Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Done, thank you!

One other thing: should this tag be removed altogether? Thanks!

Holy cow, thank you!! I will do that ASAP. I had no idea that tag was in there, nor do I know how it got there! Thanks again.

Here is the situation. Our website for our primary product (www.thetablift.com) has received a penalty by Google. Not long ago we had excellent rankings; (1st page) for some of our primary keywords, like "tablet stand". Now we are not in the index at all.

Here is what happened (or at least what seems to have happened in my non-SEO opinion). Around October 2016, we had the "bright" idea to try and emulate a campaign that Eat 24 did, utilizing inexpensive traffic from advertisements on porn websites. The idea was a play on a joke we often hear about our product being perfect for certain activities where one needs to free one's hands while watching a screen. Of course this is not how we market our product (it is a best selling mainstream product), but we wanted to see if we could emulate the success of another mainstream brand that utilized this kind of non-mainstream advertising.

The immediate result was a whole lot of traffic, but obviously the wrong kind, as it did not convert. So we pulled the plug after about 3 days. Flash forward several months later and we not only lost our great SEO rankings, but we were removed from Google's index entirely. I assume the reason for this is that somehow the website got dinged for being somehow related to porn. But of course it has nothing to do with that.

So the question is: how do we go about getting un-penalized by Google? We had build up some solid SEO over the previous couple of years, and I'd like to get back to where we were, if possible. Oh, and this may or may not be relevant, but we also switched from www.tablift.com to www.thetablift.com a few months before we did this campaign. However, we used permanent redirects and did a textbook changeover, so I don't think that had any bearing. But I can't be sure.

What are the steps to reverse this damage, if any? Thanks!

Thank you!

I'm looking for a best practices guide, or something like that.

Hi Takeshi,

Yes, I understand the basics of SEO in terms of linking.  However, my point is that lesser pages (also with little or no inbound linking to them) are outranking my pages.  Even though these very pages are based off of my very product.

Also, other pages on my site that don't have external linking have much better Page Authority.  So my question is: why do these pages have exceptionally poor Page Authority as compared to similar pages (in terms of their link profiles) that have much better Page Authority.

It's almost as if the structure of these kinds of pages are demoted in terms of authority. I am trying to understand why.

My domain authority is 35 (homepage Page Authority = 45) and my website has been up for years:

www.rainchainsdirect.com

Most random pages on my site (like this one) have a Page Authority of around 20. However, as a whole, the individual pages of my products rank exceptionally low. Like these:

http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/products/copper-channel-link-rain-chain (Page Authority = 1)

http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/collections/todays-deals/products/contempo-chain (Page Authority = 1)

I was thinking that for whatever reason they have such low authority, that it may explain why these pages rank lower in google for specific searches using my exact product name (in other words, other sites that are piggybacking of my unique products are ranking higher for my product in a specific name search than the original product itself on my site)

In any event, I'm trying to get some perspective on why these pages remain with the same non-existent Page Authority.  Can anyone help to shed some light on why and what can be done about it?

Thanks!

I know the general consensus is that these kinds of backlinks are of low value, however I'm curious as to anyones present day experience with them and if they are providing any value.

More specifically, I am curious if they can do harm.  I don't see how they could, as it would be a very easy tactic for an unscrupulous competitor to sabotage another by implementing them for their competitors. I can see possibly losing rank if they were discounted, however if this is the case, then it would only be rank that would not have been gained in the first place, minus those kinds of links.

I ask because I have competing websites who have started to outrank me (they have been climbing and improving through each Google algorithm change in the past year), despite the fact that my mosrank and authority are better than every single one of them. But they have a sheer growing volume of backlinks that I can't match (seemingly low value when I look at their link profiles).

Plus my domain is older (9 years as opposed to 3-4 years), and my site is clearly better (in terms of aesthetics, usability, content, etc), as well as my link profile being selectively cultivated from truly relevant sites.

None the less, they are starting to kill me at this point -and I don't have the luxury of time.  So....I was wondering about the wisdom of upping my volume of forum type links, as this is the only area of measurement where I can see my competitors are beating me.

I am a believer in true, difficult, quality inbound marketing - however it is not getting the job done. Any thoughts on this?

Yep! thanks!

Hi Takeshi,

Yes, I understand the basics of SEO in terms of linking.  However, my point is that lesser pages (also with little or no inbound linking to them) are outranking my pages.  Even though these very pages are based off of my very product.

Also, other pages on my site that don't have external linking have much better Page Authority.  So my question is: why do these pages have exceptionally poor Page Authority as compared to similar pages (in terms of their link profiles) that have much better Page Authority.

It's almost as if the structure of these kinds of pages are demoted in terms of authority. I am trying to understand why.