Terrible branded ranking

[WebsiteEditor]

I am at lost. My website has been live for about 3 months. Typing my name or my direct page title into google puts me on page 15.

My site is indexed by google, a site:mywebsitename search - produces 202 results. My on page SEO isn't amazing buy it isn't terrible either. The website has 35+, 500 words+ reviews and a few incoming links from some occasional link building. 0 duplicate content.

The website is animexcess.com
My thoughts on what might be causing the problem, i am hoping that someone with a bit more SEO knowledge than myself can point me in the right direction.

1. During development, i had duplicate content up on the site as placeholder while i wrote my own - All duplicate content has been removed for about 3 months now, but can this still be affecting me ranking? and to this extent?
2. The entire website is in a sub-directory with 301 redirects - can this be affecting my ranking to this extent?
3. The domain had a prior owner. Waybackmachine tells me that the domain had a page up in 2007. I bought it in 2010. If the prior owner built up a bad rep on this domain can is still be the cause for poor ranking 6 years later? I cannot file a reconsideration request since there are no manual actions taken against my site in WMT, any way around this?
4. Its only been three months. I know 3 months isn't a very long time in the google ranking world but my my 2 week old, built in 1 week, secondary website is ranking on page 1 for some pretty solid terms, so i don't think 3 months is to short a time to expect a bit of results.

• My website is being crawled daily.
  Any advice on how to move forward with fixing my website ranking will be much obliged. Thank you.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

The domain has been hit most likely - check out the incoming anchors

Spammy anchors from bad sites. You need to do a disavow and hope you come back.

[WebsiteEditor]

I have very few incoming links, hardly enough to be considered spammy, i think. But how would i go about doing a disavow? There are no errors or manual actions being listed under WMT.

[promotionsnow]

This post is deleted!

[WebsiteEditor]

I'm at a lost. I did not do this and i have never paid or asked anyone to create 13,787 backlinks for me. Would a disavow correct this and stop it from happening again?

[promotionsnow]

Earlier you said you bought the domain - it looks like the junk links could have been built before you bought it? Either way, right now that domain is killing you.

Yeah, you need to disavow those links if you want to keep that domain. Honestly, these are the lowest-of-the-low links...anchor text w/ "questionable" porn, payday loans, online pharm...it is pretty bad.

If it were me...I'd trash the domain and start with a fresh URL

[WebsiteEditor]

Thanks Michael.