Ostermann.de Buyer’s Remorse: 65% Loss of Search Visibility is a post from the best Link Building Tools available worldwide.
Paid Links on Spammy Sites Burn Furniture Company
It’s painful buying something you thought would help you, only to discover that it’s broken and even dangerous!
That’s where Ostermann found itself last month. Their high search visibility plummeted 65% when Google penalized their paid link scheme. That old SEO tactic worked for nearly 4 years, but now it’s killing their traffic.
Interestingly, their sponsorships of local organizations and charities may also contribute to their penalty. You have to see why for yourself.
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Enjoy & Learn
Christoph C. Cemper
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Table of contents
Introduction
Drop in Visibility
Visibility Charts
Keywords
Backlink Profile
Compare Ostermann against Competitors
Find Competitors
Quick Domain Compare
High Sitewide Links Ratio
Competitive Landscape Analyzer
Link Type and Location
Link Velocity
Find Dangerous Links
Domains Not Indexed by Google
Visibility Increase End 2010
Paid Directory Links
Conclusion
Introduction
Ostermann is a family-owned business based in Witten, Germany. They have four interior design-and-furniture stores and an online shop.
The company was founded in 1949, and the first store was 48 m² large. Now the store in Witten numbers 48,350 m². They have a total of 1,300 employees and a profit of 300 million euros.
In the second week of April 2014, the site dropped more than 65% in search visibility. We can assume they had a Google penalty. This case study will investigate what could be the reason for this penalty.
Drop in Visibility
Visibility Charts
In the Searchmetrics loser list of 13/04/2014, I found ostermann.de was a big loser with a 65% drop in SEO visibility. This big drop looks like a penalty and is worth looking into.
Additionally, I checked Sistrix to see if they also noticed the drop in SEO visibility.
Sistrix shows the same result as Searchmetrics – a drop of 65.8%. The Sistrix chart goes further back in time and shows there was a large increase in visibility at the end of 2010. I will come back to that later.
Keywords
A closer look at the ranking changes teaches us that Ostermann ranked on the first page for many Money keywords. Now they have lost their visibility for most of these keywords.
Backlink Profile
To get a better insight into the backlink profile for Ostermann, I used the Backlink Profiler tool (BLP). This tool makes it possible to do an extensive backlink analysis because Link Research Tools combines data from 24 different sources. You can also upload your own backlinks from Google Webmaster Tools, Moz, and so on.
To see the backlink profile for the whole domain, I activate the 5x Link Boost to get more links.
Link Research Tools uses CEMPER Power*Trust, CEMPER Power and CEMPER Trust to help you judge links.
CEMPER Power is similar to the Google PageRank algorithm. This metric evaluates the strength of a website based on the number and power of links.
CEMPER Trust is evaluates the quality of a link. The trustworthiness of a page is calculated by the inheritance of trust from other trusted sites.
CEMPER Power*Trust is the multiplication of CEMPER Power and CEMPER Trust. With this metric you can do a quick evaluation of a link’s impact.
Ostermann has many links from pages with 0 CEMPER Power*Trust. It is normal to have links from low quality sites, but this is high. Later I will compare this with their competitors.
In some niches it is normal to have a high number of low quality links, but I think this is too much for a furniture shop.
Something that immediately caught my eye is the number of images. They have many Money keywords but none pop out. Ostermann didn’t focus on one or two keywords. Instead, they have a wide range of anchor texts.
To better understand the high number of images, I’ll filter the table for images only. This can be done by filtering in the column “LinkType.”
The list contains many associations and charities.
http://ksv-witten.de/
Ostermann is one of the sponsors of this sports club. Like many other clubs, they listed their sponsors in a sidebar. This results in a high number of image links and sitewide links.
It is clear that Ostermann didn’t sponsor these organizations to get backlinks on their websites. Most of them are from the region of the four Ostermann stores. If they did this for the backlinks, they would have had links from clubs all over Germany and probably from clubs that have websites with a higher Power and Trust.
Charities and associations can’t exist without the help of their donors and sponsors. I can only applaud companies that help these organizations.
