Can good penalize a site, and stop it ranking under a keyword permanently
-
hi all
we recently took on a new client, asking us to improve there google ranking,
under the term letting agents glasgow , they told us they used to rank top 10 but now are on page 14
so it looks like google has slapped them one, my question is
can google block you permanently from ranking under a keyword or disadvantage you,
as we went though the customers links, and removed the ones that looked strange, and kept the links that looked ok.
but then there ranking dropped to 21, is it worth gaining new links under there main keyword even tho it looks like google is punishing them for having some bad links.
the site is www. fine..lets...ltd...co....uk all one word
cheers
-
What is the keyword they are trying to rank for? A brief look at their site shows me that there really isn't much content and the title tags aren't optimized. They mostly all start with "Fine Lets Ltd" which I'm guessing is not the keyword they are trying to rank for.
So, this could be good news because there are lots of things that could be done to help them rank better. I'd be more concered if the site looked amazingly optimized and it was still ranking poorly.
-
The site is likley to be penalised as long as the site is breaking the webmaster guidelines. If you believe that you have corrected the issues causing the penalty you can ask google to reconsider your site here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843
Good Luck
-
That's not a penalty, it's just losing rankings... happens all the time. And yes Google can put permanent punishment on do but they don't tend to, in fact my understanding is it would be extremely rare... and if they did do that, it wouldn't be just for one keyword. If they penalize you, you fix the issue causing it and ask for re-inclusion. But that's not what's happened to your client. It could be the Panda/Farmer update or any number of things.
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
-
Leveraging A Second Site
Hi, A client of mine has an opportunity to buy/control another site in the same niche. The client's site is the top-ranked site for the niche. The second site is also often top half of page one. The second site has a 15 year old design that is a really bad, almost non-functional, user experience and thin content. The client's site (site 1) has the best link profile and dominates organic search, but the second site's link profile is as good as our nearest competitor's link profile. Both sites have been around forever. Both sites operate in the affiliate marketing space. The client's site is a multi million dollar enterprise. If the object were to wring the most ROI out of the second site, would you: A) Make the second site not much more than a link slave to the first, going through the trouble to keep everything separate, including owner, hosting, G/A, log-on IPs, so as not to devalue the links to 1st site, etc? Or... B) Develop the second site and not worry about hiding that both are the same owner. Or... C) Develop the second site and still worry about it keeping it all hidden from Google. Or... D) Buy the second site and forward the whole thing to site 1. I know the white hat answer is "B," but would like to hear considerations for these options and any others. Thanks! P.S., My pet peeve is folks who slam a fast/insufficient answer into an unanswered question, just to be the first. So, please don't.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010 -
Sudden drop in ranking
Hi, I have been on page 1 (around 5-7th) for an area specific phrase (liverpool wedding photographer) for most of last year. I wrote a 2500 word article which was about documentary wedding photography which was meant for a landing page of its own, I decided to put it on my home page. A week later I was second position page 1. This was last November and within a week or at most 14 days I was suddenly dropped to bottom page 1 (9th 10th), then a week later half way down page 2 (14th, 15th) and ending at the bottom of page 2. I had a bad SEO company a few years ago who got me a lot of spammy links so I ended up disavowing a lot of links I had. What are peoples opinions on links now? Do I disavow all directory links, and non wedding or photography related links? Did something major happen to the google algorithm in November? The only other thing I can think of which might cause a penalty is using the keyword "Liverpool wedding photographer" as a link from at leat 10 blog posts back to my home page which is optimised for those keywords. This was something I copied from someone who was ranking nationally for phrases. Just looked at their site now and they are still using this technique and are No1 nationally for their chosen phrase???? I do try and get as many 'good' links as I can (featured weddings on wedding blogs and credits for photography work) but I am totally confused. I thought google likes a lot of content? Very gutted as it could not happen at a worse time as January is the busiest month for bookings and I have been nowhere. any help will be greatly appreciated. Best wishes. David.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WallerD1 -
Good vs Bad Web directories
Hi this blog post Rand mentions a list of bad web directories - I asked couple of years ago if there is an updated list as some of these (Alive Directory for example) do not seem to be blacklisted anymore and are coming up in Google searches etc? It seems due to old age of the blog post (7 years ago ) the comments are not responded to. Would anyone be able to advise if which of these good directories to use? https://moz.com/blog/what-makes-a-good-web-directory-and-why-google-penalized-dozens-of-bad-ones
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse0 -
Is one of my competitors trying to get my site penalized?
Hi guys, I have been ranking #2 for a popular search term for several months now, and today I noticed a drop to #5, so I went to check my backlink profile, and I'm seeing thousands of no-follow exact keyword matched backlinks, all from spammy looking websites. I looked at some of the links and they do link to me, but I didn't generate these links, and I have never paid anybody externally to build links for me. What is the best course of action for me here? link disavow tool?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | davegill0 -
Site dropping in rank even through there are more backlinks being added
Hello, One of my client's sites is ranking lower than he should. This happened when we took off backlinks (20 little blogs, several site-wide paid links. It really dropped the site, but it had to be done. Since then we've increased his # of root domains by 10% through white hat link building in his non-competitive niche, and rankings are still poor. I know that's not much in the way of added backlink value, but we're working on it. My question is, how have the recent (and coming) updates possibly effected us. We want to take the remaining problem areas off right away, but another drop in traffic is not a good idea. Even though the blogs (see below) have no backlinks of themselves, they cause drops when taken off) He still has -20 little blog backlinks w/ a quarter of them being exact match anchor text.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW
-1 sitewide paid link - an image, exact match alt tag anchor text
-1 non-site-wide paid links that is an image near the footer, exact match alt tag anchor text.
-3 links on a domain, this one looks fairly editorial, but there are a bunch of paid links on that page. Changing to non-exact-match anchor text
-2 links on two domains that look completely editorial with no other paid links on that page. non-exact-match anchor text -70 backlinks total with about 1/3 being problematic. How does this site look in regards to updates and when to take links off without tanking our site even more? Thanks.0 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
Keywords in Google Local results
We have a client in the moving business and I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the "local" results and the number of them that are not following Google's guidelines for Google Local accounts. 3 of them are using exact match keyword strings as their company names. I've reported all 3, every week for the last 2 months and have not seen a single dip in the rankings. Meanwhile our client has a duplicate listing we've verified and "suspended" and it hasn't changed for 4 months! Any tips? I've attached a photo of the listings as well. xwWZWyT.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
Getting sites unbanned in bulk
Prior to the Panda update we had 1 main site, and 300 or so satellite sites. The satellite sites all had an identical template with identical content. The satellite sites all got flagged, and the main site persevered. We'd like to TRY to get all of these sites unbanned in bulk. My question is...how 'DIFFERENT' should these sites be? I know that a real google employee will be looking. All of these sites will be in the same industry...so how 'different' can the content really be? I am going to try to do this in sets of 10 and purchase a different template for EACH city/satellite site, as well as having varying categories, but realistically how doomed/successful do you think this endeavor will be? Any advice? realistic timeline?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0