HELP! My website has been penalized - what did I do wrong?

[Startupfactory]

I have been working on a website Zing.co.nz and have made a sub domain blog.zing.co.nz.   The website is for a company that is yet to launch, so I have been boosting traffic by writing blog posts about the topic (loans) on the subdomain.  I pushed some traffic to the actual website too.  We were climbing the rankings for our brand name but have all of a sudden started to drop.  The domain authority was something like 0.9 and has dropped to 0.3.  (Using SEO Spyglass) The blog was somewhere similar, but has dropped to 0.0!!!  Please help in anyway you can.  These changes have happened within the last 48 hours.

Zing.co.nz

Blog.zing.co.nz

[RobertFisher]

Domain and Page Authority were created by Moz (formerly SEOmoz). I would not trust anyone elses number on that. From what you have here, you have a website for a company that for all intents does not exist and it is in one of the most unscrupulous areas of the Internet... Loans. 
I think the issue is likely somewhere within that.

Best

[DirkC]

Hi,

Never heard of SEO Spyglass before - are you sure that the authority rankings they provide are reliable? Did you also notice a decrease in traffic? Did you notice anything special in Google Webmastertools?

When I checked your site I found a lot of content below the fold & pages which are very heavy (>1.5K) due to the images. Is the content you added to the blog original, or taken from other sources?

Dirk

[Toddfoster]

Hello Phillip,

Based on what information I could gather from what you have said, I think the DA is a bit of a red herring here. In fact I don't think this is a penalization as much as it is a reflection of your competition.

The primary focus I have is on your content and on your link profile. From what I can see, your link profile is practically non-existent but your content is both original and quite decent. I think there is really only 1 logical solution: you need a better link profile.

Dropping in SERPs can simply be the result of competitors with better link profiles and relatively powerful content out-ranking you. I would put some effort into attaining some powerful and relevant links and see if that doesn't solve the problem. I have had this issue in the past and a few quality links boosted my client's site from a Rank 7 to Rank 1 for their terms within a month. Not saying these results are ordinary, but it can't hurt.

Your content is fine, but perhaps you could market it a bit more and get those links.

Hope this helps!