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We've actually seen this kind of behaviour with some of the sites from new clients.

They interlinked all their websites, usually with the same templated design.

If you didnt get any warning in webmaster tools, this is probably a purely algorithmic issue which is a whole lot harder to get out of.

I would look at the other things, technical seo, onpage, content being updated, those sorts of usual seo stuff. You competition might be different now in the SERPS as the keywords you were targeting are now showing different results.

im not seeing any problems. Have you fixed this already?

I wouldnt worry about duplicate issues too much unless its on the same domain. It would be my last thing to worry about, probably after fixing the new site. I have done it before on some projects so i understand how annoying this is.

Im wondering why he would want to put the same piece of content on SiteB on 2 separate pieces though...

You would want to put rel=canonical on the pages that have the content like the siteB content page pointing to the siteB mixed content

It's a bit vague but I hope I understood your situation correctly.

Ive seen such things bite our ecommerce clients in the arse for not following our advice. Some blog owners as well. I would suggest to just clean them up, add a canonical, disable the page or whatever that is possible just to quickly get it over with if time is lacking. If you have time, then you can change the content and turn them to good ones. Good pages that actually help your other pages rank.

Hi Colin

You might also want to check your on-page seo and the technical seo side.

So aside from links, those might have also contributed to the drop.

Andy and Alan covered what you need to do. One more thing to keep in mind, check the traffic, you don't want to lose those spot in the SERPS. You might want to consider fixing up the subdomain if it gets you conversions and traffic.

Hi Dario,

You should prefer the account with the better reach to a responsive crowd. There are a lot of fake accounts nowadays so if you are looking for people to help you promote your brand, go with someone active and interacts, someone that can actually get you results.

So yeah, Vadim said it best. Authority is superior.

Kevin is spot on. Google can change your title tags.

Try changing your existing one to a better one, improve the length and the relevance of the content. Plus the signals pointing to that page so they would stop changing automatically

Hi Scott

Who created the website? He could help you out, with your management that is since he created the issues in the first place  The Moz reports usually let you know what the problems are specifically so they are actionable in a way.

If there are stuff that you dont understand, people here can pitch in and help you out.

Hi Peter

It's possible that they got a link on your site pointing to one of their satellite sites. They hacked those sites/inserted their links and pointed it to you. It's possible that it's an invisible link

Try using your url (the exact page they are pointing to) on google. Look at the cache. You could see it there most of the time.

If not, then it's possible that it has been removed already, through an update of your site or something.

Yes, that does happen but eventually, it works out right. Just make sure the robots are correctly configured.

Honestly, i would just hire someone. There are a lot of great designers that could make it for you as long as you provide the outline. Sometimes, you'll get someone as low as $80 for one and it looks great. I would focus on the content of the graphic and pour my suggestions over to a designer.

If you really want to, then Adobe illustrator does the best output for me. It has templates scattered around the internet as well.

Nishadha's suggestion of smushit is a good one so go for that if you are on WP

A CDN would be good for load time but I would still prefer to load it from the same domain.

Try out developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ to see more suggestions that you can apply

cant believe they are still doing this till today.

Thanks for sharing Jacob

You might want to look at this

http://exit.zoznamtovaru.sk/mihalko-eu/563826190/?z=5&p=12

you might have some more that have issues being passed over to you

As for your page, you can optimise it a bit more with content. Better metas. Improve your categories and internal linking.

That should be enough (of course you still need the links as well)

Like Andy said, it's hard to really say without seeing it.

From my experience, it's usually just one of these:

1. The sub page is more relevant since your internal linking structure dictates that it is relevant to that keyword (plus your brand authority helps that page, even without links)

2. Something went wrong somewhere, in HTML problems, redirects and of course, overoptimised links (like a lot of domains with blogrolls pointing to the homepage) innocent looking links but they sometimes cause problems.

Hi Stephane

I would take a look at hreflang and learn that.

To help you speed it up a little:

http://www.stateofdigital.com/hreflang-canonical-test/

Look for other posts by Aleyda as well.

There's really no way to answer that as each keyword will have different factors. Each niche will also be treated differently. Each competitor has their own way of doing things versus how you are doing it.

For me, an easy niche with good competitors but are not active, 3 months or less would be a good timeframe to get a site to rank. It's better to underestimate and overdeliver.

For mega keywords, well, some will take a year or so just to crack the front page. Some will take 6 months and if promotion is good, even less. It will depend on your experience in the niche so it's hard to say exactly.

Basically, optimise the site better than them. That's the first thing you have to do (after your research is done)

Then start with the links, or some way to integrate it with the business to get customers to link to them. Read about the other link building strategies featured here on moz as well. You won't jump, but you will steadily climb up. If the competitors aren't really that active, you can make page 1 in a couple months or less.

Start fixing your metas. Your on-page SEO needs a lot of work, including technical stuff like canonicals

Next, your links.

Get better ones because seeing links like these (below) are not that good to even beat those on the front page

http://www.imle.co/

http://omega-intercept.com/

http://goarticles.com/

etc