Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Ben,

That's a fantastic response, thank you for taking the time to look.

You're right, I was going to mention fasteners being a boring industry - I bookmarked the very same webinar a few days ago but have only seen a small amount of it so far.

The reason I was looking at Penguin etc is that on those terms we've gone from 1st page to oblivion in recent months. There are sites above us with no links or activity, and that aren't relevant. Does that point to a bad backlink profile in that case? As you say, I'll continue with removing the poor quality directory links as that can't hurt, they won't have been passing value anyway.

I'll send removal requests twice and then disavow if nothing changes after a few weeks. Is there anything specific notes-wise I need to put in a disavow (ie 'sent removal request 8/11, no response') or is just a list of domains / links? I notice Google has changed the way they look at things - you can check if any manual spam actions have been taken directly in Webmaster Tools now, negating the need for a reconsideration request. Am I right in thinking that all we can do with Google is disavow?

First stop is to take a look at the 'content marketing in boring industries' webinar, and then I'll formulate a new content marketing strategy as you suggested.

Thanks for your advice.

Anything further you or anyone else can add would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Stephen

Hi,

I asked a question around 6 months ago about our rankings steadily declining since April of 2013. I did originally reply to that topic a few days ago, but as it's so old I don't think it's been noticed. I'm posting again here, if that's an issue I'm happy to delete. Here it is for reference:

http://moz.com/community/q/site-rankings-steadily-decreasing-do-i-need-to-remove-links

Since the original post,  I have done nothing linkbuilding-wise except posting blog posts and sharing them on Facebook, G+ and Twitter.

There are some links in there which don't look great (ie spammy seo directories, which I'm sending removal requests to) although quite a lot of others are relevant. Here's my link profile:

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a>

I've tried to make the site more accessible - we now have a simple, responsive design and I've tried to make the content clear and concise. In short, written for humans rather than search engines.

As of the end of November, 'nuts and bolts' has now disappeared completely, and 'bolts and nuts' is page 8. There are many pages much higher which are not as relevant and have no links. We still rank highly for more specialised terms - ie 'bsw bolts' and 'imperial bolts' are still page 1, but not as high as before.

We get an 'A' grade on the on-page grader for 'nuts and bolts, and most above us get F. I was cautious about removing links as our profile doesn't seem too bad but it does seem as if it's that. There are a fair few questionable directories in there, no doubt about that, but our overall practice in recent years has been natural building and link earning.

So - I've created a spreadsheet and identified the bad links - ie directories with any SEO connotations. I am about to submit removal requests, I thought two polite requests a couple of weeks apart prior to disavowing with Google. But am I safe to disavow straight away? I say this as I don't think I'll get too many responses from those directories.

I am also gradually beefing up the content on the shop pages in case of any 'thin content' issues after advice on the previous post.

I noticed 100s of broken links in webmaster tools last week due to 2 broken links on our blog that repeated on every page and have fixed those. I have also been fixing errors W3C compliance-wise.

Am I right to do all this? Can anyone offer any suggestions? I'm still not 100% sure if this is Panda, Penguin or something else. My guess is Penguin, but the decline started in March 2013, which correlates with Panda.

Best Regards and thanks for any help,

Stephen

OK, it's now a few months later, with nothing linkbuilding-wise except posting blog posts on Facebook, G+ and Twitter.

I've tried to make the site more accessible - we now have a simple, responsive design and I've tried to make the content clear and concise. In short, written for humans rather than search engines.

As of the end of November, 'nuts and bolts' has now disappeared completely, and 'bolts and nuts' is page 8. There are many pages much higher which are not as relevant and have no links. We still rank highly for more specialised terms - ie 'bsw bolts' and 'imperial bolts' are still page 1, but not as high as before.

We get an 'A' grade on the on-page grader for 'nuts and bolts, and most above us get F. I was cautious about removing links as our profile doesn't seem too bad but it does seem as if it's that. There are a fair few questionable directories in there, no doubt about that, but our overall practice in recent years has been natural building and link earning.

So - I've created a spreadsheet and identified the bad links - ie directories with any SEO connotations. I am about to submit removal requests, I thought two polite requests a couple of weeks apart prior to disavowing with Google.

I am also gradually beefing up the content on the shop pages in case of any 'thin content' issues.

I noticed 100s of broken links in webmaster tools due to 2 broken links on our blog and have fixed those. I have also been fixing errors W3C compliance-wise.

Am I right to do all this? Can anyone offer any suggestions? I'm still not 100% sure if this is Panda, Penguin or something else. My guess is Penguin, but the decline started in March 2013, which correlates with Panda.

Best Regards and thanks for any help,

Stephen

Thank you very much for the responses, much appreciated.

That's what's confusing me. I haven't built any links in 1-2 years for that domain. All I do is post on the blog, Facebook, Twiiter and G+.

I've sent some removal requests to the more obvious ones with names like seodirectory etc.

Should I wait or would you just send a disavow to Google now?

Best Regards,

Stephen

One of my sites that has always ranked 1st page on main keyphrases is now between pages 4 and 10 on them, I'm guessing it's been hit by Penguin 2.1.

Can anyone offer advice? Here's the link profile:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.hgoodwin.com

Any advice greatly appreciated.

UPDATE - Open Site Explorer only shows 95 links. I've checked my links in Google Webmaster Tools, and there are a lot more - 717! The vast majority I don't recognise and look dodgy. How could that happen, and what's the best course of action - is disavow the way to go? I don't even want to click some of those links.

Best Regards,

Stephen

Can any of you knowledgeable chaps please help with this?

