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So you think 3 or 4 new links and one anchor text change could be enough to result in any rank change, positive or negative (assuming at least a decently competitive keyword term)?

I don't know; I'm just asking.

when I could get someone internally to do this.

Sounds like you answered your own question, and I agree.  Thank them for their list of companies and hand it over to someone on your team.

In my opinion - and it is just an opinion - trying to figure out specific reasons for fluctuations in ranking is an exercise in futility.  There are just way too many factors going on - both within your website and outside of it - that Google is using to determine rankings.

Not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the decline in rankings.  Here are two observations for you:

1. These are pretty competitive keyword terms, and the pages you have been using to target these keywords have a PA of 1, indicating to me that you will probably see ranking fluctuations until you get some quality links to these pages.  Compare your PA to the top 5 results, which all have PA in the 30s and 40s or more.

2. How long have you been tracking your rankings using SEOMoz Campaigns? Did you have steady rankings spanning several months and then see a decline or did you start tracking recently?  I ask because (at least in my experience) low PA pages targeted towards more competitive keyword terms tend to move up and down on a lot on the SERP, so if you just started tracking you could have come in on a peak and now be seeing the valley.

A WordPress plugin I like a lot is Old Post Promoter  It allows you to set old posts in certain categories to automatically re-post as new at specified intervals.  I put all of my evergreen content in a special category in addition to its proper category and then let OPP automatically re-post that content every couple days.  Since I have my Twitter and Facebook feeds hooked up to my RSS, that old content also gets automatically re-posted there as well.

Somehow missed the bottom of your post there where you responded to my question....  Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

I do not think blog networks are necessarily bad but they won't make your blog the most popular on the web either.

Definitely do the subdirectory as you mentioned, and use WordPress.  There are other platforms out there that are just as good but I personally prefer WordPress and you can't go wrong with them.

Continue the engagement with other soccer blogs you mentioned and start asking for guest posts with links back to your blog.

But, above all, write the best content there is to write about soccer!  I just so happen to be a huge soccer fan living in the U.S. and I can tell you that there is definitely a lack of quality content on the web for U.S. soccer fans.

I am assuming that you target the U.S. market, and if so, then you have an awesome opportunity to make your blog the best thing out there for the U.S. fan.

Good content isn't enough to move the SEO needle for your site.  Premium content is a must.  It's a lot of work, but if you do it right then you'll see huge benefits.  Don't think you can just plop a few posts down a week and see a difference.  You need to become the central source for all things concerning soccer, and that will require a concerted effort by an entire team of people.

Clarification: I'm not the one getting advice here, and I do think good help was offered for free, which should always be appreciated.

I just find anything that starts with sigh a little condescending - maybe it's just me, but I have encountered this condescension elsewhere in this forum from many very smart PRO members and I personally find it irritating.

Anderson probably doesn't even care and I probably shouldn't have said anything... No offense ninja just a pet peeve.

Yes - craigslist.org.  I would hire someone local who you can look in the face and are willing to pay a decent salary to generate quality content.  It might be more expensive but it will be worth it in the long run - just ask anyone hit by Panda.

But if he had 50% keyword density to begin with he never would have ranked as highly as page 2 right?

Or maybe the existing over-optimization, coupled with the new anchor text made it the last "poof" that burst the bubble.  That makes sense to me.

Good question (and one I was hoping James would ask so I could start working on him to let me blog for them ; )

Just a few ideas off the top of my head:

1. English Premiere League coverage  - EPL games are getting more and more popular in the U.S. - they even show some games on NFL Sunday!
2. Local Colorado coverage - I also live in Colorado and am a referee here and there are many competitive leagues around the Denver area.  Become the gazette for these local teams and earn tons of local links.
3. MLS coverage - the Colorado Rapids won the MLS cup last year and went to the playoffs (despite many injuries) this year - cover the local team for local links and the league in general as there are few MLS sources outside of the league's own news reporting.
4. U.S. National Team coverage - do you have any idea how hard it is to follow the U.S. Men's National Team???  The only place for regular updates is the U.S. Soccer website.

I didn't even get to equipment and product updates, etc... this is just a start - and plenty more where that came from...

Why are customers reviewing your products somewhere besides your website in the first place?

I would strongly encourage you to set up a system that allows customers to review your products on your web pages.  That way you don't have to go to all the work of finding and copying reviews out on the web and you get a bunch of unique content for your product pages.

I don't know what your budget is like but my company uses BazaarVoice and we have enjoyed using their platform for customer reviews.  There are several good User Generated Content services out there that you can plug directly into your website.

Like most things in SEO, it depends.  What are your business goals (lead generation, ecommerce, thought leadership, etc.)?  What is the status of your current optimization efforts - i.e. has any on-page optimization, site architecture, link building, content, etc. been done?  If so, how much?  What is your competition doing and how does your site stack up against them?

Different sites have different goals and are at different points in the optimization process.  Prioritizing your SEO efforts is going to depend heavily on where you sit currently and where you want to go.

I would advise a full site audit first to figure out what is working well and what isn't.

Actually, I take that back.  First, define your goals - what do you want to accomplish with your site.  Then do the audit.

Next, discover which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which ones convert the best.  Then start putting together groups of keywords that are variations of your top performers and start looking for new keyword groups to target.

If you're getting a lot of traffic from what seem like good keywords but not converting, then start optimizing your site for conversions.

