How to Identify Search Engine Penalties

If you’ve ever opened your website analytics account and found a significant and surprising drop in search engine referral traffic, you know just how devastating a search engine penalty can be.

But don’t panic!  Not all search engine penalties are permanent, and with a little detective work and remedial action, you should be able to restore your previous rankings and rebuild the flow of organic traffic to your site.

Here’s how to do it…

Step #1 – Check Google Webmaster Tools

Immediately after noticing a potential search engine penalty, the first thing you should do is check your Google Webmaster Tools account (assuming you have this service set up for your website).  In many cases, when an automatic or manual penalty is issued to your website, it will be accompanied by a corresponding note posted in your Webmaster Tools account, detailing the specific rationale behind the penalty.

Interestingly enough, according to Barry Schwartz, writing for Search Engine Land:

“Google has sent over 700,000 messages to webmasters via Google Webmaster Tools in January and February 2012. That is more than the total number of messages Google sent in 2011 and almost more than what Google has sent since launching Google Webmaster Tools message center.”

While this is certainly a scary prospect for webmasters who fear receiving one of Google’s “Notices of Death,” it is somewhat reassuring to know that you’ll at least be informed if a penalty is assessed to your site.

Step #2 – Check SEO News Sites for Recent Updates

Of course, these notices are often only issued when Google applies a specific, known penalty to a website based on a set of defined criteria.  But what happens when it’s simply changes to the search engine ranking algorithms that have affected your site traffic?

Indeed, there have been plenty of cases where sites received “penalties” that weren’t really penalties at all – they were simply lost rankings due to a reprioritization of the algorithms.  For example, in the case of the Panda 1.0 update, thousands of sites lost rank overnight, resulting in a significant, widespread traffic loss for many industry-leading sites.  Although Panda didn’t technically qualify as a penalty, per se, the results that many webmasters experienced were similar.

To see if an algorithm change is to blame for your diminished search results, check out your favorite SEO news sites for information about potential rollouts.  Often, whenever major changes are made to the search results ranking algorithms, webmasters gather together on sites like Search Engine Roundtable and Digital Point to discuss the impact of the updates.

Step #3 – Determine the Extent of the Penalty

At the same time that you’re combing your Google Webmaster Tools account and your favorite SEO news websites for information about what led to your search engine penalty, take the time to determine the extent of its impact as well.

There are a few things you’ll want to check:

• Is your site still indexed?  Perhaps the biggest penalty of all is to have your website removed from Google’s index entirely, though this drastic measure is typically only applied in the most serious of cases.  To check whether or not your site is still indexed, enter “site:http://www.yoursite.com” (without the quotes) into Google’s search bar.  If no results appear, it’s possible your site has been deindexed.
• Have you recently started a new link building campaign?  Often, when you start promoting your site through link building, your rankings can be caught up in what’s known as the “Google Dance.”  In these cases, the search engine is attempting to reevaluate where your site should rank, so it’s not uncommon to see your natural search rankings vary wildly for a few weeks before settling down into their rightful place.
• How old is your website?  Though Google has never officially confirmed it, there’s a widespread acceptance throughout the SEO community of the presence of a “sand box” filter that issues a dampening effect to the rankings of young sites (typically 2-6 months old).  If your website falls in this age range, it’s not uncommon to see it enter the SERPs and then fall out before it’s deemed trustworthy enough to reenter the results pages.
• To what extent has your traffic or rankings changed?  Are you seeing a decrease in rankings for all of your target keywords or just a few?  Has your traffic declined significantly or have you only lost volume slightly?  Determining the extent of your search engine penalty will tell you whether you’ve been hit with a site-wide penalty or total ban (in which case all traffic would be affected) or a smaller penalty affecting a single keyword.

One situation that’s often incorrectly regarded as a search engine penalty is the devaluation of some or all of your site’s backlinks, which would typically only affect traffic to a single keyword you’re targeting.  Essentially, what happens is that your site is enjoying unnaturally high rankings as the result of poor quality backlinks.  When the search engines devalue these links – as is the case with the many webmasters who lost rank after Google deindexed several of the most popular blog networks – your rankings plummet, though not as the result of a specifically applied penalty.

