Hit by Google

[rrrobertsson]

My site - www.northernlightsiceland.com - has been hit by google and Im not sure why. The traffic dropped 75% last 24 hours and all the most important keywords have dropped significantly in the SERP. The only issue I can think of are the subpages for the northern lights forecasting I did every day e.g. http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast-iceland-3-oct-2012/ I have been simply doing a copy/paste for 1 month the same subpage, but only changing the top part (Summary) for each day. Could this be the reason why Im penalized? I have now simply taken them all down minus the last 3 days (that are relevant). What can I do to get up on my feet again? This is mission critical for me as you can imagine.

Im wondering if it got hit by this EMD update on 28 sept that was focusing on exact match domains http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4501349-1-30.htm

[vbestic]

There was recently EMD and Penguin update. What was your link building strategy? If you builded your links everytime with same anchor text or was building links to low quality directories or social bookmarks?

There are many factors that may affect your website. I advise you to do a advanced review on Google webmaster guidelines here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

[irvingw]

You are violating Google guidelines in several ways including having follow links to paid advertising.

You need a good SEO review - take this for example:

Canonical tag on homepage is rel="canonical" href="http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/" />

but then http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/ redirects to http://www.northernlightsiceland.com

[irvingw]

Just to clarify the canonical tag issue - you have a slash in the canonical tag www.northernlightsiceland.com/, but the htaccess redirects all slashes to no slashes.

[MagicDude4Eva]

I don't think it is the canonical. I would first look at GWMT (crawl rate dropped? errors increased?) and then look at Google Analytics as well.

For what it's worth, your current site has duplicate keywords and descriptions and plenty of errors (JavaScript).

You could have very well been dropped due to a manual review - your site looks very much like an affiliate with plenty of advertising and not much original content (that was at least my initial opinion)

[rrrobertsson]

Thanks a lot for your feedback. Im a bit of a new in this all so all feedbacks are very valuable for me:) thx thx

It does not look like the crawl rate has dropped. Looking at the webmaster - pages crawled per day - the graph is quite similar as before.

Yes I have some errors - i did not consider them material - primarily "not found" errors but yes some others. Did not know how to fix it

Im a typical aggregation site for some local travel businesses - so no affiliate - but yes just like any other company these local travel companies want to advertise their business and I set up content so people can find all the tours etc at the same place. All the content is orginal and in fact it simply gives a view of how much of these services are available.

Not sure what Irving means by "having follow links to paid advertising" - is it against the guidelines to have ads companies pay for? It is just the same as having google ads that companies are paying for?

[MagicDude4Eva]

I think you should build out your content - for example if you look at this URL there is hardly any content on it and a large count of external links. One could almost argue, that your site being an intermediary has no real value to a user.

[rrrobertsson]

Im not really having much of a link building strategy - it has normally just happened naturally e.g. other sites point to this site as the most informative northern light site in Iceland and also because Im the only one giving nortern lights forecast in the country etc.

[rrrobertsson]

it aggregates into one place all the offers the local industry has into one place. That is the main value. Not necessarily creating a lot of text on each provider e.g. a hotel. People see this teaser - and if they like the teaser they click through to the local provider to learn more.

[rrrobertsson]

I have discovered something interesting. I read article on paid ads: http://www.feedthebot.com/bad-ads-affect-rankings.html

It says it is ok to have ads as I thought but it needs to have a no-follow. Then I looked at my code and it seems like the no-follow tag is at the wrong place so it is not no-follow - isnt this correct? Here is a typical code in a widget on the side:

| id="text-12" class="widgetblock widget_text">class="textwidget"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>http://www.hotelranga.is" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-ad','http://www.hotelranga.is-special-offer-new']); "> |
|   | src="http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HotelRanga30off.jpg" width="280" height="280" border="0" style="border:0px solid black; margin-left: 2px;margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px;" rel="nofollow" alt="northern lights forecast" align=middle /> |
|   | |

[irvingw]

Correct - the no-follow link needs to be on the outbound link

[rrrobertsson]

I though the newest versions of Wordpress automatically takes care of this canonical tag issue?

[rrrobertsson]

Irving - thanks a lot for pointing me into the direction of the "follow" on the paid ads. Very helpful - I thought I had it covered with no-follow but found out it wasnt. So probably that is the main reason for the penalty. Did you see any other violations on the guidelines? - i was trying to fix all the "not found" errors etc yesterday:) Again thanks a lot for the help:)

[MagicDude4Eva]

Placing the nofollow will not necessarily solve the problem, that Google for example does not classify the remaining content on your website good enough to rank well.

If you take any page on your site and strip out external links, there is hardly any original content left.

I would read this article which covers the user experience and algorithm change from January, and I think Google has demoted your site based on that.

[rrrobertsson]

Hmm how did e.g. normal local newspaper then survive - most news articles are some 200-300 words of orginal text + 1-2 images. The rest are ads and excerpt of other relevant news etc. As far as I understand the article you send then it is about “above-the-fold” i.e. the only think you see when you land on a page are ads as the main source. On my site I only use the sidebar - in similar manner as newspapers - and the rest is simply information on various travelling arrangement possible. That is what a niche site this is all about - collecing all of this into one place and solving the travelers problems of finding it in various places. This creates value for the end-user.