Ranking for brand name but no other terms (no manual penalty) is this penguin?

[gezzagregz]

Hi guys,

I would like your opinions on this site www.colourbanners.co.uk

Seems to be ranking for 'colour banners' but has dropped for keywords such as 'banners' and 'pvc banners' which were ranking well.

There has been no manual actions against the site so im assuming this is an algo penalty?

Any ideas/suggestions what could be causing this?

regards

Gerry

[evolvingSEO]

Not 100% sure if it's Penguin per se but it's definitely a link based problem. Look at all of the top anchor text to the site - it's entirely commercial keywords --> http://screencast.com/t/gt4zbWiWNxMc

What I've seen happen in this cases is that you will artificially rank well for some of those keywords for a little while and then a link algo catches up with you and you'll drop to where you should have been (or lower) all along.

Your on-site isn't as poorly over-optimized as other sites I've seen, but it could be toned down a little but removing keyword repetition / stuffing in the titles/URLs/descriptions etc.

You should definitely try to change the anchor text on any of the back links that might be good links, but just too optimized from an anchor standpoint. Use natural non-exact match anchors or branded / domain for the anchor text.

For any links that are just plain old bad/spammy/low quality - try to remove them or disavow them.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Hi Gerry,

You say that your site dropped in rankings.  How much did the site drop and about when did the rankings drop?  Also, did you make any changes to the site before the drop?

Thanks.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[FedeEinhorn]

A couple things come to my mind after a quick look of your backlink profile:

• Not too much authority.
• Some spammy backlinks, even though you didn't receive a manual penalty, you should consider using the disavow tool to avoid any penalization. As stated by Matt Cutts a wekk ago or so, Webmasters should use the disavow tool even if they didn't get a manual penalty just to prevent one.
• Consider adding more valuable content to your site. Even though you have content, try to come up with information that isn't available elsewhere, perhaps a blog? Brainstorm some ideas and choose the best approach depending on your business model.

Hope that helps!