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Hello CalicoKitty,

I've been dealing with something somewhat similar for my website (slight drop in rankings, but in my case it includes a targeted penalty, not sitewide thank goodness!) If I were you I'd definitely look at your backlinks. I've disavowed and asked for a bunch of mine removed.

Since you don't have a penalty but are losing some rankings, here are some references that have helped me decide which links are worth keeping (along with everything else that goes along with trying to get rid of a penalty).

The quick and dirty rule of thumb I use (in addition to using the Moz Bar to also gauge the value of a link) is do I think this website is genuinely built for real people who might find what I'm talking about or selling useful. If it's on the fence, I generally leave it (especially since you don't have a current penalty) but if you know in your gut it doesn't seem helpful at all, and is built more for the search engines and looks like a junk page, then you're probably looking at a bad link.Identifying Link Penalties, 2012: http://moz.com/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012He does a nice job of comparing a good link profile with one that has a lot of bad links. (Essentially the same anchor text.)You can find a lot of good articles on the subject by Mozer Marie Hayne. She also wrote an excellent book on the topic available here. http://www.unnaturallinksrecovery.com. It walks you through every kind of link you might run across. The ebook is about $100 though, so I personally wouldn't buy it if I don't have a penalty on my website. That said, I bought it and I'm not sure how I would have ever worked through my penalty without her step-by-step assistance in the book.http://moz.com/community/users/308135In depth look at quality guidelines.http://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelinesMy answered question on which links to remove, which Marie weighed in on:http://moz.com/community/q/manual-action-when-requesting-links-be-removed-how-important-to-google-is-the-address-you-re-sending-the-requests-from#reply_256531How to conduct a link audit:http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2207168/How-to-Conduct-a-Link-Audithttp://searchenginewatch.com/article/2330944/7-Things-You-May-Not-Know-About-Googles-Disavow-Tool - Mariehttp://moz.com/community/q/is-this-negative-seo-should-i-disavow-these-links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7WK3s693oI&list=UU3jmlL2rHbipq_2tDd5zDRA

wattlebristol,

I had the same epiphany you're having here.

It used to be much, much worse though. Over time the pendulum has increasingly swayed toward the white hat, or at least grey hat side. A site like copyblogger.com ranks at the top for every term they care about, because ever since the very beginning they've preached and lived by creating good content. And they have no fear of getting knocked off their pedestal.

But that's not to say other techniques don't still work. And in some cases they obviously are more effective than "create great content."

One rule of thumb I live by is that Google does not live to make your website popular. It wants to reward content that is already popular in real life. Kingof5 however, makes a strong point that it's not about white or grey, it's about risk tolerance. Do what you feel comfortable believing Google will never penalize you for based on what you are seeing. And be ready to live with the results.

Hello PTHerrington,

You certainly have your work cut out for you, that's for sure.

If I were you, here's what I'd do:

• Analyze where my competitors are weak when it comes to online local marketing, and exploit those areas especially. It sounds like the main advantage they have are offices in those towns, which you can't duplicate. I personally wouldn't bother with the PO Box option. I doubt it will help a whole lot with your end game from actually netting more customers.
• I'd start with a good Google AdWords budget while you're trying to build rank organically. Over time hopefully you'll have to spend less and less on AdWords, but out of the gate you'll need it to get traction over organic competitors. Ideally you'd have really good landing pages that drive them to a page for that town, or county if towns are not feasible. (Of course, if you worked hard on a handful of pages for individual towns for organic, those could double for PPC nicely.)
• People generally don't search as much for services on a county level. So I'd argue you should focus on a few small, key town pages, and try to fill them with as much local content as possible and try to educate your consumer a bit, beyond what your competitors are doing. Over time those pages could get rankings, but doing the H1 county thing with H2 town names I don't think will deliver.

Here's an example of a woman who created good local content and from it grew not only a pet sitting business for herself, but a thriving franchise business other pet sitters have replicated in their cities. I'd assume her area was dominated by larger kennels etc., and she appears to be a one-person operation. http://www.copyblogger.com/bella-vasta-case-study/

• Be sure obviously to check out Moz Local, and listen to Greg Gifford's webinar on local SEO. He helps local car dealerships, and that webinar is packed with good, practical ideas you can execute on.

In summary, I'd argue don't try to cover everything. Just pick a few towns and test out what works, and then slowly expand out with additional pages. You can always mention other cities you operate in. But don't try and bit off your entire coverage area with regional pages.

Most companies do little more in local SEO than register a Google Places page and have a physical address. So if you try to create a little more value and optimize heavily for those towns, over time I bet you'd see some good results.

