Need Advice from an SEO Pro! Make $50 for your help =)

[Mr Marketer]

I was contracted in December by an online high school for off page SEO & link building. They wanted to get their website rankings back on the first page of Google. Their keywords are pretty competitive: online high school, online ged, high school diploma online, etc but nothing too crazy.

The website is over 5 years old with a PR of 5. On page SEO checks out fine. Up until November they had 1st page rankings for most of their keywords but that's when they dropped in the serps and contracted me a month later.

After our 1st month's campaign, we saw a pretty good jump in the serps for all keywords in their campaign. Most bounced back somewhere on the first page. But before we even finished the second month's campaign they're rankings dropped again.

Now I realize that 1 month's worth of linkbuilding is going to be the only solution here but normally our client's rankings don't drop so suddenly or at this rate.

One thing I do know is that his rankings dropped at the same time as the Google Panda/Ezines update from Google a few months back. I mentioned this to my client & he confirmed he's done a pretty good amount of ezines & article submissions. But all high quality, original stuff.

Since then, my clients rankings really haven't moved much. Even after 2 more months of link building. Our optimization included: web 2.0 wheels, high PR back linking, article & video submission, social bookmarking, rss submission, blog posting & commenting.

At this point, I'm almost certain it's not a link building issue. But there is something going on that is keeping them off of the first page. We did quite a bit of optimization during this campaign and I've never experienced this kind of trouble in the serps.

I will gladly paypal someone $50 who can help me find a solution here. Obviously I can't disclose the website in this thread so please either post here or PM me & I will get you more details.

Please only reply if you are a seasoned SEO pro! I need someone who's seen it all. Thanks for checkin out my thread!

[dial123]

it could be the usual google dance that is happening to that site, my advice is to be patient a little while and see if the site site get back to it normal position. in the main time keep on with your off page seo. and try get back link from very quality site and web2.o site.

[liveayon]

Hello Mr Marketer,

I'm interested to help you. It's not about $ rather it's about passion to help you. Can you give me more details i.e. the URL, dropping keywords etc in PM?

[Mr Marketer]

Originally Posted by dial123

it could be the usual google dance that is happening to that site, my advice is to be patient a little while and see if the site site get back to it normal position. in the main time keep on with your off page seo. and try get back link from very quality site and web2.o site.

Thanks for your post, unfortunately it's a pretty urgent scenario. Since his drop in the serps 4 months ago, he's lost about 15k a month in revenue. I'd like to go back to my client with an effective plan of attack & that's why I'm reaching out to warriors in this thread =)

[Carl-Reed]

If he's losing money right now get him to set up a PPC campaign while you're fixing the rankings so you can at least recoup some of the money he's losing

[Vogin]

Sounds like someone somewhere pushed the bad button. Are you sure that the people / companies who did SEO for your client before you haven't engaged in any black hat practices, and that would include paid links?

This sounds like a less hostile version of Sandbox to me.

Or, and that's another possibility, you need to adjust the rate of your (say daily) number of backlinks. If you're doing a campaign for one month, add ten thousands backlinks and then it all suddenly dies off the next month, it's hardly a surprise that the site drops down.

One more tip - I don't know whether the company has a Twitter account, but I've found out that if the Twt account name is roughly similar to the brand/domain name and it tweets on a daily basis, it helps the ranking (basically because like a year ago Google realized he needs to keep up with the social media and included a live feed from some of the most important ones, like Twt).

PS I could also do a SEO competition analysis in Market Samurai, PM me if you want a deal.

[Mr Marketer]

Originally Posted by Carl-Reed

If he's losing money right now get him to set up a PPC campaign while you're fixing the rankings so you can at least recoup some of the money he's losing

That's actually a good idea & one that I offered to him. He's just not interested in a PPC campaign.

Originally Posted by Vogin

Sounds like someone somewhere pushed the bad button. Are you sure that the people / companies who did SEO for your client before you haven't engaged in any black hat practices, and that would include paid links?

This sounds like a less hostile version of Sandbox to me.

Or, and that's another possibility, you need to adjust the rate of your (say daily) number of backlinks. If you're doing a campaign for one month, add ten thousands backlinks and then it all suddenly dies off the next month, it's hardly a surprise that the site drops down.

One more tip - I don't know whether the company has a Twitter account, but I've found out that if the Twt account name is roughly similar to the brand/domain name and it tweets on a daily basis, it helps the ranking (basically because like a year ago Google realized he needs to keep up with the social media and included a live feed from some of the most important, like Twt).

PS I could also do a SEO competition analysis in Market Samurai, PM me if you want a deal.

Thanks for your input & the Twitter Tip. I didn't realize that. But I'm not sure if it's a Google Penalty or not. Normally if you are in trouble, you fall completely off the serps. My client went from the 1st page for his keywords to the 3rd & 4th pages.