If Google penalized you for this, you can always ask the organization to nofollow your link and/or put it on only one page.
Compare Ostermann Against Competitors
The Quick Domain Compare tool (QDC) is a great way to compare your link profile with the competitors’ profile.
Find Competitors
If you don’t know who your biggest competitors are, you can find them with a tool built into Link Research Tools. In this tool you choose some keywords, search engine, language and country. I selected “Find Competing Pages” and entered some Money keywords Ostermann ranked for. Ostermann is a German company targeting the German market so all search engine settings are on Germany.
This resulted in the following competitors:
www.roller.de
www.ikea.com
porta.de
www.pharao24.de
www.baur.de
Throughout the rest of the case study, I will use the four German companies and Ikea – their multinational competitor.
Please note that I use the non-www domain for porta.de. Unlike most other websites, Porta doesn’t use the www subdomain for their website. The non-www domain will give other results in the tools than the www domain.
If you want to keep using the same competitors for more reports, enter your competitors in the project settings. Under “Competition Settings” you can enter your Competitors’ URLs. The URLs you enter here will be used as a default option in multiple tools.
Quick Domain Compare
In the Quick Domain Compare tool, you can only compare up to 5 domains – including your own domain – so I had to remove one of the 5 competitors. I chose to remove www.baur.de because this online shop also sells other products than furniture and home accessories.
In this overview, it is obvious that Ikea is much bigger than the others. Ikea is multinational with stores targeting the whole world, whereas the others only target Germany. The number of backlinks to Ikea is more than 100 times the number of backlinks to Ostermann.
Pharao24 has a high CEMPER Power with low CEMPER Trust. This combination is often the outcome of spammy link building. The other sites, including Ostermann, have a good balance of Power and Trust.
For Ostermann, the number of backlinks to domain stands out. If you compare the domain popularity (number of domains linking to the site) with the backlinks to domain, the ratio for Ostermann is very high. This means that Ostermann has many sitewide links. I already noticed this in the Backlink Profile when I was checking the images. They have all the sitewide links from the organizations they sponsor.
If you want a more detailed overview of the sitewide link ratios, use the Juice tool.
High Sitewide Links Ratio
The Juice tool can be used to analyze up to 10,000 URLs in a single report. There is a wide range of metrics available to choose from. I will use the Juice tool for a quick analysis of the sitewide link ratios.
Link Research Tools has many quick links between reports to work more efficiently. At the bottom of the QDC results table is a quick link to the Juice tool.
Clicking this link will automatically copy the domains from the QDC and enter them into the “URLs to analyze” box of the Juice tool.
I only want to check the sitewide link ratios this time. Therefore, I choose a Detail Analysis and select Link Ratio Metrics. A 5x URL boost will give me more links.
In these results it is clear that Ostermann has many more sitewide links than its competitors, especially to the homepage. Ostermann has a ratio of 65 for the homepage. The average number of sitewide links to the homepage for the four competitors is only 13.
Competitive Landscape Analyzer
To get a more detailed backlink comparison between Ostermann and its competitors, I used the Competitive Landscape Analyzer tool (CLA). The tool visualizes multiple metrics in clear charts. I will compare Ostermann with the 5 competitors I gathered before. Again, the 5x link boost will give more results.
In the Backlink Profile I doubted whether it was normal that a furniture shop has a high number of low CEMPER Power*Trust. In this chart it is easy to compare the CEMPER Power*Trust for backlinks to Ostermann with the backlinks to its competitors. You can see that Ostermann has more links with a low Power*Trust and fewer links with a high Power*Trust.
The “Comparison by Keyword” chart clearly shows that the link profile for Ostermann is not good. The number of Money and Compound keywords is much higher than for their competitors. You don’t want a link profile like this; it is important to blend in with your competition. If we can notice this, so can Google.
Remember the QDC where I said that Pharao24 had high CEMPER Power with low CEMPER Trust? Look at the percentage of Money keywords for Pharao24: 36%! This is way too high if you compare it with the competition. These are two signs that Pharao24 is doing spammy link building.
