Panda and unnatural links caused ranking drop
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Hi
I have been approached to do some SEO work for a site that has been hit badly by the latest panda update 3.3, they have also had a warning in their Google webmaster tools account saying they had unnatural looking links to their site, they received this in 26 Feb and that prompted them to stop working with their excising seo company and look for a new one.
Apparently their rankings for the keywords they were targeting have dropped dramatically, but it looks like just those they were actively building back links for, other phrases do not look affected.
Before I take them on I want to be clear that it is possible to help them reclaim their rankings?
I have checked the site and the on-page seo is good, the site build is good, just a few errors to fix but the links that have been built by the seo company are low quality with a lot of spun articles and the same anchor text so I see what the Google webmaster tools message is refuring to.
I do not think these links can be removed as there is no contact details on the sites I checked I have not checked all of them but a random sample does not show promise, they are from low authority domains.
So if I am to take them on as a client and help them to regain their previous rankings what is the best strategy? Obviously they want results yesterday and from our phone call they would rather someone else did the work than them, so my initial response of add some better quality content that others in your industry would link to as a reference did not go down well, to be fair I think it is a time issue there are only 3 people in the company and they are not technical at all.
Thanks for your help
Sean
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Here are some simple first step that will at the very least fix any of the underlying issues that were addressed by Google.
1. Contact the past SEO Company directly, explain to them the warnings from Google and see if they will give you that info. You never know as it never hurts to try. Many SEO companies would like to keep there reputation even after being dismissed by a client.
2.What If that doesn't work? Contact the site owners per each site and explain to them that you have been hired to address SEO warning by Google caused by a prior seo company and you would like to resolve it by requesting them to delete the articles. This is actually a win/win because I don't know any website owner that really wants garbage on there site.
3. I don't see why there would not be an opportunity to increase there rankings again. I would be upfront with them and explain to them that its pretty much like starting from scratch and that past rankings are irreverent. Send them the release about the JCPENNY incident so they can familiarize themselves with the situation that they have encountered. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380306,00.asp
4. Once you've solved these issues, do what you do best and optimize there off-page SEO, since you said there on-page is pretty good.
You said they want results yesterday. Don't give in to there pressure by making any false promises. Just be straight forward. It's better to lose a client with a piece of mind then make them false promises that will end up haunting you later.
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