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Did many of those pages have duplicate content problems. Do a quick audit on the website using "Screaming Frog". It's free to use and is fast. You can also export csv reports and study in excel. Let me know what you find!

Yea check this too; great answer here. I just don't know why people are doing this without 301 in a .htaccess file to new location. But it's hard to tell if the poster is having problems internally or externally?!

These links were probably diluted by the late and famous Google Penguin Algorithm. This algorithm was targeted at websites that have over optimized link building. This including using the same anchor text over and over.

Use Majestic SEO or Ahrefs to look at the link profile.

You can certainly do an audit on your links and determine if you have enough resources to go through a disavow process.

I would focus on instead setting a budge for quality directory submissions using branded keywords and or press releases for new content your website produces.

*Also avoid doing too much link building in a 0 to 90 period. You just don't need as many links anymore!

This should help you move forward.

You can also message me if you have pains with certain parts of your project. I have tons of resources I can help you connect to. Good luck

I am not sure I understand what you're asking here.

Are you asking is not using alt tags on images will hurt you? It should not have anything to do with your link profile. The only thing that could hurt your link profile is using exact anchor match on your link building.

Using too many alt text on a page will certainly hurt your page(s) from ranking. Also using the same keyword over and over on multiple pages is something you want to avoid.

The alt tags were for disabled people that obviously have trouble seeing images. They have special system that would play the audio from special tags like this to tell them what the page is about.

If it is not organic or natural;try to avoid spamming!

**1.) You want to check first for duplicate content issues. **

*SEO MOZ has a great tool suite here that ran a full analysis of the website from multiple angles.

**2.) You want to study their link profile and anchor text. **

If they were hit hard (not due to duplicate content), then their website probably got smashed to bits by Google Penguin algorithm. This is an over-optimize-algorithm that Google used to destroy websites that had thousands of links using exact anchor matches.

*You want to use brand anchor text and mix up your anchors when link building

*Research link prospecting and anchor text diversity

*Use majestic seo or ahrefs to study your link profile and determine if the site engaged in this damaging link building tactics.

*You certainly can try to disavow links through Google Webmaster Tools, but I don't think it is a good use of time.

*Focus on high quality directories (tons of curated list online just search), free directories, press releases using the website brand name anchor text

3.) General Marketing Persona Map - Learn Who Your Target Consumers Are

Also user site bounce rates can really become a sign of website that has worthless content. I would asses the goals of the website, product, and services and start with a general marketing persona map for surfers/customers. This is huge because it will lead to a better conversation algorithm to help you build out a marketing plan to reach your target audience at each stage of their though process and decision making.

**4.) Plan your content map and **strategy

You need to setup a schedule for custom content creation, on page call to actions, and a syndication schedule to help generate social signals of engagement to your website.

Also your blog need to establish Authorship and put a face behind the content you produce.

After doing this you need to create ideas for link bait opportunities like guest posting and info-graphics if possible.

*To do all of this, I suggest getting organized and setup a team of people within your organization to help you with each stage of the project.

This will keep you busy for a while! Hope this helps. Don't be afraid to Google the concepts I mentioned if you don't understand. This is how I learned back in 2004!

You can use, Screaming Frog. It's a free program you should include in your website audit. Very powerful and produces reports to csv you can study in Microsoft Excel.

The bulk of your main content needs to be above the fold. This is the same area where your h1 tag should reside. You can certainly see this with many ecommerce stores.

i.e.

"h1"

"content here"

try to link to two inner pages if you can for additional content that cannot be fully explained on this page. Also try to have a 1 or 2 % keyword density in a 200 word paragraph.

You should be set.

*Keep your keywords in your h1 tag and title tag to the left!"

Yes it is possible. I will start with a saying in this business.

SEO Organic rankings will largely depend on how organic friendly your content is. I have never seen a website that had very share-able, power, dynamic content that not rank. The power is in what you offer. If you what you offer is not very powerful in word-of-mouth; chances are you are in very a emotional roller-coaster ride.

A large part of what many webmasters miss is that your product, service, information, website/blog has to be very useful. What will become of a very useful website, product, and or service is the link profile for your website and very high rankings.

People ask me, "So how does SEO play into such a powerhouse?" Or why do I need SEO if my product, service, website is so raw!

SEO is more than just manipulating links and content. Keyword research will help you silo your website by targeting long-tail-keywords like you mention earlier.

