Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I have recently  had a similar ranking-drop-for-certain-keyword-experience.

I set about making any improvements I could come up with across the board primarily with the help of this forum... (so not done yet) since the end of December when it happened. But my position improved on all counts to an undreamed of, remarkable degree last week even though there is still so much to do. It seems like magic.

I don't think I will ever know for sure what did the trick and I also don't know if the rankings will hold steady, but one thing I did was singular and may be the key.

I used http://www.linkdetox.com and found a group of particularly nasty-looking article links that i was unaware of, on one site with a fictitious author etc. I was successful in getting them removed and within a couple of days, my site was back on page 1 for 10 terms it had tanked on.

You might want to take a look at any toxic links you can find by using that tool.

Here's to hoping for some unexpected "magic" for you.

Kevin, Keri and Bond13, Thank you for sharing my celebration!

Kevin- You nailed it so succinctly.

Keri- Happy to brighten up your Monday morning! It's really fun to let you know. Nice to write a happy post for a change, eh?

Bond13- Thanks for the empathy and encouragement. I feel like I am passing a lot of new found intelligence and knowledge to our clients and even our leads. I turned someone away from us last week and towards SEOMoz recommendations and companies I've been turned on to by being here in SEOMoz. It felt great to have such fine folks to recommend.

And really, things improved for us much much faster than I had dreamed possible. So I'm happy as can be.

My rank tracker reports are odd. The 'Changes From Last Week' don't align with the numbers in the other reports I have been getting. For instance, it will say +3 for a particular search term and show the Latest Ranking to be the same as it has been for a couple of weeks. There has been no +3 to the ranking according to the reports.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks!

I have been using Link Detox and have found it to be very helpful in the ways that Tom and Kyle describe. And being a non-SEO doing the SEO job for our company, I also find it to be valuable in educational info there. I think it's great.

One of the features they offer is an appropriate email link to use for link removal requests. Pretty handy! It's still important to do further research and action on the offending site, though. In doing that, I have found some alarming things- like fictitious people/authors who do not exist and are claimed as employees of our company.... And I am finding that in most cases, my requests arent acted upon. (Keep records of requests.) But I have  had at least one good, response with link removal.

I'm curious about the relationship (or lack of ) between Google rankings and Bing rankings. We took a huge hit last winter with Google and have since gotten back up to the top 3 and have been holding steady on all our most important terms. Most of our losses since regaining Google, have been with Bing. This week, we dropped 44 points on Bing and Yahoo! for our most important term.

Are there known factors for Bing ranking? If so, can anyone please enlighten me? And does anyone think Bing rankings even matter these days?

Thanks, Jesse!

Tee hee hee indeedy.

Thank you Everett. We are not using either of those plugins.

BUT! Your explanation about the double quotes got me thinking in the right direction. This blog post has an embedded infographic and when i was installing it, I had to correct a number of double quotes in the link to make the graphic appear. However, I didn't see that the attribution link had the double quotes also. So it's all solved now! Thank you again.

Everything Jesse said and...

Ultimately, we are building relationships and also building our authorship. Eventually, that will add to the big picture of earning links.

In my humble opinion, adding thoughtful, relevant  comments on blogs benefits the blog owner, their authority and your relationship with them and in turn will eventually do the same for you.

I also notice that it is a good practice arena for continually developing better communication skills which will add to your ability to create great content. Which will, in turn....It's a win win in my opinion.

That's a really valid point, Chris. There could be some messes to clean up with that kind of imprecise assignment. And who knows, there could be some PC, gender harassment kind of stuff attached to it also. While we're on the subject, there may be some terms that aren't gender specific at all like Voyager but that just doesn't describe it like Journeyman does.

Hi Miranda,
I never heard anymore from the team or you on this. Any news?Thanks!!
Gina

Hi Tcolling,

I just wrote you a long, detailed response on my ipad and when I hit "post" there was an SEOMoz error and it was lost. Arggh. I'll try to recreate what I said now, from my desk.

I had many of the same questions when I started using Google+ in the same way you are. Once you start getting the hang of it and contributing, the +1's and Circles will begin to generate- and quickly.

Here's what I've learned:

It's best to post your blog links (to Public and all  your Circles) with generous intros on both your business page and your personal profile. And then participate as YOU in order to build trust and Authorship.  When I switched back and forth between my two identities, it was confusing to people and of course, they didn't connect my business avatar with my personal one. The advice I received was to engage and myself and have my business page as further validation of where I'm coming from, experience, expertise etc. You want people to get to know your face in connection with what you contribute.

The most critical piece of getting anything out of, and enjoying Google+ is to join Communities and participate regularly. You will begin to get to know people and it's fun! AND this is how you will begin to build plus one's and being Circled. Generally, your business page gains the +1's (and to a lesser extent added to Circles). Most people will Circle you via your personal page. I figure if this is what the power users are doing, I can trust that. At first, I was trying to get our business circled but that seems less important now that I've been around for a bit. If you find anything out about this to the contrary, I would love to hear it, btw.

One piece of advice:

Use caution when posting your blog links within the Communities. Each community has its own guidelines and rules. I have found it helpful to write special inquiry posts to the Moderators to learn what is acceptable and what the attitudes are. This will help you begin to build relationships with the moderators, but more importantly you'll learn where the edges are. If you cross them, you may get banned. Typically, they frown upon blog links for posts you have written because it's perceived as self-promotion...even if it's quality content. This isn't across the board, but be aware.

