Over use of anchor text

Hi Guys.

I have been working on my own site since 2008. Exactly one month ago my site disappeared from Google and then 2 days later it reappeared but ranking had taken a sharp drop. I was wondering if anyone else noticed this? I have kept an eye on my WM Tools and there is no messages there before anyone asks!

I suppose what I'm asking is could it be possible that I have received a penalty? Some of my anchor text is over optimized so this may be an issue but I'm at a dead end and really stuck on this. I have asked SEO's in my country to take a look but to be honest having looked at some of their suggestions I don't trust their judgement!

This is the site Woodale Designs, I can't add the link as I'm a newbie. We're dependent on the business we receive from the site and I am just staring at a blank screen here. There is little or no competition when it comes to link building in my niche so I have been #1 for every keyword for the last 6 years here in Ireland.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. The only regret I have is putting all my eggs in the Google basket and I would strongly suggest that anyone link building should always have a backup site because the big G can no longer be trusted... Poor InterFlora.

Well, how long have your rankings been down? Sometimes sites come back stronger after doing the google dance for a week or so, so let your site go out and hit the google clubs and hope it comes back stronger than before. On the other hand, you said you were already #1, so maybe this might not end to well.

You have the right mindset, start building other sites asap, you should have had little "feeder" sites or web 2.0 type sites already. It's a tough lesson when you learn all your eggs were in one basket. But don't feel it's the end of the world, there is so many ways to get traffic and sales than from Google so now's the best time to find out what works in your niche. But you do need to investigate and figure out exactly what happened so you can fix it and NOT do it again.

You say there isn't much competition, so that may mean that the cost per click could be very low in Adwords, so maybe you can try that as well.

Goto ahrefs.com and review your site, your pages. From there you will be able to see if indeed you have over optimized your anchor text. From there, you will be able to come up with a solid plan on what to do. If you say there is low or no competition in your niche, then it will not take that long before you go back to your previous rankings. Check you content, are they unique? What about your on-page optimization?..Check everything then put up a plan to get back. Goodluck

You are really an offline business, and although you need a website, you should be using relevant business links to promote your business, not really building more sites.

Your strategy should include:

adwords
articles aimed at various home improvement on your website
google places setup
classified ad links (rergularly updated, like weekly in gumtree)
Similar Trade directory website links submitted
Facebook fan page,
facebook ads campaign
Youtube video of finished jobs (every job)
youtube video of kitchen cheap kitchen ideas
Get your customers to complete tradesperson website reviews
Setup a referal program and encourage your customers to refer you to make money
Setup various online referal programs so other websmasters can promote you
Tradeshows
Joint ventures with other trades people

Setting up other sites is an option, but all the above will give you a better bang for your buck, and is more relevant.

Friend I absolutely concur with Pather28. If so much of your business came from online traffic, you should stop wasting time and money worrying about the SEO, and start getting that traffic back via adwords and other sources. Since you said your comp was pretty small, those clicks will be cheap. Then you can start anylizing your backlink profile, anchor text etc. If you've been hit with a penalty it really could be for anything... trying to fix it may never work. Google are showing their true colors these days. They are big ads business and they don't give a f#ck if your site ranks or not, because if you want their traffic, you may as well pay for it.

Best of luck.

I'm quite sure the thing you should focus on is expanding your social profile in the eyes of search engines. Simple as that.

Dead right!

Panther28 said:

You are really an offline business, and although you need a website, you should be using relevant business links to promote your business, not really building more sites.

Your strategy should include:

adwords
articles aimed at various home improvement on your website
google places setup
classified ad links (rergularly updated, like weekly in gumtree)
Similar Trade directory website links submitted
Facebook fan page,
facebook ads campaign
Youtube video of finished jobs (every job)
youtube video of kitchen cheap kitchen ideas
Get your customers to complete tradesperson website reviews
Setup a referal program and encourage your customers to refer you to make money
Setup various online referal programs so other websmasters can promote you
Tradeshows
Joint ventures with other trades people

Setting up other sites is an option, but all the above will give you a better bang for your buck, and is more relevant.

