A rating on report card - Massive drop in rankings (Is it Penguin?)

[JosephGourvenec]

Hi All,

I would really like a second opinion on my current issue and I'd be very grateful for the communities knowledge please .

I have a been running a successful campaign for one of my clients, increase in natural SERP's, etc.

But since the 24th of April they were hit and hit hard and continued to decline now.

They had many top 5 listings for terms and now most are not in top 50 serps.

Openly I know they have a bad or not great backlink profile which was inherited from the past agency, but we're working on this using white hat techniques, contextual copy, brand etc.

The copy is a great, contextual and no where near spammy at all...  Very nicely written, factual, etc.

What I don't understand is this

SEOmoz's On-Page report card gives an A rating for the target term which is also a secondary term but was ranking high.

Factor Overview

<dl class="scoreboard clearfix">

<dt>Critical Factors</dt>

<dd>4 / 4</dd>

<dt>High Importance Factors</dt>

<dd>6 / 7</dd>

<dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt>

<dd>7 / 9</dd>

<dt>Low Importance Factors</dt>

<dd>8 / 11</dd>

<dt>Optional Factors</dt>

<dd>2 / 5</dd>

<dd>

On-Page Keyword Usage for

</dd>

</dl>

• Title

  1

• URL

  0

• Meta Desc

  1

• H1

  1

• H2-4

  0

• Body

  1

• B / Strong

  1

• IMG ALT

  0

Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 5

Fall from grace is SERP 5 to 25 and still going down.

So the questions are:

1. Has this happened to you?

2. Could it just be down to their bad backlink profile which now needs much more attention?

3. Is this Penguin for sure?

4. What would you recommend?

If anyone requires any further info please let me know and thank you in advance.

Cheers,
Joseph Gourvenec
SEO and Search Specialist

[MSWD]

Feeling your pain for sure.  I would start looking at the back link profile.

[josh-riley]

I agree - and also look at any possible technical issues. if the on page is good, then most likely something else is afoot. I won't speak to if it was for sure Penguin because I don't want to speculate.

And what I mean by technical issues: is a page looking fine but registering a header check of a 404/500? (I mean via a tool like this: http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/check-server-headers-tool/). Or is Webmaster registering an unusually high spike in errors? Those things can add up and have an impact, too.

[JosephGourvenec]

Thanks Kathy and Andrea.

Oh the pain of Penguin lol

Andrea, The page is setup perfect with no issues too.

I'm going to have to 100% call this a back link issue.

But I never thought that it would have this impact on my client.

Boohoo

Cheers,
Joe