Reasons Why My Site Tanked in Jagger

So J3 looks like it's winding to a close. And I've been pretty much destroyed. I'm trying to decide why my site which had done so well for so long would suddenly drop out of the serps. I thought it might be useful to discuss some of the possible causes. I know it's all conjecture at the moment but it may start some interesting conversations.

1. Reciprocal Links - yes I have some, not a lot, probably less than 40. Most are relevant.

Why I Don't think these are responsible : Firstly there isn't enough of them. Secondly there are a bunch of people who have have stated that their sites with lots of recips have not been affected by Jagger.

2. One Way Links - There's a bunch of these, naturals and directory submissions. I would guess that there's at least 30 anchor variations to my main page. Two sub pages are fairly heavily links to as well with about 5 anchor variations.

Why I Don't think these are responsible: Because if they were we would all be screwed. The links are natural, no purchased links, just a few directory submissions.

3. The Coop - Yes I use it. Yes it was responsible for a lot of rankings being higher than perhaps they should have been. Yes I know it's not a SEO tool.

Why I Don't think this is responsible: Because quite a few people are reporting COOP only sites still holding rankings.

4. Non - relevant content - Yes i have some. Perhaps 20-30 articles that are not related at all to main site topic. These have been completely wiped out by the Jagger updated. Traffic to them is less than 5% of what it was before the update.

Why I think this *MIGHT* have been responsible: The rankings for the off topic content pages are gone. Completely. Some of them I cannot even find in the top 1000 results. The on-page content and internal linking was enough to have these very non competitive terms ranking top 20 before Jagger. The content is unique and very industry specific and very accurate. I know because I'm an engineer who works every day in these fields.

5. Cross - linking - I have 5 different sites. They are all on different class C addresses. There's some cross linking but it's not heavy. The main site only links to 2 of the other sites but all of them link back to the main site. All five link back to the main site using sitewide footer links.

Why I think this *MIGHT* have been responsible: 3 of the 5 other sites are not really related. Sitewide links in the footer are not really natural links.

6. Ago of Domain - My domain was registered in 2003 and is thus fairly new.

Why I think this *MIGHT* have been responsible: My 5 major terms are all dominated now by domains registered in 2000 or earlier.


I've never engaged in any cloaking nor did I purchase any links before this update. No-one seems to have directly copied my content (as far as I can tell).

So, does anyone else have any other things they can add to this list so we can tick them off one at a time? I'd like to get to the bottom of this so I can make changes and see if I can get back on top of things.

Cheers,

Mark

 

Mark,

My site is about five years old. I was hit badly at the beginning of Jagger but have recovered almost all the way. What is interesting to me is your point about unrelated content. I have a section that is only vagely related to the whole and although I have good reason to include it, I can see why the big G. would find it irrelevant. That whole section has tanked and has not come back though just about everything else has (so far).

Links both recip and one-way, I agree, have nothing to do with it. I don't use the COOP and I don't do any cloaking so the content that is unrelated to the main page is the only thing in your post I can comment on.

 

Could you give more details on #4? What kind of content? How unrelated?

 

Extremely unrelated. The main software site (seen below in my signature) is about time and billing software. The unrelated content is some home improvement articles I wrote and a weblog about a house we are building.

 

Most of my sites got trashed in the beginning but have recovered very well as of today. All my content is relevant. I don't think that's your problem though. I think if your content was that out of your scope, well you probably shouldn't have it there unless you can tie it in. But a few pages shouldn't have this affect. More like a combination of factors.

I also think that sitewide footer links are valued much lower than before. Relevant links and Anchor text placed close to relevant content carries more link weight, IMO.

 

It's frustrating. Some of my keywords were knocked down quite a lot in this latest wave. I have lost a lot of traffic. Almost two thousand clicks per day.

 

Well, mnemtsas, I don't think you will be able to figure out what happened, at least not until this settles down. I have been checking out several forums and I really haven't noticed any clear pattern on sites that got hit or sites that got bumped up

 

Fryman I suspect you're correct.

The complete delisting of the non relevant content screams non-relevant content penalty or worse still a rotating link penalty from the COOP (which were the only external links to these pages). To be honest I'm not worried too much about these pages. They were only bringing in $15-20 a day from adsense and losing that's not a big deal.

My main pages are a different matter. The lower rankings on these is a real mystery to me. Sure I use the coop, sure I have a couple of sitewide footer links pointing at my site, sure I do some recip linking with relevant sites. However, I do none in any great volume. Recip links <40, site wides pointing at my site <5, cross linking between a couple of other sites. Other sites using the coop as the sole source of links don't seem to have been affected at all.

The other sites in my field (one in particular) use a range of dodgy tactics. Site wides from dozens of unrelated sites, thousands of recips, cross linking between many different 'company' sites, keyword stuffing, and in one case cloaking pages with content containing MY PRODUCT NAMES for the robots and their content for normal visitors. Despite this, there they are, all sitting in the top 10.

It's weird. Everything I think that I may have done to trigger this is is being done (on a much greater scale usually) on my competition sites too.

 

I had some three way linking on my server, where sites that linked to one of mine where linked back to from other one of my domains.

It wasn't a cooperative three way linking program, nothing I advertised or solicited for. I just wanted to acknowledge the folks that used our services and linked back to us. 'here are people supporting us' type of thing.

However, I suspect googlebot may see it as a purposeful, arraigned, 3-way.

Every site on my server has been hit hard in Jagger. All my rankings across many domains on the server are down hundreds of positions from their pre-jagger rankings.

Anyway else doing three way linking, either pre-arraigned with other websites or not, and been hit hard? I don't know if this is what is hurting me or not, but trying to figure it out! I have removed our supporters page for now.

 

I think age became MUCH more important with this update.

 

Did you ever use blogs for one-way link purpose,, it also heart SERP

Jagger treat as Spam bloger marketing

Even I also face similar problem, after that I decided not to use blogs.

 

No. Nothing like that at all.