This SEO thing is killing - help me please?

[I am Nick]

plushtoys4you.com used to rank top 10 on Google for competitive search frazes like "plush toy manufacturer".

In February 2004, it all changed, and I was no longer ranked even top 100. No matter how hard I tried I could not do anything about it. I noticed that value of incoming links had becoming more important but, seriously, anyone looking for a "plush toy manufacturer" would find most of the top 100 sites very little related to what they are looking for. Where is the value of relevant information, i.e. body text, headers, etc? Is it to difficult for the spidering process or what? I guess Google can still improve.

I am still getting good ranking with the other big SE's, but, few inquiries and visitors, so my focus is on Google.

If any one could give me some SEO suggestions for www.plushtoys4you.com i would much appreciate!

Ps. Understand I should get more relevant incoming links. I can not get in on DMOZ since our parent company is there allready Ds.

Nick

[google junky]

ok, here is my take on what is going on. This is just my opinion. I'll add that I spent way more time on this than I usually would for anyone.

I did a search for "plush toy manufacturer"
www.plushtoys4you.com has no ranking in the top 1000
plushtoys4you.com ranks at 155 (note: this is without the www)

Some SEO's may think I'm crazy when I say this. I believe that you are being penalized for duplicate content. Both versions of your site are indexed on google. One with a www domain and one without. You can see this here http://www.google.com/search?num=100...shtoys4you.com

I did look up to see which sites have your link wrong. There may be more. I could only find 2 of them.
http://www.indianchild.com/plush_toy..._directory.htm
http://www.webstudio-1.com/clients/w...nt_list.asp#Q6

your site without the www ranks higher and the other is not ranked at all that I could find. I would fix this linking problem and then see what happens. Don't expect it to be fixed within the next update. My guess is that it may take 2 or 3 months at the least to see a difference.

[aeclark]

It would also be worth running your pages through copyscape. Most of your main pages contain duplicate content to other other sites, which may be causing duplicate content penalties.

[I am Nick]

Thanks a lot for your advice, as well as "proof". This thing that Google would account duplicate content in this way, was new to me!

After research in the area I understand that I should do a 301 redirect on my server for the without "www" files, to the "www" files. Google would sooner or later pick it up.

- Seriously, I can not understand why Google see these files as different??? Please explain to me, anyone!

Regarding links to my domain, I can not see they would cause any problem as long as I get the 301 up and running. I mean, this would be a good way of getting competitors caught for spamming... I do not have any "highly valued" incoming links.

-Anyway, may I assume the PR value will be forwarded trough redirect?

Nick

[glengara]

Quite an interlinked network, the TVV group, has someone recently tried to clean it up a bit?

[greeneagle]

google junky:

Some SEO's may think I'm crazy when I say this. I believe that you are being penalized for duplicate content. Both versions of your site are indexed on google. One with a www domain and one without.
______

Would you please clarify. Many Sites are listed both ways in GOOGLE including WPW.

In fact WPW has a PR5 without and a PR6 with. This has always been an issue with GOOGLE. Many times Forum participants check their site without the www and are horrified to find that they have a PR0 instead of a 5 or 6, when the real reason is that there are no IBLs to the "without"

WPW shows 5700 links to the "with" version and "29" to the "without" version.

You can check this with most Sites, especially popular one's.

glengara,
Unless I am missing something there is no reason to do a 310 redirect for the without version. Can you site your research?

Thanks,
Ken

[glengara]

*Can you site your research?*

Your eagle eye failed you there.. not my post ;-)

[bhartzer]

Greeneagle: Regarding the 301 redirect issue from non-www to www.domain.com, there has been some sites that have suffered penalties for duplicate content because www is actually a subdomain of domain.com, and subdomains are separate sites. Google usually figures this out, but when there starts to be backlinks going to both versions (non-www and www), it can get confused. I actually suggest that you have a 301 from your non-www to your www version, or just don't let the non-www version get indexed (i.e., turn it off).

Back to the original post:
The main issue here is that there may be a duplicate content penalty on the site--Google appears to be possibly having a problem with the pages on your site being very similar to those of another site.

[greeneagle]

bhartzer:

If that were fact anyone could damage a competitors Site with seemingly nice, links, news articles, blogs etc.. containing an IBL without the "www".

Surely you aren't saying that GOOGLE went public with that size (San Andreas Fault) crack in their works.

Ken

[crankydave]

If that were fact anyone could damage a competitors Site with seemingly nice, links, news articles, blogs etc.. containing an IBL without the "www".

I don't believe it's "damage" per se, but Google definitely indexes the two as different sites. The loss of PR comes into play if your IBL's are using both URL's with and without the WWW. I suppose it is possible to incur a temporary drop in serps because of the two different "addresses" while Google sorts it out.

Dave

[glengara]

What Crankydave said, there was a monster thread on this in WmW that I tried to find, moral of the story, be consistent either way.

[greeneagle]

Organic IBL's aren't something you can be consistent on, they just happen.

If this was a proven issue, why hasn't WPW fixed theirs yet?

I have never seen a Site discounted or penalized in any way for organic IBLs

That discount's the censenus in just about all webmaster and SEO forums.

Ken

[crankydave]

Organic IBL's aren't something you can be consistent on, they just happen.

You can be consistent on the IBL's you want people to use, especially if you practice a reciprocal linking.

If this was a proven issue, why hasn't WPW fixed theirs yet?

Don't know. Pages with the WWW and without can often have two different PR's. This is fact. Logic would dictate that combining those links into one URL can have nothing but a positive effect.

I have never seen a Site discounted or penalized in any way for organic IBLs

Going back to my above answer, if identical pages, one with the www and one without can have different PR's, is that not a penalty to the lower one? And if one of those pages rank higher (more than 1 spot since there are no "ties") than the other (identical pages) is one of those pages not being penalized?

Dave

[greeneagle]

Crankydave,

#1. Reciprocal links are not "organic" most of the time.
#2. Neither, is being penalized. – One has more IBLs than the other. The few links to the WPW PR5 can be a complete subset of the much greater linked WPW PR6. If that is the case then “combining” them would “penalize" the lesser with a PR0, most likely.
Ken

[crankydave]

#1. Reciprocal links are not "organic" most of the time.
#2. Neither, is being penalized. – One has more IBLs than the other. The few links to the WPW PR5 can be a complete subset of the much greater linked WPW PR6. If that is the case then “combining” them would “penalize" the lesser with a PR0, most likely.
Ken

But more than likely those links are separate and unique it's just that they simply lack (or include)the WWW. Rather than being penalized perhaps it's better said that one is losing the benefit of the additional links as they are pointing to a different sub-domain. Hence the benefit of the 301 redirect.

glengara wrote:

...moral of the story, be consistent either way.

I agree 100%

Dave

[bhartzer]

with seemingly nice, links, news articles, blogs etc.. containing an IBL without the "www".

I actually ended up messing one of my own sites a while back. I had one or two links on my own site where I linked to the non-www version. And that ended up getting indexed rather than the www version, which had all the links going to it. I was wondering why suddenly I lost all my good rankings and the PR on the site went from PR5 to PR2. I then changed the internal linking problem and the site finally came back.

[greeneagle]

Was a "while back" coincident with anything else such as a Google update?

Ken