the website www.diydoctor.org.uk has been firmly on the first page of google UK for the search term 'DIY' for the last 7 years. A few weeks ago they dropped down to page 4/5.
i have found the following problems with the website which i realise are all problems and need fixing, however these have been problems for a very long time so i cant see these as being the reasons for such a big sudden drop when they havent been an issue in the past.
Gary, this is Mike Edwards, the MD of DIY Doctor. Your company have just given me a price of £2500 - £5000 to give me a report which you have obtained from a forum which we use anyway. Not only that but you have asked for that kind of money to look at a problem you do not think you can solve.
From where I stand this is pretty despicable behavior and not what I would expect from a "professional" SEO company.
I think you're on to a good start - one thing I did notice though was user experience is kind of poor. There is a MASS of ads on this site. Seriously - I think they are drowning out the actual content you have that might be relevant.
Hi its not my site, just one i have been presented with to find a solution, The amount adds on the whole website did stand out to me as well, especially when you get to the links section. As far as im aware these arnt the same sites, there certainly not on the same server.
ive spotted they have a blog on an external domain diydoctorblog.com, almost everything i have checked on there seems to be unique and not shared content with the main site
well, having a blog on a separate domain (in my opinion), is a terrible idea. You aren't going to get much value from the links and none of the great, unique content your writing will be helping the value of your main domain (where you want to actually be driving traffic to). I'd recommend something like dyidoctor.co.uk/blog and using 301 redirects in a 1:1 fashion to properly transfer everything over.
The problems you already pointed out need to be addressed. Two sites? Not useful whatsover. Are there plans to take care of the issues you mentioned?
For me a bit part of it is user experience. There is useful unique content on the site - but good luck getting to it. I have no doubt that there are lots of neat/smart men and women behind this site that contribute, but it looks like the advertising dollar greed might have ruined a potentially awesome product.
Thanks for all your responses, i agree completely with everything you have said. I expect that they will want to get all this sorted, i personally don't think this will get them their rankings back, We will have to wait and see,
Gary, this is Mike Edwards, the MD of DIY Doctor. Your company have just given me a price of £2500 - £5000 to give me a report which you have obtained from a forum which we use anyway. Not only that but you have asked for that kind of money to look at a problem you do not think you can solve.
From where I stand this is pretty despicable behavior and not what I would expect from a "professional" SEO company.
This forum needs "SEO Screwup of the Month" award for these SEO jokers who post here. This thread is awesome, and I nominate Gary for this month's award.
"... Site owner's from Somerset - course he's savvy enough to come here ;-) ..." Hmmm ... me thinks someones being a little bias there. ;)
And I'm serious - I'd love to know roughly what "value" of help this places does daily/wekly/monthly. Could be a fun figure the play around with. ".... hmmm, it's 10:30, I've done 20 minutes, I've equated to 1,500 - and unlike certain SEO companies, I actually earned that money .... " LMAO
Well, what to say, you guys are good on this forum. I don't come here much, only twice since 2006. The times I did are when we had SEO's (company or individual) who could not solve our problem. We have been through 4 SEO's in 5 years! I am surprised that you guys do it on a voluntary basis, because your help is really worth a lot. Maybe it is the timing of when I sign on of who I get help from, but a couple of years ago got we got a lot of help from Robbo, and recently Autocrat and Robbo! So if any of you decide to come to Egypt, then we can offer you complimentary diving! Thanks a lot!
A link to this thread passed through my Twitter, WOW! It's funny that there was a "DOH!" moment, but it's also nice to see people looking to this forum for assistance.
No problem with him coming to the forum Colin, I didn't expect to see him in here but having thought about it, it's ok to "not know". We can't all know everything.
I did not expect to click into a forum to see my website under discussion by people I have not given authority to discuss it with anyone but me. Neither did I expect to read in that Forum, that he did not think the problem coulb be solved with their present knowlege.
Call me old fashioned, but I think that info should have been given to me first.
Fair enough, you are more than entitled to feel like that. I know my heart would jump out of my chest if I stumbled accross a similar thing about one of my sites.
At the same time - when people come on here and *don't* share the url of the site in question - they tend to get grief off everyone! Its a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you dont situation!
As an SEO (from Manchester, not Somerset :) ) - Gary sounds like he knows his stuff, and if he identified more than a handful of problems he has certainly put the effort in.
Sometimes in SEO you go off hunches and gut feelings. Sounds like he indentified a good few problems - but his "gut" feeling was that although they may help - they may not be enough to get it sorted straight away. Thats fair enough, and probably why he came on here to ask for some peer reviews. In the future it may be worth making a company sign a non disclosure agreement, or just informally say "I would rather this is kept confidential please".
Its worth bearing in mind that there are a LOT of changes in the UK Google search results - even hardened SEOs like myself are finding it hard to work out whats going on.
Hope I ve been of help, best get back to work now.
To be fair on Gary it's not unusual to share information and ideas amongst SEO and it's not like he's told us anything confidential. If all he's supposed to be doing is compiling a report, then he's clearly done his homework and is just covering all the bases before making his recommendations to the client.
