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Hi Klarke, thanks for the reply.  So, I have indeed created and submitted articles to article directories.  However, they were extremely high quality, and full of good information that people actually need to know about certain industries.  The articles were in no way spam.  The only link I included in these articles were in the bio/author section.  It seems natural and understood that the author that wrote the article would link back to their content, in case readers want to learn more about the author.

I also commented on blogs, forums, etc, and left my website in the “Website Field Box”.  However, I used my real name and not some anchor text.  I also wrote legitimate comments that added additional information and engaging responses to the topic, not spam.  That’s what forums and blog comments are for.  It again seems natural that if someone leaves an engaging comment that they leave their website under their name so people can go their for more information, after all that is why their is a “Website Field Box”.

I have read SEO articles across the internet that also says delete comment and article spam etc.  However, these suggestions seem to be general suggestions that assume that everyone commenting or writing articles were abusive in doing so and created spammy content.  However, that is not the case with me.  All of these things were genuine and provided good information.

Nevertheless, the issue remains that Google sent me this message saying it had an issue with my links.  No doubt surely the majority of these links are responsible for helping my website rank well and are liked by Google.  My fear is if I simply go through and try to delete all of these types of links my rankings will tank.

So, the question is how do I know which links Google is looking unfavorably on, so I can only address those?

How can I determine which Backlinks are bad and should be removed?  When I look at tools like SeoMoz’s Open Explorer and other similar tools I realize they give me a score of the domain and the webpage.  Many articles I have read say look at this.  However, many of the pages linking to me I look at with low scores are websites that are extremely relevant to my website, and I would think are good links.  I got one of the messages from Google asking me to clean up my links.  I don’t want to have good links removed.  So, how do I know which one’s are bad?

Well, we didn’t change URL structures or hosting or anything.  However, Wild Blue is a trademarked term.  However, we have permission from WildBlue to use the term for marketing purposes.  This leads me to the same puzzler, which is that so many other sites similar to ours (many of the them much less relevant) replaced us in the rankings.  I have tried for several months to figure this out.  I hate to give up as this is so pertinent to the very core function our site and the information we provide, but I just don’t know what else to do.  I even submitted a reconsideration request to Google.  I haven’t heard back from them yet.

I appreciate your help.  When our site was ranking for that term it was about 5 years old.  We have ranked extremely well for that term for the entire existence of our site, with the exception of after February.  This drop actually occurred even before Panda was released (about two weeks before I think).  I did get one of the unnatural linkings Alerts In July (well after the drop occurred).  However, I did a lot of research on it, and my conclusion was unless you got one of the warning messages related to unnatural linking don’t worry about it, as the site has not actually been penalized.  From my understanding this message was more or less a “change what you are doing before it gets worse” type of message.  Frustratingly we have never engaged in shady practices.

The only thing we have done that people now say has no effect is article marketing.  Last year, we did invest some resources in creating some very high quality articles and submitting them to a few different directories.  These were very informative and useful, and not the least bit spammy.  Once Panda came out we stopped.  To further complicate things, we didn’t focus any of these article efforts on the “WildBlue” keyword.  Prior to Feb. we didn’t have to do much work for this keyword because we naturally ranked so well.

We actually use to have that keyword in our title, but took it out just a bit ago because we were not gaining any traction, and thought it best to reinvest that space with another keyword.  The most puzzling thing for me about this situation, is that I understand gradually dropping for a specific keyword due to several factors.  However, being completely dropped from the rankings in one week from a keyword that your entire website is designed to represent is still very puzzling to me.

Why do you think other non-brand owners, would replace us?  Looking at it from Google’s perspective it seems as if it would be counter intuitive to replace one website in the rankings with another one just like it.

Well, I thought about that too.  However, many of the people that jumped ahead of us are not the brand owner either, nor are they in my opinion as relevant to the subject as we are.

No, wildblue.com is owned by another company.

What do you think caused your problems in ranking?

Any suggestions on what to do, or advice from what you did?

Hello, I need help from somebody, anybody, in trying to figure out why my site dropped so much for the keyword “wildblue” and “wild blue”.  On the week of Feb. 13, 2012, my website jumped from middle of the first page to the fourth page, and then a week or two later jumped completely out of the index (or at least off the top 5 pages).  We do not engage in any deceptive practices.  Our entire website is centered around this keyword, and we are very relevant, and have informative and continually updated content for visitors.

I thought at first we got hit by Panda, but our overall organic traffic has not decreased, it has actually been steadily increasing compared to same time last year. I have tried over the past several months to get us back up, or at least figure out what happened, with no luck.  If anyone could advise me on what might have happened, how to correct it, or even has any ideas of how I could figure out what happened I would greatly appreciate it.

Website is:

http://www.mybluedish.com

Well, I thought about that too.  However, many of the people that jumped ahead of us are not the brand owner either, nor are they in my opinion as relevant to the subject as we are.

Hi Klarke, thanks for the reply.  So, I have indeed created and submitted articles to article directories.  However, they were extremely high quality, and full of good information that people actually need to know about certain industries.  The articles were in no way spam.  The only link I included in these articles were in the bio/author section.  It seems natural and understood that the author that wrote the article would link back to their content, in case readers want to learn more about the author.

I also commented on blogs, forums, etc, and left my website in the “Website Field Box”.  However, I used my real name and not some anchor text.  I also wrote legitimate comments that added additional information and engaging responses to the topic, not spam.  That’s what forums and blog comments are for.  It again seems natural that if someone leaves an engaging comment that they leave their website under their name so people can go their for more information, after all that is why their is a “Website Field Box”.

I have read SEO articles across the internet that also says delete comment and article spam etc.  However, these suggestions seem to be general suggestions that assume that everyone commenting or writing articles were abusive in doing so and created spammy content.  However, that is not the case with me.  All of these things were genuine and provided good information.

Nevertheless, the issue remains that Google sent me this message saying it had an issue with my links.  No doubt surely the majority of these links are responsible for helping my website rank well and are liked by Google.  My fear is if I simply go through and try to delete all of these types of links my rankings will tank.

So, the question is how do I know which links Google is looking unfavorably on, so I can only address those?