Dramatic drop after rapid rise for new site

[RyanKent]

From a SEO perspective your site requires numerous changes. My suggestion would be to start with the Beginner's Guide to SEO and apply what you read to your site. The guide is short and easy to read. If you decide you would prefer someone else to do the work, reach out to others in your industry and locate someone who loves their SEO provider, the same way you might want someone to find a good realtor. You don't want someone who designs sites and does SEO on the side, nor do you want someone who does an "ok" job. Whatever standards you use in your business should apply to those who directly support your business.

A few examples of items which should be addressed:

• your logo has a link to your home page URL as http://edenprairieexperts.com/index.php. Each time someone uses that link they are redirected to your actual home page link, http://edenprairieexperts.com/. The logo link should match your actual URL and not require a redirect.

• your footer links also have an issue where they are redirected. For example your anchor text "Eden Prarie Foreclusures" link is to http://edenprairieexperts.com/?page_id=122, but it is redirected to another URL http://edenprairieexperts.com/eden-prairie-foreclosures. Any time a redirect occurs there is a loss of PR within your site. All internal links should be direct links.

• your site lacks trust symbols. I imagine there are realtor organizations you belong to, certifications you have earned, etc. which provide a value to your clients. Advertise them! The only trust symbol you display is "Certified Community Expert". I have no idea what that means. The badge in your footer is not a link but simply an image which says those words. A trust badge should be a link which confirms the badge is authentic, and explains what it means.

• every image on your site should use an ALT tag description to explain to search engines and visually impaired visitors what the image represents.

• there are other issues such as you lack a meta description tag on your home page, and your title is targeting three phrases.

With respect to the question you asked about your site's appearance in search engines, your site is well indexed by Google. Bing/Yahoo both are using the same crawler and they are much more selective about indexing web pages. The only page I see from your site indexed by Bing is your home page. If I search for "Eden Prarie Experts" your home page shows as the 4th result in Bing.com.

If you wish more of your pages indexed with Bing and Yahoo, create a Bing Webmaster Tools account. You can submit up to 10 pages per day, 50 pages per month, to Bing manually. A better method would be to improve the quality of your site and earn authentic links to where they will naturally index your site and rank your pages better.

[evolvingSEO]

Your last month of backlink history does look very suspect (see screenshot from Majestic SEO)  See the giant spike about a week ago?

I took a quick look at the site of the company who designed your site, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was something that they were involved with, although I can't say that conclusively without further research.

I would HIGHLY suggest doing what Ryan says, especially the part about finding a reputable professional SEO, not a designer who happens to "do SEO" on the side.

-Dan

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[RyanKent]

Hi Dan.

I have not used the Majestic backlink tool so perhaps I am misreading the graph you provided. It seems on Oct 24th about 50 links were created. According to the 2nd graph, it appears all of those links came from a single domain. I would initially guess it is a site wide link on a smaller website, and not an issue. Would you agree?

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Ryan

Yes, you're absolutely correct to question that, good call. What I saw in Majestic (which I hadn't time to share before) was all of those sitewides were coming from "bestdirectory4you.com" (see screenshot).  What do you think?  Not a very high value site, including the others from the screenshot. It was all exact match keyword anchor text, on pages with tons of other links etc.

Secondly, check out the next screenshot - text cut and paste from the homepage and put into a search with quotes, but we're only getting two inner pages in the results.  Seems like there's something going on with the homepage not showing (although it is in the index).

In fact a site: search doesn't show the homepage first, but it brings up all the inner MLS pages.

It would seem the drop in rankings has something to do with the homepage losing a lot of its juice, in google anyway?

Thoughts?

-Dan

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[evolvingSEO]

Also, this google webmaster tools video is interesting too: what steps can I take to diagnose a drop in rankings?

[RyanKent]

Dan, I agree with your thought process about the bad links. If a new site grabs a bunch of "bad" links such as low quality directories and such, it can directly damage the site. It's a case that absolutely can show the idea "links can never hurt you" is not correct.

I don't agree it's a problem for the snippet you used showing the article rather then the home page. The text you copied is an article snippet with proper anchor text on the home page linking to the article, telling Google the article itself would be the best result.I tried searching for a bit of text unique to the home page "As Eden Prairie Realtors and Certified Community Experts(sm)". It was returned as the #1 result in Google.com.

Overall the site has a lot of issues. The more I look at the site, the more I see. The article you quoted is titled "Eden Prairie Homes Still in Demad" Mis-spellings on the home page is really bad and a sign of a lower quality site.

In short, there are a variety of issues which need to be resolved. My suggestion would be to fix the site, try to remove as many of the spam backlinks, earn authentic links to offset the spammy links, and then wait 30 days at which point rankings should improve IF the site has good content.

[jjwelu]

Thanks a million for the good advice.  I appreciate your time,  any good recommendations for seo professionals would be appreciated.   Also any advice once the content is approved for getting some links other than directories would also be helpful.

[jjwelu]

as a follow, how do I remove the backlinks on my own?  Is there a way to do that, without waiting for someone at the spammy directory site to respond to me?

[RyanKent]

There are an infinite number of ideas for link generation. You are in real estate so I'll share a few examples:

• create a mortgage calculator or other tool which is helpful to clients and agents alike. Take a look at other tools on the market and try to make your tool better, offer more features, have a cleaner interface, etc.

• write articles people want to read and link to. Some examples would be: Top 5 things to look for in your next home, 10 reasons to find a new real estate agent, How the 2012 tax law changes will affect your next home purchase, etc.

• write about any scams or issues home buyers want to avoid

• tie into any recent news items

• share a success story, or a failure story and how others can avoid the same pitfall

I view SEO as a straight line. Build a solid platform (i.e. website) you can use to share your message. Offer your message (i.e. articles) in the highest quality manner possible, and talk about subjects readers want to learn about. Then let the world know about your site (i.e. link build).

The problem most sites face with link building is the sites are poorly built, or the site doesn't present the company in the best possible view. The next challenge is either the site has great content written about topics which are not of interest to people, or they have average content which is available on a hundred other websites. Be current, be relevant, be exceptional and your results will follow.

[RyanKent]

There is not any direct actin you can take other then to contact the source of any spammy links and request their removal.

Indirectly, you can earn quality links to dilute the bad ones in your profile. Most sites will have some spammy links to them. It is perfectly natural. The question is what percent of the links to a given site are spammy.