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I've had to deal with a few clients that have been spammed by someone. In 3 out of 4 of these websites, it has had no effect on our rankings because we had a strong back link profile anyway. However, with the other, as it was a new website, these links ended up accounting for about 30% of the total links which ended up having an adverse effect on our rankings.

I'd disavow all the links and then try and get in touch with the webmasters of the website. I know you are meant to try and get them all taken down first but you should do both because it could take you months to get them taken down (if you can get a response at all). I take it you've not had a message in Webmaster Tools? If not then its an algorithm penalty rather than a manual penalty. I'd use as many tools as possible, Webmaster Tools, Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs etc to get a comprehensive list of links to your website and then start disavowing them....just be 100000% sure they are bad links!

I'd agree. I think the reason is because there are so many boxes to tick nowadays if you want to have good rankings in the SERPs. Google is looking deeper into every website now (after Penguin 2.0) and this is clearly having an affect on how quickly websites are ranking for keywords on deeper pages.

On the flip side, whereas rankings would jump around quite a lot in the past, as Google as delved deeper into a website, hopefully once a new website has its rankings, there shouldn't be too much fluctuation which is great as you can put some budgets, strategies and plans in place.

When going through a website migration you should always redirect old pages to the most relevant new page. For me, it doesn't matter whether that is an internal page or homepage. If you redirect the old homepage to the new homepage and the content is not relevant then you are going to have a high bounce rate as customers will not be seeing the right page for their search query.

It may be worth tailoring the design to show people that they are on a new website (sounds daft but users sometimes need the reassurance) and this way they are more likely to remain on the website even if things aren't exactly the same. It is probably a good time to go through your link profile to double check the keywords as well, make sure you have a mix of branded and non-branded keywords (which it sounds like you have already).

Hi Olivier,

Just to add to what the guys have said, with a www. and non-www. version of the website, you should really 301 redirect one to the other (I'd always choose to redirect to the www version but you can choose).

It's all about relevance so as long as the is a purpose to each page then there is no harm in creating a page for each city. Make sure you do your Google Places listings for both (if there is an office for each) as well as that will give you some extra visibility. As David said, just be careful with the content to make sure it is completely different for each page.

Hi,

As Thomas said in his first comment...your competitors (and I do this when researching for our clients) will use this when trying to see what keywords you are trying to compete for so I always leave it out. There are obviously other ways of seeing this so it's not going to mean they'll never know what you are targeting but it makes them work a bit harder to get the info.

In short...leave it out.

PR and SEO do go hand in hand though, if they have an external/internal PR agency then use the coverage they provide and use it contact bloggers, put it on social media websites etc. It's something I do for our clients and works quite well. Use various branded links in the content and push that out to websites/bloggers that will help influence customers.

Was there something on the website that was omitted in the new design? A tool/ news story etc. Maybe they were doing a lot more PR than they are now so it has resulted in less branded traffic. It does sound very strange but doesn't sound like it is a penalty because you would have lost your rankings which hasn't happened.

Have you lost rankings for branded terms as well? If so then it's almost definitely a penalty. The drop in PR to n/a is very strange but I'd be more worried if the branded terms have gone. What are the rankings looking like at the moment? Any huge drops?

Hi Ciaran,

Welcome to the SEO world!!

Moz's ranking software shows you were you rank, the >50 you mentioned is how much it has risen/dropped since they last crawled the website. I use Advanced Web Ranking for my keywords, its not free but does as many keywords as you like. However, if you are only managing 1 account then use Moz's ranking tool

Hi Jon,

What are the stats like year-on-year, are they ~20% down as well. If it coincided with the launch of the new website maybe it is worth asking them if they utilised all the correct redirects, if they didn't and Google is still trying to reach the new website and the old links point to the older domain then this could have an adverse effect.

It doesn't seem like a penalty to me because if it was then all your keywords would have reduced, not just the branded traffic. If they are a well known company, why not look at doing more PR, look at driving traffic that way.

DONT JUST IGNORE THEM!! First of all, I'd get in touch with the websites to see if they will remove them, this is always the best option rather than just disavow-ing the links. If you don't get a response or they won't take them down, then use the disavow tool. Remember to put that your website was spammed by someone at the top as well.

Hi,

Did you get a message in your webmaster tools account saying that your links were spammy? If so you may have to look at a reinclusion request. We have taken over websites that have been penalised and 1 website took 5 months to recover so there is no set time on how quick things will recover.

Hi Paul,

The disavow tool should be used as a last resort really, you should really try and get the links taken down because Google wants to see you have made an effort. Did you receive the message in Webmaster Tools or is it just an algorithm penalty you received?

You're welcome, good luck with it all!

Hi,

I had a quick look through the back link profile on OSE and there are a number of low quality websites linking to the website. I'm assuming some of these are websites that he's built but the way he is linking to the site isn't the best. He links to "web designers sim designs" and that is sitewide (as you said).

I would also look at the ratio of branded to non-branded anchor text links as there are a high percentage of keyword rich anchor text links. This is likely to have resulted in seeing the profile as unnatural. Look at getting rid of the sitewide links and changing some of the keyword links to branded links. Have a good look through the linking domains because some will be doing more harm than good.

I'd be really careful when it comes to keyword anchor text links. I find that 99% of them are either unnatural (ie in author bios) or paid for which is even worse (unless you no-follow it!). Ensure that your onpage SEO areas are perfected and make sure that there are no other issues onsite that could be hindering your rankings and then concentrate on producing high quality content.

Have a look at your backlink profile and see what percentage of branded links to keyword anchor text links you have because you should have a higher percentage of branded links. Those who concentrate on including too many anchor text links will (if they haven't been already) be penalised.

Unfortunately this is a problem that many people have. Sometimes the best thing to do is to simply rewrite your content. I know it seems the wrong thing to do because why should you have to rewrite yours but its often the easiest thing to do. The websites with your content on will be getting penalised for copying yours not the other way around as Google will realise that your website is the authority on this.

However, you can visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1 and file a DMCA complaint to Google. Also, have a read through this post http://blog.kissmetrics.com/keep-content-thieves-away/ as well, if you haven't already sorted out your rel=author tags then this will help you.

Good luck!

When you are looking to post content or get links from anywhere, look at the potential of the website as well as the stats. Yes, it is really good if they have a high DA and PA because it will tell you that it is an established website but it is not the be all and end all. Look at the social presence of a website/blog, whether they tweet the story or post it on facebook, look at how many posts they have made and how regularly they are posting and what they are posting about. This will tell you much more about the blog/website.

If you are really interested in posting then why not ask them how many readers, sign ups, followers, visits etc they have/get because if your post is just going to sit on a website and nobody reads it then your time is best spent elsewhere. So a blog maybe new and therefore only has a DA of 10, but they may have many followers and a high readership count so the post will be useful.

Hi Andy,

To me, that post looks paid for and as the link is not no-followed Google probably thinks the same. If the post is driving traffic then I'd recommend you get it no-followed (this can be hard to describe to a blogger) so that you do don't lose the traffic. I think that 99% of anchor text links in blog posts look spammy because they rarely fit naturally and bloggers rarely use them, saying that, the link in the blog doesn't look too bad but I'd no-follow it if I was you.

I've used Business Directory before because I think it's quite good. It is relevant (because it is a UK website) and as long as it is in a relevant category, it is ok. Directories are often useless though so I would look at industry specific directories rather than the generic ones.