Is my site being penalized?
-
I've gone through all the points on https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 but the site only ranks for its brand name after months. The website is not ranking in the top 100 for any main keywords (2,3,4 word phrases), only for a handful of very long phrases (4+).
All of the content is unique, all pages are indexed, the website is fast and doesn't contain any crawl errors and there are a couple of links pointing to it.
There is a sitewide follow link in the footer pointing to another domain, its parent company and vice-versa. This is not done for any SEO reasons but the companies are related and also the products are supplementary of each other. Could this be an issue? Or is my site being penalized by something else?
-
Micha,
After looking at your site and running a few quick tests, I still don't think your site has been penalized. You have a few technical and on-page issues to deal with, but I don't think fixing these alone will catapult you to the top of the SERPs.
I checked the SERPs for "climb kilimanjaro," and I think your competition is your biggest hurdle. In addition to being around a lot longer, your competitor's websites have far more targeted, editorial backlinks, and consequently much higher authority, than your site.
Unfortunately, there's no quick and easy fix for this problem. You'll have to work toward earning good backlinks. Check out the resources below.
-
Hi All,
Thank you for your answers. I'm glad to hear that most of you think that the single sitewide link wouldn't caused a penalty from Google. If this wouldn't be allowed by Google, how else could one promote their other related sites?
@Laura: To give a bit more information, the domain was registered in November 2014 and the website including content has been live since the beginning of 2015. I realize that this is not long ago but I've seen a lot more progress for other domains by this stage. There has some link building happened over the last months; initially a handful of strong directories, partners and a couple of articles (not indexed by OSE yet). Furthermore, we are asking past customers to leave reviews on various website and mention us if they have a blog or written a trip report somewhere. The website is of a tour operator that organizes trekking tours up Kilimanjaro. For more information you can visit the web address www.kilimanjaro-experience.com. I would be very intrigued to hear your advice on this matter.
@Patrick: Thanks for the resources! I'll go through them. WMT hasn't indicated that there are any manual actions and OSE indicates a spam score of only 2.
@Andy: Nofollow might be a good idea if this is the issue though. I've done some digging into the competition's links and besides 2 very strong links it's all a bit average and some even quite spammy with links in comments etc. I definitely don't want to go that route. Got any good contacts at renowned newspapers?
-
Hi Micha,
I doubt very much that a single link like this is causing you issues, but there would be no harm in no-following it, just to be on the safe side.
and there are a couple of links pointing to it.
You might find that this is playing a major part. It is possible for a site to rank without links, but the content would have to be pretty amazing and really tick all the boxes for Google.
Do you feel the content on you site would be classified as a linkable asset? Would what is there be reason enough for others to want to link to you? Have you had a look at those who are winning in the SERPs to see where they get their links from, and why? A little competition analysis might open up a sea of opportunities, or at least let you see what needs doing.
-Andy
-
Hi there
If everything you say is true - highly doubtful. But run through the technical checklist one more time in case there is a noindex tag or an issue with your robots.txt.
You have to be doing some pretty shady content and link building tactics in order to trip Google penalty signals. I would go through any links you have to see if there are spammy efforts there (resource below)
However, to be sure, login to your Webmaster Tools account and check your manual action notifications.
If nothing there, I would look at the following materials:
How To Do a Content Audit - Step-by-Step (Moz)
How to Conduct a Link Audit (SEW)
Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation (Moz)
How to Perform the Ultimate Local SEO Audit (Moz)
The Illustrated SEO Competitive Analysis Workflow (Moz - I put this here for ideas, not copycat tactics)
Conducting Market Research Before Investing in Tactical Execution (Moz)I would also look and see if there are any opportunities to amplify your content or if there are any advertising opportunities that can help get your name out there and help you relationship build with potential partners.
Lastly, while tedious, I highly recommend persona development - reason being, going through the exercise is necessary and you learn more than ever about who your audience is; there may be content or ideas that you are missing out on.
Like I said, if you are up to par with the checklist and you have value on your website, go through the above resources as they can help you build your brand and get more traction going. It's an uphill battle, but one worth fighting when all is said and done.
Hope this all helps! Good luck!
-
I doubt that a single sitewide reciprocal footer link is causing your site to be penalized. There are dozens of possible reasons why your site is not ranking, and it's impossible to say what's going on without knowing the website in question. If you don't want to post it here, send me the URL in a private message and I'll take a look.
