Welcome to the Q&A Forum

ABSOLUTELY great Egol advice here.....especially on the 'variance' you'd find by filtering thru common counsel for the 'style' that you like for you and yours....

Read...learn...test...then rank...and repeat!

course...maybe the real question is - why would you want to detune to free??

I've been followin the "Negative SEO" world for years - http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php?s=%22negative+seo%22 - will lead to our own blog posts on same...

Suffice it to say - please tho do read some other experts and how they say to fight off same - the best tool you have is the Google disavow one - oh, don't forget that BING has one too, eh!

Hang in. Stay on top by using a great very functional IBL tool too like majestic too...and keep on the disavow trail...is the best thing I can offer today....

Yup....Marie knows her Penguin stuff for sure...would highly recommend this Canuck!

Well....there are so so many things that can contribute to a fall in rankings...that I can't mention them all here...

But a drop - if I read you right - from #6 to #10 is not a drop really at all...just normal fluctuations...i.e. this is how the rankings flutter...

Have you checked tho to see if you're looking at the rankings using Personalized Search? Incognito? WebHistory on/off?

Do some googling for those topics....read...and learn!

Not trying to be dismissive here - just that there really is no 'answer' that you'd be satisfied with....honestly!

Your brain comes to mind....plus the months of research and testing that any due diligence would entail....

There is no shortcut to success....'cept damn hard work, eh!

Egol....your #4 - content that I will enjoy producing is SO very important....I'd a put it up at #1!

Hello EdBen...

That date seems a bit "after" the July 24th Google Pigeon update...about a month or so...but can I ask, was this rankings drop at google.com or google.co.uk?

Up here in google.ca land (Canada that is) we tend to get the changes to the major google.com algo about a few weeks after...so while Pigeon did change many things (like local listing packs, local directories, carousel items etc.) it took those weeks to be "seen" up here...

Could then, Pigeon be the culprit for your drop? Have you been able to drill-down to see if your own site has been re-ranked based on IBLs (incoming back links with authority) or new local directory reviews from say Yelp etc?

Yes...relation to the centroid of the search area is very important still (see the 2013 Local Search Ranking Factor Survey here at moz from David Mihm) as we well know...

And yes, we've had clients with the same issue too. One way that we handled that issue was to open up a "sub-office" for the client via a hot-desk at an Incubator site located across the street from city hall - ie AT the centroid! Took awhile for the updates to resolve...but the move up the Local search results happened...and they (and us too of course) were happy with the results.

Oh - they actually 'do' use the hot-desk - it's staffed by a marketing dept person every day and they 'award' the seat to a diff person each week as a sort of 'bonus'....ie the telecommuting opportunity as a reward. Works, it does!

Yeah...what I see above could ONLY be looked at as link manipulations...

Don't know how else to phrase what I mean - but it appears that you're trying to gain traffic by using all the WRONG tactics....when I see clients that use content markers as " > 2000 chars"  & "fiverr" & "boilerplate"  -- they're all telltales of trying to get real live stable rankings using 2004 tactics....sigh....

YMMV...but in my world those items you've listed show a basic fault in your whole SEO strategy, eh!

clicked on that competitor URL and it's plain jane junk...

if you create a real site with great content you should go by this EMD site in time...

and DO NOT copy this p**spoor example of serp manipulations either!!!

As Bryan said...it's a seperate item that is priced seperately...but WELL worth the cost.

And don't forget to go to the LOCAL Rankings Survey too, where the top (disclaimer, I'm one of them!) experts across NA have contributed to David Mihm's annual survey to see what we think the most important factors to consider will be of use to any SMB owner!

Here's our last years survey - http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

And the 2014 has been completed I believe and David is working on the finalizations before publishing it here! And yes, there are some big (far as I know) changes too!

As Donna pointed out, the 'delay' tween what you expect time-line wise and what Google can 'do' is often longer than anyone would wish........

drill down here on moz for Cyrus's blog post on same here - http://moz.com/blog/traffic-case-study

well worth the read!

Agreed here on Monica's answer directly above....this is what should be done, eh!

No worries, as G ignores the case sensitive issue....my own firm is KKT INTERACTIVE Inc. and it's been fine in G for like 20 years....

Can't speak on Yahoo/BING tho....anyone else know?

most recent best practices say title length should be around 56 chars...fyi....

have you checked your own length? it's 64 chars...AND you make the newbie mistake of putting brand before keywords....

I'd change that to be this (55 chars!)

"LED Furniture Hire for Parties & Corporate Events | JDB"

Search for that user name here at moz....he's very very well known & respected in the SEO world -  but usually will NOT work for others....

One more thing...

That you may also find helpful the leaked Google Qualaity Rater Guidelines - it was leaked to us SEO practitioners last July or so...

Google for that term - but here's my own blog posting on it - http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2014/07/shhhh-google-quality-rater-guidelines-2014-leaked/ - and there's a link there too to download the 11 mb .pdf....

As noted this is really a Negative SEO type of thrust, into the marketplace by folks who IMHO are idiots!

Disavow anything that looks shady....and also ensure that you check now every single week on the new IBLs....now that someone has started on you in your channel, it may be worse before it gets  better, eh?

Oh - google for "Negative SEO" and read some of the lastest case studies too....knowledge learned is a good thing, eh!

