Is my site being penalized?
-
I've gone through all the points on https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 but the site only ranks for its brand name after months. The website is not ranking in the top 100 for any main keywords (2,3,4 word phrases), only for a handful of very long phrases (4+).
All of the content is unique, all pages are indexed, the website is fast and doesn't contain any crawl errors and there are a couple of links pointing to it.
There is a sitewide follow link in the footer pointing to another domain, its parent company and vice-versa. This is not done for any SEO reasons but the companies are related and also the products are supplementary of each other. Could this be an issue? Or is my site being penalized by something else?
-
Micha,
After looking at your site and running a few quick tests, I still don't think your site has been penalized. You have a few technical and on-page issues to deal with, but I don't think fixing these alone will catapult you to the top of the SERPs.
I checked the SERPs for "climb kilimanjaro," and I think your competition is your biggest hurdle. In addition to being around a lot longer, your competitor's websites have far more targeted, editorial backlinks, and consequently much higher authority, than your site.
Unfortunately, there's no quick and easy fix for this problem. You'll have to work toward earning good backlinks. Check out the resources below.
-
Hi All,
Thank you for your answers. I'm glad to hear that most of you think that the single sitewide link wouldn't caused a penalty from Google. If this wouldn't be allowed by Google, how else could one promote their other related sites?
@Laura: To give a bit more information, the domain was registered in November 2014 and the website including content has been live since the beginning of 2015. I realize that this is not long ago but I've seen a lot more progress for other domains by this stage. There has some link building happened over the last months; initially a handful of strong directories, partners and a couple of articles (not indexed by OSE yet). Furthermore, we are asking past customers to leave reviews on various website and mention us if they have a blog or written a trip report somewhere. The website is of a tour operator that organizes trekking tours up Kilimanjaro. For more information you can visit the web address www.kilimanjaro-experience.com. I would be very intrigued to hear your advice on this matter.
@Patrick: Thanks for the resources! I'll go through them. WMT hasn't indicated that there are any manual actions and OSE indicates a spam score of only 2.
@Andy: Nofollow might be a good idea if this is the issue though. I've done some digging into the competition's links and besides 2 very strong links it's all a bit average and some even quite spammy with links in comments etc. I definitely don't want to go that route. Got any good contacts at renowned newspapers?
-
Hi Micha,
I doubt very much that a single link like this is causing you issues, but there would be no harm in no-following it, just to be on the safe side.
and there are a couple of links pointing to it.
You might find that this is playing a major part. It is possible for a site to rank without links, but the content would have to be pretty amazing and really tick all the boxes for Google.
Do you feel the content on you site would be classified as a linkable asset? Would what is there be reason enough for others to want to link to you? Have you had a look at those who are winning in the SERPs to see where they get their links from, and why? A little competition analysis might open up a sea of opportunities, or at least let you see what needs doing.
-Andy
-
Hi there
If everything you say is true - highly doubtful. But run through the technical checklist one more time in case there is a noindex tag or an issue with your robots.txt.
You have to be doing some pretty shady content and link building tactics in order to trip Google penalty signals. I would go through any links you have to see if there are spammy efforts there (resource below)
However, to be sure, login to your Webmaster Tools account and check your manual action notifications.
If nothing there, I would look at the following materials:
How To Do a Content Audit - Step-by-Step (Moz)
How to Conduct a Link Audit (SEW)
Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation (Moz)
How to Perform the Ultimate Local SEO Audit (Moz)
The Illustrated SEO Competitive Analysis Workflow (Moz - I put this here for ideas, not copycat tactics)
Conducting Market Research Before Investing in Tactical Execution (Moz)I would also look and see if there are any opportunities to amplify your content or if there are any advertising opportunities that can help get your name out there and help you relationship build with potential partners.
Lastly, while tedious, I highly recommend persona development - reason being, going through the exercise is necessary and you learn more than ever about who your audience is; there may be content or ideas that you are missing out on.
Like I said, if you are up to par with the checklist and you have value on your website, go through the above resources as they can help you build your brand and get more traction going. It's an uphill battle, but one worth fighting when all is said and done.
