Sort of lost my way - Links, SEO

[Jon-C]

Not sure where to start with this so please bare with me.

I do the SEO for our company website (we're a small family business), I'm not an SEO'er by profession (I'm a carpenter/joiner) but been doing our site for ten or so years.

About 12 months ago sort of let go of work & web things a bit due to very sudden family bereavement which kind of hit me hard. So when I did get back into doing bits on our site I probably then concentrated a little bit too much on content building rather than going after links etc. As a result we've dropped in the SERPS a bit, but having said that still just about clinging within the top ten for our terms.

Since I've started again we've had Panda/Penguin and I'm a little unsure how to go about getting links in, most of my competitors are using things like blog commenting (just random blogs that are do follow) , recip linking (any sites as long as they give a link!) etc basically things that long term will hold no value long term (or possibly none even to begin with).

All this brand stuff leaves me at a loss, we're a small family business as our the majority of our competitors so not 100% sure that the branding stuff I'm reading about is relevant?

As I say I've got some pretty decent content, some of which I am trying to push with mixed results – we're not in a very sexy niche so not much chance of it picking up links naturally!

Another thing I am noticing is in my niche I don't think any SEO companies are involved with my competitors, most of our competitors are ranking their home pages for every single related search term, whilst I've have always tried to create a page for each search term and I have these pages ranking.

For example my main search term, lets say 'wooden doors' I rank an internal page for this term whilst everyone else seems to rank homepages. I'm finding it hard to get new links into this page, so one idea I do have is elsewhere on my site I have a guide to fitting the doors (with videos, pictures and text) so what I'm thinking is place this guide on my 'wooden doors' page making it a bit more linkable (it's fairly new and not yet gained any links, so no loss to move it) and would also mean a variation of anchor text. A good idea do you think?

Some of my other content has been linked to by colleges in the UK, unfortunately all the links are behind moodle log-ins (give me a decent link you leeches! Lol) ! I am thinking of getting in touch with other colleges to see if the content would be useful, but actually getting hold of the person responsible for the subject is proving difficult!

I've also done a bit of guest blogging, however I'm torn between writing decent stuff for our blog or giving it away (I wouldn't like to give something away thats poor, ok or doesn’t make sense) to other blogs.

Sorry for the ramble (if you've made it this far then thanks for reading!)! Would appreciate all advice. Ultimately would love to get an SEO'er involved but looking around the good un's are out of our price range so I may seek some training as it may prove more beneficial.

[TammyWood]

Yes scraper sites are common and again devalued by Google. But, you are judged by the company you keep.

So cleaning up an ugly link profile is important.

[Jon-C]

A few of the links are claimable, so I'm thinking I shall do that and then change the text.

Looking at the list of them I think two are my fault and the rest have just copied and pasted away (thanks!). Never used any link submission software or automated directory stuff.

Just saw a site called 'Find the needle' they have pages and pages of my stuff but I have otherwise never heard of them.

[TammyWood]

Because of the amount of work entailed in having them changed by a third party.

Find the ones you can control and change them- review any link submission, directory submission etc- software that may have been used, for a list of these that you did unintentionally.

Focus on the other recommendations that I made, and then restart your manual submission process, for obtaining HIGH quality links. The majority of these links/ directories etc, will be ignored by google- as they are low quality. Yet I do notice that these are pretty specific to your industry.

These could be scraper sites, which scrape your content and then add a link - because these have been hit by algorythm updates, more than likely they are strongly devalued anyway, but they can appear to be purchased links on your end, which gives the appearance of breaking Google's TOS.

Apply a copyright tag, publisher and author tag on your new site as well to avoid this abuse from scaper sites in the future.

There is no short cut, you have a lot of work ahead of you- I don't envy your situation, but I have seen much worse.

[Jon-C]

I shall get to it, most of these (if not all) seem to have just copied and pasted directly from my site.

How best do you think my time would be spent, getting these changed or writing new copy for
our site (or does this still leave me with the same problem as various places linking to me with duplicated copy)

[TammyWood]

While I do have tools, yes- you can use Google to locate these and establish a level of duplication.

You can use copyscape.com as well.