Step #4 – Review Your Site Against Search Engine TOS

Now, no matter what the size or scope of your search engine penalty, you’ll want to review your website and your backlinking practices against the Terms of Service (TOS) issued by the search engines.

For reference, the following are the locations of Google, Bing and Yahoo’s TOS statements:

• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo Search Content Quality Guidelines

In addition, take a look at Google engineer Amit Singhal’s list 23 questions that highlight the characteristics Google is looking to reward in the SERPs.  Check your site and your promotional practices against these guidelines- as well as against the search engine TOS policies listed above – and highlight any areas you believe may be bringing down your site’s rankings.

As an example, considering the following five questions, as pulled directly from Singhal’s list:

1. Would you trust the information presented in this article?
2. Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
4. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
5. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

Now, take a look at your website in relation to these questions, trying to be as objective as possible.  Can you really say for sure that – based on your site’s external appearance and content quality – you’d be comfortable handing over financial information or labeling your articles as “expert-level content”?  If not, attempt to remedy these flaws by building trust with your user and positioning yourself better as an authority figure within your industry.

Step #5 – Take Corrective Action

If you’ve highlighted any areas of weakness within your site or your chosen link building methods, rectify them as quickly as you’re able to and then follow Google’s rules for requesting a reconsideration of your site.  While it may take time to introduce high quality content to your site or to delete low quality backlinks you believe may be harming your natural search results placements, this effort will pay off in the long run, as Google aims to reward sites that provide the best results for their readers.

Keep in mind, though, that what initially looks like a penalty may not – in fact – be a true penalty, and that the corrective action you may need to take in these instances is less about fixing past mistakes and more about improving your own site’s SEO according to current best practices.  The SEO field is becoming more and more competitive each day, so it’s possible that the “penalty” you’re struggling to get over is actually a better educated competitor surpassing you in the rankings.

How Do You Organize Your Online Business

 I'm finding myself getting a little overwhelmed with so many projects and tracking all of them. I'd like to know what tools you guys use to track:

        Projects
        Stats (SERPs, backlinks, etc.)
        Affiliate programs & links
        Outsourcers
        Money from various projects
        General business accounting (expenditures, taxes, etc.)


    I don't like having to use so many different systems to track so many things. Is there anything out there that tracks most of the items that an internet marketer needs in one system?

    Debating whether to focus on a narrower band of projects instead. Any suggestions and/or advice would be appreciated.

Will your site get penalized by Google

Our staff has been advising our customers and friends alike that quality content, simple forms of navigation, and creating content that applies or coordinates with the intended theme of a page or article is very important.  Google is striving to punish sites that are over SEO’d with over use of keywords and other “black hat” tactics.  Well it appears that the Google is getting ready to roll out a new tool to make that happen.

Matt Cutts announced a new Google Algorithm update last week that is meant to penalize those over SEO’d sites.  Google has been working on this update for a while now and plans to roll out the change within a few weeks.

While participating in a SXSW panel a questioner asked the following question:

“With so many SEO companies showing up claiming to do SEO, a lot of markets are getting saturated with optimized content…What are you doing to prevent, for example, if you’re looking for something, and the first page is just optimized content, and it’s not what you’re actually looking for? Are you pretty much out of luck if you’re not optimizing your site but it has relevant content? If I’m a mom or pop and I’m trying to optimize a site by myself, I’m going to get beat by people paying thousands of dollars.”

Matt Cutts explained that they are attempting to make the algorithm more adaptive.  In doing so, sites that have strives to provide quality driven content that is meant for the visitors pleasure will have no problems.  What he did say was ”throw too many keywords on the page, exchange way too many links, whatever they’re doing to go beyond what a normal person would expect.”

We think this is a very good thing!

Website content should first and foremost be theme or topic driven.  It’ OK to do research to find subject matter that readers or visitors want to find and read and then write about it on a page or article.  It’s also ok to use those keywords in the page title, URL, and heading tags.  It won’t be ok to write content that is over SEO’d with internal navigation techniques, overuse or over-duplicity of keywords within the content, and creating content that simply doesn’t make sense!

Matt Cutts added a few more comments. “Make a compelling site. Make a site that’s useful. Make a site that’s interesting. Make a site that’s relevant to people’s interests…We’re always trying to best approximate if a user lands on a page if they are going to be annoyed…All of the changes we make are designed to approximate, if a user lands on your page, just how happy they are going to be with what they’re going to get.”

