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If you want the honest answer then there is only one real way of making this work... Rewrite the descriptions. Make them unique.

If you really want the pages to do well then this is the solution.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

Matt

"The way it is being explained is that the websites pointing at your website are 'clean' websites that have gained rank by the other websites pointing to the second tier and then all the spammy and automated links pointing to the second tier."

Ah, see, there is an issue with this. Google's algorithm is very complicated and clever. If you imagine a link passing PR from tier 1 to tier 2 and then to your site then you can also easily imagine a link passing bad trust metrics from tier 1 to their 2 and then to your site.

Link juice is not the only thing that passes through a link. Just because there is a site in-between doesn't mean you are safe.

These are methods that used to work pre 2010 which are considered (rightfully so) as spammy. Look at it from Google's point of view; their algorithm is built to serve the searchers. If you are doing things to try to manipulate their algorithm then the searchers might not get the best results. It is their job to try and ensure that spammy sites don't rank as well as sites that belong high in the rankings on merit... Whether this happens in reality is a separate topic. As you are already seeing, competitors do rank well whilst using poor methods of link building. I'd argue that they won't rank for too long and will be caught out at some point but there are other who cant beat them so they join them.

Can I be frank? If so, please read on...

Problem 1 - The content of the page you want to change is duplicated all over the web. Here is one example: http://orleansmarketing.com/internet-marketing/search-engine-optimization/

Problem 2 - The strength of that page on your site is not too great. One decent metric to use is SEOMoz's PA. Yours is 20. Position number 1 page has a PA of 38. This indicates one of two things; their site is much stronger than yours or their internal link architecture is better than yours - or both. A higher DA or PA doesn't always mean it will rank better. It does mean however that the site is stronger which means it has a better chance of ranking.

Problem 3 - You have no links pointing to this page from external websites. You only have pages from within your own site linking to it. What makes this even worse is that the anchor text internally for the link to this page are mainly "search engine optimisation" and "read more". These internal anchor text links tell Google what the page is so they think your SEO Dubai page is not too relevant for the search term "SEO Dubai",

Problem 4 - the content on that page looks very generic and almost pointless. It doesn't tell people about SEO, it doesn't tell them why to choose you, it doesn't tell them what success story's you have had and what you did to succeed, it doesn't tell them what you do and why you do it. There are plenty of things you can add to that page to make it actually mean something instead of just tell them "what SEO is". Try talking about the keyword research you will undertake and why you do it. Try talking about why certain keywords will give them a better quality of visitors that might be more likely to turn into leads or sales...

Problem 5 - this might seem trivial but there are a couple of little issues on the page. It has more than one H1 header for instance. It might be worth running the URL through Moz's page grader tool: http://pro.moz.com/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization

If you change the URL it may well help a little. Just ensure that you remember to 301 redirect the old URL to the new one. You should also look at creating some good and unique content on that page. Maybe add a video too. This will help visitors stay on the site longer and add some trust factors... Both of these will help your site rank, along with hundreds of other metrics which all added together can make a big difference but picking only a few of these metrics will barely seem worthwhile. Gone are the days of just doing a few things and expecting to rank.

Sorry if that sounded blunt and scary. Unfortunately I think you needed to know these points. I could have actually gone on for a few more points but I think that should give you enough to go on.

We all have to learn somewhere and you are in the best place to learn. Stick around, you won't be disappointed. Be prepared to read. Be prepared to test. Be prepared to change your attitude towards what is the right thing to do. I personally wouldn't offer an SEO service to clients unless I already knew the answer to your question so just asking this question leads me to wonder whether it would be ethical to offer an SEO service without actually really understanding SEO. Again, I don't mean that to be negative. I think you need to put your mind to work and instead of trying to get a page to rank so you can sell an SEO service, learn about why things rank and learn about ranking metrics. That way, when you do get a client you can give them a better service.

I would regard this as actually being more dangerous than beneficial. You should be very careful about introducing lots of links from lots of new sites.

Bare in mind that links from new sites could happen once or twice, completely naturally, that is the way of the web. But if it becomes a large part of your websites link profile then it will do no good at all.

Above all else, beware of footer and sitewide links from new domains to your domain.

Matt

"However, you CAN do white hat tiered link building."

Oh absolutely. This can actually be a nice tactic to use and can also be pretty safe if done in a natural way. That's an important note Brian.

However, software cannot do this and more often than not - certainly if you are a novice - it can be hard to implement. Generally, people just assume a tiered link building tactic is spammy.

