google will see this has a 301 permanent redirect and will penalized my website?
Hi, I got a website that have a lot of information on job posting. The domain name will be new but i just want to redirect all of the old single job pages (around 300 pages). To the new domain pages but keep the old domain because it's already been indexed by google. The design will change but the content will kinda be the same. Is this a good approach? Does google will see this has a 301 permanent redirect and will penalized my website? Thanks alot
Link Building | | bigrat950 -
Is hotvsnot penalized?
Been doing some searches for this directory, we have used them for quite a few links and now it seems as though they do not show up in serps for branded terms and the actual "www.hotvsnot.com" search phrase. Scary! Have a look let me know if you are having the same issue ladies and gents.
Link Building | | waqid2 -
Can I 301 re-direct a page to regain the authority from a penguin penalized page
I built way too many anchor text links to an internal page and was penalized for the associated keyword. However, I do rank on that page for less significant keywords that I didn't build anchor text links for, though not super high. Subsequently, I've found that the sites that rank highly for the keyword that I was looking to rank for are high domain authority with almost no links built to those pages. Can I 301 re-direct that URL to my homepage, where I'm not trying to rank for that term, to make use of that authority of the links I've built to that page and start over on the page that I was hit by penguin on? This appears to make sense to me as my pages that have been hit are specifically for the terms that I have gone overboard on anchor text links. Terms that I haven't built too many anchor text links to still rank on those pages.
Link Building | | dusty79690 -
What tools/techniques you use to check if a domain has been penalized?
If we think to buy expired or otherwise dropped domains, what tools or techniques you would recommend to check if there has bad SEO history? We could of course, check with Google itself if the site is indexed and ranks, but I am asking if there is a particular tool out there that would provide more information if a website had been shady. Thanks so much, guys! Lily
Link Building | | wspwsp0 -
Will Google penalize for backlinks on non-indexed pages?
Have a client who has a bunch of links from spammy sites that aren't even indexed by Google. Will Google penalize (i.e. Penguin) for backlinks from spammy sites that aren't indexed? I'm guessing "Yes, Google still crawls non-indexed sites and may penalize the sites linked to from the banned site." Anyone have any data or experience with this? Anyone have a non-indexed or banned site? Does Google still crawl it?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
Penalized by SEO Link Wheelers Backlinks
Just over a year ago, I've bought 4 link building packages from SEO Link Wheelers. From what I see now, most of their website network has been penalized / banned and now it's hurting my websites. I've tried to contact them but they won't reply. I'd be willing to pay to have them remove the links but they simply won't answer. And I haven't been rude or impolite at all in my communications with them. I've tried calling them to but to no avail. I know where most of the bad links are, thanks to linkresearchtools.com Now I gotta get rid of that crap. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
High Mozplex strength metrics but Low TBR = Penalized site?
Suppose an old established site's root has High PA, High DA & High MR scores but the TBPR is significantly low. Can it be taken as a pointer that Google has algorithmically capped that site's ability to pass link equity when the home page metrics look suspect? Example case: pegasusdirectory*com PA = 88, DA = 86, MR = 6.61, but TBPR = 3 ( aged site ) (p.s: I'm aware that on inner pages of sites, it's quite normal to see high PA, Page level MR but no TBPR; my question is specically about guaging quality of the link for the DOMAIN in question Should I spend time on getting links from such domains ? ) TIA
Link Building | | seo-wanna-bs0
