Google Penalty?

[emeraldisle]

Hi,

I recently re-designed a site for a client. They originally had simple pages with about 20 products on each page and PayPal buttons. They wanted something they could add products to themselves, so we went to a shopping cart format. They had a page rank of 3 on the main page, and also a three on a secondary page. It was the secondary page that was what brought them most of their business:

htttp://www.justetchinit.com/militarygifts.php

They were in position 1 for "Military Creed, Soldiers Creed, Airman's Creed, Sailor's Creed" etc. I created some similar pages with the same name to try to retain some of that traffic. However, with not as much content, it was not doing nearly as well. So I optimized the heck out of it and submitted it to Google by itself. I must have gotten too aggressive because the page has now completely dropped out of the Google index. Fortunately the other pages and the site are not penalized. Here are my questions:

1. I backed off on the optimizing some, do you see anything else wrong with this page currently that Google would object to?

2. What should I do to get it re-included in Google?

3. Is there anything I can do to improve it's results in the Google search engine.

[incrediblehelp]

Did you ever redirect the old pages to the new ones?

[subsystems]

I might be wrong about this but I would think that a 301 redirect from the page missing in the SERP to the new page should pass on the PR to the new page.
Because the 301 should be indexed fairly quickly by Google the new page may just jump way up for the old pages keywords.

Eventhough onpage SEO is somewhat important, I have had pages rank in the top places when the actual keyword wasn't even onpage. It was the off page links that kept the page up in the SERPs.

[Bill Treloar]

Try submitting a reconsideration request to Google. You have to tell them how you've rectified the problem. See these instructions:
Requesting reconsideration of a site that's been removed - Webmaster Help Center

[microtekblue]

You should Never submit to Google. Google can put a hold on your site or page that you submit. This is because they receive millions per day, and so they will put you on a waiting list. That can cause you to get completely dropped from googles index for a certain tme. Call it the sandbox.

The best way to get indexed:

Simply add that new page in your sitemap.xml and use google webmaster tools to submit your sitemap.xml to google. Then that page will be index within 24 hours.

[Big Juice]

Adjust your description tag to reflect the actual page content and remove 95% of the keywords in the tag as it looks really stuffed. A good rule of thumb regarding the keyword tag - if the word isn't actually on the page it shouldn't be in the keyword tag.

Do the 301 redirect thing as described above and go out and get some inbound links to this page.

I took a quick look at a couple of pages and you need to address the description and keyword tags. Keep in mind that a well written description tag is your first opportunity to convert searchers into customers so really put some thought into that tag.

Yours
<meta name="description" content="Military creed plaques provided by woman owned, HUB zone certified, service disabled vet, small business. Personalized creed gifts for Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Army National Guard and more.">

How I would write it
<meta name="description" content="Military gifts and awards by Just Etchin It; specialists in glass etching. Personalized military creed plaques and frames for all branches of the service. Custom military creed plaques and frames for servicemen and women.">

Not perfect as it is slightly more than 30 words due to all of the joiners such as "and" "by" "for". Also, this is not my client and I only spent a few moments doing it but I think you get the idea.

I hope you find this helpful and good luck to you.

[emeraldisle]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Did you ever redirect the old pages to the new ones?

No, I have not, I simply built a new page under the old name. I kept the page titles the same. So I should do a 301 redirect? Should I indeed add it to my sitemap if it is currently banned or something?

[edhan]

If you are using under the same name then it might be that you have changed the title, meta tags, etc that is different from the previous. So, this might be the reason. I am doing the same like you but I kept the same title, description and keywords for the new page.

[inertia]

If it's the same name it should keep the PR, trust, SERPs etc. When you say "optimised the hell out of it" - what did you do exactly? How long has the page been de-indexed?

I created some similar pages with the same name to try to retain some of that traffic.

Can you explain what you did here?

Are you 100% sure the page name hasnt changed? Even the file type?

Just to expand on what edhan said. Make sure all metas are the same, all titles, all content (obviously this isnt going to be exaclty the same but redesigning a page and not having the same amount (or same quality) of textual content can cause problems).

[davidweb]

Originally Posted by emeraldisle

Hi,

1. I backed off on the optimizing some, do you see anything else wrong with this page currently that Google would object to?

2. What should I do to get it re-included in Google?

3. Is there anything I can do to improve it's results in the Google search engine.

SEO Analysis 1 :

Your website is not operating in a HIGHLY COMPETITIVE SECTOR like gaming, software, web design and seo etc etc. Therefore your chances of getting penalised are less as compared to other sectors.

However you should ensure that you never used any of these techniques listed at : Avoid these SEO Techniques SEO HAWK ( Mostly On-page)

In case you used any technique then I would recommend you to create a new page with new content and scrap this page.