- How long has your site been online?
- Has anyone conducted a link building campaign for you at any time? If so, what did they do?
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
-
All URLs in the site is 302 redirected to itself
Hi everyone, I have a problem with a website wherein all URLs (homepage, inner pages) are 302 redirected. This is based on Screaming Frog crawl. But the weird thing is that they are 302 redirected to themselves which doesn't make any sense. Example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alex_goldman
https://www.example.com.au/ is 302 redirected to https://www.example.com.au/ https://www.example.com.au/shop is 302 redirected to https://www.example.com.au/shop https://www.example.com.au/shop/dresses is 302 redirected to https://www.example.com.au/shop/dresses Have you encountered this issue? What did you do to fix it? Would be very glad to hear your responses. Cheers!0 -
Site Structure - Is it ok to Keep current flat architecture of existing site pages and use silo structure on two new categories only?
Hi there, I have a site structure flat like this it ranks quite well for its niche site.com/red-apples.html site.com/blue-apples.html The site is branching out into a new but related lines of business is it ok to keep existing site architecture as above while using a silo structure just for the two new different but related business? site.com/meat/red-meat.html site.com/fish/oceant-trout.html Thanks for any advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | servetea0 -
Travel site schema problems
I'm developing a travel site for my home state (Kansas - http://www.kansasisbeautiful.com though it's still has some development being worked on), but struggling to find scheme to work with for some items. So far my site is laid out by both region (northeast Kansas, western Kansas, etc.) and location types (waterfalls, parks, etc.). I'm currently working on coding in schema markup. I've found schema types for waterfalls, parks and landmarks, but I'm struggling to find anything for scenic drives (or highways, drives, anything related), hiking/biking trails and regions (northeast Kansas, southeast Kansas, etc.) The question I have is: What can I do to still try and put some kind of markup when there's nothing available that fits the item I'm trying to markup?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | msphoto0 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Dealing with 404s during site migration
Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Site Migration of 4 sites into 1?
Hi Guys, I have a massive project involving a migration of 4 sites into 1. 4 sites include: **www.MainSite.com ** www.E-commerce.com www.Membership.com www.ResearchStudy.com Goal of this project is to have 1-4 regrouped into Main Site I will be following the best practice from this post https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos which has an awesome checklist. I am actually about to start Phase 3: URL redirect mapping. Because all of these sites have hundreds of duplicates, I figured I should first resolve the Main Site dup issues before creating the URL redirect mapping but what about the other domains (2,3,4) though? Should I first resolve the Dup issues on those ones as well or it is not necessary since they will be pointing into the Main Site new domain? I want to make sure I don't overwork the programming team and myself. Thanks For sharing your expertise and any tips on how should I move forward with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
Hey Mozzers, I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well. My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together? To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other? My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial. A little advice/clarification would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Google penalized site--307/302 redirect to new site-- Via intermediate link—New Site Ranking Gone..?
Hi, I have a site that google had placed a manual link penalty on, let’s call this our
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
company site. We tried and tried to get the penalty removed, and finally gave up and purchased another name. It was our understanding that we could safely use either a 302 or 307 temporary redirect in order to redirect people from our old domain to our new one.. We put this into place several months and everything seemed to be going along well. Several days ago I noticed that our root domain name had dropped for our selected keyword from position 9 to position 65. Upon looking into our GWT under “Links to Your site” , I have found many, many, many links which were pointed to our old google penalized domain name to our new root domain name each of this links had a sub heading “Via this intermediate link -> Our Old Domain Google Penalized Domain Name” In light of all of this going on, I have removed the 307/302 redirect, have brought the
old penalized site back which now consists of a basic “we’ve moved page” which is linked to our new site using a rel=’nofollow’ I am hoping that -1- Our new domain has probably not received a manual penalty and is most likely now
received some sort of algorithmic penalty, and that as these “intermediate links” will soon disappear because I’m no longer doing the 302/307 from the old sight to the new. Do you think this is the case now or that I now have a new manual penalty place on the new
domain name.. I would very much appreciate any comments and/or suggestions as to what I should or can do to get this fixed. I need to still keep the old domain name as this address has already been printed on business cards many, many years ago.. Also on a side note some of the sub pages of the new root domain are still ranking very
well, it’s only the root domain that is now racking awfully.. Thanks,0