Link Type and Location
I want to compare the type and location of the links to Ostermann and its competition. This can be done with a detailed Competitive Landscape Analyzer (CLA).
In the report settings, I have to choose Detail Analysis. The tool makes it possible to choose from a wide range of metrics. I choose to get more details for the link position and link type. As always, I use a 5x link boost for best results.
Ostermann has a high number of image links compared to its competitors. This is the result of all those pages that list them as a sponsor. To blend in with the competition, they should get more text links. They first need to ask their sponsored organizations to remove the image link.
The link location comparison shows where on a page your links are located. The most conspicuous in this comparison is the low percentage of in-content links. This should be higher if we look at the competition.
Link Velocity
A sudden increase in the number of backlinks to a domain can be the result of (spammy) link building. Of course, Google also probably notices this. But the lack of new links can also be a problem.
With the Competitive Link Velocity tool, you get an overview of the link growth and velocity. Several heat maps make it easier to check and compare your link velocity.
For this report I use the same 5 competitors.
These reports don’t show any drastic changes that require special attention.
Find Dangerous Links
To find harmful links, the Link Detox tool (DTOX) is a great help. The tool analyzes all the links to the website and classifies them as toxic, suspicious and healthy.
The tool uses all the Link Research Tools’ sources to get as much data as possible. Furthermore, you can upload your own backlink lists and disavowed links. Uploading your disavowed links will give you a more accurate link risk.
Recently, a new function was added to connect with Google Webmaster Tools to automatically get its extra data so you don’t have to manually upload those files.
Ostermann has a deadly risk; this is the highest level. The other levels are: very low risk, low risk, moderate risk, high risk and very high risk. Ostermann definitely has some dangerous links.
The Link Detox Risk Breakdown tab shows a detailed overview of the number of links in each of the risk levels.
A summary shows the number of toxic, suspicious and healthy links. The toxic links are the most dangerous. These are links coming from domains not indexed by Google, domains that are classified dangerous, or links that look very unnatural. Link Research Tools advises you to remove them. You have to check all the links before you remove them, but you will probably remove all of these links.
Suspicious links are links from domains with a low CEMPER Power*Trust, the same IP for multiple linking domains, no Google PageRank, a high number of outbound links, and so on.
As the name says, the links are suspicious and you should check them. Not all of these links will be dangerous, but many will be. That’s why it’s important to check the links before removing them, just to make sure.
For a full list of toxic and suspicious link rules, visit http://www.linkdetox.com/faq/.
Domains Not Indexed by Google
Several links to Ostermann get the TOX1 rule: the domain is not indexed by Google. That is usually a sign of a penalty.
http://www.wohnen-ratgeber.de/licht-ins-dunkle-bringen.html
This site is not indexed by Google. I think it is pretty obvious they had a penalty. It is a site with multiple pages about living and text with links, but the content doesn’t have any value. It’s just a lot of dull text about living.
Ostermann probably bought a link on this site. The article is about different kinds of lights in private houses. In the middle is a link to Ostermann with the anchor text “Lampen.”
As you can see, there is a second link on this page. It’s probably another customer of the company that owns this website. They bought a link to their wellness website, but this site is for houses, not wellness. It’s obvious the site is selling links by looking at the end of this lighting article where they suddenly write, “…with these lights you feel so good that you feel like you are in a wellnessoase….”
http://www.hausbau-fakten.de/immobilien-kaufen.html
This is an identical site not indexed by Google. There’s no valuable content, but there are many links, which makes it more obvious that these are sold links.
This site is about real estate, so they make the furniture link fit like this, “If you have a nice real estate you would also like the following furniture….”
The other links on the site go to real estate loans, real estate brokers, a portal, a garden site and a lawyer.
I wanted to see if these sites belong to the same owner. There are a few columns in Link Detox that can help me with that: the name the domain is registered to, the DNS servers, and the IP.
The two previous sites are owned by Maik Scheller. I wanted to know if this is the person who is selling these links. Checking his name on Google, I found only one person with a LinkedIn and Facebook profile – a research professor at the University of Arizona. He’s probably not the same man who owns German websites that sell links.