Hope this all helps! Good luck!
-
I doubt that a single sitewide reciprocal footer link is causing your site to be penalized. There are dozens of possible reasons why your site is not ranking, and it's impossible to say what's going on without knowing the website in question. If you don't want to post it here, send me the URL in a private message and I'll take a look.
- How long has your site been online?
- Has anyone conducted a link building campaign for you at any time? If so, what did they do?
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
-
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Site Not Ranking- No Reason Why
I have a client with a HUGE website who should be ranking for it's competitive keywords. No penalties, or bad links. Old domain. Not ranking for anything. Client has a huge AdWords spend and my theory is that it's not ranking organically because of the AdWords spend. I can't think of anything other reason. Anyone? Thanks. The keywords I'm trying to rank this client for aren't even competitive.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 01023450 -
URL mapping for site migration
Hi all! I'm currently working on a migration for a large e-commerce site. The old one has around 2.5k urls, the new one 7.5k. I now need to sort out the redirects from one to the other. This is proving pretty tricky, as the URL structure has changed site wide. There doesn't seem to be any consistent rules either so using regex doesn't really work. By and large, the copy appears to be the same though. Does anybody know of a tool I can crawl the sites with that will export the crawled url and related copy into a spreadsheet? That way I can crawl both sites and compare the copy to match them up. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Site duplication issue....
Hi All, I have a client who has duplicated an entire section of their site onto another domain about 1 year ago. The new domain was ranking well but was hit heavily back in March by Panda. I have to say the set up isn't great and the solution I'm proposing isn't ideal, however, as an agency we have only been tasked with "performing SEO" on the new domain. Here is an illustration of the problem: http://i.imgur.com/Mfh8SLN.jpg My solution to the issue is to 301 redirect the duplicated area of the original site out (around 150 pages) to the new domain name, but I'm worried that this could be could cause a problem as I know you have to be careful with redirecting internal pages to external when it comes to SEO. The other issue I have is that the client would like to retain the menu structure on the main site, but I do not want to be putting an external link in the main navigation so my proposed solution is as follows: Implement 301 redirects for URLs from original domain to new domain Remove link out to this section from the main navigation of original site and add a boiler plate link in another area of the template for "Visit xxx for our xxx products" kind of link to the other site. Illustration of this can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/CY0ZfHS.jpg I'm sure the best solution would be to redirect in URLs from the new domain into the original site and keep all sections within the one domain and optimise the one site. My hands are somewhat tied on this one but I just wanted clarification or advice on the solution I've proposed, and that it wont dramatically affect the standing of the current sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiroAsh0 -
Site Transfer and Downtime
If I want to transfer my website from yahoo to another web host without having any down time how would I do that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
SEO for bigcommerce site
I have a site on bigcommerce platform .from Where do i need start SEO for these types of ecommerce sites.Looking for Experts ideas . Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Similar sites on same IP address
Hello, A client has a small number (3) of large price comparison sites which have been launched on separate subdomains - BUT all on the same hosting IP address. The roll out of the sites was not ideal from an SEO perspective - as basically cloned versions of the sites were initially launched and indexed - and are only now being customised i.e. unique content added to each of the category and sub category pages. The first site initially got some traffic - and so did the 2nd in the early days - but then they both bombed (especially number 2). So we think there has probably been some kind of slap / sandboxing. We are starting to see some very early signs of recovery now some months after. My questions is - would it be a wise move to migrate each of the sites to a separate IP address as we start to evolve and optimise each site. Or are they ok to be left on the same hosting / IP address? The sites in question are : shop.deliaonline.com shop.ivillage.co.uk rewards.bestforfilm.com Thanks in advance for your help. Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO0 -
New sites what is the first things to do?
Hi Guys, If you have a baby of a domain which is only a few months old what should be the priorty for getting establish once all the on site stuff has been done? I know the directories are not as important as they use to be but is there a top list that should be worked through steadly to get the new site setup on? Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ao.com0