Is it panda, pengiun, ad penalty?

[dashinfashion]

This post is deleted!

[firstconversion]

Your most powerful rank passing link is from this spam type site  kindermerkkleding.startpleintje.com/

and then theres

http://cfeurope.wordpress.com/ and

http://jurken.go2.be/

I certainly wouldn't rank you with this crap in your backlinks. However you do have some real links, try and get more of those and disavow the spam links you have aquired

BTW, did you drop for 1 term or many terms etc? Was it just Google?

Stephen

[MarieHaynes]

You may be confusing Penguin and Panda because Penguin only first rolled out on April 24, 2012.  So, if you had drops in February and March 2011 then this was not Penguin.

Do your drops coincide with Panda refresh dates? Panda rolled out in February 2011 but there was no refresh in March of that year.

There was a Penguin refresh on October 5, however a quick look at your anchor text distribution shows me that it is unlikely that Penguin is the problem.  (I can't say for sure, but most sites affected by Penguin have obvious anchor text manipulation.)

It sounds like your case is a complicated one so I wouldn't want to draw conclusions without digging in deep to your analytics and your site.  But my guess is that this is a problem with the structure of the site, especially if you had issues when relaunching.

[dashinfashion]

Thanks Stephen for your quick response.

The drop off has been in google, but that has been the main source of my traffic.

You mentioned spammy looking backlinks. The sites you mentioned are kids fashion resources. Do they look spammy as they added me each page or something? I think its their blogroll. So I should disavow these?

I also posted this on the google webmaster forum and two issues came up:

1) big increase in backlinks since early march using this tool:

https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/referring-domains?folder=&q=dashinfashion.com&oq=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dashinfashion.com%2F&IndexDataSource=F

In this tool the links mainly came from network mykidsfasion.com and blog dashinfashion.blogspot.com (not sure why this happened, I did update links to new urls on new site). Does SEOMOZ have a tool to see the history of backlinks in a graph?

The increase in backlink issue brought up the recommendation to non-follow links from and to my blog and network (and main site).

Also, from external blog and network, should all of the links back to the main site be rel="nofollow". If not, is this considered spam / penguin? Or can I have one follow link from the network and blog back to the site? Can I link internal pages to my site, or do these all need to be rel="nofollow". Maybe this is what harmed my site. I had links to my internal pages on the blogroll area from my network and blog.

2) to non-follow outgoing links (affiliate or ones that look paid)

Another suggestion was to non-follow outgoing links....I run a kids fashion magazine and have pages on each designer - approx 450. Most of these links are not paid, as it is a resource for our readers. So....my question is should I rel="nofollow" most of these links, all of these links, only those that are an affiliate link? (My affiliate links will be set as redirects from an internal link).

Thanks so much!

[dashinfashion]

Thanks Marie,

Can you take a look at my response to Stephen above. I have gotten some insight on backlinks and outgoing links and wanted to hear your input.

Also, the drop in traffic began before I changes my website a few weeks ago.

Thanks,

[MarieHaynes]

The thing is that if your traffic drop did not coincide with a known Penguin refresh date, then it is unlikely that you have a linking penalty.  You could drive yourself crazy with trying to determine whether links could be hurting you.  Penguin hits sites that have blatantly manipulative linking tactics.

A manual unnatural links warning can affect a site on a non-Penguin day but then you would have a message in your WMT.

You should not nofollow internal links.  If you have links from affiliates of yours then yes, these should be nofollowed.  I don't nofollow external links from my site unless for some case they were advertising links or affiliate links.

My gut instinct is that you're barking up the wrong tree by looking at linking issues unless you've got either a manual warning in WMT or a drop that coincides with Penguin.

[dashinfashion]

Thanks Marie,

So....if I understand correctly, I should be sure to nofollow any outgoing affilaite links. What I'm not clear about is did I get a penalty from linking from my blog and network to internal pages to my main website? Do you no follow links from your blog / network or any related site in your control?

Or...should I just drop the inbound/outbound link issue and concentrate on adding content and getting more quality links?

Thanks,

Laura

[MarieHaynes]

Again, a linking penalty is unlikely if you haven't had a drop on a Penguin date.  I don't nofollow links from my blog.  "Sites under my control" is a tough one.  I'd probably have to have a closer look to know.  (If you would like me to, you can contact me via the email address in my profile).  This sounds like a case where there may be more than one factor involved in the traffic drop.  Adding good quality content and links could be the solution, or there may be a site structure problem or something else that is causing the issue.