How to determine whether you have a google penalty?

lschmidt

lschmidt

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Jun 11, 2007
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I've got pretty much 100% of my site's pages indexed. It's a completely legitimate ecommerce site, ~100 product pages and then a small but growing collection of legitimate unique articles written by a real human. I have ~15 unique articles ranging in length from 1,000 words to 2,500 word apiece. Pictures included in some, alt tags, etc etc. Great content IMO.

It's a clean, seo-optimized wordpress theme. Very professional looking.

My rankings in google suck, terribly. And my site looks better than most crap that ranks ahead of me and also has better, higher quality, more readable, better organized content.

A couple months ago I paid some indian on fiver to build some shitty links. Could this have been a "shooting myself in the foot" moment and now I screwed myself over? Or is this more of a myth and the problem is just that I'm in a competitive niche and need to just keep cranking out quality content?

My next plan is releasing my affiliate program, which will hopefully get me some quality links from mom blogs and whatnot.

But my main question is, how can I determine if there is some penalty that is holding my rankings back?
 


I log into the "search console" every day (which I believe is the new GWT?)

There's never anything listed under Search Traffic > Manual Actions. Just says "No manual webspam actions found."

But I've read stories that seem to indicate this is not the be-all-end-all of penalties.

I get only ~10 organic visits per day, and for most of my keywords I'm not even in the top 100. I'm just...nowhere. And meanwhile a bunch of steaming hot crap fills those top 100 slots.
 
For a lot of my keywords, I'm literally not even in the top 200 and there are entries in the SERPS at that point which don't even have the keyword in the title tag (3-word keyword, not a single word in the title for these entries).

It's mind boggling, wtf.
 
Maybe you just suck at SEO? Remember when you told WF that you're starting a day job because you failed working for yourself? Considering going down that road again or at least reconsider software development which is something you're good at.
 
bluechinagroup said:
Maybe you just suck at SEO? Remember when you told WF that you're starting a day job because you failed working for yourself? Considering going down that road again or at least reconsider software development which is something you're good at.
Click to expand...

I still have a day job, but thanks for looking out for me. If you have any helpful input, I'd be glad to hear it.
 
Sounds like you need to build some quality links (editorial links, guest posts, etc.). I would not rely mostly on quality content to get where you want to be.

What comes up when you type site:yourdomain.com into Google?
 
When I do a site:mydomain.com search I see everything indexed that is supposed to be indexed.

If I search "company name" in google (and my domain is companyname.com) then I even see sitelinks below the main serp entry.
 
If you have unique title tags, and aren't ranking well when you search for the full title text, that could be an indication of a penalty?
 
lschmidt said:
When I do a site:mydomain.com search I see everything indexed that is supposed to be indexed.

If I search "company name" in google (and my domain is companyname.com) then I even see sitelinks below the main serp entry.
Click to expand...

Then you need to do more link building (press releases, social links, guest posts, editorial links, PBN's, etc) and check your on-page SEO. Good content is great but it won't get you traffic by itself in most cases.
 
Having extremely low (~1000) rankings for keywords you used to rank for can be a sign of a penalty IMO.
 
check on-page, focus on building quality links, including guest posting, SCM, web 2,0 and you should be back up real soon. I doubt it's Google dance, but as of this hour, you should start with linkbuilding. Don't rush with it, though.
 
Throwing a small round of low level links isn't going to get you penalized. What you need to concentrate on is building higher quality links. Google is all about authority and trust. Be patient as well. It doesn't happen as fast as it used too.

Shoot me a PM and I'll take a look at it for you if you want.
 
there are entries in the SERPS at that point which don't even have the keyword in the title tag
Click to expand...
So what you are saying is that you have more on page factors than the pages that rank -- seo 101

Your pages are "filtered" not a penalty, for being over optimized.

Do exactly what those above you are doing for onpage, but get better links. Pretty basic seo...
 
some ideas that are free and easy to implement

1. Submit your best content to Reddit and news.ycombinator.com (links on these sites can pass PR is up-voted enough)

2. Create a Reddit sub for your service and put your domain in the description

3. Make a Facebook page for your site and make a post on that page linking to each of the pages on your site

4. Do the same with #3 but with Twitter

5. Make comments on Reddit with links to your site (this can pass PR if up-voted enough)
 
Hey man... if you search for your domain name in google and it doesn't appear to be on the top, that usually means your site is penalized.

Say for instance :

Your site is called mybrand.com

Google "mybrand" and your site should rank in the first position, or at least listed on the first page.

If your site is there, no worries, that just means you have very weak backlinks. Work harder.
 
I don't think that getting somebody on Fiverr to get backlinks for Seo is a good idea these days, usually it can make more harm than good. Where your rankings better before the Fiverr gig? Or the site never took off?

What I would try is to decide 5 keywords I'm really interested and are not overly competitive, check who is in the top 3 positions on Google for those keywords, then use either Majestic or ahrefs and get the full list of those sites backlinks. Sort the backlinks by trust, and try to get as many of your competitors backlinks to your site.

Even if you get only 5/10 strong backlinks, you should then see a bit of movement in the rankings in the following two weeks.

If after getting some strong links and waiting a couple of weeks you see no rank changes, then that could be a sign that Google has some sort of issue with your site.
 
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