Site rankings steadily decreasing - do I need to remove links?

[stephenshone]

Since mid-April, our ranking have been steadily declining.  Our two main keywords are 'nuts and bolts' and 'bolts and nuts'.  'nuts and bolts' dropped from 7th to 46th in May and has recovered slightly to 28th, and 'bolts and nuts' moved from 7th to 16th, and is today 24th.

Ranking on keywords we specialise in have fared better, but they're fairly niche.  'bsw bolts' has moved from 2nd to 4th, and 'imperial bolts' has moved from 1st to 4th.

I think my link profile is the issue.  I don't think we've been penalised by Penguin directly (I may be wrong, I don't think we'd be page 2 on such a competitive term as 'bolts and nuts' after Penguin if we had been penalised.), but I think what's happened is that sites that link to us have been penalised, resulting in a knock on effect.  Does that sound right?

Here's my link profile:

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com</a>

I've been slowly building relevant links with prospective customers and kept up a very basic social media profile - just the odd blog post and sharing on Facebook and Twitter.

Do I need to delete all the directory links?  We do have links from directories that don't look fantastic, more are shown in Webmaster Tools than are listed here.  Some of the directories no longer seem to exist, I take it I don't need to do anything and Google will catch up in those cases.  Should I attempt to remove (or disavow) all links with names like best-directory etc? Or should I just concentrate on building better links? I'm not sure where to start!

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Stephen

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Hi Stephen,

A quick review of your link profile didn't actually look too bad, at least I didn't notice anything glaring.  You have some keywords that have lots of links, but those appear to all be internal links that are part of the navigation of your site which is normal.

I'd recommend focusing on building links rather than removing links.  Your site doesn't have a ton of links pointing to it.  According the the Open Site Explorer report you referenced, you have 434 links.  Even if there is some issue with an unbalanced link profile, it should take many good, natural links to balance it out.

-Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[stephenshone]

Hi Kurt,

Many thanks for your response.

The report on links in Google Webmaster Tools shows a lot more links - but the sites no longer exist for a fair amount of them.  I'm guessing that they were removed from Google's index and then the webmaster, seeing no benefit, deleted the site.  I did see on here that Google delisted 1000s of blogs and directories in March - which ties in with when we started losing rankings.  So maybe we haven't been penalised directly but lost ranking due to say, 100 links (just a guess) no longer being active, so we aren't gaining anything from them - which is a lot when we only have 400-500 anyway.  Does that sound right?

As an example, one is something like freeseo24x7. something, which is a dead link now.

I presume directories like that are obvious bad news now, I'm going through the Google list to see if there's any more like that.  Would you delete / disavow those?

If the sites are no longer accessible for a lot of the 'bad' directories that link to us, will Google update its list for my site over time?

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Stephen,

Dropping in ranking because you loose links either from them being devalued by Google or the sites shutting down is quite possible.  It could also be a combination of lost links and a spammy profile.  But you've gleaned onto something a lot of people don't get about Penguin and spammy link.  People like to talk about "recovering" from Penguin, but what they often don't understand is that the link authority that was getting them their earlier rankings is gone.  There's nothing to recover to.  What's really going on is that their site's new authority level is lower and they are going to just have to build their site's authority level up as though they never had a higher authority site before.  So, it's not something where they can disavow a few links, get a few links removed and "Alakazam!" rankings have returned...but they seem to expect that.

If you had a lot of links pointing to your site which are now either gone or devalued, then it would make sense that your site lost rankings.  You just have to build the site back up with some natural link building.

As to your question about spammy directories, I wouldn't worry about the initially.  Focus on putting out great content and sharing it and see how that goes.  If, after several months, you find that you aren't getting any movement, then perhaps you go in and have links removed and start disavowing links.

And, yes, Google will eventually remove the old links from your profile.  It just takes Google forever and a day to do so.  The link list in Google Webmaster Tools is never up to date.  It's always months behind.

-Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[Doc_Sheldon]

I would disagree with only one aspect of Kurt's comment, Stephen, and only because I tend to try to err on the safe side. I would remove/disavow any links from questionable directories. There are still a few good ones out there, but I believe the majority carry a nasty connotation.

