Where do I start, trying to work out whats going on...
-
Ok guys where do I start...
Lets go back 12months, so were in April 2011 and ranking 6th for our main keyword 'car warranty' things were going well, we didn't really move up or down the SERP and for our other keywords we were ranking well.
We decided to use an SEO agency to try and boost our rankings as we were getting ready to launch a national TV advert. It started off really well, we were moving up the rankings nicely and within 9 months we were 3rd for 'car warranty' we were happy!!
On the 7th of Jan 2012 we dropped to 10th in the SERP for our main keyword and we were gutted we contacted the agency straight away trying to find out what had happened - we got news back that a site that they were using for links (around 20) had crashed for the Christmas break and the links had been deindexed by Google, we were told give it 2 weeks and we should see them again... 2 months later we were still at 10th and they had changed there mind and decided it was a 60day filter.
We waited again until the filter had been removed and we still didn't move anywhere, with this in mind we have now left the agency and moved back to in-house.
So back to today - we are now shifting between 10th and 11th on the SERPS which Is causing us some pain.
I'm trying to work out what the hell has happened to our site, have we been penalized? Have we over optimized or is it just purely down to our link profile...
Here are some stats:
Domain Authority: 49
Homepage Authority: 59
MozTrust: 4.43
MozRank: 4.51So looking at our campaign within SEOMoz our site does seem to be OK - we have a few little issues but nothing that is causing a problem to our SEO. Our hompage and landing pages all of a report card of A so I can't see it being an over optimization penalty.
Looking at our external links our anchor text is spread quite nicely between some of our keywords and our brand name.
I don't personally think we have been penalized and we don't have any messages within Google Webmaster tools, i wish we did that way I would know where to star!! haha I personally think its just our link profile - looking at our links through OSE they don't look too bad, yes there are some low quality link directories but there are only a few.
I think if we improve this and get some strong links back we should see an improvement but Its driving me mad at the moment and I just can't seem to put my finger on it, if anyone has got any ideas or could shed any light on our issue it would be great.
Sorry for the long message but I just had to explain our past and where we are up to...
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the reply mate - yep that's what I think it is! The strange thing is our biggest competitor WD have got amazing links from high authority domains but still can't get top!
-
From the looks of it, the links that do have the anchor text "car warranty" aren't the best. I didn't go through all of them, but you'll want definitely more links that are coming from better sites.
At the same time, do be careful...you joke that you would rather see the warning, but if you do get it, you'll be regretting you asked for it. Frankly, it's not something you want...if you think ranking 10 or 11 is bad, the warning/penalization will get you much worse.
My other advice would be focusing on more than just one term. We have a client who does get excited (and rightfully so b/c it has 110,000 mo exact searches) when they go up for one phrase, but we were also able to balance it out with 9 other great terms that frankly kept the same amount of traffic coming in that were related.
Also, I was reading recently someone thought it was bad they overoptimized by having the same exact anchor in the title, h1 and all the main on page tags (like you guys do). So, maybe you can experiment with that, but frankly, I suspect that whatever links got you to #3 were potentially helping because they were coming from a great site.
You might consider finding other routes/methods in hopefully garnering more natural links from better websites though - for the long term.
-
Thanks for your response.
Looking at the copyscape there are a few copies of our homepage out on the internet, we have alot of car dealers that will just pinch content off our site and re-use it.
At the moment looking at linkscape there are around 3 copies.
-
Hi, as you may know Google change their algorithm multiple times each year so here's a few things you should go over first:
- Solve internal duplicate content issues (very big deal after the Panda update)
- Find out if anyone has plagiarized your content using Copyscape (file DMCAs if you need to)
- Can the content on your homepage can be accessed via these URLs?:
www . yoursite . com/index.html
yoursite . com/index.html
www . yoursite . com/
yoursite . com/Use 301 redirect and canonical link element to solve this issue if it exists.
- Consider using external style sheets
- Make sure your site is coded using the latest approved coding standards (old web sites usually suffer from this problem)
- Site loading time is now part of their algorithm, how long does your site take to load up a page?
From what you are describing your site doesn't seem to have been penalized but, instead the more logical things that have happened are that you have lost a few positions due to small oversights or due to matters outside of your control
a) Your competitors have made a strong push to out-rank you
b) You have lost a few valuable backlinks either because they have been removed or they have lost value for reasons outside your control.