Bing’s Duane Forrester added his own comments as well. ”Does the rest of the world think you have a great product? If they do, they will amplify this. If you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us. Whether you’re involved or not is your choice, but those signals still exist whether you’re in the conversation or not.”

So do they know?

Here are a few metrics that are used to decide if you have quality content.

1. Page and Site Bounce Rate.
2. Page and Site Exit Rate.
3. Average Visit Duration
4. Pages per Visit
5. Latent Semantic Analysis
6. Keyword Density
7. Duplicate Content
8. Social Sharing
9. Social Commenting
10. Overall Engagment

How to Diagnose a Google Penalty

How to Diagnose a Google Ranking Ban, Penalty, or Filter

If you undertake black or gray hat techniques, you run a fair chance of having your site penalized in the search results. But even if you are not engaged in these techniques yourself, your site may be punished for associating with black hat purveyors. Hosting on a shared server or sharing domain registration information with bad neighborhoods can lead to to ranking problems, if not punishment. Certainly linking to a bad neighborhood can lead to discipline. If you purchase a domain, you’ll inherit any penalties or bans imposed on the prior version of the website.

There are a wide range of penalties and ranking filters that search engines impose and a still-wider range of effects that those penalties produce. In diagnosing and correcting ranking problems, more than half the battle is figuring which penalty, if any, is imposed and for what violations. Ranking problems are easy to fix but arduous to diagnose with precision. Sudden drops in rankings might lead you to suspect that you’ve received a penalty, but it might not be a penalty at all.

In the following section we’ll look at some specific penalties, filters, conditions, and false conditions, and how to diagnose ranking problems.

Google Ban

The worst punishment that Google serves upon webmasters in a total ban. This means the removal of all pages on a given domain from Google’s index. A ban is not always a punishment: Google “may temporarily or permanently remove sites from its index and search results if it believes it is obligated to do so by law.” Google warns that punishment bans can be meted out for “certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in removal from our index.”

One of the most newsworthy instances of a total ban was when Google, in 2006, issued a total ban to the German website of carmaker BMW (http://www.bmw.de). The offense? Cloaked doorway pages stuffed with keywords that were shown only to search engines, and not to human visitors. The incident became international news, ignited at least partially by the SEO blogging community. BMW immediately removed the offending pages and within a few weeks, Google rescinded the ban.

How to Diagnose a Total or Partial Ban

To diagnose a full or partial ban penalty, run the following tests and exercises:

• Check Google’s index. In the Google search field, enter the following specialized search query: “site:yourdomain.com.” Google then returns a list of all of your site’s pages that appear in Google’s index. If your site was formerly indexed and now the pages are removed, there is at least a possibility that your site has been banned from Google.
• Check if Google has blacklisted your site as unsafe for browsing (type http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=mysite.com with your domain at the end).
• Check for Nofollow/Noindex settings. It might seem obvious, but check to make sure you haven’t accidentally set your WordPress site to Noindex. To check, go to your WordPress Dashboard and click the “Privacy” option under “Settings.” If the second setting, “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors” is set, then your site will promptly fall out of the index. A stray entry in a robots.txt file or in your WordPress template file can instruct search engines not to index your entire site.
• Check Google Webmaster Tools. Sometimes, but not always, Google will notify you through your Webmaster Tools account that your site has been penalized. But you won’t always receive this message, so you can still be penalized even if you don’t receive it. See the image below for an example message.

Google Penalty or Algorithm Change: Dealing With Lost Traffic

There is nothing worse for a webmaster/site owner than to wake up one day and find Google Armageddon has taken out all of their site's rankings and traffic. In most cases, mayhem ensues as they scramble around to try and figure out what happened or if they have run afoul of the mighty Google in one way or another.

This framework should help you keep your head should the unthinkable happen.

Google Penalty

Sadly this topic really isn't written about a lot, or discussed (go figure; peeps don't want to public talk about a smackdown) so let's get into some of the issues surrounding this particular, often poorly understood, phenomenon. We'll also look at some preventative measures that we can all keep, just in case.
Have You Been Penalized?