I do think the website stands a much better chance of recovering if the problems Gary mentions are solved. If the SEO company in question was meant to have actually worked to solve these problems on the site (rather than ignore them because "they haven't been an issue in the past"), I suspect that is a fault on the part of the company and not Gary himself.
Also, Mike, please bear in mind that Gary wouldn't have priced the report up, he's just responsible for making sure it's as helpful as possible, however he gets the information. It's the sales team at the company in question that make up the prices, if you think it's extortionate then they'll be the people to speak to.
I agree with MattDavies on the whole pricing thing, the worker bee has virtually no input into the pricing model other than sometimes offering a time estimate.
I personally do not believe it is usual (and certainly not good practice to offer a quote or even a guidline estimate for a job you clearly do not know how to do yet and, even worse, do not think will work.
I believe this and will stand by it, regardless of worker bees ar any other kind or organism on the planet, If you do not know how to do a job because you have never come across it before, say so. Then tell the client you will do some research and get back to them.
The guy we are working with now is a Google consultant and the very first thing he said was. "I have no idea, it could be a number of things. But I will find out" He then gave me the opportunity to book him for xyz hours to reserch my problem thoroughly.
That is the kind of professional approach I expect from a company and it also fits in with the ethos of most of the people helping me in this forum. It certainly fits with the way we conduct our own company. If we do not think we can help a company, we tell them. We do not publish it on the Internet.
The pricing model should be a matter of Company policy and each member of that company should be aware of it. If the two sections of the Company in this situation did not talk to each other (I know they did however) but Gary were able to solve my problem in an hour, is it still correct that I should be quoted these figures. Of course not, and in the real world it does not happen. The problem is looked at and taken on its merits. A price is given to remedy the situation and caviats are put in place in case the original diagnosis is incorrect and more work is required. A huge figure is not launched into the atmosphere to provide a report on a problem no-one knows anything about.
Not only is it usual to share info amongst SEOs Matt, but it is usual to share information within a team. This is not IBM or the NHS we are talking about. This is a small SEO company who, in my opinion, have not acted in a very professional way.
All that said; I have moved on and DIY Doctor is not sitting in the poroblem any longer. The solution is out there (or even in here!) and we are tracking it down. I'm sure we all run our businesses and our lives differently and maybe I'm completely wrong and totally out of my depth in the world of SEO so I will retire and wait for the answer to be presented to me, pay the bill and let everyone know what caused the problem in the first place so no-one need go through it needlessly.
I don't know gary... but i can see that Mike Edwards has quite a few more problems than Ashley and Gary addressed... Gary's proposal isn't listed so other than the fact that he stuck his foot in his mouth by exposing a clients URL.. there is no way to judge what he suggested. Ashley is both right and wrong.. but people do SEO differently.. and some people test things..
Mike Edwards... i would bet if you spent the 5000 you would have a better looking site and a FAR lower bounce rate... Do you know your bounce rate? did you know that Goggle recently changed the way the UK engine works?
that is why your site dropped, google changed.. and your code sucks.. i found 25 things wrong in 30 seconds..
Hire a professional SEO, check their references with their current clients they have had for over one year, ask them how many they still have after 2,3 and 4 or more years.. and unless your budget is over $5k don't bother their good clients..
and stay off forums, because you will get one sided conversations, find a Professional SEO, whose job it is to weed through a million different opinions on SEO and test the right ones and only use tested proven tactics on your website in accordance with Google Webmaster Tools..
p.s. what errors do you have in Google Webmaster tools?
Hi Mike, don't get me wrong there's no love lost between me and the company in question, having worked there in the past. I just though it would be fair to put Gary's role into perspective so that you might turn what looks like a fairly personal attack on both of the relevant threads into one focussed on the company, which I think is a bit fairer.
Anyway sounds like you're much better off now so best of luck with it all.
Hi Mike, Getting back to the question of the site drop - how long ago did you add the "NoFollow" attributes to the external links? I look at this site a while ago and it didn't have NoFollow on there before. Could be a penalisation from Google for selling links and the NoFollows were only recently added.
Also Google has announced that the NoFollow still passes on PageRank so this will dilute your authority (although Google said they made this change about a year ago) but a lot of sites are only noticing this recently.
My suggestion would be to change the links out from a direct link to a tracked javascript link (although Google can apparently follow this too now) but it may help remove the penalisation (if that is the problem) and will also maintain your PageRank.
You say the person you are working with now is a "Google consultant" - there are no such thing as Google consultants for organic search, just Adwords. I would be very very wary of anybody who uses that card as credentials for fixing an organic search issue
The best bit is the people springing to gary's defence only joined the forum today. obviously there's no chance it's gary that's just logged on under another username to speak up for himself... haha
It's just a "name" - they are not officially associated with Google in anyway/shape/form that I can see? (Technically, me being a Google Bionic would carry more 'official' weight (which is actually damned scarry!))
That said - if they are that popular/good ... maybe I can email them and suggest they come and help out here? :D
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"... and stay off forums, because you will get one sided conversations, ..."
Now thats not very nice, not very fair nor true ;)
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Sudden Drop after 7 years at Page 1
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