Hope this helps, let me know if you need more help
-
Thanks for the reply.
Yep I agree, but the annoying thing is - running and OSE on some of our competitors shows that they don't really have any better links if anything they are worse...
Our page rank hasn't dropped its still at 4.
-
It sounds like your link portfolio needs to be built up again.
If this were a penalty, I would expect you to have been pushed further down than you were. One other indicator you might check is the PageRank of the page. If the page suddenly has a 0 rank or a gray bar when it had a rank previously, but the mozRank is still intact, you might be suffering a penalty.
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
-
How does an accurate and active Google My Business profile impact a company that does all of its work nationally/internationally through remote consulting?
I'm trying to convince a client of the importance of their Google My Business profile and other listings. But because they are less concerned about local since they are a remote based B2B coaching group they don't see it as a priority. Any resources to help me unpack the importance?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanc10 -
Trying to find example of in app indexing in SERPs
My colleague who is a developer is trying to find an example of in apps being indexed in the SERPs. Does anybody know of any examples? Thanks+
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Why would one of the big 4 banks in Australia recently start defining meta-keywords?
Hi All, Hope everyone had a nice weekend. I just stumbled upon one of our competitors who for some reason is all of a sudden defining meta keywords for their product pages. I find this extremely strange since its a definite no-no to define these? They are one of the largest (Chase, Barclays equivalent) in Australia with a large digital team. Do they know something we don't? Hope someone can help. Cheers, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU0 -
Could this work for Google Reconsideration Request?
One of my websites has received the following message: We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality 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 comply with 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. I have used LinkResearchTools DTOX to locate unnatural links and remove them. So far I've been able to remove or nofollow 50/350 and that's as far as I can ever go. The rest of the websites either don't respond or don't have any contact information. I added another 300 suspicious websites to my list and I'll try to get the links manually removed. Hopefully I can get 100/650 websites (and a bit more links) removed in total - at most. That is my estimate. I've been thinking to use Google Disavow Tool for the rest and make sure to submit a nicely written report with spreadsheets to Google - when I get to the reconsideration point. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zorsto0 -
Should I build & try to rank several pages for similar keywords?
I have a client who's domain already ranks #1 on Google for 'automotive advertising agency'. However we want several listing on the first page. Should I create a few more pages like www.domain.com/automotive-advertising-agency www.domain.com/advertising-agency www.domain.com/automotive-advertising I'm assuming I can get these pages to rank well, but I'm wondering if Google will penalize us for this. Is this a good or bad idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Branden_S0 -
Whats Next, noobie needs some help :)
Hey Everyone, I have been a member of SEOMOZ for about 4 months and love it, it really has helped me out. my first website I am trying to get well ranked in the new zealand market is www.shopezy.co.nz I have chosen: sell online free ecommerce website ecommerce website builder Are paid links the way forward for me? should I aim for more keywords? should I pay for help? Just looking for a lttle direction, if someone could help. thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonmaklad0 -
Link building idea - Will it work?
The SEO agency I am working for are currently trying out a unique link building tactic that i was hoping for some feedback about. Basically, we have launched a Free SEO package, and have posted it across various established social media profiles. So far we have had about 20 sign up. We gain access to their site and provide them with 4 keywords that we will be working on, we do the necessary on page optimization to get them ranking. We will then perform some very basic link building tactics on their site. In exchange for our services, we will get the following: Firstly, we will place a link on their home page linking to our own site. Secondly, we will personally write content related to their site, create a new page within their site that will contain this article. We will then have a link from this article leading to one of our own client's sites. (paying customers) What do you guys think? The Free SEO client sites have minimum PR's of 2, and we are hoping to build a database of these free clients that will be responsible for boosting the ranking of our paying customers. Is there anything that could be improved with this technique?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielblinman0 -
Penalties for site going down often?
I have a client with a site that ranks for some very competitive terms who consistently has server issues and the site goes down for a day at a time. Each time this happens his site seems to drop in site wide rankings and then stay there for months without ever fully recovering. Only part of the rankings are usually recovered. Has anyone else seen this trend? Is it something Google keeps on record without fully removing any penalty addressed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0