Hi
A friend/clients site has recently dropped 2-3 pages (from an average #2 - #3 position on page 1 over last few months) for a primary target keyword & suspects a Neg SEO campaign hence asked me to look into it.
I checked on Removeem and the KW does not generate a red (or even a pink) result.
I looked at Ahrefs & MajSEO, backlinks and referring domains have dropped over the period the KW dropped hence presume i can be sure its not a neg campaign since this would show an opposite pattern (as per articles like this: http://moz.com/blog/to-catch-a-spammer-uncovering-negative-seo ) ? Also site has very few site wide backlinks.
The keyword is a 3 word phrase with 2 of those words being in the domain and brand name hence presume such kw are relatively safe from neg seo campaigns anyway
I would have presumed the backlink/ref-domain drop may well explain the ranking drop but site still in first field of view of page 1 for the other keyphrases which 2 out of the 3 are words are same as effected keyphrase (and also in the domain/brand name) so would have thought these would have dropped too if a neg campaign. Also many of the anchor texts in the disapeared backlinks are for one of the other partial match variant keyphrases which are still top of page 1.
Anchor text is at 4.35% for the effected kw according to MajSEO
Im pretty confident from the above that i can conclude no negative seo campaign has occurred, nor other type of penalty and probably just a 'wobble' at Google that may well right itself shortly
Would appreciate feedback though from others that im concluding correctly just for confirmation ?
Many Thanks
Dan