Massive Google Drop on two sites!

[SEOAndy]

Sounds like your SEO guy doesn't really pay much attention and his attitude towards you coming to him with that query suggests that he might be doing some poor link building which might have got you penalised by Google.

Do you have access to webmaster tools? if so you may have a message about unnatural links.

Whats the website and maybe I can have a better look for you.

[etsgroup]

Yes they are out of three words in the domain, two are the search term, for both sites. Is this something you help with?

[Carlos-R]

Before the recent update from Google having the keywords in the domain helped a lot.

I'm sure that they still help somehow, but to get back to where you were you will need to build up the authority of your site (good links, social signals, quality content, etc - nothing new).

As Simon said, also check your WMT account and see if you have any messages from Google regarding unnatural links.

[etsgroup]

Thanks Carlos, very helpful. I'm thinking about finding some new help, any tips what i should start focusing on first and how long this may take to get back up?

[etsgroup]

PS webmaster tools is not showing anything, status is currently

No new messages or recent critical issues.

[Carlos-R]

Happy to help. The first thing you need to do is find out if the SEO done to your site could also be the reason why your site dropped. Even with the EMD update, to drop from #8 to #96 there must be something else going on.

Ask yourself these questions:

Is the content on your site over-optimised?

Does your link profile look unnatural (exact keyword anchor text, low quality links, article directories, blog comments, link wheels, etc.) ?

Could you have any on-page issues (duplicate content, over-optimised meta, etc.)?

If you show us your sites we will be able to give you better advice.

[activitysuper]

Like Carlos said most likely the EMD update.

See - http://mozcast.com/metrics and tab 'EMD Influence'.

Regarding your SEO people, you may not have access to your webmaster tools account but you could put your website domain so we could take a quick look.

It wouldn't take very long to tell if your SEO people are doing a good job or not.

Just so you understand a little better, Google puts some weight (From what I have seen, a lot) on a website which has an EMD (exact match domain) and that also targets that term.

I have seen websites rank with an EMD on the first page with little to no link building.

Google has just turned the power on EMD's down. As you can see from my link.

The reason why the guys above are saying your must have a poor link profile is because even when Google turned the power down, the link building you should have should of held you up.

So... EMD turned down, poor link profile (which should have held you up) = drop

Answer - Build your link profile up.

But it maybe something else until we can see your site, for all I know your whole site is duplicate content and you have been penalised.

[etsgroup]

Thanks guys for all your help, at least I have an idea of how to move forward,. I have PM the URLs over or shall i post them here openly??

[etsgroup]

This has all been very helpful, thank you. So the questions Im left with are

What do I do next? - I am running SEOMoz crawl/report will go through everything with a  fine tooth comb?
Do I need to do more link building and what budget would be good?
Do I need better site content?
Any major flaws?
Why was the main reasons the drop so big?

Could anyone help to put a strategy together and take on this work?

[SEOAndy]

I'd say you probably need to look at how you are building links as well as the content on your site to see if it is spammy or not.

I haven't seen the site so it's really hard to tell what has caused the drops but in conclusion;

1. Look at your content, is it spammy, is it stuff users want to read or is it written for search engines?

2. Link Building, what kind of links are being built? are they spammy? (use open site explorer) look at creating a new link building strategy that focuses on quality.

If you want to talk further about it you are welcome to PM me and I can give you site a proper look over and see if I can help you

[MarieHaynes]

I think it's dangerous to speculate that you were hit by EMD without knowing all of the facts.  EMD hit Sep 28.  There was also a major Panda update Sep 27.  But you mentioned that you started dropping in August.

Can you tell the exact date of your drop?  If it was Aug 20 there was a Panda update then.  You mentioned that your two sites share the same 2000 product database.  If they have duplicate pages, or pages with significantly duplicated product descriptions then this is a big flag for Panda.

You mentioned that you pay for linkbuilding.  Some linkbuilding has been punished by Penguin.  Now, Penguin affected most sites on Apr 24 and many more on May 25.  However, there are some people who have documented that a site may be able to be affected by Penguin at any time.  (They still believe a refresh is necessary for recovery).  So, if your traffic drop happened within a few weeks of a major keyword anchor texted linkbuilding campaign then Penguin is a possibility.

Have you checked your WMT for any warnings of unnatural links?  This is a possibility as well.

Plus there are a pile of other factors.  Check this list for a bunch of other possibilities for a ranking/traffic drop.