Two years under an automatic penalty or filter?

[internetheaven]

My site has never ranked well. It was third for our own company name for the first six months, underneath our twitter page and our facebook page.

The highest ranking we've received for our top keywords is No.54 - the majority are in the 100+ area. Google accounts for less than 10% of our traffic.

About the site:

- 2+ years old.
- PR4
- over 200 information/news pages about the law industry
- one banner ad on six of those pages
- 1000+ domains linking to us providing 20,000+ backlinks (3 forum-ish sites linking to us skew this number)
- 2000+ facebook likes
- 1000+ twitter followers
- we copyscape every week

What we see on Google:

- if you type any "example keyphrase", we are nowhere to be seen. if you type "example keyphrase company name", we take up the top 3-7 places.

- if you type "exact phrase from article", we rank underneath all the social bookmark (e.g. digg), blog and scrapers of our own article.

- any new page is indexed in under an hour but ... (see above two reactions to it)

Why be so adamant about including our pages so quickly only to deliberately de-rank them? It doesn't make sense to me.

A reinclusion request late last year got the response "no manual penalty had been added". Which was cryptic to say the least.

But there has been no DROP. That's the problem. We've never, ever climbed up to then fall by doing something wrong. The site has never had traffic from Google for us to point to something and say "ah-hah! traffic dropped after we did that!"

[aristotle]

Just a guess on my part, but have you done a lot of standard SEO on the site, or maybe even overdid it? If so, you might look at the possibility of an over-optimization penalty? That's an algorithmic penalty, and presumably you can get it without violating Google's guidelines.

[internetheaven]

You mean, is our main phrase (the service we provide) in the page title, H1 and in most of the anchor text pointing to our site? You know, like Google has been telling us we needed for the past decade to rank? Then yes, we have over-optimised by making it clear to site visitors what our service is. I suppose third party websites are also in the wrong for linking to us using the name of the service we provide rather than using different phrases like "eggs and bacon" just to vary things up.

So if we are a perfect fit for the keyphrase someone enters in to Google, then we must be punished? Well that certainly makes sense as to why it is non-matching results ranking in the top as well as social bookmarking sites and scrapers that happen to mention us and our service.

Bravo Google. I hear Bing has a 30% share now in the US? I wonder why ...

have you done a lot of standard SEO on the site, or maybe even overdid it

We've tried that. And I must say, I feel really, really stupid contacting other webmasters and asking them not to link to us using the name of our service but rather using our web address or "visit". They are not all responding in the most polite manner and a few (luckily just a few) even removed our link altogether.

This is insane.

[aristotle]

A reinclusion request late last year got the response "no manual penalty had been added". Which was cryptic to say the least.

Maybe it means that the site has been penalized algorithmically, but no manual penalty has been added as well.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I regularly outrank sites that use the "keyphrase | company name | blurb about company/keyphrase" approach to titles. Less is more when it comes to titles and even adding the company or site name in the title isn't necessary(Google will add it if they feel it is) unless you want brand recognition.

What do your titles look like? Are you repeating those titles verbatim in your social profiles using automated means?

[Planet13]

- over 200 information/news pages about the law industry

Tell us more about those pages.

Is it news / information that they can find somewhere else? (I know you said that you copyscape your pages, but if it is "news" then genereally it can be found on other sites - unless I misunderstand your definition of news).

[Sand]

You know, like Google has been telling us we needed for the past decade to rank? Then yes, we have over-optimised by making it clear to site visitors what our service is.

This over-optimization thing is new -- but from what you've said, you've been having trouble for years. If that's the case, then you have some bigger issues that predate Panda or Penguin.

Unless you've received unnatural link warnings or have seen a drop in traffic that was timed with a Panda or Penguin refresh, don't go removing links.

[aristotle]

Actually I believe that Google implemented an earlier version of the over-optimization penalty at least four or five years ago. Most likely Penguin is a newer version

[chrisv1963]

1000+ domains linking to us providing 20,000+ backlinks

Natural links?

