SEO Help Getting Unbanned

[CHerring912]

I own a company that is in 10 states. We have a our national website at www.example.com. It is listed on all the search engines. Our old site is still listed as we have not taken this site down yet.

We decided to add local website for the local offices. We have local phone numbers and addresses on each site. We have backlinks from about 14 sites. We have done everything we can to get listed on Google. We have the codes and have been verified. Our sites are listed, but even if you type in our company name they do not show up for the local listings.

We have been penalized or flagged for doing something wrong and other SEO experts can't figure it out. Google is no help at all. Even the links and text are a little different on the home page and I have used robot.txt to prohibited google from going to the pages that have duplicate text.

[edited by: tedster at 7:50 pm (utc) on May 10, 2013]

[TheOptimizationIdiot]

We have been penalized or flagged for doing something wrong and other SEO experts can't figure it out.

Or they just don't have enough "weight" to rank?

How long have they been online?

Does the main site show up for those searches rather than the specific sites?

Also, why did you decide against adding a subdomain for each of the offices, keep all "applies everywhere" information on the main domain so there is no duplication at all necessary and only put location specific information on the subdomains for the different locations?

BTW: Welcome to WebmasterWorld & You're not banned, you just don't rank. When you're banned you don't even show up for a site:search, so the fact you find anything for the sites when you search for them specifically means you're not banned, which is a good thing.

[seoskunk]

I recently did something similar and all the regional sites (about 30) rank ok if not spectacularly. So I feel the backlinks may be the issue here not the regional sites as described. Where did the backlinks come from and are they valid ?

[Str82u]

We have been penalized or flagged for doing something wrong and other SEO experts can't figure it out.

Is that a fact or are you just guessing?

Are all the sites on the same server and linked together and with the same whois information? Not saying you're actually doing anything wrong there but from the algorithmic standpoint, G might be penalizing the sites as a private link network.

More importantly is what @TOI asked, "How long have they been online?" and I also agree that given the situation, I'd have gone with subdomains just to be sure G knows it's all the same business and not a private backlink network.