There's NO reason these sites should be beating mine...Or is there?
-
Hi
Over the past 10 months, my internal page rankings (previously excellent) have plummeted. I'm now trying to recover them.
I haven't received an unnatural links warning in Google Webmaster Tools. Also, I used to have hundreds of internal links to each of these 21 pages using the same exact-match anchor text eg, Tuscany real estate, Umbria real estate, etc. I changed this about 6 months ago.
So why am I still ranking poorly for these (only moderately competitive keywords) behind sites with poorer metrics?
1) Keyword: lake como real estate
My page here – **http://tinyurl.com/d34k8m ** -- used to rank No1 or No2 neck-and-neck with this page www.immobiliarevacanzelago.com/. He's still No1 but I’m down to about No13. Yet when I look in Open Site Explorer virtually all my metrics beat his.
-
No need to apologise. I'm here for honest answers, not to be soft-soaped.
I agree with a lot (but not all) of that. A lot of the article directory/blog footer links were obtained 3/4+ years ago by a previous SEO firm. Like everyone else, we haven't done article marketing in 2/3 years. Funnily enough, ALL our articles on article directories were high-quality and informative (Yes I know, we should have found another home for them. But time was when even Bing advocated using article directories).
Re; the 3 links you refer to, it appears the company that built our (real estate) site lists all the real estate sites they have built and puts them on a template. Trust me, I didn't ask for it, didn't pay a cent for it.
Re: PR links -- I'm fully aware they don't pass link pop. They were a genuine attempt to drive clickthrough traffic (and we have received traffic from them). Why are they bad, per se?
We actually do have editorial citations/links from related sites, including the New York Times real estate section.
I'm not defending the parts of our link profile that aren't great, just trying to improve things the right way. FWIW, our link efforts are now focused on content creation and social media.
-
I had a look at your link profile - to be frank, I can't see any reason why you should be ranking for these terms.
Apologies for being blunt, but from only the first 5 pages in your OSE link profile, I saw these links:
Blog commenting on .edu and .edu.sg domains about oil and energy
Blog comments on other unrelated sites
Free PR releases with syndicated content
Articles in article directories
Blogroll links that look artificialFurthermore, look at these 3 links (out of dozens like them):
http://www.treasureboxhomes.org/search/
http://www.simoncolligan.co.uk/search/
http://www.pearsons.com/search/Not only is that duplicate content, that just smacks of a link network.
I've actually yet to find a link to your site that looks like contextual link or citation from a relevant, quality website or blog.
The whole link profile to me looks hugely artificial and is out to game the algorithm and metrics such as the Moz tools. It's no surprise to me if Google has come along, seen these low-quality links and blanket devalued them. Equally, I wouldn't be that surprised if Google has, or intended to, penalise your site.
I apologise again if I'm coming across as blunt, but this is the harsh reality of it. You need a serious rethink of your link profile and your inbound marketing strategy. You need to earn high quality links by using your resources, be that content marketing, infographics or something else.
Right now, your links are offering nothing of value for a user, and Google is treating it equally as so.
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
-
Can 'follow' rather than 'nofollow' links be damaging partner's SEO
Hey guys and happy Monday! We run a content rich website, 12+ years old, focused on travel in a specific region, and advertisers pay for banners/content etc alongside editorial. We have never used 'nofollow' website links as they're no explicitly paid for by clients, but a partner has asked us to make all links to them 'nofollow' as they have stated the way we currently link is damaging their SEO. Could this be true in any way? I'm only assuming it would adversely affect them if our website was peanalized by Google for 'selling links', which we're not. Perhaps they're just keen to follow best practice for fear of being seen to be buying links. FYI we now plan to change to more full use of 'nofollow', but I'm trying to work out what the client is refering to without seeming ill-informed on the subject! Thank you for any advice 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Jim0 -
Community Discussion - What's the ROI of "pruning" content from your ecommerce site?
Happy Friday, everyone! 🙂 This week's Community Discussion comes from Monday's blog post by Everett Sizemore. Everett suggests that pruning underperforming product pages and other content from your ecommerce site can provide the greatest ROI a larger site can get in 2016. Do you agree or disagree? While the "pruning" tactic here is suggested for ecommerce and for larger sites, do you think you could implement a similar protocol on your own site with positive results? What would you change? What would you test?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattRoney2 -
Is there a downside of an image coming from the site's dotted quad and can it be seen as a duplicate?