SEO Analysis 2 :

Search engines only allow 2 results from any single website. Therefore it could be possible that search engine picked up your other two pages and this page might have never got penalised. Search engines love fresh content and they simply replaced your old page with new page whenever you search for "military gifts and awards". If you search this keyword you will see your 2 links on pages 3-4.

SEO Suggestions to improve your rankings :

1) Add some plenty of useful content related to your targeted page.
2) You have gone overboard in the "KEYWORDS" tag. I would prefer to use a maximum of 3-5 keywords.
3) Add your description tag in a natural english targeting your keyword, and not keyword stuffed english.
3) Remove on-page javascript and style sheet. Use external style sheets
4) Your Google page rank is not related to your website's actual rankings on Google. Try not to concentrate your entire efforts on Page Rank.
5) ("Military Creed, Soldiers Creed, Airman's Creed, Sailor's Creed") is not a keyword in terms of SEO. It is just a long sentence which has an extremely low probability of getting searched on any search engine. I would say the probability is somewhere in between -0.05% to -0.10

In case you are not able to recover this page ( in case you used some controversial SEO technique), then I would recommend you to create a new page with fresh content and it will surely pick up rankings fast.

Also add a link to your newly created page from the home page itself

WISHING YOUR WEB PAGE A SPEEDY RECOVERY

[emeraldisle]

Ok all of you, thanks so much for your help! I went in and made some of the corrections to the pages, as you suggested. I have a few more to make yet. One thing I realized is that the old site was being referred to without the www in front of it, and I see that this can be a problem in making the search engines think there are duplicate pages. Plus, some of the old pages need to point to the new locations. I tried to do a redirect in my .htaccess file (I am hosted on Apache) by adding the following codes:

redirect 301 http://justetchinit.com http://www.justetchinit.com/index.html

redirect 301 http://justetchinit.com/resins.php http://www.justetchinit.com/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=4

It did not work apparently. Can someone help me with what exactly the code should say?

Thanks so much! Hugs and kisses!

[emps]

Originally Posted by davidweb

SEO Analysis 1 :

Your website is not operating in a HIGHLY COMPETITIVE SECTOR like gaming, software, web design and seo etc etc. Therefore your chances of getting penalised are less as compared to other sectors.

However you should ensure that you never used any of these techniques listed at : Avoid these SEO Techniques SEO HAWK ( Mostly On-page)

In case you used any technique then I would recommend you to create a new page with new content and scrap this page.

SEO Analysis 2 :

Search engines only allow 2 results from any single website. Therefore it could be possible that search engine picked up your other two pages and this page might have never got penalised. Search engines love fresh content and they simply replaced your old page with new page whenever you search for "military gifts and awards". If you search this keyword you will see your 2 links on pages 3-4.

SEO Suggestions to improve your rankings :

1) Add some plenty of useful content related to your targeted page.
2) You have gone overboard in the "KEYWORDS" tag. I would prefer to use a maximum of 3-5 keywords.
3) Add your description tag in a natural english targeting your keyword, and not keyword stuffed english.
3) Remove on-page javascript and style sheet. Use external style sheets
4) Your Google page rank is not related to your website's actual rankings on Google. Try not to concentrate your entire efforts on Page Rank.
5) ("Military Creed, Soldiers Creed, Airman's Creed, Sailor's Creed") is not a keyword in terms of SEO. It is just a long sentence which has an extremely low probability of getting searched on any search engine. I would say the probability is somewhere in between -0.05% to -0.10

In case you are not able to recover this page ( in case you used some controversial SEO technique), then I would recommend you to create a new page with fresh content and it will surely pick up rankings fast.

Also add a link to your newly created page from the home page itself

WISHING YOUR WEB PAGE A SPEEDY RECOVERY

I am not quite in agreement with this for the following reasons

Firstly. Search engines do not rank websites, They rank only pages.

Secondly. I do agree the meta tag keywords list is too long, but up to 25 is ok. Which are keywords and which are keyphrases? For efficient spidering commas should seperate them

Preferably a keyword should be in the page title.

With the -0.05% to -0.10 i think you may be referring to KEI (keyword efficiency index) im not sure which actual word you are referring to, but it would only be the starting point for any keyword analysis, as there would be plenty of suggestions from these basic words to do an in depth analysis. Try to achieve KEI 0.10 to 0.100

I would limit the keyword number in page content to 3-5.

