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Hi,

I recently hired a link builder (who works for a digital marketing agency and wanted to earn some extra cash ) to do some link building for me on keyword Carpet Cleaner Hire

Basically , May my ranking for this work has moved from 29 up to 13 , then down to 500 + and now up to 67 ?.

It's been all over the place and I am worried that maybe google thinks its unnatural or to many links etc.

I looked at some of the work this chap did and there was a log of bookmarks done , apparently to increase social awareness and some articles on random forums I never heard of but the articles didn't look to good and in my eyes were a little spammy..

I don't have any messages in WMT saying I have been penalised or anything but I am naturally worried that this chap may have caused damaged and that I was manually penalised.

I have since asked him to stop immediately..

1. does this sound normal for the ranking to be all over the place in this manner when link building ?

2. How can I tell if I have been manually penalized in any way ?

3. What;s the general consensus ?.

4. Should I contact google or leave it and see what happens ?

5. Other keywords seems to be okay though.

Any advice much appreciated.

thanks

Sarah.

You could always try Copyscape which will show you if you put in both urls.

Hi All,

We have an ecommerce Website with multiple locations for our stores and we currently display separate location specific pages for the different categories and sub categories. This has helped us previously to rank well for local search in each of the areas we have a store but over the last few months since humingbird, our local rankings on some things have dip a little .

We want to implement a branch locator of some description to improve the user experience.

From looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages.

1. My query is should I do it so if  a user comes in on a specific category location page and follows it through to product page , then to have a tab on the product page displaying the local branch from which he can come in. My thinking here is that , is that it would help confirm my local citations and help improve local rankings. Or Should the local branch be displayed on the local category pages instead or as well ?.

2. If a user comes in from the homepage or not on a specific location page, then the branch locator will allow them to search for a specific branch.

3. Should I also put in a branch locator as a separate page or can It be in more places.

I don't want to damage anything which may have an effect on rankings due to citations and NAP on the location specific pages.

Any advice or good examples to look at would be greatly appreciated

thanks

Sarah.