Depends what your ultimate plan is. If it's a big blog and it's the ideal audience to get in front of for your product, it's definitely worth the traffic. If they click through and join your list or look around and purchase etc., then that's worth it.

But if you just want the link for the ranking value, then no it probably is not.

Think of it as though you are an opening band. Sure, getting paid is nice, but access to the audience who then becomes fans of your band for years to come is a lot better than just getting paid to perform.

Hello Gebby,

You can put it in the title tags. If I ran a local business, I'd use it on a few title tags, but not my entire site.

I'd encourage you to think of how many different ways  you can really highlight on your website that you are a local company, both for your visitor and therefore Google. It's not really about how many times you add it to a title tag.

If you're going after local traffic, you should make sure your address ideally is part of every page, (like in the footer) or somewhere. That can also include things like a directions to our store page. Use local reference information in your copy as well. Be sure to fill out local directories as well, especially Google+ Local store page (I can't recall the new name for this). Ideally if you partner with other businesses in town, have a page of recommended partners, and get your partners to do the same for you. You want to send Google as many signals that you are part of that local community. Collectively those efforts will help you show up well in local search results.

An SEO that specializes in local results will hopefully chime in with more specifics.

Not sure I 100% grasp the situation, but if you intend to work with him for a year or longer, creating an affiliate network for his business could bring in a lot more leads. Ours has turned out to work amazingly well for this.

Brian,

I agree with what Lumina wrote.

Sometimes when I run into this problem I look at the competition for the term, and then figure out how many backlinks my competitors who are ranking in the top 10 for that keyword are showing/their DAs, etc. the top 10 have, and compare it to my own.

It won't give you a super firm answer, but sometimes it's enough to explain why the top 10 is beating you.

Thanks Alex,

It I assume could also be the "nofollow" issue Mike mentioned.

Hello frustrated wattlebristol,

I know, this kind of stuff annoys the heck out of me.

I even wrote a long post about basically the same issue, here in the U.S.

It was also dealing with design, but this guy created a network of simple landing pages to pull off the same sort of trick, but in cities all over the country.

http://www.patrickgarmoe.com/fooling-google/

I do think bit-by-bit Google is eliminating this sort of obvious flagrant disobedience of the rules, but it sure is frustrating for those of us trying to follow the rules.

Thanks for the insight. Will have to check out your book.

One follow up. Is there a rule of thumb between the time you get a message in Google Webmaster Tools, and the time you get penalized for not getting rid of those links or sending a disavow report?

I agree with everything BlueprintMarketing said.

I would add that you should back up your blog posts, just in case something goes berserk. If you're on a paid theme or going to another paid theme, normally their support might have some advice for you.

I second Genesis/Studio Press framework from Copyblogger Media. I have one, and never had any issues when I switched from a free theme to a paid one. Never used Woo Themes, but I've heard good things.

I took a look at the links you posted. I'm not sure of what your business is, so I can't comment on relevance.

Some of these links hopefully popped up naturally, though if you had a previous SEO firm doing work, some of them might have come via that channel.

http://www.mobileresources.net/mobi/Night_Shark_Fishing_Florida/ is definitely a directory.

I used the Moz bar to show me it has a Page Authority of 1, and a domain authority of 25, so I would email the webmaster and ask them to "nofollow" the link or remove it, if not relevant to your business. Because of the low ranking, if it were my website, I wouldn't worry about it hurting my rankings by having it removed/nofollow.

On http://drama.academia.edu/LelaRanson I would leave this one. It has high DA value of 85 and at least on the surface looks like good content.

http://jeremyrymill.tumblr.com/post/93825362281/the-canaveral-circus

I personally wouldn't worry about stuff on Tumblr, as many social networks automatically nofollow all tags. Here you can see some of the links on the page are nofollow.

The post <a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">rel</a><a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">="nofollow" href="</a>http://ift.tt/1v4ezED">The Canaveral Circus appeared first on <a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">rel</a><a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">="nofollow" href="</a>http://ift.tt/1oFpDCf">Florida Fishing Stories.

Since you don't have a penalty, I honestly wouldn't spend lots of time getting rid of bad links as long as you believe no one on your end sought them out to begin with, like a former SEO. Focus more on continuing to build relevant links and content locally people want to link to. Easier said than done I know. But theoretically if Google hasn't taken a manual action of any sort out on your website, your issue lies with competitors simply optimizing more effectively, not "bad links."

If I'm reading the screen shot right, I wouldn't be worried. Seems like normal to me.

If you're not doing anything black or grey hat that you're worried Google might not like, I'm not sure why you'd be worried about getting delisted or penalized in any way.