Click to expand...

Hi Guys, Thank you all very much for taking the time and answers. Panther 28, a big thank you for your advice and I will try to implement it going forward. I am an offline business but 70% of last years sales came from people finding us on line, liking what we do an visiting our showroom. While we still had to sell our product, getting them in the door is the most important thing.

I really appreciate all the replies guys. I'm not used to asking for help on forums so this really surprised me.

The site is starting to rank again. I focused on the onsite stuff mostly and had one sitewide like removed which I didn't like the look of. I contacted the webmasters and it was removed immediately. I worked on duplicate content within the site. WM tools won't show everything so I suggest using Ahrefs or other software. I am now working on site speed which might see silly but I do have plenty of images and I do believe it will have a ranking effect at some stage if not already.

This may sound silly but I see site ranking for things here in Ireland (.ie) that they don't deserve. Irish search is different here in my opinion. If you look up "seo" or seo Ireland" in .ie most of the higher ranking companies are using links from client sites or bookmarking sites to rank and the companies who have a good reputation are not ranking in the first thirty results.

While my niche isn't that competitive it's not cheap. €1 per click and I could hit 50 hits a day per keyword. The lowest bid for my keywords would be 60 cent. My niche is not competitive because the the companies I compete with know nothing about seo and the web designers either think it's snake oil or just want to design the site and no more. In saying all this Google don't look at it like this. They probably see it as every other country and place charges relevant to the search queries.

Thanks again, and I'm always will to learn more so if anyone else has anything to add feel free to do so

Nice website, friend!!

Thank you Wedding. It's a couple of years old now but still works well for us when it can be found

Hy.

I also have got a similar situation with an website for an offline business but after a few weeks the website rise again and even higher...

There was some strange movements on 5-7 of march but if I look back I thing G have made some preparation for the 6th update....

Second is not just .ie showing non relevant results. In my location if you search for "traduceri"="translation" you will get few business websites but the rest are links to an dictionary, to pages of that dictionary where words are translated.... so not so relevant for some one who is looking for a professional translation service or for an online translation tool...

The suggestions above are great and I can also add:

Check where your competitors are posted and try to also enter there... Ex; If they have an ad on yellow pages you also should build one...
Also check your competitors backlinks profile..

You lost a ton of backlinks in the recent updates that has caused your site to jump around. Around 2700 backlinks are gone as far as I can see. This happened to my sites also and they have started to come back slowly. I have never used paid links but Google seem to have devalued a whole bunch of links. Keep building links to replace the lost ones.

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Thanks ija61. The thing is I am being outranked by sites with little or no links. In .ie I shouldn't really have competition but I see sites that really shouldn't be there ranking pretty high.

Woody2012 said:

Thanks ija61. The thing is I am being outranked by sites with little or no links. In .ie I shouldn't really have competition but I see sites that really shouldn't be there ranking pretty high.

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The domain age is also important...

Where do you check your competitors backlinks?

Hi and thanks for taking a look. The large drop was a sitewide link that I had removed. It was a directory link with just a single keyword link and it was give me 1.5k links! I just wasn't happy with it and while I didn't pay for it I was still worried about it. I don't buy links either and won't because any links that are of quality and paid for are too expensive!
I'm working on links at the moment and I see that the "Archive" pages of my blog are giving me duplicate content and 404's (if that's the right term) I'm really starting to believe that my issue is on site but I will have to wait until the site is crawled fully I suppose.
Thanks for your help.

islandman1010 said:

You lost a ton of backlinks in the recent updates that has caused your site to jump around. Around 2700 backlinks are gone as far as I can see. This happened to my sites also and they have started to come back slowly. I have never used paid links but Google seem to have devalued a whole bunch of links. Keep building links to replace the lost ones.

View attachment 26450

Click to expand...

I check all backlinks using Ahrefs.

I check all backlinks using Ahrefs ija61