Some of the basics first… we need to establish if it is truly a penalty. As much as it may be intuitive to some, one of the more common things we see are people that think they've been penalized in Google, when in truth it's often not the case.

Cart before horse

What often masquerades as a Google penalty?

    * Filters and dampening factors: Google may have changed how they're treating your particular space. Be sure to always track not only your own rankings, but those of your competitors as well. Is there a shake up in the space? Or is it just you.
    * Data center anomalies: The other obvious one is that rankings can vary depending on location. Be sure to have others check the rankings (from target market region) and cross reference Google referrer traffic in your analytics.
    * Algorithm updates: Such as Panda, GooPLA and so on, (see below).

Remember, recent updates such as the Google Page Layout Algorithm, (GooPLA) are in fact not a penalty per se. It is more of a filter/dampening factor.

I hear ya saying, “anything that lowers my site in the rankings is a penalty dammit!!”. This is though, untrue.

You can't go to Google Webmaster Tools reconsideration request form and say, “We removed the ads from our site, please put our rankings back”. Why? Because you weren't penalized. It is an effect of the algorithm evolution. That's an important distinction.
What Can You Get Penalized For?

If we now know the difference between algorithmic changes and penalties, what is a penalty?

A few of the more known ones include;

    * Link manipulation: Paid links, hidden, excessive reciprocal, shady links etc.
    * Cloaking: Serving different content to users and Google.
    * Malware: Serving nastiness from your site.
    * Content: Spam/keyword stuffing, hidden text, duplication/scraping.
    * Sneaky JavaScript redirects.
    * Bad neighbourhoods: Links, server, TLD.
    * Doorway pages.
    * Automated queries to Google: Tools on your site, probably a bad idea.

As you can start to see, this is not a Panda event. That's an algorithm change. A penalty is about breaking the guidelines more than anything. One place to also look around is the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Diagnosing a Google Penalty

google-penalty-notifications

This is usually the easy part. Most people notice that traffic and revenues have taken a nose dive. But that doesn't really tell us if it is algorithmic or an actual penalty. The fastest way is to check if your site is in the index (use the [site:yourdomain.com] query). If it's gone, then my friend, you are most certainly in hot water.

Sometimes though, it can be less obvious, on the page level. But that's not as common. You can also check on brand searches (still getting those?) and exact match searches for page title's that should be ranking. We have seen instances where a site was penalized but still ranked for its brand.

The next question: are there any of the above punishable elements being used on your site?

For most people this is usually the first one – link manipulations. You should also check Google Webmaster Tools to ensure you haven't gotten an 'unnatural linking' notification. If you haven't been active in ways that might get you in trouble from the list, it's unlikely you've been penalized.

But not impossible. Another common aspect we see are sites that have been hacked. You should inspect your server. Inspect the logs. Even look at the query reports from Google Webmaster Tools, (for more read "Hacking for SEO" – important stuff).

The other obvious measurement tool is your analytics. When the traffic died was is it site-wide (losses in Google traffic)? Was it only on a page/keyword level? Once more though, first be sure that it's a penalty, not an algorithmic change. There are two distinct approaches to rectifying the situation.
At a Complete Loss?

In some more desperate situations we might also do a little deeper digging. The answers are usually much more obvious, but just in case, here's a few other ways to research the issues.

    * Spy On Web: Check for suspect sites on your server. In extreme cases they will actually consider nuking or dampening on this level if a given IP is infested.
    * Email black lists: You can use tools like MX Toolbox to see if there are any events related to the domain.
    * Malware: You can also use the Safe browsing diagnostic tool to ensure there hasn't been any malware detected recently on the domain.

At this point you should likely have a sense of where your problems lie. You should have identified if you actually have a penalty or not. If you believe you have been penalized... let's look at what we can do to get it fixed.
How to Deal With a Google Penalty

google-penalty-mechanic-fix-problems

Many instances Google will just re-crawl the site and place back if the offending content has been rectified (this is for algorithmic penalties).

For manual smackdowns, there is a time-out that is set (generally 30-60 days I believe). Once that expires, you're eligible to get back into the index. On the other hand, a reconsideration request might help speed up that process. We have used this with great success in the past.

