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A site I work with ranked page 1 for a competitive keyphrase until recently. (Not Panda-related as far as we can tell.) We've done extensive on-site tweaking and the page is still parked at 27-32 in the SERPs. We believe the only viable explanation at this point is an unnatural link profile.

Over the course of several years the site has racked up a large collection of footer links with anchor text due to business relationships with the sites in question. So the profile is now skewed, with the result as follows:

• 100,000 domain links (top 10 competitors range 1800-50k)
• 87% anchor text optimized (competitors 0-41%)
• 99% follow links (competitors 85-100%)
• The vast majority of links are footer links

We're working on creating more natural, high-value links but this of course takes time. In the short term, two questions:

1. Should we aim to remove or change some of the footer links? If so, do we remove them, or just change anchor text? How many?
2. How many new links should we pursue each month to make a meaningful impact on the profile without being too aggressive?

Any other thoughts on how to fix this are also appreciated. Thanks!

That's what I needed to hear. I think maybe a cases/pest-control/industry-company or industry/company structure will work nicely then. I can fix a good link structure no problem. Thanks!

I suppose I meant the depth of the directories... Finding the page three or four directories in (I asked the same in response to Alan).

Thanks for all the help!

So when working with the directories, if we structure navigation so that you can get to a specific case study with two clicks, does that offset the depth of the directory structure? So, if it happened to be (hopefully not) cases/retail/pest-control/MI/Detroit/company-name, will the number of subfolders be an issue, as long as you could get to the page through two clicks from home?

Would it make any sense to you to group them by service? so...

cases/pest-control/industry-company

Less spammy, but wonder about the impact of too many directories.

The idea is that yes, they can all be landing pages. The pages as they're sitting now are driving some traffic from these long-tail keyword combinations -- we'd like not to lose that when we make the change.

Can the service keywords be variations? So, could it be retail-pest-control, restaurant-termite-control, athletic-ant-extermination? (samples again, of course)

We're working on revamping the URL structure for a site from the ground up. This firm provides a service and has a library of case studies to back up their work. Here's some options on URL structure:

1. /cases/[industry keyword]-[service keyword]   (for instance: /cases/retail-pest-control)

There is some search traffic for the industry/service combination, so that would be the benefit of using both in URL. But we'd end up with about 70 pages with the same service keyword at the end.

2. /cases/[industry keyword] (/cases/retail)

Shorter, less spam potential, but have to optimize for the service keyword -- the primary -- in another way.

3. /cases/clientname (/cases/wehaveants)

No real keyword potential but better usability.

We also want the service keyword to rank on its own on another page (so, a separate "pest control" page). So don't want to dilute that page's value even after we chase some of the long tail traffic.

Any thoughts on the best course of action? Thanks!

Thanks! If we did that, would it be best then to change some/most of the links to the home page, or will that tank our chances of getting the indented listing?

Hi everyone:

A site I'm working with until recently was ranking page 1 for its primary keyword. For the last month, they've dropped to page 4. One thing we've noticed is that the page that is ranking is an internal page (http://www.example.com/keyword-string) and at this point, everything ranking above us is ranking based on the root domain (http://www.competitor.com).

We've eliminated Panda, penalties, and any other obvious causes for the drop in rankings. We have similar or better page rank, external links, domain trust, etc. in comparison to the sites still ranking page 1.

We think this may be part of our problem. Has anyone else dealt with this? What did you do to change it and how did it work? We're considering eliminating the existing internal page and 301'ing to the home page. The keyword in question is the core of the business, so this is a natural change, but we're loath to lose years of investment in promoting the internal page.

Also, the site was originally optimized with the primary keyword throughout (appears in META tags, headers on multiple pages). How important is it to clear these out to make Google see the home page as most relevant?

Thanks!!

We're working on revamping the URL structure for a site from the ground up. This firm provides a service and has a library of case studies to back up their work. Here's some options on URL structure:

1. /cases/[industry keyword]-[service keyword]   (for instance: /cases/retail-pest-control)

There is some search traffic for the industry/service combination, so that would be the benefit of using both in URL. But we'd end up with about 70 pages with the same service keyword at the end.

2. /cases/[industry keyword] (/cases/retail)

Shorter, less spam potential, but have to optimize for the service keyword -- the primary -- in another way.

3. /cases/clientname (/cases/wehaveants)

No real keyword potential but better usability.

We also want the service keyword to rank on its own on another page (so, a separate "pest control" page). So don't want to dilute that page's value even after we chase some of the long tail traffic.

Any thoughts on the best course of action? Thanks!