Latest Google update

[keane-114517]

This post is deleted!

[MonicaOConnor]

The two most recent updates, Panda and Penguin rolled out fairly close together so it is a little difficult to say for sure which one you might have been affected by.

First, if you content is unique, informative, and trustworthy you should have made it through Panda.

If the link profile is spammy and full of low quality, paid for links, it is very possible that Penguin had some affect on your rankings. The way that Penguin works, it is also possible that competing websites that were previously affected have now had the negative ranking affects lifted and have just beaten out your clients rankings because they have better SEO practice. It is possible to suffer from the Penguin update without receiving a penalty directly from Google.

Unfortunately, if Penguin is to blame, you won't see a full recovery until the next update. My advice is to review the content on the site, make sure it is unique, authoritative and trustworthy. Spend some time analyzing the link profile and get rid of anything that is spammy.

[keane-114517]

Hi Monica

Thanks for the response.

We are working through the link profile and removing links that look spammy and we know the content is unique as it has been written by the client and then updated by ourselves.

I take your point about building authority and trust however, again, there are numerous sites that have maintained their listing with no links, unique content etc....

As I stated before, discussing this with the client is getting difficult to justify blog articles, social media, unique content etc... when it is very clear that there are sites that appear to have no SEO strategy and/or links from spammy and relevant sites, yet have moved up or maintained their position.

Thanks again for your help

[MonicaOConnor]

Content is only one part of the equation, a strong link profile is also very important. Are you building new links regularly? Do you have outbound links to reputable, industry related sites? You should be adding between 5 and 10% of the existing link profile regularly. Their competitors could be outranking for a lot of things. Do you use the Moz toolbar? It is really helpful you want to do some keyword comparisons on page. You will be able to check their DA, PA and links on a particular page. That might be able to give you some insight that I can't. If you would like to offer some more information, maybe the keyword and your domain, I would be happy to look into it further.

[Hannah_Smith]

I've taken a quick look at your link profile, and it looks to me like you still have some fairly spammy links live; in addition to some advertising links which are followed (rather than no-followed) which may be what's causing the issues.