I've had a website for quite some time now (since 2003) and in the beginning I built my site from scratch & it was self maintained. For Several Months now, I've used Point2Agent, with the same Domain name now pointed there.

I've always held high rankings when keywords are used for my service areas in conjuction with hot keywords like "homes for sale" "real estate", etc.
I've noticed in the past few months that I have actually DROPPED from Google completely!
So Where I used to be practically #1, I'm now very difficult to find. :-(

I'm not sure If it's because I have a "Template Site" or because I'm just getting bad at SEO.

Hoping to get some feedback. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here's My Site:
My Realtor Web Page

Thanks!
Liz

Your site appears to have been penalized with the dreaded PR0 - which is usually awarded for linking infractions (participating in link farms, multiple redirects to the site, and things of that nature). Sometimes there seems to be no good reason at all for the penalty.

Some say you can remove the infraction(s) and then contact Google and ask for reinclusion. Since one never really knows exactly what the infraction was this route rarely works. Those that have managed to be reincluded (that regain their Page Rank) never seem to regain their former positions.

The quickest way back is usually to get a new domain and start all over.

Just did a quick check of your links page - Links.html - and the sites on it (at least the ones I looked at) all have the same penalty. Looks like Google sees this as a link farm. The page itself does not seem to be your reciprocal links page but a links page set up by your site provider.

And so it begins...
If your right doug...I've been feeling this coming for a long time:(

Liz,
I also took a quick peek and noticed that you participate in linksmanager....yikes auto geberated link swapping pages are a big bullseye for penaties. I hope you get back on track.

Thanks for the heads up!
I'll have to revamp my links page and hope for the best. First I've heard of the PR0, so I'll be doing some research.

Thanks Again I appreciate your feedback! :-)

"dreaded PR0"

PR0 does not mean a penalty. A new page just indexed and cached can be PR0; that doesn't mean it is penalized.

Yes, PR0 doesn't mean anything, neither does PR anything really. PR is meaningless.

There are also quite a few things you could do improve your SEO. Your site is not in google's index at all, which may mean that you were banned.

Your site does show up in Yahoo, and in MSN.

That is correct. A new page can have no Page Rank for many months. Just because a site has PR0 does not mean it is penalized.

In this case though the site is a couple of years old, had lots of backlinks, and used to have Page Rank which it lost, and no longer shows up for searches - all the indications of the PR0 penalty. Especially when all her link partners have the same.

Liz,

To clarify what was said above, PR0 is not necessarily a penalty. Currently Google does not recognize any backlinks to your site which would explain the PR0. The other search engines recognize many but Google is very selective. I have about 1400 links total, a similar number to you but Google only recognizes 16 of them. PR does have an impact if the sites linking to you are also low PR (like most agent sites).

Perhaps the greatest cause for your ranking drop was a destinct algorithm change in Google earlier this year. Many very good sites dropped off the face of the earth while others shot meteorically to the top. No one is really sure why.

Some very simple things to change that will help. Use text links wherever your search tems come up such as "Greater New Bedford, Dartmouth, Fall River" and make sure "real estate" or "homes" is in the link.

Also, It isn't easy to tell what state you work in. Clearly I can tell but people searching for real estate in your area are likely using the state in their search phrase.

An earlier post suggested that the word "links" should be avoided, that is correct.

This tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
is very helpful for determining your ranking (if any) in Google. There is also a helpful keyword suggestion tool and a forum filled with people far more knowledgable than myself in these matters.

Good Luck!

Th

I did a quick look around on your site and noticed a few things that are probably causing problems.

Yes, Google is not reporting the inbound links to your site, but it's probably not for the reasons discussed above. Both Yahoo and MSN are showing 300+ backlinks for your site.

The first item that I noticed was that your site has very little original content. Most of the "articles" are the same old stock stuff found on a thousand other web sites. Search engine algorithms are very sophisticated - dupe content is a sure way to get your site on a downward spiral.

The next thing that I noticed was that every page on your site has most of the HTML code in a FORM tag, followed by encrypted code. To me, that looks like a sure sign of cloaking (especially with the slow load times of your pages). It may be just some innoccuous code used by the designers of your template. Or it could be a cloaking script that directs web surfers to one page and search engine spiders to another page.

Your site is also spammy in a few areas. There are better ways to get that information indexed in search engines by developing actual content, not just word lists. Your web surfers will appreciate the detailed content, too.

Your site has not been banned by Google (I can still find 54 pages listed or indexed).

All in all, your site is typical of 99% of the agent sites on the internet today. By no means is that a dig against you. I'm more concerned with these template web site companies that directly or indirectly make you believe that once you load your web site that the leads will come pouring in faster than you can reply to emails.

Search engine marketing is extremely competitive, especially when it comes to real estate. But getting people to visit your site is only half of the problem. Your site needs to be designed to get your visitors to take action (this doesn't always mean buying a home) so that your own sales abilities will turn these prospects into customers.

This is almost a sure sign that the site is created using some .NET language. If it's a tempalte site it's probably created dynamically. .NET webpages require everything to be inside of a form tag. The .NET framework also uses those cryptic id values to keep track of things.