Huge drop in organic traffic after Google's May update

[gphelmets.com]

This post is deleted!

[RobertFisher]

GPhelmets

You say "We have cleaned up many link, pages, content, but sure a lot more as to do with it." Have you at all looked at your actual link profile? Have you looked at linking domains? Have you looked at anchor text?

I looked at all and you have changed a few things: From roughly Late May/early June you have gone from 4100 links or so to about 2250. That in and of itself is interesting. If these were done that quickly (less than two months) did you know every webmaster with the bad links you got rid of? Were they somehow connected to a site you own(ed)?

Next, even though these links are down, it may not be apparent to Google; and, the links you have still contain some that are  questionable. Links from a site for Introverts with every link having your domain as the anchor text. Seems a pure giveaway.

I would suggest you go through the site using ahrefs or a similar program and then for every domain that is questionable utilize the disavow tool. (Follow the directions on how to submit the disavow carefully). Yes, there is no guarantee, but we used it with a client who catapulted from 5200 to 28000 links in a month and it has been great. GWMT now shows 189 links from a site they had over 20K from. They lost rank on May 22 and as of Sunday they are not only on page one for two key terms they are ranked first and second. So, it can work.

Good luck.

[FedeEinhorn]

Wish everyone could get the same results out of the disavow tool.

We completely cleaned up our backlink profile (and we are still in the process), took like 4 month to contact all of them or add the domain to the disavow file. Sent the disavow file waited for about 4 weeks, NOTHING, even worse.

We had no manual penalty, it was an algorithmic one, and while I think we did our work creating excellent content, earning links the right way, we are still on positions 9 - 30 for our main keywords, outranked by PURE spammers, sape link buyers. Reporting them didn't work, contacting Google with a reconsideration request (even we had no manual penalty (as Cutts suggested)) didn't work. And seeing the rankings still dropping against black hatters (for over 8 month now) I wonder, should we go that route? It seems to be the only way it works, as more and more blackhats manage to outrank us. Even if google takes them down, they are up there the very next day with a new page, same owner (you can tell by the text and language they use). Seems that that's their job, spam a site, get top rankings, google takes it down, "rinse and repeat"...

[Jonathan_Hatton]

Hi GP Helmets,

A similar thing happened to one of our clients, we noticed they had around 6-7 spammy links in their profile. We requested they got removed and we only saw a very slight movement in rankings.

Next, we looked at the landing pages from an on page perspective. We realised that the pages affected were heavily over optimised for 1-2 specific keywords. We have re-written (de-optimised) the content on these pages and we are starting to see rankings dramatically increase.

Looking at your homepage content you have around 390 words of content on there. Within these 390 words you have 40 keyword mentions of 'Arai'. Please see attached image.

Note

I am aware that the May update mainly targeted backlinks, however this is just something I have noticed and it worked quite well.

Cheers

WeQAWxg

[RobertFisher]

Federico,

First, sorry this is a bit long, but I think it has to be said. Also, it is not about you it is about a global view.

One of the most difficult things for me to overcome as an SEO is looking at how someone who is doing it the wrong way is ranking for something. Over time, for me, it has become really important to not look at them from the perspective of who is doing it "right." I may look at competitor rankings and then what they are doing from the perspective of "am I missing something" but not from who is blackhat vs whitehat, etc. There is no payoff for the latter. 
But, when you try to see what they are doing right, (trust me, I am neither naive nor innocent), sometimes you realize you could do better. That is where I focus and where I have the team focus.

My job as an agency is to do the best for my client within the belief system here at our firm. Many clients focus entirely on rank and it becomes very difficult to stick to your beliefs when you have a client paying you large sums of money demanding better ranking.

Our client who was Penguinized got this from us. Became client on 1 April. Our staff caught a bad link profile change two weeks later within 24 hours of it occurring, we immediately began trying to contact the webmaster (not that we thought they would respond in the least) and creating a paper trail of that. At the same time, we could take no immediate action re the disavow tool as the links had yet to show in GWMT. We told the client as soon as we saw the anomaly. (Learned transparency from Moz). The problem was with the former marketing firm and their link building - NOTE: I really believe the client pushed them so much they gave up and were trying anything to keep the account. This is what I mean about sticking to your firms beliefs re SEO and marketing and business. 
The client, knowing that it was caused by the others, still wanted to know they could and would rank #1 or #2 for key terms. I told them there was a real chance they would be wiped off the serps. 
They were already doing things that were highly problematic around Google's terms of service.

They felt that our refusal to say yes, we can get you #1 and keep you there was a lack of confidence or a lack of buy in about their product. Luckily, our team is truly remarkable. They are young (at 57 I am the oldest by more than double) but imbued with the belief that management will back them and not blink. I did not blink (full disclosure, I wanted to). When penguin hit on May 22 they were on page 2 #20 and on page three a couple of times over a few days.

As soon as the links had shown in GWMT, a young SEO was tasked with correctly submitting the disavow tool. NOTE: This is often the reason for it not working, it is not done correctly. As we watched, the links dwindled for that domain.  Yes, to a point I feel lucky. I know it does not always work, but do not get caught up in that and miss that you could have done something differently to impact your site(s). When you focus on what you can control, you have power. When you focus on things outside of your sphere (competitor sucks and does blackhat) you are wasting time when you could be learning how to push them into oblivion.

I told my clients early on, "I am here to make your competitors have very bad days. I wake up looking for ways I can get them to focus on you and not on their business." This next part is true no matter how hard it is to believe.

My clients chief competitor contacted our ISP (a high end fiber provider) about a month ago and told them he was going to sue them as we were committing click fraud. I called the guy and he would not listen to anything - including a definition of click fraud. He believed his problem was that we were paying people to go click on his PPC campaigns. Trust me, we are not as I do not have the bandwidth to handle such a pain in the butt practice. But, the moral is this. Because of what we are doing for our client, he is starting to feel it. He is now focusing on us and not on his business.

My clients continued to demand we say we would get them ranked #1, etc. I did not do it. When we were at the point of launching their new site, taking down their microsites and using sub directories for areas where they had no presence the client held their collective breath. As pages that had never been on the web began to show on page two and rather quickly move up, they were more calm. When they got an email regarding top terms for them ranking 1 and 2 after we had stuck to our beliefs, they sent a  two word reply to our entire staff:

Impressive Gents!

That is why we focus on our job and not the competitor, that is why we stick to our beliefs even when we are afraid we will lose the client. You can win, stick to the way you are going and get smarter than your competitors. If I can assist, shoot me a PM.

Best,

[RobertFisher]

Jonathan,

This is a very good point. Thanks,

[FedeEinhorn]

Wohoo that was a long read

I'll shoot you an e-mail later Today or tomorrow, perhaps you can help us.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Federico! You've received some excellent responses. Did any of them answer your question?