Reconsideration Request

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Guys,

We have recently took a dip in rankings for some of our main keywords.

We have had an SEO company look after our campaign but when we noticed we were moving down the rankings and not up we have decided to leave them.

Our rankings dropped on the 7th January 2012 and haven't picked backup we are still #10 we were #3 on the 1st page...

From what I can see using SEOMOZ and other tools our site has a good profile and is dominating some of our competitors when we look at our link analysis report.

I was wondering if we submitted a 'Reconsideration Request' to Google would they tell us if we have a manual penalty against our site.

At the moment we are struggling to work out what could be causing the problems.

Thanks,

Scott

[applesofgold]

I can't answer you on the reconsideration request and will leave that to someone who can, but I wanted say that in general SEO companies I have found are often expensive and do not always do the quality job that you can do yourself with the right tools. Mostly it's having clean code, good content, and good authority links.

The best thing you can probably do is patiently gain relationships with other websites who will link to you and build good content that others will want to link to; try guest blog posts and keep at it to just keep building.

[PaulDylan]

Have you logged in to your Google Webmaster tools and checked for any warnings from Google. Usually, you can see if there is a penalty on the site there...Otherwise, it can be a multiple of issues. What is your domain?

[stubby]

Hi,

I am pretty new to seo (or at least new to taking it seriously), so take advice as you see fit.

First, I think you have some hidden content (google does not like hidden content, they think you may be trying to show different content to search spiders than to humans).

This whole section  div style="display: none; " id="SeoHeapKeywords" and everything in it.

You are also hiding this area, but I am not sure why, since a human would read it fine:

It's a fact that a quality car warranty can save you money. Warrantywise offers the highest level of car warranty cover at the most competitive prices in the UK. Without a car warranty you could end up paying unwanted garage fees that could leave you with wallet busting garage repair bills. A car warranty from Warrantywise is a brilliant way to secure your finances and your cars future, no one likes nasty surprises especially when it causes problems both financially and for your everyday life. A car warranty is an ideal way to protect yourself and your car! Warrantywise are one of the best car warranty providers in the UK, with competitive prices, friendly, helpful staff and fantastic car warranty offers, you will not be disappointed with your car warranty policy.

Also, I am not sure about the strategy of having multiple "car make Car Warranty" pages, that seem pretty darn close to duplicate content to me.

Let me know how it turns out!

[WME]

I have the same issue for a site recently.

Webmaster tools doesn't show and warnings or messages.

How can i tell if a site has been penalised?

[loopyal]

Well spotted Stubby.

Warrantywise, stubby has your answer.

Either you or your SEO company have been massively keyword stuffing.

You set up a big red flag and told google to slap you down.

Remove that garbage and great good useful, well structured content for your readers.

After you do that, then go do a reconsideration request and in your request, say what you found, and that you fired the SEO company and removed the keyword-stufft text and rewrote the pages - and anything else you found and changed.

Then wait, because it can take up to a month before you see a response back.

You are lucky you didn't drop further back.

Another option is to fix it and just wait, but if they put on a manual penalty, not an algorithmic one, waiting probably won't help.

[ScottBaxterWW]

Morning Stubby,

Where is that div? I can't seem to find it?

Thanks,

Scott

[ScottBaxterWW]

Yea I've logged into Google Webmaster tools and can't see any messages from Google at all...

I really want to find this hidden div as I can't see it anywhere...

[ScottBaxterWW]

Thanks for your help Stubby..

I've managed to find this content:

"It's a fact that a quality car warranty can save you money. Warrantywise offers the highest level of car warranty cover at the most competitive prices in the UK. Without a car warranty you could end up paying unwanted garage fees that could leave you with wallet busting garage repair bills. A car warranty from Warrantywise is a brilliant way to secure your finances and your cars future, no one likes nasty surprises especially when it causes problems both financially and for your everyday life. A car warranty is an ideal way to protect yourself and your car! Warrantywise are one of the best car warranty providers in the UK, with competitive prices, friendly, helpful staff and fantastic car warranty offers, you will not be disappointed with your car warranty policy."

But I still can't find that id="SeoHeapKeywords"

[stubby]

Hi, I am on the road today, but can give you better details on how to find it tonight, or send you a screenshot or something. I will try now, but this is off memory. Using chrome, and the "developer" option (not view source code) Then it brings up a half page. I think it was under either the "resources" tab ot the "elements" tab, I don't recall It shows all your divs, and close to thelast one was the one in question. If you open that one you see numerous keywords, all separated by the paragraph divider.

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Stubby,

I can't seem to find it for some reason... Is it on the homepage?

It would be great if you could send me a print screen.

Thanks.

[stubby]

I seem to have discovered that that line of code was only visible in the developer tools of my browser - and not to you - because of a Chrome Add On that I was running called iSEO for Chrome which counts keywords per page.  I just put that add-on a few days ago, so I had never noticed that before.  So, that part of my analysis was wrong - (remember I'm New!).  I didn't realize that add-ons would show code to me in a way that appeared to my novice eyes as code of the website I was on.

I am glad you found the other content so you decide to show it or delete it.

I would also consider your pages of "car make" Car Warranty to be potentially duplicate.  Really look at them closely to determine if you have them there for human users, or if they are there for search engines.  If they are there for search engines, they have to go.

Also, your Dealer website looks pretty similar, so you might have duplicate content between the two sites.

Good Luck, and let me know if I can help in some way.

[ScottBaxterWW]

Hi Mate,

OK that's good news then!

Yea our dealer site is near enough an exact copy but it isn't indexed in google so it shouldn't cause a problem...

Cheers,

Scott