As  my last post says, I'm getting an 'A' grade on the Moz on-page grader, but 31 repeats of 'bsf bolts' meaning it's picking up the list from the shop database.

Is there a way around this? In the description of the item, I've changed BSW to 'Whitworth' where possible (means the same), but I'm stuck on 31 repeats, which is obviously too many. I thought Google ignored shop database lists of items, but seemingly not.

Best Regards,

Stephen

Hi Cyrus,

Thank you very much for your response.

I have added content related to the bolt threadforms on my page to give more information. However, the ranking on the BSF Bolts page has decreased from 4th to 9th.

http://www.thomassmithfasteners.com/hexagon_bolts_bsf.html

I ran it through the MOZ on-page grader and the thing that jumps out is it says I have 22 repetitions! I think the PHP list of the shop items is being seen as keyword stuffing. Of course, I have to describe the items on each line. Is there a way to combat this?

Many thanks for your assistance.

Best Regards,

Stephen

Hi Kurt,

Many thanks for your response.

The report on links in Google Webmaster Tools shows a lot more links - but the sites no longer exist for a fair amount of them.  I'm guessing that they were removed from Google's index and then the webmaster, seeing no benefit, deleted the site.  I did see on here that Google delisted 1000s of blogs and directories in March - which ties in with when we started losing rankings.  So maybe we haven't been penalised directly but lost ranking due to say, 100 links (just a guess) no longer being active, so we aren't gaining anything from them - which is a lot when we only have 400-500 anyway.  Does that sound right?

As an example, one is something like freeseo24x7. something, which is a dead link now.

I presume directories like that are obvious bad news now, I'm going through the Google list to see if there's any more like that.  Would you delete / disavow those?

If the sites are no longer accessible for a lot of the 'bad' directories that link to us, will Google update its list for my site over time?

Since mid-April, our ranking have been steadily declining.  Our two main keywords are 'nuts and bolts' and 'bolts and nuts'.  'nuts and bolts' dropped from 7th to 46th in May and has recovered slightly to 28th, and 'bolts and nuts' moved from 7th to 16th, and is today 24th.

Ranking on keywords we specialise in have fared better, but they're fairly niche.  'bsw bolts' has moved from 2nd to 4th, and 'imperial bolts' has moved from 1st to 4th.

I think my link profile is the issue.  I don't think we've been penalised by Penguin directly (I may be wrong, I don't think we'd be page 2 on such a competitive term as 'bolts and nuts' after Penguin if we had been penalised.), but I think what's happened is that sites that link to us have been penalised, resulting in a knock on effect.  Does that sound right?

Here's my link profile:

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a>

I've been slowly building relevant links with prospective customers and kept up a very basic social media profile - just the odd blog post and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.

Do I need to delete all the directory links?  We do have links from directories that don't look fantastic, more are shown in Webmaster Tools than are listed here.  Some of the directories no longer seem to exist, I take it I don't need to do anything and Google will catch up in those cases.  Should I attempt to remove (or disavow) all links with names like best-directory etc? Or should I just concentrate on building better links? I'm not sure where to start!

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Stephen

Our rankings on the two main keywords have recovered slightly.  We've gone from page 5 to page 3 on 'nuts and bolts', and are page 2 on 'bolts and nuts'.

I think what's happened is that, rather than us being penalised directly, sites that link to us have been penalised, resulting in a knock on effect.  Does this sound reasonable?  I don't think we'd be page 2 on such a competitive term if we had been penalised.

I've been slowly building relevant links with prospective customers (ie a few classic car sites have linked to us, our old imperial bolts are very useful for them) and kept up a very basic social media profile - just the odd blog post and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.

Regarding links, looking through my link profile

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a>

we do have links from directories that don't look fantastic, more are shown in Webmaster Tools than are listed here.  Some of the directories no longer seem to exist, I take it I don't need to do anything and Google will catch up in those cases.  For the others, should I attempt to remove (or disavow) all links with names like best-directory etc? Are most directories bad these days?  Or should I just concentrate on building better links?

Again, any advice is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Stephen

Our site is over 10 years old and has consistently ranked highly in google.co.uk for over 100 key phrases.

Until the middle of April, we were 7th for 'nuts and bolts' and 5th for 'bolts and nuts' - we have been around these positions for 5-6 years easily now.

Our rankings dropped mid-April, but now (presumably as a result of Penguin 2.0), we've seen larger decreases across the board.

We are now 5th page on 'nuts and bolts', and second page on 'bolts and nuts'.  Can anyone please shed any light on this?

Although we'd fallen some before Penguin 2.0, we've fallen quite a bit further since. So I'm wondering if it's that.  We do still rank well on our more specialised terms though - 'imperial bolts', 'bsw bolts', 'bsf bolts', we're still top 5.  We've lost out with the more generic terms.

In the past we did a bit of (relevant) blog commenting and obtained some business directory links, before realising the gain was tiny if at all.  Are those likely to be the issue?  I'm guessing so.  It's hard to know which to get rid of though!  Now, I use social media sparingly, just Facebook, Twitter and G+.  The only linkbuilding I do now is by sending polite emails to people who run classic car clubs that would use our bolts, stuff like that.  I've had a decent response from that, and a few have become customers directly.

Here's our link profile if anyone would be kind enough as to have a look:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com

Also, SEOMOZ says we have too many links on our homepage (107) - the dropdown navigation is the culprit here.  Should I simply get rid of the dropdown and take users to the categories?  Any advice here would be appreciated before I make changes!  If anyone wants to take a look at the site, the URL is in the link profile above - I'm terrified of posting links anywhere now!

Thanks for your time, and I'd be very grateful for any advice.

Best Regards,

Stephen