Not sure which way to go or what to do?
-
Hi there,
I have been a pro member of SEOmoz for a while now but this is my question in the forum and although I have looked through so much helpful information I was wondering if someone could give me some further advice and guidance?
I have a 3 year old ecommerce website personalisedmugs.co.uk which until May 2012 had some excellent growth, we then lost around 50% of traffic due to reduced organic rankings in google. We then noticed a further drop again in September.
From researching information I believe this drop was from the penguin update and EMD update?
Since these updates we have:
*Stopped working with a company in India whom was looking after SEO for us for 18 months
- redeveloped/designed website and upgraded software version
- constantly refreshed website with content as we always have done
- Modified internal anchor text (this did seem keyword rich)
My next steps I believe before giving up is checking our links coming into website?
Is anybody able to please help me with regards to our links or point me in the right direction. I have no idea where to start or what do now?
Someone may see something really obvious so any help or guidance is greatly appreciated to assist me in gaining some UK organic rankings back.
Kind Regards,
Mark
-
Wow, thank you ever so much for this awesome response Cyrus! There is alot of information you have provided for me to work through, I appreciate your time.
A response to your question, we did receive a unnatural links warning back in 2011, being quite naive to this type of warning we stupidly ignored it
Once again many thanks,
Mark
-
Howdy,
Most of the major Google updates in the past 12 months have targeted backlinks more than anything else. So while it's always good to look at on-site issues and improve your site in every way, a thourough backlink audit is almost always prudent when you experience a major rankings drop - especially when the drop coincides with known Google updates.
Looking at your links in Open Site Explorer, we find several types of links that seem "suspicious" or "unnatural"
- http://personalisedtshirts.blogspot.com/ (sitewide, exact match anchor text - I highly suspect this is part of a blog network)
- http://www.wokietokie.blog.seo-catalog.com/Shopping/Gifts/ (penalized, deindexed directory)
- http://ww.w.b3directory.com/Business_and_Economy/Marketing_and_Advertising/?p=8 (low quality directory)
Unfortunately, these are the types of links targeted by Google and we often see these lead to penalties and or devaluation.
Have you received any messages/warnings in Google Webmaster Tools? That would be a good place to start. Typically, the best way to recover from this is to perform a complete link audit, then go through the arduous task of trying to get the links cleaned up, submit reconsideration requests, and possibly use the disavow tool.
I've been through it myself with several client sites and it can be a lengthy process the first time you do it. Some tips to consider:
1. What links to look at? First of all, John Mueller of Google recommends starting with the links listed in Google Webmaster Tools, as these are the links most likely to effect your rankings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX...
2. Third Party Tools: A couple of companies have developed tools to help identify bad links.
- SEOGadget Link Analyser - http://tools.seogadget.co.uk/ (has a great API - highly recommend this site)
- Link Detox - http://www.linkdetox.com/ (haven't used it, but I've heard decent things)
3. Manual Review - In the end, you're own eye is the best tool you have. You want to look for:
- links with keyword-rich, optimized anchor text
- Comment Signature and Forum Signature links (these are different from the more legitimate forum links)
- Sitewide links, such as in the sidebar or footer
- Obviously paid, or suspicious looking links on low-quality sites
Our friend Paddy Moogan wrote a great guide on how to do this step by step. You should check it out. I also made a video about earning high quality links. It might be worth a look: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/high-value-tactics-futureproof-link-building-whiteboard-friday
It usually takes Google 2-4 weeks to reply to reconsideration requests. In my experience they like to see both a manual effort to clean links, and I've also had success supplementing this with the disavow tool.
Lot's of information here. Hope it helps. Best of luck getting back on track!
-
Thanks for your answer, how do I work out which ones are spammy or not?
-
Hi Mark,
Go ahead and check all the links pointing to your website and start deleting all the spamy ones.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best way to change URL for already ranking pages
Hello. I have a lot of pages that I'm optimising. The ones I'm focusing on right now is already ranking, but the URLs could be better (they don't include the keywords right now). However I'm worried that if I change the URLs they will drop in rankings or have to start over. I would of course set up 301 redirect, but is there more I need to do? What is the best way to change URL for already ranking pages?
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
How should I close my forum in a way that's best for SEO?
Hi Guys, I have a forum on a subdomain and it is no longer used. (like forum.mywebsite.com) It kind of feels like a dead limb and I don't know what's best to do for SEO. Should I just leave it as it is and let it stagnate? There is a link in the nav menu to the main domain so users have a chance to find the main domain. Or should I remove it and just redirect the whole subdomain to the main domain? I don't know if redirects would work as I doubt most of the threads would match our articles, plus there are 700 of them. The main domain is PR3 and so is the forum subdomain. Please help!
Technical SEO | | HCHQ0 -
Is there a way for me to automatically download a website's sitemap.xml every month?
From now on we want to store all our sitemap.xml over the next years. Its a nice archive to have that allows us to analyse how many pages we have on our website and which ones were removed/redirected. Any suggestions? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency0 -
What is the best practice to seperate different locations and languages in an URL? At the moment the URL is www.abc.com/ch/de. Is there a better way to structure the URL from an SEO perspective?
I am looking for a solution for using a new URL structure without using www.abc.com**/ch/de** in the URL to deliver the right languages in specific countries where more than one language are spoken commonly. I am looking forward to your ideas!
Technical SEO | | eviom0 -
Lost with conical, nofollow noindex. Not sure how to use it on a dyanmic php site with multiple region select options
I have a site with multiple regions the main page after a region is selected is login.php but the regions are defined by ?rid=11 , 12, etc. These are being picked up as duplicate content but they are all different regions. As i hired external php coders to develop most of the site I am scared to start meddling with any of the raw code and would like some advise on how to not show these as duplicate content. should i use noindex nofollow or connical? if Connical how do i set it up on the main login.php page? p.s. i am an extreme nube to seo
Technical SEO | | moby1230 -
Which is The Best Way to Handle Query Parameters?
Hi mozzers, I would like to know the best way to handle query parameters. Say my site is example.com. Here are two scenarios. Scenario #1: Duplicate content example.com/category?page=1
Technical SEO | | jombay
example.com/category?order=updated_at+DESC
example.com/category
example.com/category?page=1&sr=blog-header All have the same content. Scenario #2: Pagination example.com/category?page=1
example.com/category?page=2 and so on. What is the best way to solve both? Do I need to use Rel=next and Rel=prev or is it better to use Google Webmaster tools parameter handling? Right now I am concerned about Google traffic only. For solving the duplicate content issue, do we need to use canonical tags on each such URL's? I am not using WordPress. My site is built on Ruby on Rails platform. Thanks!0 -
Way to find how many sites within a given set link to a specific site?
Hi, Does anyone have an idea on how to determine how many sites within a list of 50 sites link to a specific site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Best way to Handle Pagination?
At the moment I my blog is paginated like so: /blogs > /blogs/page/2 > /blogs/page/3 etc What are the benefits of paginating with dynamic URLs like here on SEOmoz with /blog?page=3
Technical SEO | | NickPateman810