The thing with that is, if you have an algorithmic penalty, Google would likely take no action from the reconsideration request, just allow the algorithm to do it's job (re-crawl and remove the penalty).

More here from Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts.

The main goal here is to look at all the common areas and elements that can be involved when a site is penalized (or removed entirely in this case). The reason it is important to look at everything in these situations is because when one files a reconsideration request, we want to ensure we’re actually taking responsibility for the causation of the removal.

In short, if we go to them and discuss elements that are unrelated to the removal, we run the risk of them profiling us as trying to play games/trick them. Not an ideal situation….

For more, here is a great interview about reconsideration requests with Tiffany Oberoi.
Dealing with Algorithm Changes

Now, if you're fairly certain that you haven't been penalized, the question remains – what the heck happened?

We now have to start considering the possibility that there isn't really a penalty, but some form of filtering or dampening happening to the site or page. What can cause this? Plenty.

Including:

    * Changes in valuations of links (weight, segmentation, etc.)
    * Changes in freshness (temporal signals)
    * Seasonal changes
    * Major algorithm updates (Panda, et al)
    * Minor algorithm updates (see monthly posts from Google)
    * Trust algorithm changes (social graph, outbound links etc.)
    * Duplication (scraping and attribution)

We want to start tracking things on the keyword and page level. Commonly analytics data is the best place to turn for this, and rank checking monitors (always use more than one for accuracy).

Consider:

   1. Is it one or more pages that have been affected?
   2. Are there common keyword elements/modifiers to terms affected?
   3. Are the rankings lost common in severity?
   4. What (if anything) happened to competitors in the space?
   5. What changes have been made to the website?
   6. What known algorithm changes have happened of late?

We essentially need to identify the type of filtering or dampening that is at play. In most cases there are some common elements that will emerge as you start to look deeper at which pages have been affected.

For example, we have only one (suspect) case of Panda only affecting a single page, not an entire site. If we note that a large number of pages have been affected, then we can start to consider algorithm changes that related to entire sites, not just individual pages.

Obviously, with the limited space of this article, can't get into dealing with each and every potential instance. What is important for now is the differentiation between a penalty and an algorithmic affect.
One Last Consideration

google-penalty-pieces

It also bears mentioning that we have also seen many cases where it's none-of-the-above in the sense that the site was neither penalized nor feeling the affects of an algorithmic change. What can often be the case are some less than complicated human error.

It is always a great idea to have your site developers/programmers keep a detailed change log of things being worked on for the site. The SEO team for that matter too. We have seen things like:

    * Architectural changes
    * Canonical issues
    * Response codes (500 instead of 200)
    * Redirect issues
    * Crawl issues (see Webmaster Tools)
    * Content changes (unauthorized)
    * Title and meta data changes

You'd be amazed how many times developers or other staffers throw a monkeywrench into the works and others have no clue it has happened.
What Data to Keep for the SEO Doctor

It doesn't matter if you do it for your own purposes, or for that poor ol' consultant that has to come in someday to try and assist in recovery, data is going to be key.

Here's what you should be collecting to ensure if it happens, you're in a position to do anaysis and get things back on track.

General data includes:

    * Google Analytics (or relative)
    * Google Webmaster Tools (lots of great data there)

Historical data includes:

    * On-site change log (programmers, SEO, anyone that edits the site)
    * Link building activity log (including dates, types, locations)
    * Paid links activity (including dates and locations)
    * Ranking reports (competitors and yourself)
    * Indexation levels (actual pages indexed)
    * Changes to htaccess or Robots.txt

If you have all of these, you will be in much better shape should the day come that you have to deal with traffic/rankings losses. And if you're bringing in outside help, these data points will be invaluable to the person doing the analysis.

Guide to Google penalties recognition and removal 2012

1) Penalty recognition and removal:


A) Did you got some private blog network backlinks?

If you see a penalty some time after you got some private blog network post backlinks - even some long months later - it could meant that blog network got de-indexed (check your reports and forums for any comments about de-indexing networks).

Penalty recognition:

- sudden drop in rankings without any reason (sometimes it could be 3-5 spots, sometimes 100-200 spots)
- un-explained dancing (no backlinking/onsite optimization done in last 2 weeks)

Solution:

If you see only dancing/small drop in rankings then it means your backlink diversity is low. Go and grab some different types of backlinks - mix of Manual Bookmarks (a lot of them from different providers) and unique article submission to article directories will help to regain your position - even stronger than before.




