Hi guys. My website www.myxboxfix.com was doing really good recently in google. It was indexed about a week ago and it was ranking on page 1 for some longer phrases such as "how to fix xbox 360 no tools". For that phrase my site appeared on position 9. For popular keywords such as "repair 3 red lights" I was on position 40. I was finally getting first, small traffic from google. Just now i have seached for my website to see how it was doing and I realized i have a massive drop in position. For the keyword "how to fix xbox 360 no tools" i am now on page 3 and for the keyword "repair 3 red lights" my page dropped beyond page 10 About an hour ago I submitted my site to some social bookmarking directories but I doubt that is what somehow caused the sudden drop since the backlinks cant be even indexed yet at this time. I heard that new sites get indexed very well in google but they drop over time, is it possible that this could be the cause? I think it could also be because my page is a single-page landing page without much content. What do you think is the reason for the sudden position change? Should I delete this website completely and start a new website from a scratch but this time concentrate on content too? Thank you for your time
Yes this is the answer. & sometimes they penalized website for many reason...as a result your site maybe on SANDBOX [not sure] Don't do this. Just keep posting with good content & make some quality backlinks & link up with high PR site.
I would say no - improve the content on your current site, get backlinks. NB the social bookmarking sites wouldn't have caused a drop in position - I've been adding my site to 20-30+ such sites over the last couple of months and we've shot up in the serps. Note that the age of a website can play a big part int he serps - Google doesn't always like new sites.
A second thought - just make sure you're not being penalised for keyword spamming, black hat seo etc. Keyword spamming on a site can lead to a drop in serps.
What you are experiencing is perfectly normal. It's affectionately referred to as the Google "honeymoon". They do this for almost all new sites when they first discover them. For a few days, sometimes even a few weeks, they will show pages from your new site on page 1 of the SERPs for what they believe are relevant search phrases. There are many theories as to why they do this... To possibly get some statistics or initial ranking factors needed by the Ranking algorithm that can only be gathered if people see your site in the SERPs (possibly click-thru-rates? not sure if CTR is a ranking factor or not... but is just an example of something that could only be accurately determined if shown on page 1). Or to get late breaking news about a particular topic to the top of the SERPs. But in a few days or weeks the honeymoon usually ends (unless you aquire a lot of backlinks while on page 1 during the honeymoon)... your pages will more than likely disappear falling way back into the SERPs where you naturally rank (and should have been all along). Then the REAL work begins... Just continue creating unique, compelling content and developing backlinks.
get more content and more back links and make sure you use the same keywords in the anchor text of your back links that you are targeting in the searches.
That's why everyone try SEO with many tricks, Nobody can be a static in Google SERP. So you have to get performance with Link building and other SEO related works. Don't go for a SPAM. Read good guides and work hard.
Ok thank you very much guys. Maybe this is a stupid question but is content absolutely necessary to rank high? I am currently happy with my page the way it is. It is a landing page, nothing more and I dont really want to add any content to it. So if I had 1000 backlinks and no content would I still rank poorly?
Ultimately it depends on what others are doing...if someone else has 1000 backlinks and quality content then they will out rank you. Analyze your placement competition to see what they have going on with their sites and backlinks. I recommend having a well optimized website with quality content as a strong foundation for SEO and then adding backlinks as needed to stay on top.
FYI...Google does give an initial boost for a week or two to new sites, having a well optimized site will enable you to ride that wave longer.
Actually Google absolutely hates landing pages showing up in their results. They even hate thin affiliate sites that actually have several pages of weak content. If an affiliate page shows up and and is basically a sales page... adds no real value... they will make sure that page doesn't continue to rank well. You might want to spend some time reading through Google's Webmaster Guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webma...er=35769&cbid=-tzujh6adyr29&src=cb&lev=answer) and especially the sections on how they feel about sites with little or no useful content (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66361).