Ok the question doesn't fully explain the issue. I just want some opinions on this. Here is the backstory. I have a client with a domain that has been around for a while and was doing well but with no backlinks. (Fairly low competition). For some reason they created mirrors of their site on different urls. Then their web designer built them a test site that was a copy of their site on the web designer's url and didn't bother to noindex it. Client's site dived, the web designer's site started ranking for their keywords. So we helped clean that up, and they hired a brand new web designer and redesigned the site. For some reason the dotted quad version of the site started showing up as a referer in GA. So one image on the site comes from that and not the site's url. So I ran a copyscape and site search and discovered the dotted quad version like 69.64.153.116 (not the actual address) was also being indexed by the search engine. To us this seems like a cut and dry duplicate content issue, but I'm having trouble finding much written on the subject. I raised the issue with the dev, and he reluctantly 301 the site to the official url. The second part of this is the web designer still has that one image on the site coming from the numerical version of the site and not the written url. Any thoughts if that has any negative SEO impact? My thought it isn't ideal, but it just looks like an external referral for pulling that one image. I'd love any thoughts or experience on a situation like this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BCutrer0 -
Why my site it's not being indexed?
Hello.... I got to tell that I feel like a newbie (I am, but know I feel like it)... We were working with a client until january this year, they kept going on their own until september that they contacted us again... Someone on the team that handled things while we were gone, updated it´s robots.txt file to Disallow everything... for maybe 3 weeks before we were back in.... Additionally they were working on a different subdomain, the new version of the site and of course the didn't block the robots on that one. So now the whole site it's been duplicated, even it´s content, the exact same pages exist on the suddomain that was public the same time the other one was blocked. We came in changes the robots.txt file on both server, resend all the sitemaps, sent our URL on google+... everything the book says... but the site it´s not getting indexed. It's been 5 weeks now and no response what so ever. We were highly positioned on several important keywords and now it's gone. I now you guys can help, any advice will be highly appreciated. thanks Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0 -
Best way to view Global Navigation bar from GoogleBot's perspective
Hi, Links in the global navigation bar of our website do not show up when we look at Google cache --> text only version of the page. These links use "style="<a class="attribute-value">display:none;</a>" when we looked at HTML source. But if I use "user agent switcher" add-on in Firefox and set it to Googlebot, the links in global nav are displayed. I am wondering what is the best way to find out if Google can/can not see the links. Thanks for the help! Supriya.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SShiyekar0 -
How long does it take before URL's are removed from Google?
Hello, I recently changed our websites url structures removing the .html at the end. I had about 55 301's setup from the old url to the new. Within a day all the new URL's were listed in Google, but the old .html ones still have not been removed a week later. Is there something I am missing? Or will it just take time for them to get de-indexed? As well, so far the Page Authority hasn't transfered from the old pages to the new, is this typical? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanConroy0 -
Can some brilliant mozzer out there teach a moron/newbie like me how to 301 redirect several URL's I have?
Okay - I am a supermodel. I look pretty. My legs are amazing. My cheekbones are high. But when it comes to 301 redirects I am the ugliest supermodel on the block. Crap, here is the truth: I am not even a supermodel. I am just a middle-aged, goofy looking dude who is a newbie to fixing websites. I have inherited several sites from a friend and I have been helping by creating solid contextual links internally and externally for a while. But, when Roger the wondrous SEOMoz robot talks to me, he says, "oops, it looks like your foolish freak self has a site that has both a www. and a non-www, which can create competition for yourself." What do I do when he says that? I just whisper a "thank-you" but gently press the skip this step button and go on with my life because I do not know how to make my non-www.'s redirect into the www. sites... Now, I have sort of asked this question on the site before, but I was answered by someone who does not understand my level of ignorance. any use of the word canonical or just put this lfwjkshj.htp/php inside the left ear of your mom, does not tell me anything so, is there any willing and kind soul who can walk me through redirecting several of my sites to their proper home - kind of like Carl Chubbs Weathers did for Happy Gilmore in that Academy Award winning classic? Thanks for the help in advance best, dumbhead
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | creativeguy0 -
Adding index.php at the end of the url effect it's rankings
I have just had my site updated and we have put index.php at the end of all the urls. Not long after the sites rankings dropped. Checking the backlinks, they all go to (example) http://www.website.com and not http://www.website.com/index.php. So could this change have effected rankings even though it redirects to the new url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | authoritysitebuilder0