Kurt is absolutely correct when he says that "recovery" of previous rankings by no more that link removal is a pipe dream... ain't gonna happen! The equity that you lost by any links that were devalued before removal is gone forever and will have to be replaced with new activity.

Since it seems that a major portion of your losses are focused around "nuts and bolts" and "bolts and nuts", you might also try changing your anchor text on a significant portion of the links using that anchor text, at least on any source sites that seem worth hanging onto.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Stephen,

Without doing a full backlink audit, there's a few things I would do first.

Try your site with Panguin Tool to see if you've been hit by a known update: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Also try this over-optimization tool to check your anchor text: http://www.removeem.com/ratios.php

Your theory about the decrease in value of your link profile may be spot on. It never hurts to build more quality links.

On another note, I couldn't help but notice quite a lot of your site is "thin" content. Pages such as this: http://www.thomassmithfasteners.com/full_nuts_bsf.html . While this is common with your competitors as well, beefing these sections up with more descriptive content could never hurt.

Also, you might want to check your title tags. The seem to mostly start with "Thomas Smith Fasterners". Normally, you want to place the keywords you want to rank for towards the begining of the tag, and avoid repeating the same phrases across multiple title tags.

http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag

Thomas Smith Fasteners - UNC Full Nuts BS 1768 Online Shop
or
Shop UNC Full Nuts, BS 1768 from Thomas Smith Fasteners

[stephenshone]

Hi Cyrus,

Thank you very much for your response.

I have added content related to the bolt threadforms on my page to give more information. However, the ranking on the BSF Bolts page has decreased from 4th to 9th.

http://www.thomassmithfasteners.com/hexagon_bolts_bsf.html

I ran it through the MOZ on-page grader and the thing that jumps out is it says I have 22 repetitions! I think the PHP list of the shop items is being seen as keyword stuffing. Of course, I have to describe the items on each line. Is there a way to combat this?

Many thanks for your assistance.

Best Regards,

Stephen

[stephenshone]

Can any of you knowledgeable chaps please help with this?

As  my last post says, I'm getting an 'A' grade on the Moz on-page grader, but 31 repeats of 'bsf bolts' meaning it's picking up the list from the shop database.

Is there a way around this? In the description of the item, I've changed BSW to 'Whitworth' where possible (means the same), but I'm stuck on 31 repeats, which is obviously too many. I thought Google ignored shop database lists of items, but seemingly not.

Best Regards,

Stephen

[stephenshone]

OK, it's now a few months later, with nothing linkbuilding-wise except posting blog posts on Facebook, G+ and Twitter.

I've tried to make the site more accessible - we now have a simple, responsive design and I've tried to make the content clear and concise. In short, written for humans rather than search engines.

As of the end of November, 'nuts and bolts' has now disappeared completely, and 'bolts and nuts' is page 8. There are many pages much higher which are not as relevant and have no links. We still rank highly for more specialised terms - ie 'bsw bolts' and 'imperial bolts' are still page 1, but not as high as before.

We get an 'A' grade on the on-page grader for 'nuts and bolts, and most above us get F. I was cautious about removing links as our profile doesn't seem too bad but it does seem as if it's that. There are a fair few questionable directories in there, no doubt about that, but our overall practice in recent years has been natural building and link earning.

So - I've created a spreadsheet and identified the bad links - ie directories with any SEO connotations. I am about to submit removal requests, I thought two polite requests a couple of weeks apart prior to disavowing with Google.

I am also gradually beefing up the content on the shop pages in case of any 'thin content' issues.

I noticed 100s of broken links in webmaster tools due to 2 broken links on our blog and have fixed those. I have also been fixing errors W3C compliance-wise.

Am I right to do all this? Can anyone offer any suggestions? I'm still not 100% sure if this is Panda, Penguin or something else. My guess is Penguin, but the decline started in March 2013, which correlates with Panda.

Best Regards and thanks for any help,

Stephen