A whois of the domain came up with an address in Germany where another person is living, a fake phone number and a Yahoo email address. The company that sold these links uses fake domain registration details to register domains.
The third domain owned by Maik Scheller that links to Ostermann is http://www.lampen-info.de/kueche.html
This site has the same layout as wohnen-ratgeber.de. Again, it’s full of dull text with links in it. But this website is still indexed in Google, although it has no PageRank and doesn’t rank for “lampen info.” Google didn’t gave it the same penalty as the two other sites from this company.
Anyhow, I wouldn’t want to have a link on any of these websites.
Visibility Increase End 2010
In the beginning of this case study I noticed a sharp increase in visibility at the end of 2010. During my check of the links with Link Detox, I found many paid links to Ostermann that were posted at the end of 2010. The strong link building at the end of 2010 worked well for them, and they had a great increase of visibility. But this could be the main reason for the drop now. The methods that worked years ago don’t work anymore.
These are some examples: http://www.lintermede.ch/der-wohnraum-als-lifestyle-objekt/
A fashion blog that writes an article titled, “The living room as a lifestyle object,” contains a link to Ostermann with the anchor text “Wohnzimmer.” The article was written on August 24th, 2010.
In the right sidebar tag cloud there are keywords like Blackberry, Free SMS and mobiles. Again, it is clear that this is a blog for selling links.
http://www.moderner-lifestyle.de/eine-bar-peppt-die-wohnung-auf/
This site is similar to the previous one – a fashion blog with a Money keyword link to Ostermann. The anchor is “Barhocker” – bar stool. It was also published at the end of 2010. And again we see the tag cloud that has all kinds of keywords that have nothing to do with fashion.
http://deluxeberater.de/deluxe-wohnen/67-die-luxus-kueche.html
This blog, called “Deluxe Consultant,” has articles on deluxe travel, deluxe cars, deluxe notebooks and (of course) deluxe kitchens. This article links to Ostermann with anchor “Küche” or kitchen. All these deluxe articles link to at least one related website with a Money keyword.
The site was also created in 2010.
I can give many more examples, but I think it is clear that Ostermann bought links at the end of 2010 with good results.
Paid Directory Links
I also found links in paid directories. Again, this SEO strategy might have worked in the past, but I wouldn’t want to have a link there now.
On the website are two big buttons to get you to register your website for this directory. On the registration page you can choose the free registration that takes about 11 months, or the paid registration. If you choose the paid registration, the link will be visible immediately, and they congratulate you that you made the choice to become more successful and earn more money.
Everyone wants to become more successful and earn more money, but this is definitely not the way to achieve this.
Conclusion
Their search visibility drop is devastating, and we can assume that Ostermann had a penalty.
As Ostermann helps local organizations, they get promoted at events and online. But they have to be careful not to get too many sitewide links from these websites. They have many more image and sitewide links than the competition, and Google might notice this.
Their link profile shows multiple SEO strategies that might have worked in the past but don’t work anymore. Eventually, Google will punish you for it. Many companies don’t use these link building strategies anymore, but most of them never clean up their old links. Paid blog post links and directory links are not good anymore.
Even if you didn’t get a penalty (yet), it is a good idea to analyze your link profile and clean up the dangerous links.
This case study was written by Christiaan Bollen, Owner and Founder of Boljoro, and proud user of Link Research Tools and Link Detox.
A word from Christoph C. Cemper
This analysis was conducted and written by our new Certified LRT Professional, Christiaan Bollen.
Christiaan demonstrated his expertise in doing a SEO link audit on why Ostermann lost 65% of their search visibility from paid links, paid directories, and sitewide links from organizations. He methodically and carefully investigated the possible causes and isolated the penalized tactics in this case study. Therefore, I’m very happy to certify Christiaan Bollen as the latest Certified LRT Professional by approving and publishing his research on our site.
Our goal is to provide our user community and clients with quality service and knowledge. Our Certified LRT Professionals are key to achieving this goal.
I look forward to his future work, and personally recommend working with Christiaan Bollen whenever you get the opportunity!
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