Ranking drops POST Penguin?!

[Webrevolve]

Hey guys,

I've noticed that one of our sites have seen some considerable ranking drops for competitive keywords at least a week or so after Penguin was introduced.

I've attached an image to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. We were ranked around 2nd page for each of the phrases but plummeted to 80+ (although, there has been some movement back towards 50).

I mention Penguin but that really shouldn't have been a factor with this site as it's a relatively new one and all the links have been built naturally.

Any help appreciated!

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[Chris.Menke]

Mathew,

Even if all of your links were "built naturally" you can still be impacted by Google penalties assessed to sites that are linking to you.  If, for example, a site that is linking to you and providing your site with some amount of link juice gets penalized, it my no longer be sending you that juice.  The impact may be huge if it was a powerful link or if many of your links were coming from sites that were penalized, or the impact may be relatively minor if the penalized site was helping with your rankings in a small way.

Those kinds of changes happen with or without penalties being assessed, as back links from other sites may fall away or lose value over time (link rot). It looks like you may just need to keep up the hard work of marketing you site on line to rebuild your rankings.