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 handle URLs of the to-be-translated pages on a multilingual site
Dear Moz community, I have a multilingual site and there are pages with content that is supposed to be translated but for now is English only. The structure of the site is such that different languages have their virtual subdirs: domain.com/en/page1.html for English, domain.com/fr/page1.html for French and so on. Obviously, if the page1.html is not translated, the URLs point to the same content and I get warnings about duplicate content. I see two ways to handle this situation: Break the naming scheme and link to original English pages, i.e. instead of domain.com/fr/index.html linking to domain.com/fr/page1.html link to domain.com/en/page.html Leave the naming scheme intact and set up a 301 redirect so that /fr/page1.html redirects to /en/page1.html Is there any difference for the two methods from the SEO standpoint? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Lomar0 -
Is a micro site the way to go?
Hello, a client has asked us today to quote for how much it would cost them to get a micro site built. A Google employee has told them that because their current URL doesn't include .co.uk or.com it is simply: brandname.word that it will be harder for them to get their website to rank. My understanding is that micro sites aren't a good solution for any problem as Google doesn't like them. Would it be better for them to buy a .co.uk (they are a UK company) url and then redirect the url to their current website or is there a better solution? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | mblsolutions0 -
How do I get my pages to go from "Submitted" to "Indexed" in Google Webmaster Tools?
Background: I recently launched a new site and it's performing much better than the old site in terms of bounce rate, page view, pages per session, session duration, and conversions. As suspected, sessions, users, and % new sessions are all down. Which I'm okay with because the the old site had a lot of low quality traffic going to it. The traffic we have now is much more engaged and targeted. Lastly, the site was built using Squarespace and was launched the middle of August. **Question: **When reviewing Google Webmaster Tools' Sitemaps section, I noticed it says 57 web pages Submitted, but only 5 Indexed! The sitemap that's submitted seems to be all there. I'm not sure if this is a Squarespace thing or what. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | Nate_D0 -
Which way round to 301 redirect?
Hi We have just added a new layered navigation menu to our website. so for example we had Before : www.tidy-books.co.uk/chidlrens-bookcases (this has the seo juice) And Now: http://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-book-storage/childrens-bookcases Might be a stupid question but do I redirect the 'now' url to the 'before' url or the the other way round I look forward to hearing your thoughts Thanks
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
What is the best way to refresh a webpage of a news site, SEO wise?
Hello all, we have a client which is a sports website. In fact it is a veyr big website and has a huge number of news per day. This is mostly the reason why it refreshes some of its pages with news list every 420 seconds. We currently use meta refresh. I have read here and elsewhere that meta refreshes should be avoided. But we don't do it to send to another page and pass any kind of page authority / juice. Is in this case javascript refresh better? Is there any other better way. What do you think & suggest? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | pkontopoulos0 -
My Rankings Keep Going Down - Needs some more ideas on why...
Hi Everyone, I have been working on the website www.PetsSpark.com for a while now. I used to be on the first page for many of my keywords, now I am lucky if i am on the 2nd or 3rd. I stopped my SEO efforts for about 3 months while making changes to the website, its whithin these 3 months that I started dropping from the first page. The biggest thing I notice is the "type" of website now ranking for my main keywords. Mostly Forums, Blogs, or Product Review websites. Take for instance Dog Tear Stain Remover. I used to rank at about #5 for this keyword and now i rank at #20. I'm not sure if my loss of ranking is a combination of things like who Google is letting rank now or if there is something wrong on my website, etc. Can anyone give me a little insight?? Please.... I will also be happy to give more information about what has been going on if needed.
Technical SEO | | DTOSI0 -
Is Go Daddy a bad domain?
I heard today that Go Daddy is not the besting hosting domain for websites...it isn't crawled well by websites. Is this true? What is the best hosting domain?
Technical SEO | | CapitolShine0 -
Are article sites a good way to generate traffic and links
I read a lot that article sites are a great way to generate links and traffic but i would like to hear from people on here to see about their experience with article sites. I have tried article sites and i have to be honest that most of them are no follow links and have also not generate any traffic. I have written over 30 articles for free article sites with no traffic coming from them and this has been done over a eight month period can anyone recommend any good article sites that can produce traffic and also ones that produce do follow If you feel i am wasting my time putting articles on free sites then please do tell me
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860