Hello, I think i have been penalized by google. I have some text links on some websites, i use 3 different keywords for my anchor text. My website used to rank well for the 3 keywords, 1st for one of them and 1st page for the other 2. Now however i do not rank at all for them, and i am not even ranking for my name. I have not ranked for these keywords for over 3 months. I read that if you use the same anchor text it can trigger a google filter, i am wondering if this has happened to me. If i type in my website name i do not rank top now either, i rank 4th and 5th, but not the main domain, internal pages. Something else is also bothering me. I used to use a .com domain. I then switched to a .co.uk and setup a 301 redirect. If i use the link: command in google it shows the same amount of backlinks for both domains, even though the website which the link is on has never had my .com link on it. Do you think i have been penalized? Any ideas or thoughts on what i can do to get my website back?
I think you will have to give it some more time. See if you can get some of your quality links switched to the .co.uk
More time? It has been like this since Late June; Thats over 3 months. I dont think you understand the links. They all point to the .co.uk. there are still some that exist which point to the .com of course, but most point to the .co.uk. I have been using the .co.uk domain since May. Its not that i dont have enough good links pointing to my site, i dont believe this, because the main domain isnt listed if you type in the title, if i type in www.domain.co.uk it comes up, but even without the www. it wont come up. If i type in a sentance from the main page it doesnt bring up the website. Internal pages rank fine. I rank top of google for some internal pages for longer keywords. Something is definatly not right.
Its tough to say exactly what the problem is. You can try getting rid of the 301 and put a "we have moved to .co.uk" page Have you done a site redesign in addition to the move to the co.uk It could take six months to recover rankings if that is the case with nothing guaranteed.
I know it is tough to say! I did remove the 301 and just replaced it with a 404 file not found, i dont care about the old domain, it is that old now. I have done a redesign but the structure is the same. The design was done AFTER these problems aswell, basically the template is the only thing which has changed, but i dont believe this is the problem as it has been happening before the new design.
I wouldn't do a 404 Just place a plain html page with "We are now located at ...." with a link to your site
I did actually do that for a few days, then i noticed it ranked above the .co.uk domain so i removed it. I even setup a blank page for that domain, and that ranked above the .co.uk domain when typing the title into google (the .co.uk didnt even show, some internal pages did) I dont quite understand that....If you mean remove what you think you have been punished for, its easier said than done. If it is because i have used the same keyword too many times in my backlinks then that could take months for google to notice i have stopped. I dont want to get new backlinks either... If i have been penalized for using the same keyword, wont that just make things worse?
Have you tried an xml site map? Here's a link where MICHAEL GRAY a.k.a gray wolf discusses some of the issues you have http://www.wolf-howl.com/case-study/webmaster-central-has-problems-with-301s-to-a-new-domain/
Since the full profile of Google filters is a secret, no one knows for sure. However, my understanding of every Matt Cutts blog on this subject indicates that Google's policy is NOT to penalize sites based on backlinks, only to devalue such links if they are "bad." The reason is that a competitor or scraper could point links to your site and trigger a penalty if it worked that way. So I do not believe you have this kind of penalty, or that it even exists. Actually, consider Adobe ranking for "click here." There's no penalty. The worst is that these links might be manually filtered. But so many times, when webmasters think they've been penalized, the problem has to do with the site structure. Duplicate content can create indexing issues that are not penalties at all-merely an incorrect choice by Google of the preferred URL. This is where I would look.
i think other site has more optimised seo tan yours so wait fo a month and improve your ranking by backlink
Google is having problems with 301s read the link http://www.wolf-howl.com/case-study/webmaster-central-has-problems-with-301s-to-a-new-domain/
I didn't believe in the filter till recently; I got ranked well within a couple days for a pretty good keyword....I did all the work manually; submissions etc but used only one anchor text. Now the site doesn't rank at all for this keyword. It still comes up in G so it's not blacklisted that way...but if I build links to that same page with diff anchor text will it eventually start showing up again for that keyword? I'm about to Googlebomb someone if it doesn't lol
I have submitted a sitemap, and i do submit new ones every time i create new pages. I also thought the same, because you cant control what other people do to their site and if that were the case you could do the same to your competitors. Google tells us to use a 301 for this case, so it is what i did. I read the link, i've never had that warning. The redirect was working fine for a few weeks, i mean it works fine now, if you talk about that the .com doesnt really show up for searches, but it did when i put a blank page on it. I even tried using the remove a site feature in google webmaster tools, thats why i had a 404 on the .com, but it got denied (why???). I did buy some links (relative to my site) some where sitewide ones and i read somewhere that this could be bad, that is why i am thinking this is the problem. More or less what happened to me...But i wasnt nowhere and then #1 over-night, it did take a while and it went slowly up the serps. Thats an interesting point. Duplicate content could be the problem, it is hard to say. Its a store website, not a content website so lots of pages have the same text on, i have been working hard on changing that over the past few weeks.
I have just noticed that if i use the site: command in google my website (the top level) omes up almost last...on page 56. I knew it wasnt first but i didnt know quite how far down it was. Has anyone heard of this or had this??