This is all pretty high level, but if there's one thing I've learned about SEO it's that there are no absolute answers, only problems that need solving, and there are always many ways to skin that cat.

Going through the process of identifying problems and opportunities, developing a strategy to act, and then analyzing success is a constant effort.

Deciding which problem/opportunity to attack first can only be accomplished by having a clear goal in mind.

If you type "hydroponics nutrients" into SEOMoz'a Keyword Difficulty Tool you'll see that this is a pretty competitive keyword.  The only domains to rank in the top 10 results with a DA of less than 40 have an exact or partial match to the keyword in their root domain.

Your DA is 12 which means that you probably should not have been ranking so highly (even on page 2) for such a competitive keyword.  It's possible Google was giving your site a test run higher up in the SERPs because it's a new site and then dropped you back down to where you should have been all along.

You need to continue your link building efforts (with much more focus on premium content and social networking) and wait - probably for a long time - until you build up your link profile and DA.

In the meantime, start going after less competitive long tail keyword terms that still relate to your website and product.  Try researching keywords with 3+ words that get any kind of traffic according to the Exact Match Local column in Google's Keyword Tool.  Write articles and optimize pages on your site targeting these keywords.  If you put enough of them together you'll start driving some significant traffic to your site while you continue to work towards ranking for the big main keywords.

Oh OK that makes sense - it will be a worthy investment!

As far as copying over content, here are my thoughts:

1. Are these reviews on competitor websites?  If so they would probably take a dim view of you using their reviews.  I would make sure I got permission to republish reviews originally posted somewhere else.
2. It's still technically duplicate content, but it does add value for your customer, and as long as you have a good amount of other copy on the page (original product description, accompanying how-to article or buying guide) then you're probably OK - in my humble opinion at least.

The main issue is getting permission to pull those reviews from somewhere else.  And if the review is the only (or majority) content on these product pages then it's probably not a good idea.

Wow, what a fascinating product you work with and a very interesting website.

I took the liberty of checking out your site and found it pretty impressive.  Some effort has already clearly been taken to optimize this site and provide real value to your customer, so kudos to whoever is responsible for that effort.

At a very high level - so take this with a grain of salt because I only spent a few minutes - you have great domain authority and a lot of really strong content, but it appears that you are not ranking for keywords associated with your product that you clearly should be ranking for.

I went to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "cablevey tubular drag conveyors" (the first keyword in the page title of your home page) and got a long list of great keywords associated with your industry.  I went through a couple of the higher traffic ones in SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool and there's no reason why you shouldn't be ranking for these keywords based on your Domain Authority alone.  It very well could be that you just haven't optimized the proper page on your site for these keywords yet, and it is possible that a little on-page optimization is all you need to start ranking well because your DA is so strong.

I am willing to go more in-depth if you want - just shoot me a private message and we can exchange contact information.

As far as a referral goes... there are many good SEO companies and individuals in the SEOMoz community who would be able to provide quality help.  My recommendation would be to instantly tune out anyone who says you need link building and content - not that you don't need those things but I don't think they are your priority right now.

That is a pretty competitive keyword you are targeting, and there isn't a single domain on the first page of Google's SERPs with a domain authority of less than 30 (and most are upwards of 40) while your DA is 29.

You need to build some quality links to this page from a diverse range of domains with a diverse range of anchor text.  In order to do that you need to give people a compelling reason to link to this page - unique content, contest giveaway, socially viral content like a video, etc.

Link building takes awhile but it's the most reliable way to build rankings, especially for competitive keyword terms.

In the meantime, don't forget to target longer tail variations for which you have the domain strength to rank well - "anvil organic t shirts" or "wholesale organic cotton t shirts."  These terms don't get nearly as much traffic but if you put together enough of them you can see some real results.

I feel your pain.  I write content for a company that sells restaurant equipment - not exactly the most exciting topic out there.

But that doesn't mean you can't come up with some awesome articles that still reference your site.

For example, one linkbait that worked really well for me was surveying our customers about Groupon.  I had been reading in industry publications about how many restaurateurs didn't like Groupon - and earlier this year the company was a hot topic among the general public.

I published a press release titled Restaurateurs Think Yelp, Groupon Are Hurting Business citing my survey results and quoting a prominent restaurant marketing consultant.  The only reference to my company was that we had conducted the survey and I worked in some keyword anchor text back to our site.

I would use Google Insights to find some trending keywords related to popular news stories that cover the fashion industry.  Then build some content around those hot topics with some solid in-line anchor text links to your site.  Publish that on your blog, talk about it on social media, and see what happens.

Actually, when you type "comfortable shoes" into Insights you see some really interesting hot topics:

Wear Comfortable Shoes On Your Wedding Day
Why These Hunters Pack Comfortable Shoes
On Path To World Peace, Wear Comfortable Shoes

Some real gems there!

Heather,

We didn't end up going with Catch Marketing; in fact, it was a predecessor of mine that originally posted this and our company did end up going with another company that does something quite similar.  I've always seen this as bad practice - doorway pages.

One of the first things I did when I started here was get those pages taken down - it just seems way to risky for a company like ours (or any for that matter).  We have more than 60k products online, and to do something shady like this is going to end up doing more harm than good.

Anyways, since we took those pages down within the month, I haven't seen any changes really, but I think there are also a lot of other things we need to fix to get things right again - ho-hum.