Used SEOMOZ top 100 Directories, my site ranking lowered, what can we do to fix this?
-
We have made a big mistake.... So what can we do to fix this?
A trainee member of staff has used the seomoz 100 top directories and added to sites from PR10 to PR6 approx about 25 sites, using keywords were possible instead of using the website URL "which i now was stupid!.
Our website ranking have been lowered big time for all keywords used!, eg from 1st to 10th and even disappeared from the top 100
We are contacting all directories asking for the Title link to be changed to the URL instead of a keyword.. Will this help?
I understand that Google give sites a penalty for this!!, but what can i do to put this right and how long would this penalty last for?
Any advice would be highly appreciated...
Thanks
Dean
-
Do you think it could be something to do with the panda update?
My clients are based in the US and Canada so I am not up-to-date on the Panda rollout status in Europe. Hopefully others can offer feedback on that topic.
-
Ryan
We are going to change all the directory links to the url names..
Thank you for your SEO improvement suggestions...
1.footer links = remove
2. cannibalizing your keyword
3. images from a secure server (i will look into this)?
4. verified by visa" and "godaddy secured i will add link to godaddy SSL certificate..
I will make these changes and holpfully see if this improves things..
Do you think it could be something to do with the panda update?
If you think of any thing else that could be knocking us down please let me know...
Thanks Again
Dean
-
Thanks for the additional details Dean.
I need to be absolutely clear regarding "paid" directories. There is a line separating "good" and "bad" directories. Paid directories such as Yahoo, BOTW, Business.com and a few others are perfectly legitimate for Google. These are high quality directories who charge customers for reviewing their site. They have quality standards, and they reject some sites as not meeting those standards. They also do not offer refunds.
Any directory which charges to be listed, guarantees a listing, or offers a refund if you are not listed falls under the category of "paid directories" which would incur a penalty from Google.
With the above understood, is there any possibility your employee included any paid directories? I would suggest reviewing the receipts for any payments made to any directory companies. I suspect one or more directories may have been included which are not on the SEOmoz list. Alternatively, if I recall correctly that list is a few years old and some changes may have occurred with the business practices involved for any given directory service.
I took a brief look at your site and notice many signs of good SEO work, but I also notice many opportunities for improvement. A few quick tips:
-
many of your footer links are spammy. "Moving boxes", "Removal boxes", "storage boxes", "packing boxes", "cardboard boxes", "boxes for moving", "packing boxes for moving" are all anchor texts in your footer, and all of the links point to your home page. I would suggest removing all of them.
-
you are cannibalizing your keywords which has a negative impact on SEO. For example, you have a page on your site /storage-boxes. That page is clearly optimized for the term "storage boxes" yet your footer link points that term to your home page.
-
you are serving your images from a secure server. I believe that causes the images not to be cached which ultimately leads to slower page loads
-
your images for "verified by visa" and "godaddy secured" should be linked images. Users should be able to click the images and verify your site is indeed trusted in those areas. Providing images which are not linked properly is a sign of fraud and should be avoided. If your site has earned those credentials, allow your visitors to easily verify your status by using a properly linked image. If your site has not earned those credentials, remove the images.
-
-
Jacob
Thanks for repsonding
This happened at the begging of August 5th to 10th.. I have experienced this "Google dance" before but only dropping for a couple of days to a week at most and then an increased in ranking, but iv not experienced this for over a month?
I don't think this is the case... ?
Dean
-
Ryan
Thank you for responding..
We are running 4 Sites and 3 have had the same issue apart from one, it seems that only the home pages have been hit on all 3 sites.. internal pages are fine, This happened at the begging of August and the keywords was varied between 3-4 keywords..
We have done nothing different apart from accruing these directories, I have read in previous questions they had penalties for buying these directory links?
At first i though it maybe a panda update? Then i read about penelties for paid directories?
Any advice would be highly apprenticed, as i have come to a standing block?
-
You could be experiencing what is known as the "Google dance". I've noticed many sites will drop several ranks or even pages, only the next day to see they jumped forward 5-15+ ranks from where they started.
-
Hi Dean.
If you used the SEOmoz directory list, it is unlikely your ranking drop was related to any links you earned from those directories. Google can penalize you for paid links, but I am unaware of any directories in the SEOmoz list which violate Google's terms.
The only advice I would offer in using the directories is to vary the anchor text. It is not desirable to use the identical anchor text as those appear quite unnatural. Google obviously understands directory links are not the same as natural links, but it can still be an issue with their algorithmic penalties.
If your staff member varied the keywords, then his efforts are fine. If he or she used the identical keyword or phrase, I would only suggest adjusting it a bit.
While the above is accurate, it does not explain your ranking drop. What other changes have been made to the site? Dropping from 1st to 10th is quite a drop. When exactly was the last time you saw your site at #1 for the keyword? Is it possible there are other issues for which you may have been penalized? Has there been other SEO changes in your site? Or perhaps you were looking at a different search engine?
Without knowing your site URL, the keywords and pages involved we are left to guess.