[kevsta]

your coding isnt correct.

you dont include the http:// on the first part of the redirect, just the path from the root, ie

Redirect 301 /resins.php http://www.justetchinit.com/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=4

Originally Posted by emeraldisle

Ok all of you, thanks so much for your help! I went in and made some of the corrections to the pages, as you suggested. I have a few more to make yet. One thing I realized is that the old site was being referred to without the www in front of it, and I see that this can be a problem in making the search engines think there are duplicate pages. Plus, some of the old pages need to point to the new locations. I tried to do a redirect in my .htaccess file (I am hosted on Apache) by adding the following codes:

redirect 301 http://justetchinit.com http://www.justetchinit.com/index.html

redirect 301 http://justetchinit.com/resins.php http://www.justetchinit.com/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=4

It did not work apparently. Can someone help me with what exactly the code should say?

Thanks so much! Hugs and kisses!

[emeraldisle]

Originally Posted by kevsta

your coding isnt correct.

you dont include the http:// on the first part of the redirect, just the path from the root, ie

Redirect 301 /resins.php http://www.justetchinit.com/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=4

Hi, Thanks again! Does this look better?:

redirect 301 justetchinit.com http://www.justetchinit.com/index.html

redirect 301 /militarygifts.php http://www.justetchinit.com/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=15

[monfis]

Originally Posted by emeraldisle

No, I have not, I simply built a new page under the old name. I kept the page titles the same. So I should do a 301 redirect? Should I indeed add it to my sitemap if it is currently banned or something?

Yes you should, specially if there have been inbound links pointing directly to that page, if you don't redirect the link juice from those links will be lost. (this might be the reason for your ranking problems)

[emps]

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[full house]

I think Google will get the changes you made by the them the pages is being indexed. To make it easy, submit a site map then do some indexing of the page. To index your site, submit it to search engine.

[emeraldisle]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks again for all of your help! It looks like my individual page redirects are working fine such as:

redirect 301 /militarygifts.php http://www.justetchinit.com/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=15

However, if that page had a penalty on it, should I redirect it, or just forget it?

Also, the main domain name was orignally listed without the www. I tried to redirect it to the new www preference as so:

redirect 301 justetchinit.com http://www.justetchinit.com/index.html

It appears to NOT be working, so there is still something wrong with this code?

Thanks again!

[Terry Van Horne]

Originally Posted by Big Juice

Adjust your description tag to reflect the actual page content and remove 95% of the keywords in the tag as it looks really stuffed. A good rule of thumb regarding the keyword tag - if the word isn't actually on the page it shouldn't be in the keyword tag.

10 years ago yes. Now that is exactly what you can put in the keywords tag to get some value/benefit. Keywords tag is where mispellings, dual meanings, input errors, slang and a lot of other term/phrases that aren't on the page but are relevant or used as an alternative search query belong. Repeating keywords your optimizing the page for is a waste and likely more problematic than using what I suggested.

[emeraldisle]

Thanks again for your help! I am concerned for my client's sake the fact that thier site is not performing NEARLY as well for military creed searches. That was the bulk of thier business!

They were on page 1 for most creed type searches in March. Most of these searches were being pointed to www.justetchinit.com/militarygifts.php. Here is the Google impressions positions from March:

# % Query Position
1 13% best frames 6
2 10% airman's creed 22
3 10% etched glass gifts 4
4 10% security forces creed 5
5 6% paintball keychain 6
6 5% the meaning of the airmans creed 3
7 5% crystal key chain 321
8 4% airforce creed 10
9 4% ornament 198
10 3% framed airman's creed 1
11 3% etchin 3
12 3% the meaning of the airforce airmans creed 3
13 3% the meaning of the airman's creed 4
14 3% etched glass michigan 7
15 3% police creed 9
16 3% resin awards military 10
17 3% army ornament 18
18 3% resin figure 22
19 3% resin gifts 591
20 3% cube photo frame 595

Now they are at position 400 something for most of the creed searches:

# % Query Position
1 39% teamwork 411
2 8% seabees 125
3 6% best frames 7
4 3% military christmas ornaments 7
5 3% firefighter background 66
6 3% homemade christmas ornaments 169
7 3% christmas ornament 470
8 3% etched glass gifts 1
9 3% glass frame 58
10 3% pulling rope 105
11 3% the lord is my shepherd 150
12 3% military christmas decorations 8
13 3% army female 29
14 3% police in action 124
15 2% crystal christmas ornaments 18
16 2% firefighter backgrounds 141
17 2% frame 845
18 2% navy christmas ornaments 9
19 2% airman's creed 337
20 2% teamwork hands 65

Does Google put penalties on individual pages? They must. The question is, should I just include it my index, submit to Google for reconsideration, or use some other method? Also, is there anything that would cause a penalty on the page now? I am not aware of anything.

[emeraldisle]

I am wondering if the keyword density is TOO HIGH that Google could penalize that? I have optimzed specifically for "creed" type searches, including the image names, alt tags, frame names and more. What do all of you think?