Expert SEO advice - what am I working against

Google penalty?

[Jim Westergren]

I have an SEO client that does not show up at all when searching for "widgets" but ranks very well on KW combinations together with widgets. MSN ranks him #5 and in my estimate he should be in the top 10 but he is only showing up as #320 sometimes.

Prior my SEO job there was an H1 widgets tag with "H1 {visibility:hidden;}" in the CSS file. I of course removed that BH as part of my on-page optimization job.

I thought that this would be handled over time, jagger came etc. but still the same. And it is only on Google.

The client are subscribing to a number of backlinks on a number of sites that I own - all with "widgets" as anchor.

So do you think the site is under a Google penalty only when searched with widgets due to the hidden H1 or could it be because of the unnatural link growth that might have triggered a filter when I placed those links all on the same day (PR 4-6 sites, many in the footer)?

I have learned more about links since I did this job, also with own testing but I don't want to alter the links now if it is because of something else. The links are aging - would be stupid to alter them.

The job was done in end of September 2005.

Thanks a lot for possible help.

[Stefan]

So do you think the site is under a Google penalty only when searched with widgets due to the hidden H1 or could it be because of the unnatural link growth that might have triggered a filter when I placed those links all on the same day (PR 4-6 sites, many in the footer)?

I am not an expert.

I would think that if the hidden H1 had triggered a true penalty that the page would not show in the index at all, not for it's URL and not for any serps.

all with "widgets" as anchor

The flood of SEO links all done at once would more possibly be the problem. But, I could be wrong ;-)

[Jim Westergren]

I just spoke to a SEO pro that I know and he looked at the site.

We found that the following query:

site:domain.com KW

Put the index page at #10 which means that the other pages are more relevant for Google.

So by placing all backlinks on the index page but by having the subpages more relevant was probably the mistake.

To handle this I will have more of the internal pages link to the index page with the KW in the anchor in order to flow more weight.

if someone has anything else to add I would be thankful. Will e-mail the client now.

[Jim Westergren]

Thanks Stefan.

We posted at the same time.

I think you are right.