B) Did you pinged your website/got some Whois posted to it?

You can notice huge dancing (even tens of positions back and forward) or sudden drop way below top100.

Penalty recognition:

- sudden drop in rankings or heavy dancing
- drop in just few keywords or group of related keywords


The main causes could be two:

B1) your onsite optimization is really poor
B2) you have nasty backlinking (some really poor backlinks/spam/porn links)


To determine which one is right - simply check what backlinks Google sees by checking Alexa backlink checker and Google search engine. If Alexa is not showing anything of ppor quality (spammed websites where you link is located) then search for your website as - domain.com (without quotes and without www or http://). If you can see any spammy links (use your common sense to determine) within first 5 pages - then go ahead with B2 solution. If not - use B1 solution.

Solution:

B1) Check your inner linking (for any dead ones), correct 301's, proper site map, proper coding of website (no serious errors). I would suggest getting some webmaster to check your coding (he do not need access to your hosting - he should be able to work by reading your sites code with his browser) or using IBP (expensive but extensive) or SEOmoz (less expensive but really user friendly) - I didn't tested other options so just check reviews on SEO non-affiliate forums/blogs/review sites.
After you are done hit your site with ping services (pingomatic, feed burner) and whois sites (hit it with like 1000-10.000 sites to get your site noticed by crawlers to re-check it).

B2) Build some high authority backlinks - perfectly 2-3 types of links.
I would suggest high PR backlinks at first (any high PR backlinks will do really). Once you have some good number of them get them indexed at once (build SB links to them or run them by one of the indexing/crawling programs like Linklicious/Backlinks Indexer/Lindexed etc.)
[For example - build some High PR (PR4+) forum profiles, High PR blog posts and High PR Web 2.0 properties]




C) Did you created a lot of backlinks lately?

You have created a lot of backlinks recently and your site is jumping around or lost a lot of rankings.

Penalty recognition:

- heavy dancing, moving up and down (from top position to out of top100 and backwards)
- most of the keywords changed position right after backlinking (possibly for worst)
- your website lost all rankings (but you can still see it in Google as top3 when you search for your own domain name without spaces etc.)

Solution:

C1) You are not in top3 results when you search for domain.com (where domain = your domain name, .com = your extension - do not use www/http when searching for it in Google)

It means your website got serious penalty from Google - possibly soft one.
DO NOT ask for reconsideration within Webmaster Tool in Google.

Follow those steps:
- remove Google Analitycs from your site
- close your Google Webmaster Tools account (cancel it)
- log out from Gmail/Youtube (from now on always log out from them before accessing Google search results or your site)
- opt out/log out from any Google owned business that could lead to YOU or to your website

Perform full onsite optimization - (Check step B1) but do not do Whois linking.
Build quality backlinks to your site - Facebook, Twitter and whole group of Reputation Management business sites (Linkedin/Merchant Circle/YouTube/MySpace...). Do it manually or get a guy that can do this for you.
Get some social backlinks (High PR Manual Bookmarks or Re-Tweets with your link in it).
Get all links crawled (use Pingomatic or more advanced crawling service)
After all this - wait for ~5 days and then submit your site to good list of Whois websites (minimum 1.000).

C2) You are on position 2-3 when you search for your domain name.

Build more diverse backlinks - create "Raw backlinks" (no anchor links) to your main page. You can use for this AMR - get some quality article from Ezine, do not spin it and submit it to article directories. As a link use your homepage url (not inner pages, just homepage).

C3) You are on position 1 when you search for your domain name.

This is just a dance. You can get few of crawling services (Pingomatic etc) and submit your site to them to speed up process of ranking selection.
DO NOT submit your site to Whois sites at the beginning of dance as this can mislead you with further investigation on whats the problem.




D) Did you maintained status Quo for last 2 months?

You have done nothing in last 2 months but all suddenly all your keywords started to falling in rankings.

