6 replies to this topic

[jeepster]

Hi
I run a 5-year -old real estate website hit by Penguin/Panda.
We're stuck with a load of spammy identical anchor text links (mainly sitewide blog footers) done for us by an incompetent SEO when we knew no better. In the years since, we've acquired much better links.

Two questions:
1) For my homepage's (v competitive) keywords i've fallen from #1 to #4-#9.
Is this the sort of not-too-severe drop I can recover from simply by adding better, more natural links? Or must I try to kill off the old spammy links?
(Problem is it's time-consuming when I could spend the time developing the business. I've tried it with negligible success in the past: one webmaster quoted me $2,500 to remove 5 links).
Also, could on-site duplicate content be an issue (possibly via an old wordpress blog, www.mydomain/blog)? I'm sure one of Jill's old mantras was duplicate content doesn't hurt you...

2) It's on my (less competitive) product pages where I've taken a real whack.
Take my real estate in Toytown (let's say) page. I had 1500 internal links (ie, 90% of its total IBLs) pointing to it with the same anchor text Real estate in Toytown.
Pre-Panda: #4. Post-panda: #75. I've replaced the exact-match anchor text with various district names in Toytown so I now have about 500 completely different anchors. I'm still at #75.
Yet for the keyword Property in Toytown I'm still #2 or #3.
I've read Matt Cutts saying Google can stop pages ranking for specific keywords, which is what this seems to be.How do I deal with that?

Thanks

Edited by jeepster, 15 October 2012 - 10:05 AM.

[Jill]

Did you receive an "unnatural link warning" from Google?

If not, it's probably more due to your duplicate content and internal anchor text. Also look for keyword stuffing.

Impossible to say for sure without a full review, however.

[jeepster]

OK, here's the rub: I don't have a Google Webmaster Tools account (I know, I know).
Any other way of finding out if my homepage has been penalised?
I think my rankings drop may be because I've ignored link-building over the past 6 months (new dad).

Re product page:
I thought I'd overdone the internal & external exact match linking re: Property in Toytown yet still rank #3.
I've removed all internal linking (~ 1,500) with exact match Real estate in Toytown yet still rank #75 - which is why I suspect it's a penalty.

I may be open to a review.

[Jill]

Set up a GWMT account ASAP. You can probably still get messages to it to know for sure.

[qwerty]

If the problem is the links, Google has just released a link disavowal tool. I haven't seen it yet, but once you're in Webmaster Tools you should be able to find it -- it wasn't there for me this afternoon, though.

By the way, has your organic traffic dropped?

[jeepster]

Very helpful replies, thanks very much.
Qwerty - yes, organic traffic's dropped. But as mentioned in my previous post, I think my lack of link-building for six months and complete ignorance of social media is as much to blame as anything else -- which I'll redress asap.

[Jill]

The disavowal tool should be in your GWMT account here:
https://www.google.c...s/disavow-links