Negative seo by Shady SEO Firm?
-
Recently a former client of man called me up and said that his rankings for his Auto Repair Shop in Tacoma WA had dropped and he had his worst November in sales since they hired this new SEO firm to rebuild their website and provide SEO. Of course the first thing I did was check his back links and sure enough there are 22 links from Yellowbook.com all pointed to different cities
I checked the SEO firms website and they and they had 4 links from YellowBook. The problem was the links from YellowBook were all optimized from different cities. I am pretty sure Google penalized my client for the unnatural back-links to YellowCrook.com. Does the community agree that these links caused the penalty? I included the links in pictures on my LinkedIn Profile. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-how-google-erased-60-percent-revenue-from-small-meshach?published=t
Here are the links.
<colgroup><col width="202"> <col width="545"></colgroup>
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/automotive |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lower-queen-anne-seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Lower Queen Anne Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/bonney-lake-wa/mechanic | Mechanic in Bonney Lake, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-mechanics | Auto Mechanics in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/shoreline-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Shoreline, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair | Auto Repair in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lynnwood-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Lynnwood, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Auburn, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/redmond-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Redmond, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/matthews-beach-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Matthews Beach Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/wilburton-bellevue-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Wilburton Bellevue, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/laurelhurst-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Laurelhurst Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa-98166/auto-oil-lube |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/gig-harbor-wa/auto-oil-lube | Auto Oil Lube in Gig Harbor, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/northeast-seattle-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Northeast Seattle Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-transmission |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/burien-wa/automotive | Automotive in Burien, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com | -
After further looking at his search results I noticed that his keyword that he was number 1 for the last 3 years. Tacoma Auto Care was still showing high up in the organic results. Number 4 behind 2 yelp results and one other company. But he was still number 10 to 15 in the 3-pack results for the same keyword. This leads me to conclude that the Yellowpage links destroyed his NAP with all the different cities they added. See picture attached
Also when you use the same search terms in BING there is NO LOCAL Penalty.
Bing Tacoma Auto Care
Bing Tacoma Auto Repair
www.philsautocareinc.com shows up number 1 and number 3 respectively.
Now we all know how to knock out our local competition in Google Don't We?
-
Thanks for the response. The company Philsautocareinc.com has had stead rankings for 3 years. They hired this new company www.effectivewebsolutions.biz to do their website site in April of 2016. They took 3 months to build the website and then started SEO work around July August 2016. The reason I focused on the Yellowpage links is because www.effectivewebsolutions.biz has the exact same links pointing to there site. So i know they are the ones who did it. Since this business physical address is in Tacoma wouldn't googles algorithms still see the different cities in the Yellowbook links as spam? Just saying.
-
Agree with Marcel, in essence he recommends a deeper dive. I recommend collate links, from majestic, moz, ahrefs and WMT's. Then you have to go through them each manually.
I tend to focus on exact matching anchor text, and non branded anchors. That is where you usually find the culprits. Also when identified disavow from the root.
Focusing on bad links though is not enough.
I would also be tracking any other site changes, did the new seo company change any title tags, h1's etc. Is the page speed still under 2 seconds... you should be able to do deep dive off WMT's as it all seems within 90 days... pin point some dates of drops... look at the words specifically that have dropped. Get granular. WMT's should really help at this stage, so I would do a deep dive there, capture as much data as you can as it is slipping away.
Hope that helps.
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
-
What is the best strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimJ3 -
Website rankings plummeted after a negative SEO attack - help!
