Rankings have fallen suddenly - I need a plan of attack.
-
I started my business a few years ago. Only recently (6 month) I started to get some good traffic and sales.
At first I was ranking pretty well 3-5 for my main keywords and business began to pick up. After Penguin I was hit hard and I'm placing 10-17'ish. My Google local/places has disappeared too.
I haven't received any contact from Google about unnatural links (but I'm not sure where that would appear? Email? Web Master Tools? Horses head on my pillow?).
I've read so many different things online about what I 'could' do. I'm not sure where to start. I've checked and I know we've created lots of questionable back links. Using the Open Site Explorer lots of the backlinks don't have terrible DA but some do.
I guess I was hoping someone would give me a checklist or priority list of things to do. It's just me so I need to use my time as best I can. What should I be doing first? Should I be trying to:
- Remove my bad backlinks?
- Spend my time making quality backlinks.
- On-page issues that I can't see?
- Telling google i'm sorry via web master tools.
- Changing to new domain (eek)
I'm very time poor and hoped the seoMoz community might save me from wasting my time.
Keywords: indesign training, web design courses & photoshop courses
Thank you in advance.
Dan
-
Hey Cryus,
Thank you so much. This is exactly what I was looking for.
I'm ready for the hard work. The tricks I got my SEO company to do were bound to get me into trouble.
It's great to have some expert advice
- thank you Cryus & Trickshotric!
Dan (from NZ)
-
Hi Dan,
Sorry to hear you got hit by Penguin. Because Penguin is an algorithmic action, you often won't receive any messages in Google Webmaster Tools, unlike when they place a manual penalty on your site. But it's not uncommon to receive both a Penguin slap and an unnatural link warning.
Ok, deep breath.
1. First things first, you need to take a deep hard look at your backlink profile to see where you stand, if clean-up is worth the effort, or if you should start over.
If you engaged in questionable link building practices, you need to asses if you have any links worth saving? Do you have any editorial (non robot generated) links that you didn't pay for and/or didn't control the anchor text?
You probably know the answer, but for more complex cases a couple of resources that might help:
A. Manual Review - In the end, you're own eye is the best tool you have. You want to look for:
- links with keyword-rich, optimized anchor text
- Comment Signature and Forum Signature links (these are different from the more legitimate forum links)
- Sitewide links, such as in the sidebar or footer
- Obviously paid, or suspicious looking links on low-quality sites
Our friend Paddy Moogan wrote a great guide on how to do this step by step. You should check it out.
B. Link Detox - http://www.linkdetox.com/ For $40 dollars it will analyze your backlinks (be sure to upload them from Google Webmaster tools) and give you a full analysis of what links they think are bad.
Most of the links I'm seeing for your site are similar to this: http://www.computer-desk-furniture.net/date/2012/06/ which would be considered a low quality link.
2. You may decide to try to get the links removed, which to be honest can be a long, arduous process.
Even if you didn't get a link notice, you can file a reconsideration request to see if they will verify a penalty. Sometimes this will get you more information then you had before. In any case, it might be well worth it to do a complete link audit and cleanup, and even go through the disavow process if necessary.
in addition to removing suspicious links, I'd continue to build good, high value links as well. If you need inspiration, here's a good place to start: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
Hope this helps clear things up! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
Awesome thanks!
-
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843 third option at the bottom.
You will need to be logged into your Google webmasters account.
-
Has anyone else got time to have a quick look into my post. I'd love some more feedback before I set off with my SEO strategy.
Any and all opinions are welcomed.
Dan
-
Great advice. Thanks Trickshotric.
The reconsideration request you mentioned - Where is that done?
Thanks also for the content advice. End results is something I'll work towards & shouldn't be to hard to create.
-
Before removing links it is worth posing a reconsideration request to google. This will confirm if your site has been manually punished.
This removes a lot of the doubt out of the process so definitely do this first.
If you have lots more links like this http://kierszencweig.com/with-wordpress-website-design-to-make-websites/ (this is super dodgy!) then you may well have a unnatural link penalty!!
I think your site is pretty good but would also be nice to show-off some of the end results e.g show some great images that your students will be able to achieve. This is more of a salesy point rather that search engine ranking one, however, if you have some great images on your site you could start getting some real good natural links!.
