Ranking for brand name but no other terms (no manual penalty) is this penguin?
-
Hi guys,
I would like your opinions on this site www.colourbanners.co.uk
Seems to be ranking for 'colour banners' but has dropped for keywords such as 'banners' and 'pvc banners' which were ranking well.
There has been no manual actions against the site so im assuming this is an algo penalty?
Any ideas/suggestions what could be causing this?
regards
Gerry
-
Not 100% sure if it's Penguin per se but it's definitely a link based problem. Look at all of the top anchor text to the site - it's entirely commercial keywords --> http://screencast.com/t/gt4zbWiWNxMc
What I've seen happen in this cases is that you will artificially rank well for some of those keywords for a little while and then a link algo catches up with you and you'll drop to where you should have been (or lower) all along.
Your on-site isn't as poorly over-optimized as other sites I've seen, but it could be toned down a little but removing keyword repetition / stuffing in the titles/URLs/descriptions etc.
You should definitely try to change the anchor text on any of the back links that might be good links, but just too optimized from an anchor standpoint. Use natural non-exact match anchors or branded / domain for the anchor text.
For any links that are just plain old bad/spammy/low quality - try to remove them or disavow them.
-
Hi Gerry,
You say that your site dropped in rankings. How much did the site drop and about when did the rankings drop? Also, did you make any changes to the site before the drop?
Thanks.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
A couple things come to my mind after a quick look of your backlink profile:
- Not too much authority.
- Some spammy backlinks, even though you didn't receive a manual penalty, you should consider using the disavow tool to avoid any penalization. As stated by Matt Cutts a wekk ago or so, Webmasters should use the disavow tool even if they didn't get a manual penalty just to prevent one.
- Consider adding more valuable content to your site. Even though you have content, try to come up with information that isn't available elsewhere, perhaps a blog? Brainstorm some ideas and choose the best approach depending on your business model.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Alternate Spelling of Brand
Our brand is called The Queen's Lace. Based on Search Console, more people search for it by "Queens Lace" than "The Queen's Lace". Any suggestions on how I can improve SEO on "Queens Lace"? Search Console (last 28 days) "the queen's lace": 206 impressions, 60.7% CTR, 1.1 avg position "queens lace": 518 impressions, 46.3% CTR, 2.2 avg position Note: our domain is thequeenslace.com and I use a redirect from queenslace.com. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | pmk0
Patrick0 -
Slowly recovering from algorithm penalty
Hi , over the years a website we took over was hit by an algorithm penalty (a combination of penguin and panda). We managed to bring rankings back (after 6 months) from page 5/6 to page 2 after we used the google disavow tool. now for the past 9 months we have been stuck on page 2.. is there anything you think can be done to bring it back to page 1? we are building quality links now and moved away from low quality links other link builders were making. We are managing the process much closer and ensuring we maintain good standards of links. also making the pages flatter and merging short page content to larger content pages now we are looking at site structure and creating structured internal link flow is there anything we should be aware of and any recommendations to get back on page 1.. this is a tailor-made travel related website with a small selection of destinations
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
Domain Change -- Drop in Rank
So I had a client that recently decided to change their URL to make it more "searchable"/shorter. Since doing so, I have noticed a significant drop in rankings for a number of the keyword terms we were previously ranking for. Is there a way to push the links to the new URL or is the only solution to revert back to the old URL?
Technical SEO | | maxcarnage0 -
Changing URL - Ranking Disappeared?
Hi All, I named a page URL /plectrums/ within the back end framework. But then decided to change it to /personalised-plectrums/ I resubmitted a GWT sitemap and 301 redirected plectrums -> personalised-plectrums My ranking for personalised plectrums has disappeared and has not come back does anyone know why this is? Or is there something I have missed? Lewis
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
# in url affecting rank
Hi I am building links to a page www.companyname.com/category.index.php There is also another similar url www.companyname.com/category.index.php#. This page is linked to from the non # page. This is a new client and I'm not entirely sure why that link is there. Am I correct in thinking that these two urls are different in the eyes of the search engines? If so, would some of the link juice to www.companyname.com/category.index.php be transferred to www.companyname.com/category.index.php# and affect the ranking of the non # page? I hope this makes sense! Thanks
Technical SEO | | sicseo0 -
Delayed Penalty...
I received the 7/23/12 Unnatural inbound links warning but nothing changed, if anything my traffic and rankings improved well over the next 2 - 3 months. But last week a couple of the better (maybe slightly over) optimized pages suddenly dropped out of the rankings completely, is it possible that these two events are related but three months apart? A change I made close to the time of the rankings dropping was completely overhauling the homepage. I realized this would impact the internal "link juice" flow but never expected the kind of drop in rankings I received. I have restored the homepage to its former glory but it hasn't helped get my slightly over optimized pages ranking again. Any ideas? Suggestions? Exact date of drop in rankings is 18 - 19 October (site has lost roughly 50% of its organic search traffic)
Technical SEO | | Stan_C0 -
Domains redirect influence search rankings
Hi seomoz, I'm currently optimizing a website which is www.photobookworldwide.com and the ranking is on 2nd page, but looking at the result this morning, instead of showing photobookworldwide.com, it show other result which is www.photobooklaos.com on 2nd page for the keyword photobooks. Our web developer using virtual domain, and redirected photobooklaos.com to photobookworldwide.com. Any solution for this? need you guys to help me on this. Cheers Gerald
Technical SEO | | greathokage0 -
Sudden ranking drop, no manual action
Sort of a strange situation I'm having and I wanted to see if I could get some thoughts. Here's what has happened... Monday morning, I realized that my website, which had been showing up at the bottom of page 2 for a specific result, had now been demoted to the bottom of page 6 (roughly a 40 spot demotion). No other keyword searches were affected. I immediately figured that this was some sort of keyword-specific penalty that I had incurred. I had done a bit of link building over the weekend (two or three directory type sites and a bio link from a site I contribute to). I also changed some anchor text on another site to match my homepage's title tag (which just so happened to be the exact phrase match I had dropped in) - I assumed this was what got me. I was slowly beginning to climb up the rankings and just got a bit impatient/overzealous. Changed the anchor text back to what it originally was and submitted a reconsideration request on Tuesday. This morning, I get the automated response in Webmaster Tools that no manual action had been taken. So my question is, would this drop have been an automated deal? If that's the case, then it's going to be mighty hard to pinpoint what I did wrong, since there's no way to know when I did whatever it was to cause the drop. Any ideas/thoughts/suggestions to regain my modest original placement?
Technical SEO | | sandlappercreative0