Whats wrong with this site?

[QGS77]

This post is deleted!

[TomRayner]

Hi Ben

I've quickly had a look at your site and can't find any major on-page issues, so I hopped to your link profile and I think that could be the cause of your problems.

I'm assuming here that for the 'turf' keyword you were ranking your homepage.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Some of your top links by PA and DA are rather poor quality.  Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4 - these are a mix of forum profile links and guestbook links.  They're poor quality in the sense that they have been put their solely to pass PageRank, offer no benefit to a user and are an obvious attempt to manipulate ranking.

I've consistently seen with these type of links that they will inevitably be devalued by Google.  IF that happens, they'll stop passing link equity, or strength, to your site, which might account for a fall in rankings.  If you have had a number of links devalued - which at first glance looking at your homepage links this could well be the case - you could see a drop like you have just seen.

Now, there is a chance that your site may have been bit by the Penguin algorithm.  The algorithm can trigger site-wide penalties, page specific penalties or even just keyword penalties.  The offer keywords you rank for - are they also for the homepage?  Do you also have an idea when it was that you saw the rankings drop?

If you're unsure, you can run the free Panguin tool with your analytics data - if you see a decline in traffic after the last Penguin refresh in October, it could be the reason for the fall.

If the rankings and traffic does not coincide with this drop, then you should be free of any algorithmic penalties.  In this case, the main problem will be that the links you have to your homepage like I mentioned above have been devalued by Google, thus passing no strength.  If the drop does coincide with the Penguin refresh, then you will need to take action on the bad links.

What I would do in both circumstances is to make a list of which links you have that could be deemed as spammy and manipulative.  Both OpenSiteExplorer and the LinkDetox Tool are great for helping you identify these.  If you haven't been hit by an algorithmic penalty, simply take note of these links for future reference.  If you have been hit by Penguin, you will need to contact the webmasters of those sites and ask for the link to be removed.

The aim is to appease the algorithm so that your link profile for that page/keyword/site would not be deemed as spammy or manipulative.  Removing the links is the best way to achieve this.  However, you'll know doubt be thinking that the likelihood of even getting a response from those sites is slim.  That's where the Google Disavow tool comes in.

Cyrus Shephard gave a great account of how to use the tool in his blog post.  Once you submit the disavow file, it should trigger the algorithm to ignore those links for your root domain.  Remember, this is for an algorithmic penalty.  In this case, you would need to wait for the algorithm to refresh before any penalty is lifted - and we're due a Penguin refresh very soon.

Hope this helps to diagnose the potential problem and if you'd like to chat any more, just drop me a message.

[QGS77]

Tom Thank you so much for taking the time to look into this for me.. I have had a look at the penguin tool and it does look as though the first penguin update had a large effect.  Having said that it is difficult to be 100% sure as it took effect at about the same time that we saw a natural down turn in business due to bad weather.

I foolishly outsourced some link building at about the same time as well. and this is the cause of many of the spammy forum profiles etc..

I will keep looking into the link profile in more detail, is linkdetox worth the $?

Ben

[TomRayner]

Hi Ben

If you could break down your traffic data into segments, such as branded keywords vs non-branded keywords, that would be a big help.  A drop in branded keyword traffic would reflect seasonality, whereas a drop in non-brand might suggest the effect of Penguin.  If you have any historical rankings to back up those traffic figures as well, that would help.

We've all made mistakes in SEO - the challenge is to learn from them.  I think LinkDetox is definitely worth the money.  You can also tweet for a discount and I think it still makes the tool free for a short period if you do - so you can try before you buy.  Send Christoph a tweet (he made the tool) to check if this still is the case:

http://twitter.com/cemper