Google Algorithm Penalty - HELP!

CliveTheSnail

CliveTheSnail

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HELP! - HELP! - HELP!

Question....

I've had my website for almost 7 years, mostly ranking spots 2 - 4 for main target keywords while doing little to no SEO, even beating out YELP for a lot of them. That being said, over the past year, 3 to 4 local competitors have hired SEO companies or started to do SEO themselves as my rankings went from 2 - 3 to then positions 6 - 9.

SIDE NOTE: FOR MANY YEARS there has been a small (but bigger than mine) local company that I just cant seem to beat for position #1 on any of our industries local keywords...None... I have checked AHREF'S and gained most of their links, hasn't really helped at all, I have NO CLUE what they are doing to Rank So Well...

Long story short... I built several links to my site, focusing on home page and exact match keywords (main city's service location) hoping to get that rank 1 spot... Not only that, but I sent several exact match keywords to a new page, a page that targets another city we just started to do services in as well (two cities total). My on-page SEO and web design is MONEY, so I've been told by several SEO savvy people... Yes I know rank 1 isn't everything...but in my industry, a service industry people go with the first company that answers the phone, and looking at the company's traffic in position #1 compared to positions #2 and #3...it would 10x - 15x business for just 2 main key words, not to mention the lower searched 4 - 5 keywords that could increase it to 20x - 30x current business volume

OK... SO... It's Safe to say I got a major Google Algorithm Penalty as rankings dropped from spots 3 - 4 for my homepage to spots 10 - 13+ ... And even worse, on the new city's page, spots 18 - 22 to positions 45 + .... I have since contacted the company(s) that provided links over the past 45 - 65 days, and they have notified myself that all links were completely removed within the past 24 hours from this post - One even offered a refund without me asking or expecting is it was my lack of knowledge and error... (Thank You).

I guess MY QUESTIONS IS... Will my site fully, partially, or never recover??

If it eventually will at some point, what time frame am I looking at from BHW members experience? I understand there are a lot of variables to consider...

Also, once recovered... HOW can I rank for position #1...

Cheers,
-Dandy
 
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Dandylions said:
HELP! - HELP! - HELP!

Question....

I've had my website for almost 7 years, mostly ranking spots 2 - 4 for main target keywords while doing little to no SEO, even beating out YELP for a lot of them. That being said, over the past year, 3 to 4 local competitors have hired SEO companies or started to do SEO themselves as my rankings went from 2 - 3 to then positions 6 - 9.

SIDE NOTE: FOR MANY YEARS there has been a small (but bigger than mine) local company that I just cant seem to beat for position #1 on any of our industries local keywords...None... I have checked AHREF'S and gained most of their links, hasn't really helped at all, I have NO CLUE what they are doing to Rank So Well...

Long story short... I built several links to my site, focusing on home page and exact match keywords (main city's service location) hoping to get that rank 1 spot... Not only that, but I sent several exact match keywords to a new page, a page that targets another city we just started to do services in as well (two cities total). My on-page SEO and web design is MONEY, so I've been told by several SEO savvy people... Yes I know rank 1 isn't everything...but in my industry, a service industry people go with the first company that answers the phone, and looking at the company's traffic in position #1 compared to positions #2 and #3...it would 10x - 15x business for just 2 main key words, not to mention the lower searched 4 - 5 keywords that could increase it to 20x - 30x current business volume

OK... SO... It's Safe to say I got a major Google Algorithm Penalty as rankings dropped from spots 3 - 4 for my homepage to spots 10 - 13+ ... And even worse, on the new city's page, spots 18 - 22 to positions 45 + .... I have since contacted the company(s) that provided links over the past 45 - 65 days, and they have notified myself that all links were completely removed within the past 24 hours from this post - One even offered a refund without me asking or expecting is it was my lack of knowledge and error... (Thank You).

I guess MY QUESTIONS IS... Will my site fully, partially, or never recover??

If it eventually will at some point, what time frame am I looking at from BHW members experience? I understand there are a lot of variables to consider...

Also, once recovered... HOW can I rank for position #1...

Cheers,
-Dandy
Click to expand...

In my experience, if Google will tell you if you've gotten a manual penalty.

They want you to show proof that the links were removed, or you are trying to remove the links.

Typically, it can take 4-6 months to see your rankings start to go back up, and a year to get back to (almost) where you used to be.

In extreme cases it can take 1.5 years - 2 years.
 
from what I read you have NOT received any notice from google that you got a penalty and you are assuming that you got an algorithm penalty. correct?

you also said that other SEO companies are telling that you have a decent on-page seo. are they talking about your correct use of meta tags, description, alt-text, etc., or are they talking about what you have written?

it very well could be your writing. it could be that it is not meeting what the customer is coming there for. since you are in services, is your content really meets this need? have you given the customer a reason to pick up the phone and call you? have provided images and text that talks about your features and benefits. don't laugh, but this really does matter.

one thing that I think you made a mistake on: asking them to remove old links. that is often more damaging than beneficial. you would have been far better if you had added more links to dilute any negative impact that you thought you could have received from those "bad" links.
 
It's hard to help without doing a site audit.

Did your site get hit in March-April? If it did, it can be fixed but you need to do some counter-intuitive stuff and it'll take a couple of months. Let me know if you want to give it a shot. If it was hit some other time, then it's hard to tell without looking at your site.
 
For me the shake up occurred February 2019
Do you find links to be the answer?
Have you tried a Bright Local Citation tool?
Your checking his backlinks might ass well check the citations too
 
Hold on, did I get this right?

You had a small drop in rankings, you received no message from Google, you paniced and got all your latest backlinks removed?

So if I were Google and wanted to see if you were trying to manipulate me by creating backlinks and I would give you a temp drop in rankings.......
Well didn't you just prove that I (Google) was right in thinking you were trying to game me?

NEVER panic and start removing backlinks without knowing what's going on.
You might have just hurt yourself way more than needed.
 
SEO Masters said:
Hold on, did I get this right?

You had a small drop in rankings, you received no message from Google, you paniced and got all your latest backlinks removed?

So if I were Google and wanted to see if you were trying to manipulate me by creating backlinks and I would give you a temp drop in rankings.......
Well didn't you just prove that I (Google) was right in thinking you were trying to game me?

NEVER panic and start removing backlinks without knowing what's going on.
You might have just hurt yourself way more than needed.
Click to expand...

There's even an algorithm for that.

Google will drop your site on purpose and then monitor links. If you remove a bunch of links, it flags you.

They published a patent on this years ago.
 
You might wana check your anchors to make sure it's not over optimised.
I've had sites that drop more than 20 spots only to hit pg1 a few months later. I just continued building quality links and content.

If nothing happens to your site after a few months then try removing spammy links or disavow them.

These days, SEO is a marathon.
 
Thanks everyone for the comments,
I haven't touched the disavow tool, I've asked anyone who built links or was in the process of building to stop and remove them correct, the large drop came almost immediately after building links with over optimized anchor texts, i'm 99% sure thats the reason for the drop in positions. I'm not talking about Hundred and Hundreds of links, so I wasn't to concerned about getting them removed as I know some of them weren't even indexed and wanted to catch the removal before they were and likely penalized even more.

Since removing them, I have seen a bump in the past 24 hours, just going to give it time and see how things go, nothing more I can do for now aside from slowly build high quality posts, work on anchor text, and contiue with high quality content.

For any lower quality links still on the site with exact match keywords, would you think its best to remove them by asking the provider - or - have them change the anchor text to naked / brand - or - leave them alone?
 
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