Hello Mozzers A website of a new client (http://bit.ly/PuVNTp) use to rank very well. It was on the top page for any relevant search terms in its industry in Southern Ontario (Canada). Late last year, the client was the victim of a negative SEO attack. Thousands upon thousands of spammy backlinks were built (suspected to be bought using something like Fiverr). The links came from very questionable sites or just low quality sites. The backlink growth window was very small (2,000 every 24 hours or so). Since that happened that site has all but disappeared from search results. It is still indexed and the owner has disavowed most of the bad backlinks but the site can't seem to bounce back. The same happened for another site that they own (http://bit.ly/1tErxpu) except the number backlinks produced was even higher. The sites both suffer from duplicate content issues and at one point (in 2012) were de-indexed due to the very spammy work of a former SEO. They came back in early 2013 and were fine for some time. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mattylac0 -
Identifying a Negative SEO Campaign
Hi A friend/clients site has recently dropped 2-3 pages (from an average #2 - #3 position on page 1 over last few months) for a primary target keyword & suspects a Neg SEO campaign hence asked me to look into it. I checked on Removeem and the KW does not generate a red (or even a pink) result. I looked at Ahrefs & MajSEO, backlinks and referring domains have dropped over the period the KW dropped hence presume i can be sure its not a neg campaign since this would show an opposite pattern (as per articles like this: http://moz.com/blog/to-catch-a-spammer-uncovering-negative-seo ) ? Also site has very few site wide backlinks. The keyword is a 3 word phrase with 2 of those words being in the domain and brand name hence presume such kw are relatively safe from neg seo campaigns anyway I would have presumed the backlink/ref-domain drop may well explain the ranking drop but site still in first field of view of page 1 for the other keyphrases which 2 out of the 3 are words are same as effected keyphrase (and also in the domain/brand name) so would have thought these would have dropped too if a neg campaign. Also many of the anchor texts in the disapeared backlinks are for one of the other partial match variant keyphrases which are still top of page 1. Anchor text is at 4.35% for the effected kw according to MajSEO Im pretty confident from the above that i can conclude no negative seo campaign has occurred, nor other type of penalty and probably just a 'wobble' at Google that may well right itself shortly Would appreciate feedback though from others that im concluding correctly just for confirmation ? Many Thanks Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Victim of Negative SEO - Can I Redirect the Attacked Page to an External Site?
My site has been a victim of Negative SEO. During the course of 3 weeks, I have received over 3000 new backlinks from 200 referring domains (based on Ahref report). All links are pointing to just 1 page (all other pages within the site are unaffected). I have already disavowed as many links as possible from Ahref report, but is that all I can do? What if I continue to receive bad backlinks? I'm thinking of permanently redirecting the affected page to an external website (a dummy site), and hope that all the juice from the bad backlinks will be transferred to that site. Do you think this would be a good practice? I don't care much about keeping the affected page on my site, but I want to make sure the bad backlinks don't affect the entire site. The bad backlinks started to come in around 3 weeks ago and the rankings haven't been affected yet. The backlinks are targeting one single keyword and are mostly comment backlinks and trackbacks. Would appreciate any suggestions 🙂 Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
href="#" and href="javascript.void()" links. Is there a difference SEO wise?
I am currently working a site re-design and we are looking at if href="#" and href="javascript.void()" have an impact on the site? We were initially looking at getting the links per page down but I am thinking that rel=nofollow is the best method for this. Anyone had any experience with this? Thanks in advanced
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | clickermediainc0 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
UK SEO Agency Recommendations
Hi, I am currently looking for a new SEO agency to manage strategies on 3 websites, budget of about £15k pm in total. Any recommendations would be really appreciated as trying to navigate through all the usual sales waffle and hollow promises of most SEO agencies is becoming rather difficult. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cewe0 -
Abused seo unintentionally, now need a way out
Hello, I have been in contact with a smo to optimize my site for search engines and social media sites. my site was doing great from last 4 years. but suddenly it started dropping in ranking. then i came and joined seomoz pro to find a way out. i was suggested to categories content in form of subdomains ... well that put a huge toll on my rankings.. thanks to suggestions here i have 301 them to sub directories. Now another huge question arises. i found out that my smo guy was taking artificial votes or whatever youc all them on twitter, facebook and g+ ...twitter and facebook's are understandable but i am getting to think that these votings on g+ might have affected my site's ranking ? here is a sample url http://www.designzzz.com/cutest-puppy-pictures-pet-photography-tips/ if you scroll below you will see 56 google plus 1s... now the big question is, i have been creating genuince content. but nowt hat i am stuck in this situation, how to get out of it ? changing urls will be bad for readers.. will a 301 will fix it ? or any other method. thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wickedsunny10