Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Steve,

yeah of course, send me an emails to karlb@deepred55.co.uk and give me some more details, eg website and what has been done on it in the past.

thanks,

Karl

You would have only received a message in Webmaster tools if you had got a manual penalty, if it is an algorithm penalty you wouldn't have got any message. I would have a look at all your inbound links and see if any look unnatural, it would also be useful to look at your website structure to make sure there are no glaringly obvious errors that may be hindering you.

Hi Steve,

Is your website a .com.au site? If you want to rank well in .co.uk etc then you may need to look at setting up a UK version and using Webmaster tools to let Google know. However, as Chris said, it does sound like you may been hit with a penalty. Is this the case for all pages on the website and keywords?

How your website ranks for different search terms is based on many things. First of all, I get you at number 2 for "irish payroll online" in Google UK. Google will look at a number of things to determine what your website is relevant for. It will look at the optimisation of the website, so if you want to rank for "irish payroll online software" then you will need to find the relevant page on your website (which I'm assuming would be the homepage looking at the site) and include that term in the key areas (title tag, meta description, H1, Content etc).

Then once you have optimised the website you need to start creating some unique pieces of content and then use them to get in touch with bloggers, key websites that will help drive traffic and sales to the business. As Chris said, setup up your campaign in Moz and look it will explain ways of optimising your website.

Good luck!

Hi,

I can seem pretty hard to get some quality links nowadays but I think the best thing to do is not to think of it as "getting links" and to think about where your content will be seen by your potential/existing customers. Guest blogging can still be useful because if it is on a relevant and powerful blog then there is a good chance that people will read your post, realise you have a good knowledge on the subject and look for more information.

The secret is to give enough information about the subject you are writing about but enough in reserve to make readers want to know more. Think about creating some content (without the subject of the website you are looking to build for it is hard to be specific) and adding it to your website. As saw this before on Direct Travel's website (www.direct-travel.co.uk/infographic/uk-aviation) and thought it'd be a good example. They created this infographic and they can now contact different travel-related websites to ask them to link to this page. On the page where you create the "linkable asset", make sure you have details about the products/services you offer because you want to entice people to search through the website and ultimately convert.

This is just one way of getting links but it can be quite successful if you find the right type of content.

Hope that helps!

To add to the top 2 posts, it was only clustering domains after the first 2 pages I seem to remember reading

Whilst Cesar is right than Nike has a perfect link profile, they don't really need to do much link building because they get it all done naturally for them. 99% of companies don't have the social interaction (or the budget!) that Nike does so it isn't really that helpful to study their linking profile.

Saying that, the majority of your links should be branded because when people are talking about you they are unlikely to link your website via an anchor text keyword. You need to create some linkable assets so, for example, content based around the cities you have apartments in  and create some content that bloggers will want to have on their website.

Was "service apartments Bangalore" the keyword you pushed the most by any chance? Article directories have been seriously devalued and directories haven't been worthwhile for years now (unless they are really good!). I suggest looking through your backlink profile on OSE and Webmaster Tools and start to get rid of the article links because they will be doing you more harm than good.

Just make sure that your posts are relevant to the blog you are posting on and that the links match the blog post you are writing. In terms of the benefit, because they are going to different pages on your website there is some benefit to be had.

hi Larry,

That does seem like an extortionate amount of links from ONE website. I had a quick look because I thought it may have been a footer link across all the pages but it wasn't. I did a search http://en.dilandau.eu/download-songs-mp3/audio%20books/3.html and saw all the links.

I don't think it will have harmed the website that much. They all seem like legitimate links to me, audio book links on a music website may be a grey area but I don't think Google will see it as spamming.

What kind of link building are you doing?

Hi Justin,

I'd say it depends on how important the keyword is to you. If you got a grade F for something then I assume you aren't even targeting that keyword!

