Not sure which way to go or what to do?

[SparkyMarky]

Hi there,

I have been a pro member of SEOmoz for a while now but this is my question in the forum and although I have looked through so much helpful information I was wondering if someone could give me some further advice and guidance?

I have a 3 year old ecommerce website personalisedmugs.co.uk which until May 2012 had some excellent growth, we then lost around 50% of traffic due to reduced organic rankings in google. We then noticed a further drop again in September.

From researching information I believe this drop was from the penguin update and EMD update?

Since these updates we have:

*Stopped working with a company in India whom was looking after SEO for us for 18 months

• redeveloped/designed website and upgraded software version
• constantly refreshed website with content as we always have done
• Modified internal anchor text (this did seem keyword rich)

My next steps I believe before giving up is checking our links coming into website?

Is anybody able to please help me with regards to our links or point me in the right direction. I have no idea where to start or what do now?

Someone may see something really obvious so any help or guidance is greatly appreciated to assist me in gaining some UK organic rankings back.

Kind Regards,

Mark

[manam]

Hi Mark,

Go ahead and check all the links pointing to your website and start deleting all the spamy ones.

[SparkyMarky]

Thanks for your answer, how do I work out which ones are spammy or not?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy,

Most of the major Google updates in the past 12 months have targeted backlinks more than anything else. So while it's always good to look at on-site issues and improve your site in every way, a thourough backlink audit is almost always prudent when you experience a major rankings drop - especially when the drop coincides with known Google updates.

Looking at your links in Open Site Explorer, we find several types of links that seem "suspicious" or "unnatural"

• http://personalisedtshirts.blogspot.com/  (sitewide, exact match anchor text - I highly suspect this is part of a blog network)
• http://www.wokietokie.blog.seo-catalog.com/Shopping/Gifts/ (penalized, deindexed directory)
• http://ww.w.b3directory.com/Business_and_Economy/Marketing_and_Advertising/?p=8 (low quality directory)

Unfortunately, these are the types of links targeted by Google and we often see these lead to penalties and or devaluation.

Have you received any messages/warnings in Google Webmaster Tools? That would be a good place to start. Typically, the best way to recover from this is to perform a complete link audit, then go through the arduous task of trying to get the links cleaned up, submit reconsideration requests, and possibly use the disavow tool.

I've been through it myself with several client sites and it can be a lengthy process the first time you do it. Some tips to consider:

1. What links to look at? First of all, John Mueller of Google recommends starting with the links listed in Google Webmaster Tools, as these are the links most likely to effect your rankings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX...

2. Third Party Tools: A couple of companies have developed tools to help identify bad links.

• SEOGadget Link Analyser - http://tools.seogadget.co.uk/ (has a great API - highly recommend this site)
• Link Detox - http://www.linkdetox.com/ (haven't used it, but I've heard decent things)

3. Manual Review - In the end, you're own eye is the best tool you have. You want to look for:

1. links with keyword-rich, optimized anchor text
2. Comment Signature and Forum Signature links (these are different from the more legitimate forum links)
3. Sitewide links, such as in the sidebar or footer
4. Obviously paid, or suspicious looking links on low-quality sites

Our friend Paddy Moogan wrote a great guide on how to do this step by step. You should check it out. I also made a video about earning high quality links. It might be worth a look: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/high-value-tactics-futureproof-link-building-whiteboard-friday

It usually takes Google 2-4 weeks to reply to reconsideration requests. In my experience they like to see both a manual effort to clean links, and I've also had success supplementing this with the disavow tool.

Lot's of information here. Hope it helps. Best of luck getting back on track!

[SparkyMarky]

Wow, thank you ever so much for this awesome response Cyrus! There is alot of information you have provided for me to work through, I appreciate your time.

A response to your question, we did receive a unnatural links warning back in 2011, being quite naive to this type of warning we stupidly ignored it

Once again many thanks,

Mark