Keyword research helps you ensure you setup a series of implicit and explicit conversation with your user, which will develop into many landing pages with a targeted conversion. That conversion could be to filter into a semantic-powerhouse email program (designed to generate revenue), coupon offer, instant discount on some product to checkout, a phone call, a lead, something.

The Keyword Research will evolve into marketing persona project that will help you understand how to direct users throughout your website to an end result.

After the Keyword Research, Persona Map and Content Conversation-Conversion Map,you'll need to silo (Google it tons of blog post our there on what this is and how to do it) your website and come up with a schema that interconnects your website for site-usability and crawl-ability is critical to ensure that you can rank for just about any keyword relative to your niche without having to resort into blackhat/grayhat linking. You can just do high-quality press releases, directories, and community advertising to promote your content.

*This is pretty much the only strategy that can ensure enough natural organic links develop to your root page on your server and any other inner directory or page in your site.

Hopefully this is a little clearer.

Yes it is possible. I will start with a saying in this business.

SEO Organic rankings will largely depend on how organic friendly your content is. I have never seen a website that had very share-able, power, dynamic content that not rank. The power is in what you offer. If you what you offer is not very powerful in word-of-mouth; chances are you are in very a emotional roller-coaster ride.

A large part of what many webmasters miss is that your product, service, information, website/blog has to be very useful. What will become of a very useful website, product, and or service is the link profile for your website and very high rankings.

People ask me, "So how does SEO play into such a powerhouse?" Or why do I need SEO if my product, service, website is so raw!

SEO is more than just manipulating links and content. Keyword research will help you silo your website by targeting long-tail-keywords like you mention earlier. Keyword reseach helps you ensure you setup a series of implicit and explict coversation with your user, which will develop into many landing pages with a targeted conversion. That conversion could be to filter into a semantic-powerhouse email program (designed to generate revenue), coupon offer, instant discount on some product to checkout, a phone call, a lead, something.

The Keyword Research will evolve into marketing persona project that will help you understand how to direct users throughout your website to an end result.

After the Keyword Research, Persona Map and Content Conversion Map. you'll silo (Google it tons of blog post our there on what this is and how to do it) your website and come up with a schema that interconnects your website for site-usability and crawl-ability is critical to ensure that you can rank for just about any keyword relative to your niche without having to resort into blackhat/grayhat linking. You can just do high-quality press releases, directories, and community advertising to promote your content.

*This is pretty much the only stratgey that can ensure enough natural organic links develop to your root page on your server and any other inner directory or page in your site.

Hopefully this is a little clearer.

What is GWT? Can you give a description or link? Thanks in advance!

I would definitely say your off-site seo would be the first place to start.

If you are new, you need to make some investment on time building links.

*There are a few ways to do something like this.

1.)You can start with free and paid directories.

=>spend sometime finding niche specific directories for free listings

=> spend sometime on premium directories

*only submit every 90 days like to 5 or 10.

*also use your brand name instead of exact anchor matches.

2.) You can try to do some custom link building by looking up blogs and building relationships with blogging experts. This is very white-hate-seo and naturally takes time. Don' get anxious in trying to get a ton of these links. Last year's algo Penguin rocked the SEO industry in over optimizing in links (the amount) and the exact match of the same anchor terms (keyword phrases) and Google devalued them.

*Try to use a variety of phrases instead of the same anchor over and over. Make your custom links look natural and do 10 - 15 each month

*Use link prospecting like "list hunting" top 10 blogging (keyword phrase) and you should be able to find websites or blogs listed as hot or the best.

*Offer to send your product or service to them for review in exchange for link.

3.) Produce better content!

->Syndicate your content with Web 2.0 bookmarking and forums.

-> Again this is also white-hate-seo and will take you time.

-> I suggest doing some research to find your users "paint-points" and making a map of your content.

This content should be well thought out. You'll need to get inside your consumers-visitors heads.

Think implicit thoughts and explicit thoughts. (Google if you don't know much about this)

Make a spreadsheet and start tracking the results you find.

*I find forums are a great place to find out these thoughts, pain-points, and your demographics.

*Great content will produce natural links for you. If it is really dynamic, you get social signals and other quality signals that will help your site rank better.

Also silo your website (Google silo website for seo) and start planning how you are going to inter-link your inner pages. The bigger the website the better. This will help in distribution of your website for other pages that you want rank or long-tail-keyword you want to target.