[internetheaven]

1000+ domains linking to us providing 20,000+ backlinks

Natural links?

Good question. What is natural?

We have links from press releases. From Yellow Pages. From governing bodies we're signed up with. From Directories (Yahoo, Thomson Local etc.)

Thousands of our links will be paid for. It was perfectly natural for us to pay for those links to our site.

[aristotle]

We have links from press releases. From Yellow Pages. From governing bodies we're signed up with. From Directories (Yahoo, Thomson Local etc.)

According to Google's Guidelines, those types of links should have a nofollow tag.

But I agree with you that so-called "over-optimiztion" shouldn't be actively penalized. Instead, SEO efforts should just be nullified. Because a site has been SEO'd doesn't necessarily mean that its content is low quality. In some cases it could be the highest quality in its niche.

So when Google introduced over-optimization penalties, they indicated that they are willing to sacrifice the quality of their SERPs in order to punish owners of sites that have been heavily SEO'd, regardless of whether the SEO was done purposefully or accidentally.

[Planet13]

Is the content subject matter unique?

I am not asking whether it will simply pass copyscape; Is it info that can be found on lots of other sites, regardless of whether it is re-worded on those sites?

sorry to harp on this, but I think it is as important as the issue of links.

[jimbeetle]

Instead of talking about penalties the first thing I would do is get out the old SEO tool chest and find out why other sites are ranking. A bit of competitive analysis goes a long way in understanding the, erm, competition.

[netmeg]

If a client came to me with a similar situation the first thing I would ask him is why he feels he deserves to rank higher.

[internetheaven]

If a client came to me with a similar situation the first thing I would ask him is why he feels he deserves to rank higher.

Why do I think I should rank higher than social bookmarking pages about my site and scrapers that have reprinted my content?

Ummm ...

[Sand]

Why do I think I should rank higher than social bookmarking pages about my site and scrapers that have reprinted my content?

Ummm ...

It's an important question to ask -- don't be so quick to dismiss it.

Google's approach isn't necessarily to reward originality. It's to reward quality and authority. No, they're not always successful at it, but that's what they're trying to do.

If you have participated in spammy SEO tactics, or if your site creates what could be a negative user experience, then they don't want to send people to your site. It makes them look bad, and they will look for any alternatives they can find (in this case, scrapers and social bookmarking sites).

You need to take a serious look as to *why* you aren't ranking above these other sites. Unless a site is brand new, getting outranked by a social bookmarking site is an indicator of a huge problem.

[Planet13]

Thousands of our links will be paid for. It was perfectly natural for us to pay for those links to our site.

That's probably where I would start first.

[tedster]

Remember, paid links are FINE, if they are nofollowed. If they are good links, then they will send you traffic and there should be no concern about lost PageRank.

[netmeg]

he highest ranking we've received for our top keywords is No.54 - the majority are in the 100+ area.

Why do I think I should rank higher than social bookmarking pages about my site and scrapers that have reprinted my content?

53+ of them?

It *is* important, because we have to be brutally honest with ourselves about our sites. So ask yourself the question, and don't start out about what the other sites are doing or not doing; what's important is what *you're* doing.

If the client can't immediately give me legitimate reasons why he should be ranking higher than those outranking him, he generally can't reflect it on the site either (at least not honestly). So users won't realize it and Google might not either.

No question Google makes huge gaping mistakes in figuring out what should go where. But so do we.

[internetheaven]

the highest ranking we've received for our top keywords is No.54 - the majority are in the 100+ area.

Why do I think I should rank higher than social bookmarking pages about my site and scrapers that have reprinted my content?

53+ of them?

Yes. Not all scrapers, but the alexa page stating our stats and a page about our whois info ranks higher.

I'm just saying that heavily penalising websites that do SEO will simply allow those that don't do any (scrapers, low quality pages etc.) to fill the top ranks.

Of course, scrapers won't revert to buying Adwords when they get penalised ... so I can see the logic from Google's bottom line view. Companies that do SEO have budgets.