Jim Rudnick
KKT INTERACTIVE Inc. www.canuckseo.com

What Egol said is quite true...this has been debated for years....but those of us who don't care about the validations rank our own or our clients sites quite nicely.

Oh sidebar - you'd be so surprised to learn what kind of HUGE well known sites won't validate either....

without a price, how can I determine if you are making the best offer...this IMHO is so important for commodity products...

Hire someone Mark that you're "comfy" with would be my answer....

Email me for more info....I've a couple of CA contacts you might want to consult on this for candidates too!

well...then again (this is the programmer in me speaking!) you could always "force" submission compliance by building in scripting to ensure that ALL those items are completed by the submitter themselves - else the SUBMIT button remains grayed out....

would work. have built them myself. you could eLance or oDesk it too....

Would totally agree here - looks and smells like one of those "well past their best before date" link machine models...so stay the hell outta their world!

Been right there and here's what we did...

We got an alum of the university to put it on their own page - that they'd attended and found the Seminar a great one...and we ensured that the alum pages (we got 3 attendees to say what a great event it was) were all FOLLOW links too!

YMMV but that's what we did! And do!

David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal run the Local University group of great SEO experts and yes this is WELL worth the time to attend...been at 2 myself and loved learning something new at each one!

Find out more here - http://localu.org/

As Andy put it "...Remember, you are aiming to get the right traffic to your page - not just any traffic..."

and what he means is traffic that converts!!!!

And as Erica prob knows...that timeline can often be speeded-up by simply reporting the site...as many competitors do just that!

Me? I'd do a full web audit...find all those IBLs....then disavow 'em all....incl the ones you've yet to find when you do!

Best to start with a completely new slate IMHO....

And then there's the whole globally sized SMX conferences...have been to many and spoken at the ones up here in Toronto too...well worth the time/costs too!

EdBen....yeah I know...you're prob as irritated with this as I was to learn that even Canada ain't covered....yet!

Hmm...never seen this exactly before - but a few years back we discovered for a client that their reality tv series show (Deadliest Catch) member site had been severely infected by Canadian Pharma phony sites....

Seems the hacker had 'broken' in via a MS update that was not done on their hosting platform site - and it took the tv company almost 4 months to disavow, rebuild and then index and begin to rank again as I remember....i.e. this was NOT a WP issue but a hosting server hack...

But with 20+ pages of Uggs and Nude Men rolling Christians (love that one, eh!) infections, you need to get that totally fixed asap so I'd start with querying the hosting vendor logs...

How comes to mind...if you can not determine where the hack came from - you could kill the subdomain after saving all your articles - recreate it say as "info.mshowells.com" or "advice.mshowells.com" or "counsel.mshowells.com" and reload in the same artices....have had to do that too for another client....

YES...you do need to include the full NAP!

Check here at moz.com for the local search ranking factors survey - we're still working on this years, but last years shows too the vast importance of the full NAP on every page....

As Egol has said....it's all true...and as he never takes any consulting....he's unavailable

But DO look up Alan on google - and you'll find he's one of the best known, most revered, most reputable audit guys out there...in fact I couldn't even name a peer of his....he's def the one to contact.

Flavour - schmavour!

the only thing in my world that hurts conversions - is the inablity to communicate! if the bad grammar does that, then I'd find a way to change it to work for you - rather than against you....

What Keri said...works!

Whitespark....Darren's got Nyag there and he can build with the best of them!!!

As usual, Egol perfectly answered...but thought I'd just add....

That just a year ago, I did file a DMCA and eventually wound up (honest!) talking to someone from Homeland Security in the US as the firm I was after apparently was being "watched!" While I do believe we're all being watched, that experience did worry me a bit...

My content was taken down - but by the .gov of the firm in which the owners of same lived - least that's the answer I got...if you can trust that anything you hear from the ones in charge is believeable.... <knocks on="" desk="">testing testing...you guys still listening in???

:-)</knocks>

Course same value to the reader of that post if you just LIST the URLs, and do NOT make them real live links...

Value passed on still, eh!

Haven't seen any 7-Packs in months now...I too am up in Canada using g.ca and they're all gone for all of our own searches....

Yeah, that kinda display trick is transparent to the googleBot....i.e. it's for users not bots...so it's not an issue...use them as you see fit...

I'd check over on Alan Bleiweiss's site...IMHO he's the best audit guy out there and if memory serves, he's got a checklist of some type there too...including a detailed post on same....

re: directories....um...when I now think of same I use "citations" instead....and here's a great link to whitesparks list of the best citation URLs in the US and other countries too....http://www.whitespark.ca/top-local-citation-sources-by-country as well as I've blogged about this again just today too here....www.canuckseo.com !

ALWAYS brand last...keyword/keyword phrase first, left to right as Eng is written works best, eh!

Have NEVER heard any variations on same - well, from anyone that counts in the SEO world that is....

Just a quick drive-by look at the <title>tag you're using on the home page shows me that you're like WAY beyond the 57 char limits...</p> <p>Have you not googled for "best on-page seo optimization tips" for research?</p></title>

Yup...the content is not hidden from the googlebot...so it's still read, indexed and used....

But as Sheena noted, that's "old school" design thinking, eh!