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
-
Website rank 5th position than bounce
Hello A website client won't rank dor branded keyword (site name) for several months, i optimize onpage seo, did some backlinks, the DA jump to 8 (from 1). Yesterday the website rank for branded keyword 5, than 4, tomorrow can't found it.
Technical SEO | | Zidani0 -
Drop in Rankings
Hello Webmasters, My site has incurred a sudden dip in rankings across sections. We conducted an analysis and have observed the following two major issues: Unnatural Links Penalty: Our site was issued an Unnatural Links Penalty on May 23. Basically, we have both 'http' and 'https' versions of our website registered on Webmaster tools. Initially, the warning showed up on the 'http' version and thus we started a cleanup by extracting the linking domains and have also filed a reconsideration request once all the spammy domains were removed and rightly disavowed. Recently, we got another manual action warning on the 'https' version regarding the unnatural links. So we have started with the cleanup activity right away. While analyzing this issue, we came across another major problem regarding the two versions which is our next concern and is mentioned below. https Canonical Issue: For more insights, we went through our site’s content and found that our website is following the below pattern Our 'http' version of the webpages get 301 redirected to the 'https' version. This 'https' version again has a canonical pointing to the 'http' version thus creating a loop. To conclude, I request your valuable learnings and thoughts on the following: Which of these issues are likely to have affected our website’s ranking Which version is likely to be preferred by Google (https or http) in our case
Technical SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
Mobile site not ranking
Hello, I have a m.site.com version of my original site. It is about 1/10 the size, and no matter what I do-I can't get the site to rank. I've added more pages and specified canonical etc etc. Should I add as many pages as my larger site has? Are there specific places I should be submitting this version beyond the typical? I am at a loss, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! L
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Good organic ranking/Poor local ranking
Hi, I am a local retailer with a physical store in a major US City. My website is very well ranked on major keywords related to my business from an organic result perspective (between 1st and 3rd spot). However, in terms of local results (google place), my website isn't even ranked (except for one specific long tail keyword). Anybody know why? Thank you so much for your help. This is driving me crazy:-)
Technical SEO | | larose370 -
Keywords Rankings-Change-Bug?
Bug? or just because the change happened beyound the Top 50 within Bing & Yahoo SERPs? The Keyword Ranking for in the example "dry desulfurization" shows a change of >40 up, but the history (Google) does not show these changes. May be, it is that the change was within Yahoo and Bing Rankings, and because the keyword is not showing up within the Top 50, I just can't see? ... but Rogerbot is considering. Thanks for any response 🙂 rankings-change-bug.jpg
Technical SEO | | inlinear0 -
Not ranking on Google
Hi all, I am optimising a site which is a hotel directory for a small island in the Mediterranean - Malta. The site is www.maltahotelsonline.com. I did a keyword research and optimised the page. However I am now at link building stage. Since we do not have many links the site is still not ranking very well for the desired keywords (ranking fine on Bing and Yahoo yet not on Google). As a result there isn't much traffic on the site. 1. Is there any particular issue that you can spot on this site that is not allowing it to rank well on Google? 2. Any suggestions on link-building please?
Technical SEO | | ICON_Malta0 -
Increase Search Ranking for CEO
Hi guys My company CEO is concerned that when her name is googled pictures of a glamour model appear in the image results area. The glamour model shares a second name with our CEO and this is why the model's images are appearing. I have been asked to rectify this situation. My CEO has a linked in page and twitter account which are underused but no personal page on our company website. I was thinking of buying the url for the CEO's name and optimizing a small site for her name with bio etc and links to twitter, lined in etc. Would this be the best strategy? Thanks Gavin
Technical SEO | | gavinr0 -
Syndicated Posts Not Ranking, Possible Solutions?
All, We used to allow users of our legal information site to syndicate content that was published in identical form on their blogs and, in some cases, other sites as well. No surprise that post-Panda, we're not ranking for those syndicated posts, they offer very little value. We still boast a very nice library of original content that drives traffic, however, I'm concerned that those lingering syndicated posts are bringing down our overall domain authority/credibility. Right now, syndicated posts account for roughly 25%-30% of overall site content. I'd like your opinions as to whether I should: 1. Delete the syndicated posts and 301 to an original page; 2. Do nothing 3. Do something I've yet to think of Any insight is welcomed! John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0