No manual spam actions found - still my site does not rank
-
I noticed it on the 1st of October 2012 - that all my rankings disappeared - i filed a reconsideration request w google and i got this - No manual spam actions found.
I have no idea why my site would have been subject to an algo change which made my rankings completely go away - i have not used spam, not used any kind of linkbuilding.
Can you guys look at my site and see if you have any ideas:
Thank you,
Cary
-
Cary
That stinks, really sorry to hear less than one month of link building did that. Without being able to do a full investigation, I surmise the links simply don't count anymore. In other words, they're likely not hurting you or helping you in any way.
Yes, brand is any variation on the company name or URL.
Also, this extensive list on link building strategies has some great ideas for local businesses.
-Dan
-
I will focus on building some branded links.
The reason why the google maps and yelp have the same link is because i have been in google maps and I noticed that one day my listing was up in maps the next day it wasnt....someone told me that my competitors were flagging me, but i dont understand how that part really works - I do have 2 offices one in san diego and one in temecula.
thank you for your feedback,Cary
-
Last year i did outsource 1 month worth of linkbuilding
but i had canceled as soon as i saw what kind of links they were building. I know natural links are way better and i am doing my best to provide good quality pages so that users naturally link back to me.
Would you say i need to remove those links? How can i even get them removed?
I will think of something that will bring me more branded kw. By brand you would say Aall In Limo LLC, or the websites url?
Thank you, Cary
-
The website looks decent and on-page in my opinion is way above than average websites in this industry... (Although your Google Maps and Yelp logo down the page contain the same URL #justnoticed but it has nothing to do with SEO and rankings...)
I can see a major mistake at the link building side and that is the improper use of anchor text that are pointing back t your site... Actually many links pointing back to your site contains the keyword but very few links contain the brand name which is absolutely unnatural.
My advice to you is to build some high quality links with the variation of brand name in the anchor text and you will see a change soon...
As this is not a manual SPAM action so no matter what you have to wait Google to refresh the changes and then only you will be able to rank again (IMHO) and this filing a reconsideration request in this scenario won’t work!
-
Cary
Your onsite looks cleaner than most I've seen lately. Your link profile does look slightly suspect though. Its heavily weighted towards keyword anchor text. Although perhaps they're all legit sources, lack of brand signals in anchor text could be to blame. There is also very little social sharing of the site.
Also, I did find some suspect links like I mentioned, for example at the bottom of this page: http://www.automobilesbook.com/index.php - also a comment here: http://howtosplitanatom.com/how-to-hack-your-life/how-to-use-firefox/
Did you outsource anything and were perhaps told they didn't do anything spammy?
-Dan
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
-
Can someone that had (or seen) a Manual Action in WMTs tell me.....
This is a repost of this question http://moz.com/community/q/manual-action-found-in-wmts-no-email-no-message-in-wmts But I'm sure there is someone in the moz fourms that have had/seen manual action 🙂 Someone I know said that they were looking though their WMTs and under Manual Actions they found they had a partial penalty. There is no date against it and they never got an email and there are no messages WMTs for it. I haven't personally dealt with a Manual penalty before, but I would have expected there to be a message in WMTs for it ( an email might have been missed because of a spam filter etc). Could it be a very old penalty?
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays0 -
Site was infected with spam webmaster tools still reporting it
I have recently been working with a site that was hacked. It suffered from a pharma injection into Joomla. The site has been cleaned for several months, but WMT is still reporting "pharmacy" as occuring 421 times. The url it gives reports a 500 error. I also removed it in Google. Can this still be hurting the site? How can I clean this up?
Technical SEO | | smcmark0 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
Sudden decline in ranking
Hi SEO People, Rankings for one of my search keywords has declined over the last two weeks from place 2-4 down to 13-15 on Google NZ. It had sat at the place 2-4 level for months. Nothing has changed on any of the sites above/below ours, and nor have any changes been made to our site. All our other, similar, keyword rankings have either stayed unchanged or improved. Does anyone have any bright ideas?
