Why has my authority article gone from P1 to below the top 50? Along with the rest of my site...

[Biota]

My site has run into some serious and unexplained SEO issues over the last 6 months, i.e:

I wrote the content at http://www.flatroofs.co.uk/flat-roof-insulation/ about 3-4 years ago, and ever since it's competed for position with the huge PLC websites and hovered around the top 3 spots in google.co.uk.

However, since May this year things have declined rapidly and now isn't even in the top 50 for [flat roof insulation]! Why??

I am aware that this content has been pretty heavily plagiarised since day 1, with some other sites making the effort the 'rehash' my wording and others just blatantly copying. At the same time it's also been relatively well linked to (for a very boring subject) since day 1.

Over the same period (since May) the site has suffered a huge decline in traffic and rankings, as can be seen here http://www.flatroofs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Capture.png, but I find the huge drop harder to justify for a relevant article than for the homepage/site in general.

What strikes me about the above is the two step changes in traffic volume; one in early June and the other in late October. I am vaguely aware of the penguin update etc, but it seems to me like I've been manually banished somehow?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[MattAntonino]

One part Panda + one part Penguin.  It's not a manual penalty but algorithmically, you're eating it pretty hard.  You need some link balance, content refreshed and basically to put the past as far into your past as you can. Good luck!

[RichardSEO]

Sent you a PM with more info

[Biota]

Thanks Richard

I have suspected that might be the case, thanks to providers used in the past.

Would you be interested in giving me a proposal/some costs for SEO to try and undo this mess?

I don't really want to dominate the SERPS any more, as I was for a while and it just resulted in me fielding thousands of calls which weren't worth my time.

I'm looking in particular for these pages to rank well again http://www.flatroofs.co.uk/projects-case-studies/

I've never had any onsite SEO as I haven't trusted the providers with back end access, so there's probably some improvement to be made there too...

[RichardSEO]

You dont have a manual penalty.

But you are or used some questionable link building in the past.

Quick breakdown

#1 You need more branded keywords because your top linked/anchored word is Flat roofing. The top referring keyword should be http://yoursite instead of a single keyword

#2 A lot of the links you bought (or your SEO company did) are using private blog networks or sites blog sites built for SEO. Consider using other methods.

The exact times in traffic drop are due to the updates.