My site has dropped, I'm a little lost - help

[timmiewheeler]

Hi guys, my site www.platesbypost.co.uk ranked #1 for replacement number plates for years about 6 months ago it dropped to 3rd then 5th now 8th. As a result the traffic has dropped off a cliff. Some of the sites above me don't look stronger on moz's metrics.

About two weeks ago I had an unnatural external links notice in webmaster tools, I no followed all external links in the blog and sent a reconsideration request the day I had the notice and it was revoked within a week. The rankings didn't seem to be effected by the manual action notice.

I would welcome any help you can give me.

[JaneCopland]

Hi,

If the notice was revoked due to you nofollowing the bad outbound links, this means that a penalty has been lifted. However, there could be other issues affecting the site that have caused its drop - ranking 8th is not an indication of a penalty - penalised websites tend to rank a lot worse than this.

The inbound links Marie has cited could be part of the problem, even though you have not received a warning about them. If they are no longer helping (but were helping back when Google's standards were a little lower), then it's feasible Google has raised the rankings of other websites over yours, even though their Moz metrics have not yet caught up.

[MarieHaynes]

While I can't say this is the cause for certain, I'm concerned about the number of unnatural links that I see pointing TO your site.  For example:

http://www.the-free-directory.co.uk/Shopping/Automotive/spares_and_parts/

http://www.add-page.com/subcategory/subcat_1209_5.php

http://www.ukonewaylinks.co.uk/plates-by-post.html

http://www.cultuurtechnologie.net/recreation_and_sports/automotive/page-174.html

In fact, on a brief look it looks like most of your links are unnatural.  This type of link was probably doing a lot to support your rankings in the past but Google is now very good at determining that these links should not be counting towards your ranking.  I'm concerned that when Google refreshes the Penguin algorithm you may see a further drop in rankings.  It is a good idea for you to review all of your backlinks and create a disavow file to disavow all of the self made ones.

Unfortunately in order for you to be able to rank well again you're going to have to find ways to get people to link to you on their own volition as these are the only true votes that Google wants to count.

Hope things look up soon!

[timmiewheeler]

Hi Keri, thanks for looking at this for me, no the notice was for external links made by guest bloggers on my blog.

[KeriMorgret]

Was the warning that you had unnatural external links pointing to your site? In that case, adding a nofollow to the links going from your site to other sites won't do any good. Instead, you need to look at the links pointing to your site.

[Berner]

Hello

Sorry to hear about your troubles

I would say that maybe it may take a while to refresh, yet also if you were ranking at one time with those bad links, you may have to replace them with good natural links.

I am learning myself, so I am sure an expert will chime in. I know it is very frustrating. I have sites above mine that have hardly to no backlinks, a low domain authority, and kills my site in every search I do.

I never got a warning like yourself. In some ways I wish I did so I could send in a reconsideration request.

It sucks, but I feel your pain. I do wish the best for you.

Chris