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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

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

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 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