Great. I'm pleased you are wanting to do it the right way. Many people come here for advice and simply reject the advice given because it costs too much money or takes too much effort.

Generally, creating decent unique descriptions for 5000 products will take lots of time and effort. If you do have a budget for this sort of thing then it might be worth trying oDesk or Elance or something similar. Just remember that if you follow this advice, you should also have someone editing and checking the descriptions that you are provided with.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm working on a site at the moment which needs unique descriptions for 30,000 products.

Matt

I'd guess that the jobs get pulled from a job board. If this is the case, then the content ( job description, title etc.) will just be a duplication of the content that can be found in many other locations. If a plugin is used, they sometimes automatically add a disallow into the robots.txt file as to not hurt the parent version of the job page by creating thousands of duplicate content issues.

I'd recommend creating some really high-quality hub pages based on job type, or location and pulling the relevant jobs into that page, instead of trying to index and rank the actual job pages.

July, take note here... Phil is the man to listen to regarding video!

I'm throwing my backing behind ensuring that the video doesn't auto-play.

I find generally that if the video does it's job then it helps to keep visitors on the page longer too

Matt

If its a new website then you should avoid trying to grow too quickly - especially with link building. Link building is an area in which the SEO cheats have taken advantage of Google's algorithm in the past so Google are very aware of the problem. To combat this they are very careful with new domains receiving loads of incoming links. However, link building is obviously still important with new websites. You should make a spreadsheet of the link directories along with their PA and DA, keep a note of which directories you have submitted to.

You should start with the best directories on the list and when you get more time, filter down the less important directories.

In the mean time there are plenty of other bits which are just as important like content and on-site optimisation (forgive me if you have already worked on these two but most people just straight into link building. I had a client a while back who had built some really nice and relevant links but the foundations of his website were terrible and all his links were sent through to pages with poor URL's (ie, mysite.com/?>£hfgrt%catalogue-p5 instead of mysite.com/dogfood))

Hope this goes some way to answering your question?

I feel your pain, Steve! Unfortunately these things take time. If you havent already, whip up a spreadsheet of all the remaining bad links. Add a column to explain what steps you have taken to get the link removed. Google will understand that sometimes you are not in control but you can only try. They might help with manual interventions. You can then use this spreadsheet to send them to ask to be reconsidered. It is important not to keep sending the request, fix the problem and then ask. Remember that they don't owe you anything so don't depend on this method - chances are they might not even reply!

Google have announced that a tool could be coming out soon which will allow you to tell them which links you wish to distance yourself from. Keep an eye out... Clicky.

In the mean time, don't just work on removing these bad links, concentrate on building much more good quality links in a variety of forms. Try and make your link profile look natural - over time these things will help.

On a side note, you need to add a canonical tag to your home page. Your domain loads a different homepage for http://www.yourdomain.com as well as http://yourdomain.com.

Check out the attachment to see why your link profile is so un-natural. You have 8220 links from ONLY 78 domains for one anchor text and 4047 links for another anchor text while your domain name only has 188 links.

EDIT: You haven't actually been de-indexed (see attached) so you don't need to submit reconsideration yet. You just need to sort that link profile out BADLY first.

As a token gesture to help you out in your time of need I have added a contextual link from one of my websites to your homepage with the anchor text "click here" - its a small drop in the ocean but every little bit helps make your profile look that tiny tiny tiny bit better.

5214017_orig.png 1558966_orig.png

The site seems to have decent on-site optimisation, now you should concentrate on some off-site work.

• Build some links, looking at competition, I think between 5 and 10 real manual links should work well. (good quality, relevant link sources are a must).
• Get some social work done - set up a twitter account and tweet with your keyword inside the tweet message and a link to your landing page. Once this is done you can encourage re-tweets. There is no point tweeting at all if you don't get retweets - these are the important factors for Google. Try to get your friends and genuine customers or site visitors to retweet it for you. Remember not to cheat this step, you cannot use fake accounts. These need to be genuine and aged accounts.
• Do the same as above with Facebook and the G+

With a little time this should see you climb. Dont forget to keep your content fresh... Update your content with some well written unique content (news section maybe?).

It could be that your links are poor quality or on poor domains. It could also be that Open Site Explorer hasnt updated since your links went live.

Where are you getting the links from and what methods are you using to acquire the links?

Excellent! Seems like you have most bases covered - this is good.