Look at easy/hard the fix would be as well because some of the fixes need a considerable amount of work. As long as it is a keyword and page that is going to drive traffic and sales, I'd concentrate on moving the C's to B's and B's to A's.

"Google will slam you into a wall, pick you up, throw you on the floor, punch you in the junk, toss you out of a window, and then start dating your mom." beautifully put!!

Hi Mozzers,

Just wondering how many of you had used Bing Advertising and what kind of results you got compared to Google's PPC ads? Just wondering whether or not to set up a few campaigns and trial it.

Thanks!

I wouldn't waste your time to be honest. Article directories, even Ezine Articles, took a huge hit and I honestly don't think they even drive that much traffic. We used to use them a while back and they drove hardly any traffic so I'd focus on other areas. If you are going to the effort of creating unique content, use it as a way of attracting people to your website, you'll get much better results from it.

Whatever you do, DO NOT PAY FOR LINKS!!!! If the content you have to offer is quality then they will be willing to take it. Don't just guest post for the sake of links though, if links is why you are doing it then you're wasting your time because Penguin 2.0 was released to stop people doing exactly that!

Concentrate on writing compelling and interesting copy in your website and reach out to people using it as a way of getting people to visit your website where you can then sell your products and services. If you find a website that looks good, see what kind of stats they have. If they openly say what kind of visits they get then that's good, how often to they post, look at the cache date of the website and look at the quality of the posts.

A good place to start is to look at where your competitors have links on, especially nowadays with the changes, those ranking at the top are sure to have some good links.

Have you tried using Whois to find the contact details?

If you disavow the domain rather than an individual page in the disavow tool, you shouldn't have to update the file every time they take one of your feeds. I don't think there is anything you can do to stop them taking it though unfortunately.

100% in agreement with Alan here. Reconsideration request and the disavow tool DO work and we have used them on 2 clients with proof. It can take anything from 4-12 months for you to actually see the positive results, they do work. Try and get the links removed first BEFORE using the disavow tool because Google wants to see that you have made an effort to get them removed rather than just take the easy way around!

It is true that you won't get responses from them all, especially if it is article websites where the webmaster rarely does anything on the site itself. That is when you use the disavow tool, just make sure that you are 100% certain that the links are doing your website harm.

Be honest though and look at which links are spammy and do your up-most to get them removed first. It takes time and a lot of effort but it will work....eventually!

It is basically looking at targeting spammy links. Rankings in a number of industries have been altered, some considerably. It also targets the lower level pages on your website rather than just your home page as was the case with Penguin 1.0.

However, it really is too early to know exactly what has changed but the points above are the main ones I think.

I wouldn't agree that you don't need to worry about bad links built 18 months ago. Google are always refining their algorithm so you shouldn't just hope that your links won't be seen and penalised.

Hi John,

If they were doing articles and promoting them then this is why your website has been hit. Article websites took a major hit in the update prior to Christmas and the Penguin 2.0 update last night has more than likely reaffirmed any penalty you were going to receive unfortunately. Do a backlink analysis in OSE and find all the article websites with links on and get them taken   down (if you can, obviously if you have login details then this will be easier). If you can't then use the disavow tool.

Don't forget that any onsite changes that you make, you will have to wait for Google to come back and cache the website before you see any effect. Concentrate on creating great content and look to create relationships with those in your industry and concentrate on your outreach. 5 links on relevant, topical blogs are worth a million times more than 10000 links on article websites.

Hi Jonathan,

Lets deal with the disavow-ing first. I'd do a backlink analysis of the website and find ALL the links that look irrelevant and spammy and try and get them taken down first, if that fails then use the disavow tool but only if you are 100% sure they are doing you harm. It's a tricky thing the disavow tool but Google does urge you to try and get them removed before using it.

In terms of the website and the products in the footer...Why not create a section in the main body of the website such as "Customer Favourites" or "Most Popular". The reason for this is because, I'm not sure if users would scroll to the footer whereas if it is in the main body of the website, your customers are more likely to see it.