I have been varying my link building including onsite blog (post every other day), article marketing, blog commenting and social bookmarking. But I had 4 sites in the top 6 on the first page of google all with unique content. But since the Google update my sites are all over the place, one is even on page 2 when it was #1 and inner page #2! So what has changed so much?? When I built links I got a mix of dofollow and nofollow, I just cannot understand. All the links are from trusted sites no bad neighbourhoods, ethical link building from sites within the niche.
Google's latest project has affected a lot of popular sites. Chances are, if your blog was linked to by a popular site that was punished by this change, your blog suffered the same. Not much you can do about it. Just continue to do what you were doing and decrease your dependency on back links.
What do you mean by "decrease your dependency on backlinks"?? Are you refering to fresh content only?
If you think you are following all the ethical methods then you need not worry. May be with the next PR Update you may get your ranks back. Just work on what you are doing now.
There seems to be some confusion here, one person saying decrease link building and others asaying keep on link building. Does anyone know what they are doing?
geester1, welcome to the world of forums, where <sarcasm>"everybody's" an expert</sarcasm>. To get your answer, all you have to do is think about it. Link building isn't a permanent strategy because it depends on the stability of the 3rd party linking to you. What will you do when that 3rd party disappears? Or when it's punished by Google (which recently happened)? You don't have to stop link building altogether, but focusing on it is a bad idea right now.
Wait until the dust settles with this google thing and more is known, then you can make a better decision. Just be patient
Check out the sites that are in front of you and see why they are currently ranked higher. Especially check out their backlinks. Article directories suffered big ranking losses, so article backlinks aren't as good as they once where. Focus on getting some real backlinks - links from related and complimentary websites (they are gold, and far better than anything you've mentioned). These links are the hardest to get (anyone can do article marketing, blog commenting, social bookmarking) and have the most benefit.
Geester1! Let me take a look at those website for you to pin point the exact problem, if I can...I will provide you with some more insight rather than just speculation on what happened or could have happened because of the Panda update... As well all know... There are 200 different aspects that go into determining a sites rank and relevance to what is being searched for. Some aspects stronger than others.. Just because there was an update not too long ago, doesn't necessarily mean that your sites suffered from just that. Other things could definitely be happening or wrong. Take away backlinking and content for a sec and think about the other issues that could be affecting your site... I can tell you this... There are a lot of sites out there that follow into the "Your site is a piece of shit" in Google's eyes - whether you have awesome, unique, quality content and strong, powerful, high PR, relevant, theme related backlinks. I have ranked several sites on the first page of Google with just some social bookmarking, article marketing and Press Release distribution... NOTHING ELSE... Only one of those sites was affected and when I dug really really deep it had nothing to do with the backlinking or marketing techniques I used. It had to do with one of the other 198 aspects that go into ranking a site. But, never stop backlinking and never stop providing unique quality content either... You can actually do both of them in one - BOOOM! - By way of article marketing and Press release distributions... No need to Panic, slow down, take your time and asses deeply into what you don't think is going on. Expect the unexpected. Not necessarily easy to do, why? Because you don't know. Remember.... Google just might have thought your site fell into their "shitty" category and devalued it... Not likely, but it happens...
it also happen to some of my sites, some got back to their place and with the other i`m still struggling. just continue to build links and you will get your position on the 1st page again
I immediately checked our competitors sites and only internal links between other sites they OWN in same niche show up...all their additional article marketing has vanaished too!
backlinks are intrinsically more difficult to 'fake' than content, so the dependency on them is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Your sites that got hit - what kind of content was it? Original? Articles republished? RSS feeds scraped? What? Because if you didn't have original content (or worse, spun someone else's content really badly, e.g. with a 'collaborative' spinner), you are a classic victim of the Farmer update, and rightly so, no matter how many backlinks you built.
This is ridiculous in my opinion (and most webmasters I would think). It's the equivelent of saying don't focus on building a brand, don't put effort into becoming the brand name on the tips of everyones tongue. No smart business person would think something like this, it's to counter productive. Links can help you on way to many levels to not want to do them, and they are still just as important now as they were in the big engine. The only thing google will ever change about links is the value of links. You will never see an engine (a successful search engine) algo that doesn't factor in popular opinion, and with privacy becoming more and more of a concern, the only way they will soon have left to judge it is by links, just like they have for many years now. If you focus on getting shitty links, then I can understand why they would be of little value to you, if you are a real webmaster, building real websites, and you have the slightest clue, they are gold to you. /end morning coffee
"a mix of dofollow and nofollow" What does this mean? Your backlinks are all from comments/profiles? Chances are your site wasn't devalued, but the backlinks did.