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
-
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 -
Can internal links cause Google to penalize me for key terms/phrases?
For example, having a link on many pages (so dozens of links in total) using a product name, all pointing to that product page. Could Google see that as "spammy" and penalize that product page in the SERP's? Note: My product page has been penalized for the search term "Product Name" and there are no external links pointing that page using the product name as a term. This is new with the latest Panda Updates.
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Too much backlinks [Penalized]
Hello, I purchased a backlink service and I think the most of them were spam sites and sites like that. I am lossing Organic traffic, Im sure that my site is penalized, how long will last it?Can I do something? Thank you
Link Building | | matiw0 -
Why is ooshirts.com not being penalized for exact match keywords?
Clearly this site is buying links. They have the most exact match link profile I have ever seen. It appears their strategy has been to buy links for their domain as a way to mask all the other exact match purchases they are making. I have also been sent copies of the emails where they are attempting to purchase links. Thoughts?
Link Building | | bradwayland0 -
One folder/keyword seems penalized.
Hi, One of the keywords i am optimizing for seems to be penalized. We are selling childrens clothes and we have 1 folder/url for each producer/designer. Main page is strong compared to competitors and we are ranging 1st for 2 most important keywords. Most of our other producer pages are ranking 2nd-4th. I took some time to rank and I had a some catalogues(hotvsnot, addsitelink, webzdirectory, 3 blogs) link into this specific folder some 3 months ago. It didnt seem to rise in ranks staying in range 12th-23rd spot. Which seemed sort of weird to me. 2 Days ago it dropped to around 120th spot. No other pages on site dropped. Looking at it now I do see that its almost 100% 'producername' in anchor text which i guess is the reason for the ranking problem and maybe the drop in rankings a couple of days ago. Blog links are completly natural, catalogues are not i guess. The total sum of links doesnt seem natural because the anchor text is same on all. Still its not that unnatural if you sell nike shoes to have a catalogue called nike and the anchor text to be pointing to it to be nike, but still. So my question is: do i try to change anchor text in catalogues or have them completely removed ? Do i get blogs etc to link to my site using an other word than the producer name that might seem less natural ?? Thanks for your help.
Link Building | | danlae0 -
Will Google penalize for redirects related to a company merger?
Company A is set to acquire Company B. As part of the merger agreement, Company A will be redirecting the linking domains of Company B's website (over 1,000 links) to company A's website. Will Google penalize Company A for redirecting Company B's 1,000 linking domains to Company A's website at one time? If so, would it be better for Company A to redirect Company B's 1,000 linking domains in waves?
Link Building | | 5outhpaw0 -
Google penalizing sites because of press release pages?
Does anyone know of situations i can look up where Google penalized a site because of press release pages (hosted on a non owned major site like prweb or whatever), where the prweb page obtained back links from a group of sites that Google felt was part of a "farm"?
Link Building | | joemas990 -
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