Some people find links from high DA but low PA useful, others find the opposite useful. As always, there should be a bit of both. Try not to pick a strategy that puts all your eggs in one basket. I would prioritize the high PA first but dont forget about the high DA and low PA links, come back to these at a later stage

Also, make sure that there are other backlink strategies in place other than directory listings. There are lots of ways to gather links, directories are just one slice of the pie.

Feel free to send me a private message should you need assistance or add me to skype, the info is on my profile

Matt

I did a similar thing not too long ago (maybe 9 months ago) for a friend. To cut a long story short he only usually averaged 50 visitors a day coming on to his website from Google and about 400 visitors as direct traffic. He ran a large scale offline marketing campaign and the printers managed to screw up his domain name so he wanted to do the same thing as your client.

I anticipated a similar effect to what you expect in that SERPS might drop slightly but then recover. However, his 50 visitors a day dropped to around 25 a day for 3 months and all his rankings (not that there were many terms he ranked for anyway!) dropped off quite badly. After 3 months, they recovered quite well apart from one search term.

I think on a larger scale operation such as yours, the data and figures might represent a real life answer a little more than my data set on such a small scale website... Due to this its hard to say whether you will see a similar effect on your clients website.

What are your main search terms that you are targeting? The site doesn't look like it is particularly optimised towards a specific keyword other than "Natural Hemorrhoids Treatment". Is this the keyword which has dropped SERP's?

Where were you ranking before the drop?

The site also seems a little "spammy". I would concentrate on cleaning it up and optimising the on-site content then look at where you are getting your links from. From what I can gather, you have quite a few incoming links from some strange and none-relevant places - some I see are in Arabic and Japanese. How did you get these links?

Definitely. I think that example was way OTT and not needed for most websites. I think it looks like it would be pretty easy for small businesses with smaller websites.

Unfortunately there seems to be plenty of to55ers around. It worry's me that some people have no remorse... It could mean jobs lots and life's destroyed! Shame on Google!

In short, yes. But this is obviously not Google's concept behind "buying" links. If you read my comment above I explain about what Google cannot possibly class as a "purchased" link. Here is a snippet...

"For example, how can Google tell if you are buying links? It could be that you have a next door neighbour with a very genuine website and you get a link from his site in return for a pint of beer at your local pub - Google have no way of knowing this! However, if you aren't very careful with your footsteps and you openly sign up to places like BMR which clearly advertises paid links then at some point you will more than likely be found out."

You would be wise to understand that more often than not, the value of purchased links is nearly always less than the value of a manually built link based on good, unique and relevant content on a page which is from a trusted domain and has very few links on the page.

As always, the key here is accountability and covering your tracks. I'm not telling you not to buy links. Im saying you would be wise to put all your eggs in the "purchased links" basket. If you must purchase links then ensure they are of good quality and cant be traced... more importantly, make sure they only cover a smallpercentage of your overall link strategy.

Lastly, I just want to comment on your comment:

"Every site in a competitive market buys links"

Not true. I agree that most do, sure. I also think that most do not understand the dangers and pitfalls of buying links. They probably also think that the more links the better,., regardless of quality of link and the quality of the content on their site.

I used to own a multimillion pound-a-year eCommerce company until I sold it last year and I can honestly say that I had never once purchased a link for the site. We were position #1 in Google for over 300 keywords and the largest eCommerce company in Europe for our specific Niche. Just so you understand the competition, our main keyword which we ranked #1 for brings back the following when searched:

About 740,000,000 results (0.18 seconds)

I'm assuming by taking them offline you mean discontinuing the product permanently? If so, it is important that you 301 redirect (always 301 redirect unless the product is coming back at some point) the page to the nearest closest product or if there is nothing similar that you sell, redirecting it back to the closest category page.

Hope this helps a little?

Matt

As above... Thumbs up.

Also consider whether they have contact details, what kind of sites they link out to. Check what kind of sites link in to it. Have a read of some of the articles, are they good quality?

Remember not to concentrate your entire time on blog posts to obtain links... Blog links needs to be only one of many link types otherwise you may end up in trouble.

I wouldnt panic too much. Just prepare for some hard and time consuming work. Stick with the domain. Keep updating new content and lower the keyword density, make the content as good as possible.

Then, you should follow a good quality link building strategy which should also include social link building.

I would happily provide you with a free report and plan should you wish to take me up on the offer. Then you could use the plan to do things properly and reduce the risk of SERP drops or even sandboxing (removal from results).

Add me on Skype if you wish to discuss anything, I should be available most of the time. My Skype name is on my profile (click my name).