I have a site that while an established domain name and has been running for several years, I recently had fully redesigned to comply with best SEO practice and gave it a bit of a tart up.
At the start of May I hired an SEO guy to cover 17 key phrases and we began slowly moving up the rankings, such that last month we were on pages 2-4 for our key phrases some in competitive markets.
This morning he sent me an email to say that across the board we have dropped and average of about 50 pages (yes, PAGES not positions). He also detailed how I had changed the text of some of the meta tags, mainly descriptions, and this was the cause as it has rendered all the "social bookmarking" they did ineffectual. I did change these descriptions a few weeks ago but I did also mention it to him that I would be making them more readable. At the time he raised no objection so I was led to believe that as long as I kept the key phrases in the description there wouldn't be a problem.
Is this guy taking the p** out of me? Surely a change of meta description doesn't warranty a 50-70 page drop as has happened in in some cases? Surely there is something else going on here and Google have blacklisted the site due to other reasons, possibly, I fear, due to black hat SEO being done by him (which I didn't authorise I'll assure you!!).
Or am I wrong and can such changes actually have this impact?
Thanks in advance for your assistance with this one.
Does look as if he's taking you for a ride.
Any SEO chap who thinks social bookmarking is the holy grail of SEO is not an SEO at all.
What kind of work has he done so far? What do his monthly reports say?
How are you paying him btw? On a monthly retainer basis after upfront money?
In hi defence he never said that social bookmarking was the be-all and end-all of SEO. I assume he did it simply as part of a wider strategy.
As for what he has done so far he claims to have:
2200 Manual Submissions - We have done 11 articles submissions to 200+ articles directories.
770 Manual Submissions - We are targeting 11 urls so we have done socialbookmarking to over 70 websites for all 10 urls.
198 Manual Submissions - We are done with Web 2.0 - for your 6 articles to over 33 sites .
2500 Manual Submissions - Directory Submission - 250 * 10 urls.
30 Manual Submissions - Search Engine Submission - 30 websites
In addition we have added more content pages to the website and we have also added a Blog and newsfeed where we started posting articles (this only a few weeks ago mind).
Anything wrong with any of this? I would have thought it was reasonable SEO practice..??
I am paying a monthly flat fee (three months in advance) plus a percentage of profits (paid in arrears). The contract is up for renewal at the end of this month so have a guess how that conversation is going to go...
His work sounds ok, but on-site content, article content, speed of links acquisition, backlinks anchor text - one of these must've been incorrectly done or maybe site is so new that it got sanboxed as backlinks aren't so good. Easy to not get things right but not so good to blame it on meta tags..Originally Posted by seaninog
Not taking into account anything else and to answer your question- would changing META tags drop you 50 pages, No, it would not. Sounds like you've been slapped with a Google penaty, not the end of the world as it might seem right now as give it 6 - 12 months and you'll be back fighting on all fronts, but your SEO guy should be more upfront about whats happened, it happens, sometimes no matter how good the SEO it happens, its part of the game.
My Link Building Blog -x-|-x-
It just seems weak what he's done and doesn't really know what he's on about. Give me his site's URL, it's usually an indicator to whether they talk-the-talk or not.
Changing meta descriptions might get you a flutter +/- 10 positions not 50 pages.
Few things though about your site: domain age, link velocity (how many backlinks did you have before he started), age of the site (it could just be a big G.Dance) and is he working on it consistently? If it's been slapped, then aggressive link building is the best way, while it's out of the SERPs you can effectively 'shock' it back up the rankings. How competitive is your niche? p2-4 for your keywords either sounds competitive or more likely it's been weak off-page SEO on his work.
Thanks for all your replies on this, I have an update.
A friend pointed out to me that when you view the source code on any page, there is a long - very looooong! - bit of jibberish attached to the main image file. It is preceded with reference to 'base64' and he says this is some sort of encryption code (all greek to me, I'll be honest!) and it looks like someone is using my site for "cookie stuffing" - and that's a good reason for Google to delist your site, I'm told.
My SEO guy missed it and is still protesting that the change in meta data caused the 70-80 page drop. Oh dear.
So now begins the next chapter of cleaning up the code, getting rid of the cookie cr*p and trying to convince the Googlebots that the site is not a spammy one. It's been a good learning for me but I'm afraid that like all the bets learnings, it will be expensive.
I'll let you guys know how I get on but thanks for all your comments here.
I didn't think the search engines bothered with meta tags anymore? Even the description tags doesn't bring much weight!
you need to work out how the cookie stuffing happened before you blame them.
are you on an old version of wordpress? are you on shared hosting? has your server been compromised?
it may be something that is totally out of your SEO person's control.
when you fix it, you will probably get your old positions back.
Ah, I think there may have been a misunderstanding. I was never seeking to blame my SEO guy for planting the cookies (in fact, until you raised the possibility here I'd never even thought of him as the culprit), rather I was annoyed with him for a) having missed the fact it was there (shouldn't a good SEO guy always be checking onsite content?); and b) the fact that he tried to blame the 70 page drop on minor changes to the meta tags - a story he is staggeringly still sticking to!. But you're right, I do need to get to the bottom of how it happened and I have a few theories that hold water but still no smoking gun.
