Negative seo by Shady SEO Firm?
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Recently a former client of man called me up and said that his rankings for his Auto Repair Shop in Tacoma WA had dropped and he had his worst November in sales since they hired this new SEO firm to rebuild their website and provide SEO. Of course the first thing I did was check his back links and sure enough there are 22 links from Yellowbook.com all pointed to different cities
I checked the SEO firms website and they and they had 4 links from YellowBook. The problem was the links from YellowBook were all optimized from different cities. I am pretty sure Google penalized my client for the unnatural back-links to YellowCrook.com. Does the community agree that these links caused the penalty? I included the links in pictures on my LinkedIn Profile. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-how-google-erased-60-percent-revenue-from-small-meshach?published=t
Here are the links.
<colgroup><col width="202"> <col width="545"></colgroup>
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/automotive |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lower-queen-anne-seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Lower Queen Anne Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/bonney-lake-wa/mechanic | Mechanic in Bonney Lake, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-mechanics | Auto Mechanics in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/shoreline-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Shoreline, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair | Auto Repair in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lynnwood-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Lynnwood, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Auburn, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/redmond-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Redmond, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/matthews-beach-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Matthews Beach Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/wilburton-bellevue-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Wilburton Bellevue, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/laurelhurst-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Laurelhurst Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa-98166/auto-oil-lube |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/gig-harbor-wa/auto-oil-lube | Auto Oil Lube in Gig Harbor, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/northeast-seattle-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Northeast Seattle Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-transmission |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/burien-wa/automotive | Automotive in Burien, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com | -
After further looking at his search results I noticed that his keyword that he was number 1 for the last 3 years. Tacoma Auto Care was still showing high up in the organic results. Number 4 behind 2 yelp results and one other company. But he was still number 10 to 15 in the 3-pack results for the same keyword. This leads me to conclude that the Yellowpage links destroyed his NAP with all the different cities they added. See picture attached
Also when you use the same search terms in BING there is NO LOCAL Penalty.
Bing Tacoma Auto Care
Bing Tacoma Auto Repair
www.philsautocareinc.com shows up number 1 and number 3 respectively.
Now we all know how to knock out our local competition in Google Don't We?
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Thanks for the response. The company Philsautocareinc.com has had stead rankings for 3 years. They hired this new company www.effectivewebsolutions.biz to do their website site in April of 2016. They took 3 months to build the website and then started SEO work around July August 2016. The reason I focused on the Yellowpage links is because www.effectivewebsolutions.biz has the exact same links pointing to there site. So i know they are the ones who did it. Since this business physical address is in Tacoma wouldn't googles algorithms still see the different cities in the Yellowbook links as spam? Just saying.
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Agree with Marcel, in essence he recommends a deeper dive. I recommend collate links, from majestic, moz, ahrefs and WMT's. Then you have to go through them each manually.
I tend to focus on exact matching anchor text, and non branded anchors. That is where you usually find the culprits. Also when identified disavow from the root.
Focusing on bad links though is not enough.
I would also be tracking any other site changes, did the new seo company change any title tags, h1's etc. Is the page speed still under 2 seconds... you should be able to do deep dive off WMT's as it all seems within 90 days... pin point some dates of drops... look at the words specifically that have dropped. Get granular. WMT's should really help at this stage, so I would do a deep dive there, capture as much data as you can as it is slipping away.
Hope that helps.
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