Stuck on Page 4...is this diagnosis on the right track?

[bartlettpairphoto]

My website's (http://bartlettpairphotography.com) SERP rank is #45 for my targeted keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers. My site is several years old, with 31-Domain Authority and 42-Page Authority. I've been stuck in SERP 40's for about a year now (I used to be top 5) and I have been pulling my hair out trying everything to no avail. I have an inkling that some configuration is seriously wrong, and would be very very appreciative is someone could point me in the right direction! I'm evidently not an expert at this, but here are my high level thoughts, though I could be totally off base here:

Homepage problems (ranking 45 for highest priority keyword: Philadelphia wedding photographers):

1. The #5 rank has a flash website, homepage = 33-DA/44-PA (slightly better than me). This makes me wonder if my problem is off-page? I have recently been submitting my photography work to many relevant wedding blogs so I think I will get some nice relevant backlinks in the coming weeks/months.
2. The #11 rank has the same wordpress theme as me (ProPhotoBlogs), and homepage = 26-DA, 35-PA (somewhat worse than me) and similar homepage content etc...this makes me think I have an on-page problem?
3. As you can see, my targeted keyword starts off with a geographic location. Geographically, our location is ~1 hour outside of the location, so ranking on Google maps etc. is very competitive (hundreds of competitors that are closer). Therefore, I'm mostly focused on non-local ranking. Both of the competitors I mentioned are ranking non-locally and both are 1 hour outside Philadelphia. With that said, would it still benefit me to add local content to my homepage (insert google maps, address, hours etc.)?

NON-homepage problems (ranking ~30 for longer tail keywords, i.e. specific wedding venues)

1. My blog page (http://bartlettpairphotography.com/blog) is ="noindex,follow." My reasoning for the "noindex" is because I'm showing FULL posts rather than excerpts (because I want my brides to flip through ~5 weddings rather than only clicking on 1). My thinking was that the FOLLOW aspect would pass along the link juice, while avoiding a duplicate content penalty by noindexing? I don't think this problem affects my higher priority homepage problem, but still wanted to point it out.
2. We have ~100 published posts, but honestly I only care about ranking for ~30 of them. What should I do with the ~70 that I don't care about? Are they sucking up link juice that would be better elsewhere? Or should I just leave it because it's more content?

Other than that, I'm really lost as to how I can improve my site. I gave the above examples to show that I am trying, but ultimately I feel like I'm looking in the wrong areas. With my SERP in the mid 40s, I feel like many things are broken that I am not able to figure out. I would be so very grateful if someone could help diagnose my issues!

[Keszi]

Hi Lincoln,

First of all, I would try to investigate what happened, why you have dropped out of top 5 to position ~#45. If you take a look at the Moz's Google Algo update page: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change and you compare it with your Google Analytics/Google Webmasters Tools data, do you see any specific update that might have hurt your rankings?

If you want to be quick with this, there is a great tool Panguin.

Before I would jump into troubleshooting the other questions, I would try to figure out what went wrong in the first place. Sometimes resolving old issues on the site can help the success of future efforts. So it might be worth a try.

I hope it has helped, Gr. Keszi

[bartlettpairphoto]

Thanks Keszi...here's how Panguin looks for me.

bTJt009.png

[bartlettpairphoto]

So I think I'm going to revisit the content for all of my blog posts. When I'm rewriting them, does anyone have a guide as to how often I should use words that mention the major keywords that I want my homepage to rank for? i have Yoast's plugin to help me with ranking that blog post, but I'm a little lost when it comes to how often I should mention overall homepage words (in my case, Philadelphia wedding photographers).

i also think I'm going to get rid of a lot of old posts that I don't care about.

Any other suggestions based on the graph above?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Lincoln!

I'm sorry to hear about the troubles you're having! I want to preface what I'm going to write with my opinion that your scenario is likely to require a full audit by an SEO who knows both traditional and local SEO. The Moz Q&A Forum is a great place to get at-a-glance opinions on things, but should not be seen a replacement for a formal, dedicated audit of your company. So, what follows is just my at-a-glance take on this. I am not going to look at penalties - I am just going to look at this from a local perspective.

