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Thanks Tom, I have looked at a number of other pages and it does seem that certain keywords have all dipped around February (some have bounce back to where they were before) However it doesn't seem to be the pages themselves as other keywords for the same page have moved up over this period into position 1.

Thanks Keri!

Good point about the Change History - at least that will catch things like new filters. Understood about the external doc being easier for some clients not used to working in Analytics. When going that route, I at lease try to get them working in a shared document - either in Google Docs or at least a shared doc in a DropBox or something. That way there are fewer issues with trying to figure out who has the most current version, and it's available to you when you need it - like when you are doing a normal monthly review but want to quickly check what you  think might be an anomaly - without having to make a request for the doc. P.

Hi Aaron, In the example you've provided, I'm 99% sure that the photo of the man is stemming from his Google+ Local page. Contrast that to this search in which a business owner photo is appearing within the organic SERP, presumably due to rel=author or rel=publisher markup: http://www.google.com/search?q=tech+squad&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS511US511&aq=f&oq=tech+squad&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=5&gs_ri=psy-ab&gs_mss=barbara oliver jew&pq=tech squad wi&cp=22&gs_id=a6&xhr=t&q=barbara+oliver+jewelry&es_nrs=true&pf=p&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS511US511&sclient=psy-ab&oq=barbara+oliver+jewelry&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=1cc4a42c76cdcbc&biw=1366&bih=625 You can read more about this markup here: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/2400-critical-4-local-author-rank-publisher-author.html But the display in your example seems simply to be coming for the business' Google+ Local page.

Thanks Nakul Much appreciated! Danny

Yes, directory submissions is a part of the list of tchniques that i am using. The other techniques that i am following include : article submissions, video submissions, blog commenting, forum discussions, social bookmarking, press release distribution. Also i have created facebook and twitter pages and doing regular postings that are related to my site.

This is the result of the new Google Images, probably. What displays is this (attached JPG.) The red circle is a link to your domain.  The blue circle is a link to the actual image page. Many photographers are reporting their image search results are down and I've seen this with my own clients. People are clicking the visible domain, not "view this page" and it's really messing with image search hits. Visit page will take the visitor to the actual page but for some reason, many people are clicking the domain instead. coffee.jpg

Seems like it could definitely be over-optimization then. That doesn't seem like a natural link profile at all. See if you can get rid of some of the lower quality links, and focus on getting high quality links with varied anchor text.

You have too much unnatural anchor text. It is a penalty without question. You must submit a reconsideration request to Google (so they confirm the penalty) then you must start clearing the spammy links. This will take some time to fix. I recently cleared 3 massive Google penalties on clients sites (worse than yours). It takes time but it is definitely worth doing it properly. Do no try any tricks to get round it, they will only come back to bite you in the posterior.

Have you verified your site in Bing's webmaster tools and looked to see if there are any messages in there for you?

Thank you, Dana. I will read those posts and I appreciate hearing that someone like you is also mystified.

Thanks Jeepster, that video answered my question. It just seems like Google was showing a lot more links on the link: search than they currently are.

Many thanks! I have tried with custom segments in the past but got confused and gave up. In doing this it has helped me clarify how I evaluate the data. My keyword ranking have dropped and it is the perfect incentive to give them a kick up the behind to right some new content! I will also talk to them about a link building budget as currently their investment is far too low for a site of this size. Thanks again for your help very much appreciated.

dean1986 I totally agree with you.Look at the meta keywords.Are they not part of SEO strategies.Forum posting was used as one of the largest technique of SEO.Than people switch over to blog posting.Than web 2.0 and now guest post/infographics. Surely the ranking game is not easy by any means and google have to take actions all the time but the day I meet MR MATT always coming up with happy face in videos telling the world EMD is there check out are you down,I shall ask him.MR MATT "why you guys hate spam and index it"? Who develop natural domain as ranking signal and who said this game is over?