Recent Algorithm Update Impact on Rankings

[JuiceBoxOM]

I've read that the most recent algorithm update by Google is targeting dodgy links. I have a client's website who within the last few days has been smashed out of of top positions for the most competitive keywords (and many others). I'm worried that the site has been penalised, however I can't understand why it would be.

The site only has 11 domains linking to it (65 links total) and a lot of these links are coming from the same websites that link to all of our other web clients and none of them have experienced this sudden and significant drop in rankings.

Does anyone know if Google is targeting a specific type of site, or how I can determine if my client's website has been penalised? I've not made any significant changes recently to the site's content or meta data, however rankings have remained steady for months now. It just seemed to happen overnight that they dropped off everything (eg. middle of page 2 to page 8 of search results for some of the better keywords)

Thank you in advance for any assistance!

[dogfish]

Hey Juice, I had the same thing happen on a very well optimized site with great backlinks.

I found that I had 2046 links from m(dot)biz linking to me that did not show in any tools but did show in GWT inbound links. These were all do-follow with the title tag as the anchor text. and about a third of them popped up right before the algo change.

I have disavowed them, and waiting to see if I get the change in rankings back like before. I wanted to see if you have found a different issue or if you might have also been link spammed by a similar site.

Dogfish

[JuiceBoxOM]

Thanks, Moosa. I have investigated in Webmaster tools and I don't seem to have any notice from Google. I haven't done any black-hat SEO on this site however these ranking decreases are more than the average fluctuation...

[MoosaHemani]

Probably you are talking about Penguin update. Yes Google do target doggy links! The best way to check if you website has been penalize by search engine or not is by getting in to the Google Webmaster tool and see if you received any manual penalty email If yes, you know where you are standing if not then match the date of the update with the date when your traffic and rankings dropped significantly, if they match (which I think it does) then you probably are attacked by Google.

As far as the competitors are concerns who are not dropped for those keywords, there could be two reasons for it. They might have more quality links in this link profile or maybe they have seen a drop on other keywords they might be targeting.

What you should be doing?

If you are attached by Google what you should be doing is auditing your links, removing the bad links, update a disavow file and finally start building some highest quality links so that Google can see you are working hard and lift the penalty accordingly.

Hope this helps!