Did I Get Boned by the Search Engines?

I think I may have been penalized by Google and Bing. I launched a new company last year for web design. I already had a company listed also doing web design in the same area back in 2010. My SEO is solid for the first company. Both small businesses are doing similar offerings but one does templates and one for custom site design.

My second company launched last year but I just got around to doing all my usual SEO listings and such. At first I moved up in the rankings well when I searched "web design (my geo)". When I went back to look recently my second company has disappeared from the engines. It was on the first page. My first company floats between the top 3 on page 1 and is still there. My new company is listed when I search the name, but NOT when I search the geo. I went 10+ pages deep, and this is not that big of an area, and nothing.

So it would seem that the search engines somehow figured out that both companies are mine and did not like it. The domains have private listings and completely different dns servers. The are also registered separately, although both to me. So how could they know? And more importantly is this something that they penalize for? I never received any notification or warning. Just poof, gone.

I wasn't trying to implement black hat techniques here. I just don't do a lot of business with my old company anymore and my focus is on my new one. Not too long before launching the new company I did a complete redesign of my original company website. I decided to just leave it up in case it generated leads since I did all the new work and it is fairly well established in the area. My new company is my main focus now though.

So if I did get bumped what do I need to do? Wipe out my old company and write a big fat but kissing email to the search engines?

If you search your meta head title in qoutes, and it does not show up, it has likely been penalised.

mickyfu said:

If you search your meta head title in qoutes, and it does not show up, it has likely been penalised.

Click to expand...

Sure enough. Googled that and nothing comes up. Bing did come up BUT not as my root URL. Was listed with myrooturl/index.php. Which is the same as my home page but still not the root URL.

So what can I do now micky?

If I take down my old company website will I get my ranking back for my new one?

Please reply, I really need resolution of this. What do I need to do to fix the listings of my new company?

You can also try searching for "site:yourdomain.com" in Google to see if it really is deindexed. Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account? They will usually send a warning about unnatural links or other shady behavior via WMT if that is the problem. I can't imagine that they would care that you have two similar businesses, although it is unclear to me why you set up a separate company for such a similar product.

Since your original domain is still working, can you move your new business over to a subsection of the old domain? For example, if you are using "indigo6.whatever" for custom site design, maybe create a new page at "indigo6.whatever/express" for the template service. I definitely would not take down your old site. If your new domain isn't penalized, you could 301 redirect the old one to it. It will still show up for awhile if people are searching for your old company, although they might not realize that the new company is yours.

Are both your website similar in structure and content? Is the second one a duplicate or something?

Were you promoting either site using the local algorithm?

Do you have the same contact information on each site?

Using the site: command, are both sites listed?

I would suggest you 301 the first domain you do not use to the second one you do use., but I alsio havn't seen the sites.

Hi,

I am afraid not and to play safe, perhaps you may need to start up another company. If your rankings suddenly disappeared, it is most likely been penalized.

Sigh,
Commoner

k3p13r said:

You can also try searching for "site:yourdomain" in Google to see if it really is deindexed. Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account? They will usually send a warning about unnatural links or other shady behavior via WMT if that is the problem. I can't imagine that they would care that you have two similar businesses, although it is unclear to me why you set up a separate company for such a similar product.

Since your original domain is still working, can you move your new business over to a subsection of the old domain? For example, if you are using "indigo6.whatever" for custom site design, maybe create a new page at "indigo6.whatever/express" for the template service. I definitely would not take down your old site. If your new domain isn't penalized, you could 301 redirect the old one to it. It will still show up for awhile if people are searching for your old company, although they might not realize that the new company is yours.

Click to expand...

The site comes up that way. Went google 20 pages deep for web design in my area and nothing. Was coming in at top of page 2 bottom of page 1 a month ago. I do have WMT and analytics on both company sites, under different accounts. The old company was my first company launched. I came up with a better name, better offerings, based on different tech, and doing a more focused scope. I just didn't take the old one down as I thought it would work as a second funnel, and I put a lot of work into the site.
I don't want to combine the companies. If I do anything drastic it would be to close the first company down and focus on the new one. Or just do a 301 I suppose.

Are both your website similar in structure and content? Is the second one a duplicate or something?

Click to expand...

Not so much. Both are custom builds and quite different. Not built on same tech or served on the same host. There's no obvious connection from one to the other.

Were you promoting either site using the local algorithm?

Do you have the same contact information on each site?

Using the site: command, are both sites listed?

I would suggest you 301 the first domain you do not use to the second one you do use., but I alsio havn't seen the sites.

Click to expand...

Same sort of key words and built in site seo were used. No link in contact info. Different phone number, no listing of owner name. Both sites come up fine using the site: search. Does that mean I wasn't penalized and something else has made it slip? I did my usual round of seo with the main stream social media accounts and about 12-20 main stream biz listings. That's always worked very well for me. I've done a lot of research on how to build organically, but am novice with what takes your rankings down. I have read some of what not to do and I am not purposely trying to break or get around any of the rules.

My competition in the area may very well have figured out that both companies are mine however and may have made a report to the search engines to get something done. I'm not sure what that would do, but it is a distinct possibility.