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Is anyone else seeing a big shift in local results since Penguin 2.0. I am logged out of Google, all personalisation switched off but my results are being personalised to my location for all results, not just Google+ Local results? I'm pretty sure penguin is bigger than 2.3% of queries or whatever was reported..

Yes I can see some changes in Google in Australia, some strange results though!

Thanks David, you're a genius  There is a robots noindex via the meta tag!!! Thank you so much I really appreciate it.

Thanks for the response and I don't think anything is overly simple at the moment I didn't do the 301 redirect but there are no pages of the old domain indexed anymore so it looks like that has been done OK.

Karen

I am working on a brand new website and really struggling to get the site indexed and listed for it's business name! I don't normally struggle and have got clients ranked for much more challenging keywords so I'm a bit stuck!

The site is a new domain and has been live for about two months. The business previously used an old domain and this has been correctly 301'd to the new domain.

There is no duplicate content with any other website when checked through Copyscape.com

Webmaster Tools has been set-up and verified and this shows the site is being crawled but in Google site:www.website.com.au shows no pages as being indexed.

Google Places has been set-up and verified, the site has also been added to local citation sites.

There are also a few incoming links from other sources.

Robots.txt is fine and has been checked.

Business name mentioned in the title tag, footer and throughout the site.

Does anyone have any ideas how I might be able to get ranked or is it just a waiting game? Or have I missed out something really obvious?? My last step is doing a crawl test to see if this brings up anything I have missed.

Thanks

Karen

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond, I saw a decline in traffic on Saturday so likely to be the latest Panda update. I just thought a penalty would result in a penalty for all keyword rankings not just some. I will try the reconsideration request, check out Majestic SEO links and see what happens and build more quality content in the meantime.

Kind regards

Karen

Hi

One of my clients has recently suffered a big decline in rankings on some of their keywords, going from positions in the top 10 to sub 50 for some of their keywords, but not all. Their website is still indexed and there is no link warning from Google. Some of their links from a previous link builder are dodgy and we have already tried to contact the other company for removal but to no avail.

Any ideas where I start? So far I planning to increase the branded anchor link and add some content as the site is fairly light on content. Is it worth doing a reconsideration request and mention the bad links incase this is the problem. Has anyone seen any particular good resources on what to do when it appears you have a penalty. None of my other clients have been effected by Panda or Penguin and although I have done some general reading I need to know what action to take and get up to speed FAST!

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards

Karen

Thank you so much, that is a great help!

User-agent: *

Thanks for your response.

Quick question, if this appears in a clients robots.txt file, what does it mean?

Disallow: /*/_/

Does it mean no pages can be indexed? I have checked and there are no pages in the index but it's a new site too so not sure if this is the problem.

Thanks

Karen

Can anyone recommend an SEO friendly Joomla extension to use for SEO on an existing website? I have downloaded sh404sef but I don't want to change my URL's and make them longer than they are at the moment. Any ideas?

Hi Peter

If you are working with a website that has a local audience make sure you are taking advantage of Google Places as well and adding the business to some local websites such as Yellow Pages, Start Local, True Local and Hot Frog. Make sure you use the same address in all instances and this address in on the website.

Also try Googling Australian Business Directory, Sydney Business Directory, 'Local town' business directory and also Pest Control Directory as it is good to get links within your vertical both industry and geographically although doing solely directory link building isn't the answer it's a good start and you may find some quality links this way.

I think you will have more success if you target more Australian websites than the more international list on Seomoz and wouldn't recommend the bulk submission option, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is!