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
-
What can be the cause for difference in local rankings between mobile and desktop?
I have a site that ranks differently for the same search term on mobile and desktop computer. I'm based in Glasgow, and the search term is (I've replaced the term with X's) XXXXXX XXXXX Glasgow Searching from a location in Glasgow: Desktop: Snackpack : 2, Organic : 6
Technical SEO | | johanisk
Mobile: Snackpack: 1, Organic : 10 I'm keen to improve on the Organic positions as this term is a lead generating one for me. My site is mobile friendly and scores 69/100 on the speed test. Do you think bumping the pagespeed well "into the green" would help improve it's position? Is there anything else I should look at?0 -
Can anyone review my site please?
just wandering if anyone can review my site and give me some feedback please much grateful I have just really trying to get clients don't have any yet and any help would be great. reseolve.com
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Does anyone use Ning (Custom social site)?
We just got a custom Ning site developed and the second we moved it to our domain, we lost almost all of our rankings in Google. So, we sign up for a SEOMoz Pro account and within a week we see that we have over 6,000 errors and warnings on our site. Duplicate content, duplicate page titles and pages with too many links. Is anyone using Ning and successfully maintaining 1st page rankings in Google? Seems to me that we need hundreds of fixes and modifications in the code of our site to fix all of these errors and get Google to take our penalizations off.
Technical SEO | | danlok0 -
Can 2 sites co-exist in Webmaster under same owner?
He we have 2 website that have same exact content, both are redirect to one url. Is it safe to let google know by verifying both website with same ownership in webmaster tools? thanks
Technical SEO | | solution.advisor0 -
Is any know if seomoz update for site crawl.
i belive my site www.breeze-air.com hit by penguin; i found that i had un-natural anchors text and able to remove around 1200 from the 1900 seomoz found. seomoz still shows those anchors - but when i check the link its not there. i removed them 3-4 weeks ago any idea?
Technical SEO | | eoberlender0 -
Penalities in a brand new site, Sandbox Time or rather a problem of the site?
Hi guys, 4 weeks ago we launched a site www.adsl-test.it. We just make some article marketing and developed a lots of functionalities to test and share the result of the speed tests runned throug the site. We have been for weeks in 9th google serp page then suddendly for a day (the 29 of february) in the second page next day the website home is disappeared even to brand search like adsl-test. The actual situalion is: it looks like we are not banned (site:www.adsl-test.it is still listed) GWT doesn't show any suggestion and everything looks good for it we are quite high on bing.it and yahoo.it (4th place in the first page) for adsl test search Anybody could help us to understand? Another think that I thought is that we create a single ID for each test that we are running and these test are indexed by google Ex: <cite>www.adsl-test.it/speedtest/w08ZMPKl3R or</cite> <cite>www.adsl-test.it/speedtest/P87t7Z7cd9</cite> Actually the content of these urls are quite different (because the speed measured is different) but, being a badge the other contents in the page are pretty the same. Could be a possible reason? I mean google just think we are creating duplicate content also if they are not effectively duplicated content but just the result of a speed test?
Technical SEO | | codicemigrazione0 -
Mobile site rank on Google S.E. instead of desktop site.
Hello, all SEOers~ Today, I would like to hear your opinion regarding on Mobile site and duplicate contents issue. I have a mobile version of our website that is hosted on a subdomain (m instead www). Site is targeting UK and Its essentially the same content, formatted differently. So every URL on www exists also at the "m" subdomain and is identical content. (there are some different contents, yet I could say about 90% or more contents are same) Recently I've noticed that search results are showing links to our mobile site instead of the desktop site. (Google UK) I have a sitemap.xml for both sites, the mobile sitemap defined as follows: I didn't block googlebot from mobile site and also didn't block googlebot-mobile from desktop site. I read and watched Google webmaster tool forum and related video from Matt Cutts. I found many opinion that there is possibility which cause duplicate contents issue and I should do one of followings. 1. Block googlebot from mobile site. 2. Use canonical Tag on mobile site which points to desktop site. 3. Create and develop different contents (needless to say...) Do you think duplicate contents issue caused my mobile site rank on S.E. instead of my desktop site? also Do you think those method will help to show my desktop site on S.E.? I was wondering that I have multi-country sites which is same site format as I mentioned above. However, my other country sites are totally doing fine on Google. Only difference that I found is my other country sites have different Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop site, but my UK mobile site has same Title & Meta Tag comparing to desktop. Do you think this also has something to do with current problem? Please people~! Feel free to make some comments and share your opinion. Thanks for reading my long long explanation.
Technical SEO | | Artience0 -
Has anyone used paid services to help improve their site
Hi, i am getting lots of spam in my mail box about how companies can help you get more traffic and i see on lots of sites about tools that can bring you more traffic and help improve your site, and i am just wondering if anyone has tried any of these services or products to help promote their site. For example, i keep getting sent about submitting my site to over 200 directories or search engines and just wondering if these are a waste of time.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860