Believe my site is being penalized

I was doing some reading on the net about determining if you site has received a google penalty or not and I think have one.

We recently had an SEO guy working for us and we had a dispute with him. He was difficult do deal with and I think he might have been using "Black Hat" techniques. Our site was getting good traffic and then all of the sudden it dropped to 20 users a day from 200 very shortly after out disagreement with him started.

The way I'm determined was by doing a search for a pretty unique term in our title page and we were ranked #58. When I did that same search in Yahoo we came up #1.

My question is how do I find out for sure and go about getting the penalty removed?

Thanks,

G

 

do u have any bad backlinks

 

What constitutes a bad backlink? Our original site was created in 1999 so I'm sure there are lot of backlinks out that and we can't control all of them.

g

 

I guess you cant do anything about it. If it isn't under your control, then it isn't worth spending time or effort on. The best you can do is forget about it.

 

I don't agree with this theory when our site dropped from 200 to 20 visitors a day.

 

and that's why it's a good idea to do SEO yourself. We outsource some link building but we clearly specify what links we want and freelancers deliver.
we tried to use seo "specialist" and they're useless.
In your case, wait for a month and hopefully your site will be back on top.

 

You should investigate his works and reports, see which of those probably causes flagging of your site and penalized. Check this article for good ideas for you...

http://www.davidairey.com/how-i-reversed-my-google-ranking-penalty/

 

Well, unfortunately in this world there simply is not enough time in the day and we can't do it all... I manage it the best I can and hire people for link building and such...

We are sorta implying that SEO is the only industry where people lie about they level of competency. This happens every day and in every industry. I had a lady do some work on my house, I ended up having to sue her and won because of her poor workmanship.

g

 

I use google site: URL to check if de-index or not.
Usually G do not count those duplicate page's links.

 

Well, I'm in the index, but that doesn't mean you aren't being penalized. I've done a search for "iso9001compliance" which is my domain name without the .com and usually your site will be first. I'm listed #69. My blog site does better than our actually site. Now if you go to Yahoo, we are listed #1 for the same term.

Also, our PR ranking is now 0, which is supposed to be another indicator you are being penalized.

g

 

In order to check what are the sites that links to you, type in site:sitename.com in yahoo

This way, you could identify the "bad" links

 

Ragnarok the line is link:sitenam.com in yahoo and all others ( siteexplorer ) , or you can use backlinkwatch.com .

 

What makes a link bad? Yahoo doesn't tell you this!

 

You don't have a lot of links despite your website being online for a long time (since 1998). Looking at your yahoo backlinks (155), a large majority of your links are of little or no value at all. If it was your SEO guy who did this, then you will have to get rid of all the bad links; actually get rid of all the links that he acquired for you and submit a reinclusion request to google specifying the circumstances.

If a penalty has been imposed on your site, then it can last a very long time and even longer if you don't eradicate the root of the problem.

Btw, what makes a link bad - search on google and you'll get the answer. Here's a headstart for you, all backlinks ending with links.html, links.php, links.asp etc are useless and bad ...

 

type the name of your site in google (without the www. and .com) for instance if your site is "www.fantasticsite.com then go to google and type in fantasticsite

if you dont rank #1 for your name then you are penalized

 

It's pretty hard to tell but Google can definitely slap you if you're building links too quickly. I would take a look at all the sites linking in and make sure they're legit.

 

Try that article: How to find out if site was banned by google

 

Hi there

Just found your site now sorry about my previous post, if you type your site into google with the.com and it doesnt come up first usually a sign somethings gone wrong, finding out what the problem is can be very difficult though

Woc

 

Well obviously if I've been around that long, then I was doing what was acceptable 10 years ago. No Google wants to change their policy and penalize me for what they used to encourage!!

 

Done this and our site is #69 for our domain name!!!