Penalty recognition:

- sudden drop in rankings without doing anything to the site by you
- complete lost of rankings by all the keywords

Solution:

D1) Your keyword is easy/medium competition

You lack link building - keep building backlinks on weekly or even daily basis. Try to diversify backlinks and fetch some high quality manual ones (Linkedin/Merchant Circle/YouTube/MySpace/Tumblr/Tweeter/Ezine...)
You need to re-build your whole SEO campaign so create a plan of backlinking and start getting them in proper quantities - use your common sense on how many of them. Regular site will use 3 different backlinks provider/sources a month (for example - Manual Bookmarking, Manual Web 2.0 and Scrapebox blast with 10K links - change strategy/providers each month).

D2) Your keyword is in high competitive niche

You need to check your backlinks.
Go to Alexa.com and Google.com and search for your backlinks.
When in Google.com search for domain.com (without quotes, where domain.com is your domain name).
Go through first 10 pages (if there is as much as that) and look for backlinks you do not recognize.

D2-A) You found backlinks that you do not recognize (made by your competitor) - you need to make them weaker or stronger:

D2-A1) Make them stronger - build backlinks to those bad links (do not do it if the anchors are nasty ones like - "Porn", "Fuck", "Cocaine" etc or there is more than 1.000 outgoing links from the page). Get some proper Scrapebox blasts to those links in order to create authority in them. Around 100-500 backlinks per bad link is enough. Get all the backlinks created to badlinks crawled (use Linklicious/Lindexed/BacklinksIndexer).

D2-A2) Make them weaker - to do so you need to make your website authority one. Create high authority backlinks to your website comming from popular social sites + Wikipedia (if you can - possibly as a source link or in-article anchor) + Wiki sites (there is many service providers offering such a Wiki submission). Build few hundreds of high PR backlinks to your site without anchor ("Raw Link"). Get all the backlinks crawled using popular pinging/indexing services.
If none happened - submit your site to Whois database after 2 weeks of creating major backlinks.
Keep building backlinks constantly and take care of diversity so this wont happen again.





2) Avoiding Penalty and Google reviews:


A) Onsite Optimization
B) Offsite SEO
C) Overall Quality Score



A) Onsite Optimization

You are required to keep a very good onsite optimization.
You need to prevent having serious coding loops or errors as Google will detect it easily. Any dead links (within a site or going to other sites) can affect your rankings and cause problems.
List of things to look at:

- Check your websites code for any serious errors. Your code should be W3C validated: http://validator.w3.org/
- Check for dead links - Google hates them: http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com
- Interlink your inner pages to main page (Inner Page linking to main page with one of your main Anchor) or other way around (main page linking through footer with Anchors to most valued inner pages - not too many though)
- No excessive advertising - 2 ad blocks are enough, 3 is a lot, 4+ can affect your rankings
- No linking out to Scam/Spam/Illegal sites - one link to Scam e-commerce shop can drain out your authority
- Proper content quantity/quality for crawlers to index - 300 words article is not enough to fill whole website. Every site, even MNS should have more than 1 page and more than 300 words article
- DO NOT post spinned content on your website - Google will index copied content as long as it is quality and related. Spinned content can get you de-indexed or penalized
- You do not need to link to authority sites - by doing so you will pass some juice on them but also you will get more Google trust. Evaluate which option is best for you.



B) Offsite SEO

To impress Google you need proper diversification and constant backlinking.

- Create different types of backlinks. There is no "Miracle Backlink". You cant dominate results with just one backlink type and hope for Status Quo. You need to diversify your campaign so Google wont see any spam attempts. Even if you are #1 keep building diverse backlinks (if #1 was achieved by blog posts from
private network - build some quality Web 2.0 and .Edu links for diversity and security).
- Keep constant backlink flow. You cannot create 100K Scrapebox backlinks at once and expect best. Keep building backlinks daily, weekly or even monthly to maintain your good authority and trust within Google.
a) Monthly backlinking example - buy automatic bookmarking, 10K Scrapebox blog comments and wiki links in one month - then in next one create new "campaign"
b) Weekly backlinking example - create 1-2 different backlink types like Private Blog Network submission and Forum Profiles first week, .Edu backlinks and Linkpushing other week.
c) Daily backlinking example - build daily amount of backlinks like blog comments, forum profiles bookmarks and manual high PR backlinks
- Mix quality with quantity - Scrapebox or Xrumer links are good as long as you will mix them with high authority (or high PR) backlinks. Do not worry about getting 10K Scrapebox links - but add some extra high PR Bookmarks or Articles same week you done them for fast and secure results.
- Get high authority backlinks indexed using indexing/crawling systems - any high authority (or high PR) backlink can be artificially forced to cue for crawling by Google without any negative penalty.


