Client's site dropped completely from Google - AGAIN! Please help...

[Greg_Gifford]

ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there)

Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help

Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research...

in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs...

He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone.

Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened.

We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site.  They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon)

There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway.

SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again.

We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did...

AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again.

So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"...

Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -

[SEODinosaur]

The site is relatively new. Ideally I would not focus on his current rankings, I would just continue to build good relevant helpful and authoritative links. The linking profile should mostly anchor in using a brand name or a URL. The internal linking structure should be built keeping the Panda updates (no duplicate content/no attempts to manipulate the search engines) in mind.  Also, be sure that when you are checking for these rankings you are doing so from a browser in which you have cleared your browsing history and that you are not logged into any google accounts.

Add Google + buttons to your site.

Add a blog and post something unique (helpful to your users) every week targeting different pages on your site.

[RDK]

Google is constantly tweaking - I do not have a single website where half of the keyword rankings don't fluctuate back and forth as you have described. Especially so are those keywords that don't exist on the first two pages.  One week we're on page 3 and then "POOF" and vice versa.

Donnie gives you the right advice. Take it and run.

[SEODinosaur]

YEAH BABY!

[MarieHaynes]

There still is a possibility that duplicate content could be an issue here.  When I searched, in quotes, the first two sentences of your home page, here's what I got:

Google search

I did the same with your second paragraph and got the same results.  So, that means that in Google's eyes, you've got 4 pages on your site with identical content and this could definitely have an effect on your ranking.

I do see you on a search for your site name and brand name, but you're right, I can't see you on a search for your keyword (which I'm assuming is in your title).

The first thing I would do is change up the text on those pages and see if it makes a difference.

Also, as mentioned before, your inventory pages are duplicated across other sites as evidenced here.  I would probably noindex those pages.

It's worth a try!

[Greg_Gifford]

Thanks Marie -

As far as the dupe content issue on your attached search, that was an issue with the way our devs built our site system - instead of serving up 404 pages, any URL that was hit that didn't exist lead back to the home page...

we just corrected that last week and now have proper 404s...

BUT - every site we host has this same issue, so if that was penalty-worthy, we'd have a lot more sites penalized...

same thing with the dupe content on other sites  - in the auto industry, every dealer feeds his inventory out to other websites, so you usually have anywhere from 100-300+ other websites with the same images and vehicle descriptions... not ideal, obviously, but that's now it works in the industry... but again, this happens to every dealer, so if that's what caused his penalty, it should have affected other dealers as well... so we're still stumped...

[MarieHaynes]

It's still a possibility even if it isn't affecting your other sites.  Google may be looking at the percentage of duplicate content on a site.  So, it's possible that your other sites have enough non duplicate stuff to outweigh the duplicates.  If you combine the fact that your homepage is duplicated several times on the site plus the inventory pages are duplicated on other sites that might be enough to trigger a duplicate content issue.

If you've fixed the issue with the homepage duplication then you may jump back to the rankings you had.  We'll see!

You may want to go into webmaster tools and tell Google to take the urls that were throwing dupes out of the index.  That can speed up the process if indeed this is the issue.

[MarieHaynes]

Just wanted to add one more thing too.  I know what you are saying about the process of cataloguing inventory amongst car dealers.  We have a real estate site and just about everyone in town uses the MLS description for a house.  Most of those individual realtor sites that do that don't rank well at all for the individual houses because they are completely duplicated along with hundreds of other sites.

For our listings I write a unique description that only goes on our website and we almost always rank #1 for our own listings.

It's a lot of work though, but if you can set it up so that an employee can write some type of unique description and title for each new vehicle in the inventory it'll really really help.  So, if someone's searching for a "Ford Taurus in [yourcity]" you could potentially rank really well if you've got individual descriptions.

That's not connected to your current issue, really though...just a thought...that is, if your client was willing to put the staff-hours into doing that.

[Greg_Gifford]

just to update everyone...

just like last time, we're "mysteriously" back in the rankings one week to the day after submitting a reconsideration request...

we know it wasn't a manual action, so maybe the reconsideration request pings someone that can fix the algorithmic mistake? not sure... but it's definitely interesting that both times, we're "back" one week after sending in the request...