Just a sampling here of using google, as I stated earlier it looks like your content on your home page is what is often used to submit to various directories- causing duplication there are variances in the duplicated numbers, I just took a quick peek:

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q="We+are+a+small%2C+family+run+business+which+has+evolved+through+the+knowledge+and+experience+of+three+generations+of+time+served+craftsman.+We+have+manufactured+our+range+of+made+to+measure+wooden+garage+doors%2C+driveway+gates%2C+and+pedestrian+gat"&oq="We+are+a+small%2C+family+run+business+which+has+evolved+through+the+knowledge+and+experience+of+three+generations+of+time+served+craftsman.+We+have+manufactured+our+range+of+made+to+measure+wooden+garage+doors%2C+driveway+gates%2C+and+pedestrian+gat"&gs_l=hp.12...35913.48456.1.50711.2.2.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.2...1c.1.xmyq38zo6Pk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.cGE&fp=bbcdca4f4ff7f7a5&bpcl=39967673&biw=1043&bih=560

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=We+are+a+small%2C+family+run+business+which+has+evolved+through+the+knowledge+and+experience+of+three+generations+of+time+served+craftsman.+We+have+manufactured+our+range+of+made+to+measure+wooden+garage+doors%2C+driveway+gates%2C+and+pedestrian+gat&oq=We+are+a+small%2C+family+run+business+which+has+evolved+through+the+knowledge+and+experience+of+three+generations+of+time+served+craftsman.+We+have+manufactured+our+range+of+made+to+measure+wooden+garage+doors%2C+driveway+gates%2C+and+pedestrian+gat&gs_l=hp.12...2307.2307.0.7822.1.1.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.1...1c.5J_MxsMOi9E&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.cGE&fp=bbcdca4f4ff7f7a5&bpcl=39967673&biw=1043&bih=560

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q="We+are+a+small%2C+family+run+business+which+has+evolved+through+the+knowledge+and+experience+of+three+generations+of+time+served+craftsman.+We+hav"&oq="We+are+a+small%2C+family+run+business+which+has+evolved+through+the+knowledge+and+experience+of+three+generations+of+time+served+craftsman.+We+hav"&gs_l=hp.12...2553.4659.0.6250.3.3.0.0.0.0.98.98.1.1.0.les%3B..0.2...1c.1.1xjoQB9JtA8&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.cGE&fp=bbcdca4f4ff7f7a5&bpcl=39967673&biw=1043&bih=560

[Jon-C]

How did you find my content duplicated across 3700 urls?! What tool shows this?

[TammyWood]

Hello again,

Your main focus in my opinion is to remove all the duplicated content that you have within your links, your content is duplicated across approximately 3700 other URLs. This is where we meet the Panda Penalty. Instead of links at this time, focus on "On site" Optimization.

1. Do your keyword research- what are people searching for, choose URL's on your domain that offer value to the visitor and reflective of the keyword query.

a. review your traffic and analysis- what keywords are your current visitors using? Review the traffic on those as well, could they be improved? Are they directing to the correct landing page. Use a variety of keyword tools to review mobile/ desktop and your location.

2. Review all your title tags for duplication - as well as description tags

3. Review your on page links, is the anchor text your keywords ?

4.Shorten your ALT tags on the images- why? Because they are crammed in there like sardines!

5. I am glad to know you are building a new site - be careful with duplications in Wordpress platform.

6. Add at least *400 words of content on your main pages- all of which contain your main keywords.

That is just the beginning, but in truth your site needs a top to bottom overhaul for SEO and the easiest and oftentimes ( with lack of substantial competitors) most effective is the basics. Once the basics are done, we can look then at link building- your site isn't ready for that, as your duplication problems are very obvious to me, therefore- very obvious to the big G.

I hope this helps.

[Jon-C]

Thanks, wasn't sure whether I was allowed to post a url! Don't want it showing up in search so I've shortened it (and broken it in half -- please take the DELETE bit out)

http://bit.ly/DELETE9388FQ

Design is old (Was doing this originally last year but as I say I lost my way a bit) and being redone at the moment in a Wordpress style (Genesis based theme) to make it easier to navigate.

[TammyWood]

A url would really assist a positive response with suggestions. Because there is so much more to seo than sexy niche and link bait.