So i have the pleasure of being hit by a big G penalization
-
I noticed a pretty drastic drop in rankings 2 weeks ago after shelling out £7500 to a UK seo company for 5 months work.
I went with this company because they had showed very good results with the number one position company in an equally tough niche.
So my rankings across the board dropped, i think 12 out of my 16 tracked keywords had dropped 10+ places or more.
I immediately questioned what the hell they had been doing and was told that they were writing blog posts (which i knew about) to rank for category specific pages, but the linking method was using snippets of those blog posts to get links (which i did not know about) I was always told at the beginning that they have never given link reports and never will. Had i of known the links that were being built and they literally were the only type of link i would never have gone with them.
Since then i have taken on an established member from the SEOmoz community and we have actioned a plan to go through all links and request removal from all bad sites. (in webmaster tools i have this message)
"Dear site owner or webmaster of imrubbish.co.uk, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.Sincerely,Google Search Quality Team"superb news!
my new SEO guy is dealing with the bad links, but i do think i have content issues, my real question is how do i weed out the bad content and should i just delete them? leave them as they are and create new better posts? make them better?
I must have nearly 100 blog posts and a lot of the early ones were wrote by someone whose English is definitely a second language.
Would appreciate all your thoughts.
Thanks guys
-
Find the articles bringing in no traffic first some pf the articles might be bringing in some long tail traffic but gradually switch to the new articles when & where appropriate.
-
that would be the SEO company i just got rid of!
Thank you for such a great reply, so how would you deal with the blog then, delete all 50-60 posts and 301 all old titles to the 3 very high quality posts i have just had written?
Thank you
Jon
-
Ok so on further inspection I can see a lot of Anchor text heavy reciprocal links which have no doubt triggered the Webmaster tools message.
Reciprocal links themselves are not inherently bad but can often be implemented (particularly at scale) in ways that are not true to the spirit of trust and authority.
Reciprocal links are viewed negatively if there is an agreement or incentive in place to do so. This type of linking can get you in trouble if it makes up too large of a percentage of your overall backlinks.
In addition to these links you have internal links within poorly written content within the blog posts. Content written with the purpose of containing links is almost never high quality.
-
I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience. Without seeing your site I can't comment 100% on the quality of the content. By the sounds of it your former firm were trying to rank 1 page for 1 keyword I assume the pages are 350-600 word garbage posts? Personally I would consolidate the pages by trying to rank one page for several keywords. I would delete them, get a writer to write new content & 301 them to the new pages. If you want me to offer additional advice please feel free to send me a private message or email me via my website.
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
-
HELP! Google is penalizing me and I can't figure out why.
I've come to the conclusion Google is definitely penalizing me for the keword "sensaphone" and I cannot figure out why. I've checked back links etc. and I don't see anything that would raise a flag. We rate very well in Bing etc. for the same keyword, but in Google SERP's will be on the 3rd or later page. Our domain is - www.absoluteautomation.com - any ideas?
Link Building | | absoauto1 -
How can I tell if a site is trustworthy and is not / hasn't been penalized by Google?
Hello Moz Community, I'm looking to do some link building for a client and I would like to know if there's a way to find out if a website is trustworthy and is not or hasn't been penalised by Google. Thank you.
Link Building | | CosminC0 -
One page hit with 10K no follow spam links, should we disavow?
Hi everyone, I'd like your opinions on the best way to handle this situation: One particular site page just got hit with 10,000 no follow spammy backlinks over 10 days time. I've read that it's pointless to use the disavow tool on no follow links (since it basically does the same thing) but we want Google to be aware that this WAS NOT US and we don't want to be penalized for these spammy links. Couple of questions: 1. Do we send backlink removal requests to each domain webmaster? 2. Should we skip removal requests and move right to disavow? 3. Should we take other action? As a site we have NEVER used any black hat SEO tactics over a 15 year history and have many HQ do follow and no follow links to the site and this particular page. Thanks for any suggestions in advance!!
Link Building | | geteducated0 -
Why is ooshirts.com not being penalized for exact match keywords?
Clearly this site is buying links. They have the most exact match link profile I have ever seen. It appears their strategy has been to buy links for their domain as a way to mask all the other exact match purchases they are making. I have also been sent copies of the emails where they are attempting to purchase links. Thoughts?
Link Building | | bradwayland0 -
Penalized by SEO Link Wheelers Backlinks
Just over a year ago, I've bought 4 link building packages from SEO Link Wheelers. From what I see now, most of their website network has been penalized / banned and now it's hurting my websites. I've tried to contact them but they won't reply. I'd be willing to pay to have them remove the links but they simply won't answer. And I haven't been rude or impolite at all in my communications with them. I've tried calling them to but to no avail. I know where most of the bad links are, thanks to linkresearchtools.com Now I gotta get rid of that crap. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
If Google truly penalizes sites for bad linking, could my competitor sabotage me?
I am sure this has been discussed before (I am new). I am very paranoid about upsetting Google with questionable SEO practices. The white hat people sometimes claim that google will penalize you for bad linking, paying for links, buying social bookmarks etc. If this is true, could my competitor do this for my site to lower my rankings? I would never know about it until it was too late. If they can't do this to me, then what's to stop me from doing it to my own site? Maybe I am missing something here. Thanks for your input.
Link Building | | frankthetank20 -
Google penalizing sites because of press release pages?
Does anyone know of situations i can look up where Google penalized a site because of press release pages (hosted on a non owned major site like prweb or whatever), where the prweb page obtained back links from a group of sites that Google felt was part of a "farm"?
Link Building | | joemas990 -
High Mozplex strength metrics but Low TBR = Penalized site?
Suppose an old established site's root has High PA, High DA & High MR scores but the TBPR is significantly low. Can it be taken as a pointer that Google has algorithmically capped that site's ability to pass link equity when the home page metrics look suspect? Example case: pegasusdirectory*com PA = 88, DA = 86, MR = 6.61, but TBPR = 3 ( aged site ) (p.s: I'm aware that on inner pages of sites, it's quite normal to see high PA, Page level MR but no TBPR; my question is specically about guaging quality of the link for the DOMAIN in question Should I spend time on getting links from such domains ? ) TIA
Link Building | | seo-wanna-bs0