Site used to rank first for main keyword - now dropped drastically
-
The home page for this site (http://bit.ly/4m1eXy) was ranking between #1 and #3 for the term "Minneapolis criminal defense" as of a few months ago. Now the home page has dropped to #23 for this keyword, and the only changes we've made should be enhancing its ability to rank - through on-page optimization, cleaning up site errors, and ensuring good, quality content. The thing is, the sites who rank ahead of our site have lower domain authority and page authority, and their content, quite frankly, just isn't that great. Some of them are definitely doing SEO but they aren't necessarily targeting "Minneapolis criminal defense" like we are for the search term.
Before our company started doing SEO for this website, they hired a company that generated a large number of backlinks that Google would probably now see as spammy. The previous company also used to direct traffic towards the home page for the keyword "Minneapolis DWI laywer" too - and we have since stopped doing that. So I'm wondering with all of Google's algorithmic updates if this is the reason we're seeing a drop for this term, and if Google's confused. We're pretty confused, too, though, since the sites ranking ahead of us don't seem to be doing squeaky clean SEO by any means.
Advice for us? We're stumped. Would anyone consider Google's disavow tool for the bad links?
-
Sounds like it. You said: Before our company started doing SEO for this website, they hired a company that generated a large number of backlinks that Google would probably now see as spammy.
Penguin targeted low quality links (and seemed like you have them). Prune those links out and see what happens. Also, focus on reducing/eliminating any over-optimization (specifically anchor texts/kw stuffing and etc). I'm sure other mozzers will weigh in, but at face-value, that is what I'm guessing.
-
Thank you Kevin. It's always fun to clean up other people's messes.
Are you thinking that's the reason for the tanking?
-
Check your Google Webmaster Tools for any messages. Yes-use the Disavow tool to eliminate any spammy links and manually shoot an email to the webmaster of the incoming links to remove them. Document the correspondence as evidence that you are making an effort to clean up your backlinks and save in a Google Doc for the future.
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
-
Unlinked mentions that seem to be FROM by site
Hi Everyone I'm new to SEO so apologies if this is a silly question. I'm using the unlinked mentions tool and as far as I can see the mentions are from my own site! I've attached a screen grab. Am I being a muppet? I thought that it would show mentions on OTHER sites that I don't have a link back to my site! The screen grab appears to show links on my site, as in posts on my own forum? Thanks for your help! Cw2bjhw
Link Building | | NappyValleyNet0 -
How can I find page 1 google keyword rankings for a certain page?
Not sure if someone has a tool for this yet or not... Say I have a page like this: http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Spokane.Painting.Pros.509-210-2799 and I would like to find out what keywords this page ranks for on google. Is there any tool that I can paste in that link and it would give me keywords that it ranks well for? Other than the SEO moz rank checker. It's not like I want to run a campaign just for links like that but I might want to build some links to citations like that so I can move those citations up in the rankings.
Link Building | | Superflys0 -
Why should I pay attention to sites that rank well in Bing?
If Google has the most market share, why would I use Bing to find backlinks. This question relates to Raven Tools using backlinks found on Bing for their Domain Research tool? Wouldn't that make their tool inferior to one that uses Google? Thanks, Sam
Link Building | | PGD20110 -
Seo using images
I have a client that creates a lot of custom jewelry and takes pictures of it. They've been reluctant to part with it for fear of competitors stealing their designs, but I was able to finally wrastle them into submission and get them to release 30+ original images. I had some ideas about it, but I was wondering if you guys could help me brainstorm doing some linkbuilding using these images. 1. tag them all on pinterest 2. create a slideshow using them and upload to slidesharing sites 3. create a flickr account and upload all the images 4. search for other image/slideshare gallery sites and upload to them. (I welcome any suggestions regarding this). Any other suggestions for submissions? I was also thinking of creating some written content around each image. What type of web properties would be best for for example a FAQ about custom made emerald rings, or other types of jewelry.
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Should I post an article to the same article site each month or should I vary the sites I post them to?
Hi Community,
Link Building | | acs111
Im planning on creating an article each month centred around 1 keyword.
Is it best to post this to the same site. eg http://ezinearticles.com/ every month or should I try to post it to a mixture of different sites? I'm trying to rank a site higher for their chosen keyword by gaining links from anchor text within each article I create.0 -
Interesting link to a competitors site
I recently found a very interesting link to two of my competitors sites. The companies are number 2 and 3 in Google for my targeted keywords (for some reason Wikipedia is number 1) and are both linked from the home page of this site. I don't want to leave a link for linkers site because I don't want them to be able to see that I'm snooping on them but, here is the scenerio: The site that they are linked from is a .org site. It is basically our targeted keywords in a .org. Something like bluewidgets.org. At the very bottom of the home page are some tabs, you click the first tab and it opens about 20 new tabs, when you click any of those 20 tabs it displays some text at the bottom of the page. This text is of no value to visitors, it is obvious to me what is happening here. Both companies are linked with targeted keywords in the anchor and title text. I'm wondering if I should also pursue a link from this page. I know there is value in a .org link but this site seems to be built to link to those two sites. Anybody else ever run into anything like I'm describing. Should I post a link to this site?
Link Building | | TRICORSystems0 -
Backlinks from PR sites not showing in Open Site Explorer
Hi, Over the last year I have used a range of different PR sites to post news articles that link back to various pages on my site. However, barely any show up as link backs on Open Site Explorer, neither follow nor nofollow links. Can anyone explain why this is and whether or not the dofollow links count towards SEO if they are not picked up by OSE?
Link Building | | pugh0 -
Natural Anchor Text distribution for brand = main keyword
Dear folks, I will start link building for my all new site www.buy-hosting.net and would greatly appreciate your opinion about some questions: 1.) How many links would you in my place seed per day? I plan to start with directory links and sincere, useful contributions in blogs and forums, with my URL in the signiture. 2.) Natural anchor text distribution:
Link Building | | ie4mac
My brand Buy-Hosting.net ist the same as my main targeted keywords "Buy Hosting". However, I also want to have a natural looking link profile, so I would seed links like "Click here" or "Windows Hosting" or "Webhosting" as well. How would you distribute die Anchor Text Precentage ?
E.g. (60% Buy Hosting - 10% Windows Hosting - 10% Click here - 10% Joomla Hosting - 10% Hosting Reviews)? Does that make sense or is that already spammy? 3.) How many No-Follow links would you seed (in %)?
4.) How many links (in %) would you seed to subpages, instead of the main page? Are there larger margins for Keywords, that eqal the Domain/Brand Name, without being conted as spam? Is there a good article about the natural distribution of anchor texts? Your input is greatly appreciated and thoroughly considered.
Thank you and kind regards0