Is my site being penalized?

[Robbern]

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?

[LauraSultan]

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.

• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/link-building-earning/
• http://www.linkbuildingbook.com/

[Robbern]

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?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

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

[PatrickDelehanty]

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!

[LauraSultan]

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?