Technical SEO | | chris.elevate0 -
Whats happened to my rankings
Hey everyone, I hope someone might be able to help me figure out what has gone wrong here. I have a website which was slowly growing in rankings. The domain used was a .net However, It is a UK based business so I shifted this to a .co.uk domain and then followed googles advice in webmaster tools for moving address. ie, copy site, verify in GWMT and then 301 the old site. Now the .net had 71 indexed pages out of 73. But after 2 months .co.uk only has 41 out of 73 indexed. At the end of last week I did change the theme on my website although the content / urls have all remained the same. I have gone to check my rankings this morning and the site has totally bombed. Even the own brand name does not ranking in top 10 pages. I have not done an major link building at all yet for the site and any links that are there are all high quality from industry related authority sites. Looking at GWMT the latest links all look ok, nothing spammy but one thing I did notice is that it shows the .net domain providing 193 links via 301and also individually a great deal of the links that point to .net but have shown in .co.uk What I would like to know if have I actually done something wrong? Should I just kill the 301 (i am loathed to do this as a few of the links to this took me a long time to get), after spending a great deal of money developing my site and just starting to see some nice progress in the natural rankings and google has gone and pulled the carpet from under me. I would understand if I was doing something wrong but I have made strenuous efforts to ensure the linking on this site is whiter that white. Oh, I have had no warnings in my messages at all. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | easyrider20 -
Client's site dropped completely for all keywords, but not brand name - not manual penalty... help!
We just picked up a new search client a few weeks ago. They've been a customer (we're an automotive dealer website provider) since October of 2011. Their content was very generic (came from the previous provider), so we did a quick once-over as soon as he signed up. Beefed up his page content, made it more unique and relevant... tweaked title tags... wrote meta descriptions (he had none). In just over a week, he went from ranking on page 4 or 5 for his terms to ranking on page 2 or 3. My team was working on getting his social media set up, set up his blog, started competitor research... And then this last weekend, something happened and he dropped completely from the rankings... He still shows up if you do a site: search, or if you search his exact business name, but for everything else, he's nowhere to be found. His URL is www.ohioautowarehouse.com, business name is "Ohio Auto Warehouse" We filed a reconsideration request on Monday, and just got a reply today that there was no manual penalty. They suggested we check our content, but we know we didn't do anything spammy or blackhat. We hadn't even fully optimized his site yet - we were just finishing up his competitor research and were planning on a full site optimization next week... so we're at a complete loss as to what happened. Also, he's not ranking for any of the vehicles in his inventory. Our vehicle pages always rank on page 1 or 2, depending on how big the city is... you can always search "year make model city" and see our customers' sites (whether they're doing SEO or not). This guy's cars aren't showing up... so we know something is going on... Any help would be a lifesaver. We've been doing this for quite some time now, and we've never had a site get penalized. Since the reconsideration request didn't help, we're not sure what to do...
Technical SEO | | Greg_Gifford0 -
How many pages should my site have?
Right now I think I only have 36. What is a good amount of pages to have? Any ideas on ways to add relevant pages to my site? I was thinking about starting a message board. Also, I have a free tech support chat room, and was thinking about posting the logs somewhere on the site. Does that sound like a good idea? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Google.ca is showing our US site instead of our Canada Site
When our Canadian users who search on google.ca for our brand (e.g. Travelocity, Travelocity hotels, etc.), the first few results our from our US site (travelocity.com) rather than our Canadian site (travelocity.ca). In Google Webmaster Tools, we've adjusted the geotargeting settings to focus on the appropriate locale, but the wrong country TLD is still coming up at the top via google.ca. What's the best way to ensure our Canadian site comes up instead of the US site on google.ca? Thanks, Tory Smith
Technical SEO | | travelocitysearch
Travelocity0