1. Your website is not locally optimized. There is no contact information. No local phone number, address, etc.

2. So, next step for me was to guess at a Philadelphia zip code and look up your business in our Check Listing tool. The only option I see as a result for your business is located in Morgantown - not Philadelphia. Is this your business:

https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMkJhcnRsZXR0JTI1MjBQYWlyJTI1MjBQaG90b2dyYXBoeSUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjE5MDE5JTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyQmFydGxldHQlMjUyMFBhaXIlMjUyMFBob3RvZ3JhcGh5JTI1MjIlMjUyQ251bGwlMjUyQyUyNTIyJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyNjEwNTA3MDczOCUyNTIyJTI1NUQ=

3. If the above is your business and you are not located in Philadelphia, aiming for Philadelphia-related rankings is going to be a major uphill battle. Doubtless there is major competition from companies physically located in this city who are going to have a significant inherent edge over your business unless you can get an office in Philadelphia.

4. The Check Listing results indicate that almost no citation building has been done for the business. Of the 15 platforms this tool surveys, you have listings on just 3, so it doesn't look like much off-site local search marketing has been done.

5. Your Google+ Local page has earned 0 reviews: https://plus.google.com/107698063096203549335/about?hl=en-US

6. You should research local algo changes that may have occurred around the time that you noticed any drops.

So, in just a minute or two, I'm seeing some important things that, in and of themselves, could explain a lack of visibility for the locally-focused searches you're hoping to rank for. The site is not optimized locally and isn't being marketed locally and the physical location is a big question mark. This is just a start, of course, but I hope it's helpful to get started thinking about these basics that you'll need to begin addressing in your marketing efforts.

Here are some links I think you'll find really helpful:

http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

http://moz.com/learn/local

It's really smart of you to be investigating all of this, Lincoln, and I'm wishing you good luck!

[bartlettpairphoto]

Thank you so much Miriam! Yes, I was so concerned about getting a high non-local ranking that I lost focus of some basic local optimization.

i just bought Yoast's local plugin to add NAP with a map etc..should I add this to my homepage? Or only my contact page?

i have 25 reviews on WeddingWire (which Moz ranks as a top citation source for wedding photographers), but none of those are showing on my Google Local page. How would I fix that?

[bartlettpairphoto]

Well, the story is becoming clearer now. I just looked back in my GWT and found a message (see attachment) from Google on March 22, 2012. I suspect this is related to over optimized backlink anchor text (probably mostly lots of anchor optimized comments on other photography related blogs).

I plan on using this tool (http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/3524/the-fastest-most-accurate-unnatural-link-detection-case-study/) to discover/disavow links. Does that sound like a good approach? Can I submit the same disavow tool to Bing and Yahoo, or just Google?

This is the first and only time that I've received a warning. Does that mean anything? Also, I am able to rank pretty well for long tail keywords (it kinda seems like the penalty is most severe on the anchors that were over optimized?), so it's not like I've been banned...do I have to do a reconsideration request or will the disavow be a good step?

EtSvD5D

[Keszi]

Hi Lincoln,

I'd be cautious using tools that automatically generate a list for disavowing links. Instead take a day or two and go over it manually, filter out those which do look spammy. (You can use Opensiteexplorer to export your backlinks.)

Here you have a very good article from Modestos Siotos, on how to conduct a link audit.

Gr., Keszi

[bartlettpairphoto]

Thank you Keszi - after reading your link I agree that there are several steps to take before disavowing.

Before I jump into all this work, i'm still looking for clarity that I actually have an anchor over optimization problem (or if it's something else). Based on the March 22, 2012 note above...and also the fact that I don't have anything in the Manual Actions of my GWT, is it reasonable to think I have a penguin anchor problem given that commercial anchors comprise ~25% of my backlinks? Especially since I remain indexed and Google seems to be penalizing me for the keywords that were over-anchored?

[Keszi]

I was thinking how to answer this, but it is so simple: Yes and Yes for both of the questions

Let me know if you need further assistance.

[bartlettpairphoto]

Great! I will work to clean this up. I'm hoping that since there is no Manual Action that the algorithm will take care of itself without needing a Manual Reconsideration.