deep sixed by google Help!

[Ian.MacD]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Sounds like Ron hit the main points right on the head. I'd say the most important thing to make sure to check is that your anchor links are natural. Penguin attacks sites where the algorithm might find "link spamming". Although your site is not a spam site, Penguin might see it that way. If you still need more help or suggestions you can reach me at [email protected]

Ian MacDonald
e-Business Express
We Help Grow Your Business!
(330)931-4428

[Mamie1989]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

It’s onerous to find educated folks on this topic, however you sound like you realize what you’re talking about! Thanks

[Ron Frigon]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Good luck and keep in touch. Let us know what changes you made and what effect they had. I think we'll be hearing a lot more about issues like this.

Cheers!

[Nerd Boy Inc]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Dear Greg,

http://www.bizweb2000.com/

[ballyhoo]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Thanks for taking a look at my site. yeah, this has really killed my traffic and as a result my wallet! I'll lake a few of the changes you suggest across the site then wait and see before making more. maybe ask them to respider it.
Thanks again,
greg

[Ron Frigon]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Fortunately only one of the sites I manage got hit. His site is a little over-optimized in my opinion. I've tried telling the store owner this but he doesn't seem to want to listen. His traffic was cut by 50% in the middle of his peak season.

Is this your site? http://www.ballyhoovintage.com/

These things are what jump out at me first:

The page title: Shop for Vintage Clothing at Ballyhoo Vintage Clothing
The phrase Vintage Clothing is used twice. try re-wording it so it's only used once.

Your page headings: You have 3 h1 tags on your home page. There should only be one h1 tag on any page. Make the other headings h2, h3 etc.

How many times is the word Vintage used on the home page? It seems like a lot. This is something Google is now targeting.

The word vintage is also in almost every link in your primary navigation. You may want to use it in your top level links but not the ones below.

My thought would be that Google thinks your site is over-optimized for "Vintage" and has de-ranked you for that keyword. But that's just my guess...

I wouldn't make too many drastic changes too fast. It's been a couple weeks and things are starting to re-shuffle a bit.

[ballyhoo]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Hi Ron,
Yeah, there are all of these corporate sites above us that don't even sell vintage clothing, they just use the keyword to describe a tee shirt or a watch even. I watched those videos thanks. I can't see what I'm doing to over optimize? Maybe the product page titles? I noticed one of my competitors uses the prod description for the page title so i do that now as well-tho they have not been rocked by the penguin update it seems so that isn't it?
Looking at my site do you see anything over optimized?
I've never been very good at going out and asking for links, the link manager we have does attract a lot of crappy sites asking for links and hopefully they aren't adding my site to their links pages- off track betting etc…I doubt there is anything i can do to get those links taken down if they did.
i notice you don't have a links page on your site? was that a conscious decision? Did you get whacked too?

[Ron Frigon]

Re: deep sixed by google Help!

Your not the only one. Iv'e seen this happen to other sites as well. Always ranked at the top of the first page. Now the first page is full of companies and websites I've never heard of before.

One if the biggest changes Google made was released around April 24th and targets on-site over-optimization. This update was immediate and the changes I've seen are drastic. Google has changed the way we need to look at on-site seo.

Check out these videos from SEOmoz:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes...teboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-pengu...teboard-friday

Or any of the other related posts in their blog:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog

Good Luck!

[ballyhoo]

Over the past month we've seen our site slip from page 2 of our main keyword, vintage clothing, to page 32! From about 1997 to 2 years ago we were ranked in the top 4. This recent slide has occurred in the last month. April 20 or so. We don't use any black hat link stuff-we do use a respected link management service but don't reply to the link offers from shady sites or non relevant sites. also other keywords that google webmaster tools rank as 1.1 for position now are also no where to be found? but it isn't consistent like they did it on purpose? 30s vintage clothing still has us on page 2- we were on page one. confusing! Any ideas what the recent slide could have been caused by?

thanks
greg