Sudden disappearance from google organic ranking

[akstory]

I have been ranked in top 5 for all relevant search terms for years. I have been in business for 25 years and am modestly speaking the best in our field. The name of my company is "Alaska Yacht Charters" and suddenly I have disappeared from Google search.  Google "alaska yacht charters" and I am nowhere to be found. This all occured within days of my suspending my adwords account which I felt I didn't need because of my great organic ranking.  What has happened?Geoff Wilson  www.alaskanyachtcharters.com

[TheZenAgency]

You seem to be appearing at the bottom of page 1 when i search for your suggested phrase

[akstory]

That appearance is from "google plus" not from my url...You will not find my url on top 100

[MarieHaynes]

Can you pinpoint the date of your drop?  Was it October 17 of this year?

Your backlink profile looks pretty typical for sites that were affected by the Penguin algorithm.  Penguin was designed to demote sites that have gained an unfair advantage by creating links for the purpose of SEO.

Look at your anchor text profile...this is not natural:

https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/anchors?site=alaskanyachtcharters.com&source=phrase&target=page&page=1

You have many unnatural links such as these:

http://buysellin.co.uk/travel-c17-p1.html

http://gostylascott.blogspot.ca/2010/12/scott-gostylas-story.html

http://dollarlinksdirectory.com/business/Travel/

The reason why links matter for SEO is because Google thinks that if someone else recommended you (by linking to you) then you are probably a good site to show to searchers.  But, if those links are self made, then these are not links that Google wants to count.

Can you recover?  It depends on whether you've actually got truly natural links in your link profile.  If so, then you can try to remove the unnatural links, disavow those that you can't remove and then wait until Google reruns the Penguin algorithm.  Once this happens, provided you have done a good cleanup, then you will have escaped the Penguin filter and will be ranking where you should rank according to the good links you have and the quality of your content.

[akstory]

Great!  How do I disavow and how do I remove?

[Stewart_SEO]

Can you give me an example of what a natural link looks like or is these days?

[MarieHaynes]

A natural link is one that would be there even if links didn't matter for SEO.  The best natural link is one where someone really wants to recommend you or to tell their readers about your content and then they link to you.  Some industry connection links are ok.  For example, if you are a vendor for a certain product and they list you on their vendors page that's good.  Also, some directory links are ok.

Here are a some articles that might help:

http://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines

http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2360254/is-that-directory-link-unnatural

[Stewart_SEO]

So you're only taking about branded links then otherwise what a link actually is these days is not so clear.

Dude you need to figure out if you even have a poor link profile before you start thinking of disavowing anything. You could have poor content or duplicate content on your domain that caused the drop or as you suggested because you closed PPC... very conspiratorial! Is there a correlation between adwords and google search?

Something the EU anti-trust commision on the break up of Google need to look at that if it's true.

[MarieHaynes]

If you search the Moz Q&A there are many posts on disavowing.  But, if you're not sure what you're doing it may be best to have someone experienced in disavowing take a look.

Also, in 2-3 weeks from now I'll be publishing a Beginner's Guide to Disavowing on Moz.

[BBEXNinja]

I agree with Marie. I see indications that your site has been negatively impacted by Google Penguin 3.0.

Viewing your site on semrush, I see that your loss in traffic occurred in October '14 -- the same timeframe in which Penguin 3.0 was rolled out.

I also see only "money" keywords populating your website's link profile (e.g. "alaska yacht charters," "alaska charter boats," "alaskan yacht charters", etc.). In other words, these links appear to be links that were created by you (or by extension, an SEO company) for the purpose of increasing Google rankings. Google considers this to be a "link scheme" and penalizes this activity: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

To move forward, I would first make sure that your website is verified/connected to Google's Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en). It's 100% free and you can simply upload a verification file to your server to get started. From there, you can review your website's inbound links and anchor texts. I would do a lot of research on DIY link audits before considering doing one yourself, but I can tell you that Google recommends being ruthless. Don't just pick a link or two that come from a Russian site. You have to be objective and honest about the links pointing to your site and whether or not they were created for the sole purpose of improving your ranking for a keyword. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-machete-16844.html

The first step for removing links is to simply reach out to the webmaster of a site/directory containing a dubious backlink and kindly ask them to help you remove it. If you had an SEO company build these links for you, ask them if they can provide you access to the user profiles they created to make these links. Hopefully you can just log in and get rid of the link yourself.

Your success rate in removing links by  email solicitation may be very low. Most won't respond. Some may even ask for money. Never do this(!!!). It isn't the end of the world if you can't remove a link. Google has provided us a disavow tool that you can use to simply write off these links instead. They won't count toward your SEO anymore, but they can't count against you either (in theory). https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

If you can clean up your backlinks, then you have a shot at recovery, but this can only happen once Penguin refreshes again. We have no idea when this will be. It took over one year(!) between Penguin 2.1 and Penguin 3.0.

For that reason, you may actually want to consider building a new site in the meantime. More info on whether you should do that or not here: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penalty-new-site-18200.html

[MattAntonino]

Have you claimed your site in Webmasters Tools? If so, do you have a manual penalty?

You also have a LOT of duplicate content issues. Google could be choosing not to index your site because (not much) nothing is original.  I pulled 10-15 sentences individually off your site and found so much duplication. I would suggest re-doing your whole homepage content while you sort out the link issues.  Also, many inner pages need some re-work on content as well.

I agree though, it looks like a link issue. 170+ referring domains with 1700 links in Ahrefs is usually a dead giveaway of 2007-2011 link building. Disavow, reconsideration request & you should be back in the index.  Your site needs a LOT more proper SEO work to rank well but that's a start to get you back in the index.