To answer your other questions: the site isn't on Wordpress rather a custom PHP platform, and yes, it is on shared hosting but I've had eUKhost scan all my websites and they found no viruses. They also say security has not been compromised at a server level. I'm no expert here so let me sincerely ask you: is this a satisfactory situation? What else would you ask them in my shoes?
The good news is the cookies have now been removed and we're waiting now for the next crawl of the site to see if it has an impact in beginning the process of convincing Google that we are not a spammy site. I've also hired a new SEO guy so I'll let you guys know how we get on with our rankings in the future.
I didnt mean to suggest it was your SEO guy who did the stuffing if it came across that way.
but the meta tags thing isn't going to be the problem either, so they do not look very knowledgable sticking to that line. it seems you have made a good choice changing.
I dont think the cookie stuffing or whatever it is would show up as a virus. perhaps you need to tighten up your directory permissions on the server. if someone has edited your files then they have got access to them somehow.
do you also have forms that accept data on your website? make sure all the data entered is sanitised before it goes into a database.
and if you have a database, perhaps that has been compromised too. check permissions here too.
seaninog (17-10-11)
Yes. I've changed all the access codes to my cPanel, database and ftp. Fingers crossed that does the trick but at least now I know what to look out for. Thank you for your helpful advice lethal0r.
This is just a base 64 encoded inline image. The code has nothing to do with encryption whatsoever and is just a way of representing binary (image) data. It's not seen that often, but has nothing to do with cookie stuffing.bit of jibberish attached to the main image file. It is preceded with reference to 'base64' and he says this is some sort of encryption code
More about embedding can be found here : Embed Base64-Encoded Images Inline In HTML | Phil Whelan's Blog
I know this is an old thread but I've only just come across it...
Rather than your "SEO" guy spamming the life out of the directories (which are probably spam ridden directories at best) and everything else he's done such as spamming the same article over 200 times to various websites (duplicate content?). None of this is going to help your cause.
I've no idea how much you are/were paying him, but there are plenty of websites out there charging around £100-£300 for everything he's done in your list, but I'm guessing you've paid way more. He's mugging you off by claiming by claiming YOU broke the website. He's obviously clueless and hasn't a clue what he's talking about. Any good SEO should understand the building blocks of a website and be able to test everything about the website and know it inside out before venturing out to try and get links.
You wouldn't try and get lodgers in your home, if you hadn't fitted the electrics and decorated. So why would you go out and start trying to acquire (piss easy in this case) links back to you website?
I love this one "30 Manual Submissions - Search Engine Submission - 30 websites".
I mean come on? Is this guy trying to sell snake oil to you or what? If a website cannot be found through external link building on the scale he'd claimed to have done, doesn't deserve to be indexed at all!!
One last thing, it amuses me the thought of this muppet spamming the hell out of your URL and then blaming you for your website rankings being harmed. He obviously hasn't a clue what he's doing and you're his first (read as last) client, so he was making the most of the opportunity to test everything out on your website he's read about. Rather than buying up his own domains and seeing what he could do with them first safe in the knowledge if he screwed anything up, some poor mug (you) wouldn't be paying to watch their website fly off the radar and be expected to pay for the privilege.
Meta tag keywords are defunct, you could add whatever the hell you want there and it wont make a blind bit of difference.
Meta tag descriptions are only used when Google decides that it you've provided a good explanation of what is within your web page. Else it simply makes up it's own if a) you didn't add one or b) it makes more sense to show a snippet of the body text as a description in the search results.
According to your post and others feedback and discussion. You may knew that while making some major changes like changing domain or redesigning website, the previous rankings are definitely gonna lost.
But still starting from the new applies will gradually help your site ranking to move up. But there are some points that i need to share here.
Proper and regular SEO activities will help you to remain in the competition and some smart work doing Analysis on the competitors will lead your ranking up.
Some basic SEO activities are listed below. Hope that might help.
After proper On-page SEO Off-page activities is done like:
Search Engine Submission
Directory Submission
Business Listing & Profile Networking
Social Networking
Social Sharing: Photo, Video, PDF & Portfolio Submission
Social Bookmarking
Article Submission
Blog Submission & Blog Marketing
Guest Blogging
Blog Comment Posting
RSS Feed Submission
Podcast Submission
Press Release
Forum Posting
Classified Submission
Google Maps & Places
Shopping Store or Online Deals Sharing (For Ecommerce Website)
Once started the regular SEO work for 2-3 months needs maximum attention.
As you get into the rankings work gradually slows down and no need to overdose.
Just regular work like article posting, blog posting, social media marketing, social networking wil help you to on top and save from drop down.
Because if the SEO work is stopped all of a sudden after 2-3 months dropping down starts
Its very simple to remain in competition competitors are also at work.
So there a slight change here to think one step ahead from them.
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