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I know dramatic losses in organic traffic is a common occurrence, but having looked through the archives I'm not sure that there's a recent case that replicates my situation. I've been working to increase the content on my company's website and to advise it on online marketing practices. To that end, in the past four months, I've created about 20% more pages — most of which are very high quality blog posts; adopted some rich snippets (though not all that I would like to see at this point); improved and increased internal links within the site; removed some "suspicious" pages as id'd by Moz that had a lot of links on it (although the content was actually genuine navigation); and I've also begun to guest blog. All of the blog content I've written has been connected to my G+ account, including most of the guest blogging. And... our organic traffic is preciptiously declining. Across the board. I'm befuddled. I can see no warnings (redirects &c) that would explain this. We haven't changed the site structure much — I think the most invasive thing we did was optimize our title tags! So no URL changes, nothing. Obviously, we're all questioning all the work I've done. It just seems like we've sunk SO much energy into "doing the right thing" to no effect (this site was slammed before for its shady backlink buying — though not from any direct penalty, just as a result of the Penguin update). We noticed traffic taking a particular plunge at the beginning of June. Can anyone offer insights? Very much appreciated.

I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons. But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal. What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on? Your insights most appreciated!