C) Overall Quality Score

Look at your website as manual reviewer will do it.
He have less than a minute to evaluate your website and he will look for following:
- code/keyword report
- relevance of content to keyword
- ad spam/affiliate spam attempts
- content lockers (do not use content locker if 100% of your traffic is from Google unless you are experienced in what you do)
- misleading information/links

Google Will Now Kill You for Over-Optimization

For years there were rumors that if you over-optimized your site that perhaps Google would penalize you. So far, these have only been rumors and never confirmed. However, now Google has officially announced that they are in development of a secret algorithm that will hurt sites that over-optimize themselves on specific keywords.

According to Matt Cutts, from Google:

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

What exactly is over-optimization? While there are some theories around the net, Practical Ecommerce Claims that these are the 5 signals that someone is over optimizing:

• Linking to a page from that same page with optimized anchor text. If the page is www.jillsfakesite.com/flannel-shirts, and in the body copy of that page I link the words “flannel shirts” to the same page the words are on, IE www.jillsfakesite.com/flannel-shirts, that should count as over-optimization.
• Linking repeatedly from body copy to a handful of key pages with optimized anchor text. If 33 of my 100 pages link to www.jillsfakesite.com from the body copy with the anchor text “Jills Fake Site,” that should count as over-optimization.
• Changing the “Home” anchor text to your most valuable keyword. Usually the home link is the site’s logo. But in the cases where the home link is textual and has been optimized with the juiciest keyword, that should count as over-optimization.
• Overly consistent and highly optimized anchor text on backlinks. If 10 of the 100 links to a page contain the same highly optimized anchor text, such as “Jill’s Fake Site, the Fakest Site Selling Flannel Shirts on the Web,” that should count as over-optimization.
• Generic keyword domain name. They have way too much impact on rankings, and need to be demoted in importance. Now I’m sure it’s difficult to determine which words are generic and which are brands. But Google seems to have cracked that nut at least partially with its related brands results. Surely they must be close to understanding the difference between the non-branded domain littleblackdress.com and the brand whitehouseblackmarket.com.

What is basically being pointed out that is that proper SEO actually levels the playing field between you and everyone else because now you can stand by the quality of your site, not by the search engine’s ability to figure it out. Because, sure, the search engines are getting better at understanding new technologies and “seeing” what is on your Web site – but would you really leave the success of your site and your business in their hands. No, you’re going to do everything in your power to make sure it’s as crawlable and easy to navigate as you can. That’s SEO. It’s also good business.

BIG G will kill you if you over optimize on page factors

Now here's the 5 factors that you must be careful when optimizing...
 

Linking to a page from that same page with optimized anchor text. If the page is jillsfakesite.c0m/flannel-shirts, and in the body copy of that page I link the words “flannel shirts” to the same page the words are on, IE jillsfakesite.c0m/flannel-shirts, that should count as over-optimization.
 

Linking repeatedly from body copy to a handful of key pages with optimized anchor text. If 33 of my 100 pages link to jillsfakesite.c0m from the body copy with the anchor text “Jills Fake Site,” that should count as over-optimization.
 

Changing the “Home” anchor text to your most valuable keyword. Usually the home link is the site’s logo. But in the cases where the home link is textual and has been optimized with the juiciest keyword, that should count as over-optimization.
 

Overly consistent and highly optimized anchor text on backlinks. If 10 of the 100 links to a page contain the same highly optimized anchor text, such as “Jill’s Fake Site, the Fakest Site Selling Flannel Shirts on the Web,” that should count as over-optimization.
 

Generic keyword domain name. They have way too much impact on rankings, and need to be demoted in importance. Now I’m sure it’s difficult to determine which words are generic and which are brands. But Google seems to have cracked that nut at least partially with its related brands results. Surely they must be close to understanding the difference between the non-branded domain littleblackdress.c0m and the brand whitehouseblackmarket.c0m.