The good news is that once you start engaging, it will all make a lot more sense.

Hi Everett,

Thanks for your response. This situation has continued to develop since I posted my question.

Our positions for critical keywords has continued to improve dramatically with yet more improved rankings reported early this week and again yesterday. We're now #1 for 3 keywords, 2 for a couple and 4 for a few more. Increases for additional keywords also.

Positions in Bing and Yahoo have gone up and down by relatively small amounts, mostly down this week but still holding on page 1 for those I care about other than "Gina Fiedel" which dropped 5 for Bing and Yahoo this week down to #14 and up to #6 on Google.

Immediately after I first posted this question, we did change one of the more worrisome site-wide citation links to the name of our company only (removing the keywords from anchor text), but left it in the footer for the time being.  -we didn't do more due to internal issues that aren't worth mentioning here or I'll start venting- although, as time has gone by and we're doing so well, I'm afraid to rock the boat even though I know the advice from Russ and Mash was otherwise and I'm kinda embarrassed we haven't gone after it thoroughly yet. I guess I also felt that spacing the removals might make sense. The positions did drop a tiny bit when we did that but bounced back and as I mentioned, are continuing to improve.
Now to answer your question directly, Everett: We never received any messages in GWT and had no proof of penalty-manual or otherwise, so we did not file a reinclusion request. Our company name continued to rank #1 throughout the whole thing. It was only a couple of keywords that were effected. I now feel it may have been a manual penalty for those keywords (see below).

More info:
Just prior to the bounce back I found and got removed some inbound links that were really spammy with duplicated content in an article supposedly authored by an employee that never existed, a completely fictitiously named and imaginary person. (thank you http://www.linkdetox.com).

I also believe I overused those keywords on our Home page and had obviously re-wrote that right away but further tweaked it just prior to the bounce back.

Probably most importantly is that I started a blog and have been adding thoughtful, quality content and engaging much more on social sites and promoting the blog posts on social sites.

I am happy you chose to respond to my question at this belated time because it's a whopping good reminder of Russ and Mash's (and now yours as well) advice......

Oh! And one more thing! We will not continue putting site-wide footer links on client sites when we launch them. We will NOT be perpetuating that mistake.

Thanks!

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the tip. I checked and our .xml sitemap has 55 pages and Google is indexing 53. not sure what the 2 missing pages are or how to find out, but I imagine the difference may have to do with blog archives or something along those lines. At any rate, I'm reassured by this. Thanks again.

Gina

Hi Eliran,

I believe both Sheldon and I have both answered your question by saying to use rel=publisher on the Home page.

Is there something we are both not understanding about your question?

I agree with David. The last thing you want is for your visitors to have to search for how to get in touch. Best rule of thumb- hand that to them on a platter. Make it easy. I also agree that it should be text, not a graphic.

Good to know you are using it. Yep. I've been studying the alternatives this morning. One called "Redirection" is standing out as a potentially good one and has a lot of downloads. Anyone use that?

Others seem potentially complicated and my concern is that i dont understand enough of what I'd be getting or how to use considering the complex description details. Some of them say they won't work with permaLinks? Or look like they aren't designed for a simple URL change within a site. Another thing I saw was that some seem to require creating a new post or page and it would be so nice not to have to do that.

I'm not a programmer and it would be so nice if I could take care of this on my own without having to wait within our company's own queue. sometimes I feel like the shoemakers kid.

Simple is good!

Egol, I was thinking the same thing while I was out on a hike just now and you beat me to it. It is so logical- so much talent here right under our noses and we get to learn so much about members here by their interactions and smarts. No place like home.

Hi TorontoV,

I'm not sure why you say one cannot promote posts on Google+. Are you talking about paid promotion like in FB? Or are you talking about promoting your Blog posts in G+?

Adding to what Matt said, which is great advice:

In G+, you can promote anything you wish to from your home page or profile. Write the comment, include your link to your post and make it Public and also choose whatever Circles you want it to reach. I find it naturally reaches way more users than FB.

As far as self-promotion inside Communities goes, make sure you check the guidelines of the Community before promoting your own posts. In some Communities, it's frowned upon. You can also write a post specifically asking the modorators what the policy is. Some may delete your post and/or ban you from the Community if they feel you've done it too often. It's important to respect the guidelines if you want to build relationships.

What I have found is that if you participate in Communities in good faith and do your promotions publicly, your fellow Community folks will see your post, know who you are and will more likely click through because you've spent time engaging within the Community. And as you build your Circles, more and more people will see what you post, click through and comment on it. Also, make sure to comment on posts at your Home page level so you are getting to know people you wouldn't ordinarily.

Just keep at it. It takes time, but I have found it to be much more fruitful than FB overall.

Hope this is helpful and not just a bunch of early morning talkativeness.

I am wondering what would happen if I switched my plugin for social media integration on my WordPress site. For instance, if I have been using Sociable for a long time and have accumulated +1's, likes, shares etc. and then I switch to Flare or Social Stickers, what will happen to all my counts?

Thanks so much! I haven't been able to find any documentation on this.