Penguine Recovery

[contactatonce]

Our site, www.autodealerchat.com got hit hard by Google's recent Penguin update (also known as the over-optimization update). For our main set of keywords including:

• auto dealer chat
• dealer chat
• car dealer chat
• automotive chat

We lost placement across the board most notably on automotive chat where we were third and are today non-existent. If you look at our site, we were following former best practices and SEOMoz recommendations. If you look at our backlinks, we were playing the white hat game like everyone else. SEOMoz tools indicated that we were tops in terms of Domain Authority, etc. according to the old rules. Everything changed on April 25th.

Going forward, what are some of the things that we can do to regain some of that lost ground?

Thanks in advance for the insights.

[AdamThompson]

I did a super-quick review of your backlinks in OSE. What I saw was mainly press releases, with a few links from sites you own, and links from pages full of spam like http://www.alivincent.com/blog/post/2010/04/28/Work-Weeke280a6e280a6-when-the-reality-show-becomes-a-REALITY!.aspx

I also notice that your backlinks are overwhelmingly using your target keywords as anchor text, so you may be suffering for anchor text over-optimization.

My recommendation would be to focus more on higher quality, natural backlinks. Focus on SEO strategies that build your brand and focus on users. You might find http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-big-brands-get-all-the-breaks helpful.

Hope this is helpful.