This should get you start; you have an arsenal of info here and research to do.

Tools:

Use Majestic SEO to study competition back-link profiles and you own as it progresses. Great way to find broken links of expired domains or against older competitors and reach-out to the webmasters they use to have links to and try to get your site's link there. All around great tool

Ahrefs is another web-based to tool to study back-links

Authority Labs will help you track many keywords you want to target. It's free for like 30 days

SEM Rush will help you study competition and counter them.

Good Luck!

Defiantly agree with the Penguin Algo.

*When you do initially build out your directory links or custom links, try to use randomization on your anchor phrases. You can do search within searchengineland.com and searchenginejournal.com for post on junk anchors and random anchor phrases.

This algo update rocked the seo industry and many of the over optimize links-anchors were diluted in seo value.

Hey, if you need other advice or help with analysis; I usually can point you in the right direction. Good luck!

You Heading Tags also know as your h1 and h3 tags are important for on page seo.

Especially the H1 tag. You should probably define a css class for styling because this tag can be big, bulky, and ugly; however, Google uses this as a large signal for what a web-page is about. The title tag is also the other most vital signal and it should match the h1 (I mean the keyword phrase you are targeting).

I emphasize everyday to internal departments where I work about the importance of on-page-seo. In competitive search ninches, these on page scores and organicness (if that is a word) will matter in stable rankings.

Also where you have your h1 should be above the fold (nerd jargon), right under the top nav. The h1 followed by a simple paragraph that has useful content and one or two links to direct users to targeted pages or directories.

Hope this helps.

What CMS system are you using? If you are using Wordpress, you can use a plugin to help with canonical issues.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/canonical/

I have to add in Ahrefs. I checked them out but I never really got engaged.

Also citation labs has Link Prospector tool. Which is great for link building from list standpoint to find websites that could be viable options for links.

This would be a mistake; you don't every really want to try and adapt a project down the road. You can do it, but it will be painful! The biggest investment really is the time you put into the project. Right now time might be your friend and you have plenty of it. But once things start rolling time can become a valuable commodity to your project time lines and task activities set with certain cost. You'll have to start buying time and maybe hire someone to handle some other task you cannot do on your own to solve upgrading your website.

*I suggest planning the scope of your content, product paths, and list them on a white board or piece of paper first.

*List things (in human code) you want and would like to have and come up with a date to upgrade. This could be options, graphical appeal, and many other site usability issues.

*You'll find this to be more manageable and goals set for yourself and business.

I once tried to change the design of a website I ran years ago and it was a very hard process, because I had to keep up with content development, adding custom pages, doing pictures, videos, custom landing pages, competition analysis, link building, content syndication, social bookmarking and other email campaign filter programs and much more.

The SEO part of adapting your site design can also cause some problems too. Typically you want to avoid sudden changes to the complete layout and look of your e-commerce store. You can certainly make small changes overtime (aka upgrades like framework, style of elements and navigation structure).

*If you do decided to redo anything avoid deleting directories, or files that Google has crawled; instead just use 301 redirects to avoid missing pages. Google can be weird. I remember when I launched SecurityCameraWarehouse dot com website, Google took interest in my discount cctv dvr page and other similar ones and ranked them. At the time I decided I wanted to offer a better page that targeted a different keyword, and different design. I actually ended up doing that for like 30 pages and it caused my website trouble. Like Google eventually deindexed my website. This was like 6 years ago!

If you are on Apache Linux Server, you want to ensure you modrewrite is in place on your .htaccess file. If you are using a CMS like Wordpress, Drupal, Jaloma and or Wolf CMS, do a simple Google search to find the process or plugins that can help you fix this problem.

If you are not using a CMS; I would suggest Wordpress!

Hope this helps!

Day in and out, I have to do on page analysis and off page analysis; so screaming frog is one great desktop software that I use to see lengths on title tags, meta desc, meta keywords, on page content, keyword density and other internal linking b/w pages.

The offsite I use and cannot live without Majestic SEO backlink profile lookup and SEM Rush to see overall trends when studying competition. These two are web-based and offer a free version; however, the pro version is worth the money!

I use Authority Labs to track keywords that reports tracking for all three search engine platforms. They offer reports to you and show you up and down movement on all your keywords and even the long-tail-keywords!

Hope these tools help with your post!