One of my sites took a big blow yesterday. I had been working on the site for over a year. It has a pagerank 5, lots of NATURAL backlinks, many article backlinks, and it had pretty good SEO. As a result, it ranked on the first page for some EXCELLENT keywords. I never paid for directory submissions. I never sold links. There was no blackhat SEO involved. I did have a small link exchange section, but all of the links were niche-related. I never bought any links, but I did buy about a half-dozen advertisements (banner ads and text ads on related sites.) About 90% of the content was unique. The other 10% was duplicate only from articles I wrote for Ezinearticles and re-published on my own site. Yesterday the site disappeared off Google's SERPs. I couldn't find the page anywhere (aside from typing the domain name). I don't understand what I did to lose my ranking, but I'm not posting to whine about it. I'm posting to ask what I should do next. The site still gets SOME traffic-- through yahoo and people clicking on my banner ads-- but Google supplied nearly 75% of my 2,000+ visitors a day. My question: Now what? The site sold a specific product. Should I create a new site that sells the same product? Or will I be better off if I keep working on the old site to try to build it up again? Is Google "forgiving" over time or has the site been pretty much wiped off the serps forever? What should my next steps be? Many thanks for any and all advice. - FB P.S. If someone would be so kind as to offer your thoughts as to why you think the page was bumped off the serps, I'd be very appreciative. I can send you the url via pm.
It seems a number of people have been talking about their site getting bumped from the SERps here ... I don't know if anyone has really figured it out yet. But as of the last pagerank update, it seems google has been giving greater weight to more recent timely sources (latest articles, press releases within the past 72 hours, etc) ... have you been sitting on the site for a while, or have you been actively promoting it over the past couple weeks?
I would say you got smoked because of your link farm. Remove it imediately and apply for a reinclusion here http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843 http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/some tips from matt cuts on how to do it. You should bounce back up in 4-6 weeks Having a link exchange is against the google guidelines.
I think you should remove your link exchange pages ... wait a few days and see if you get your ranking back. If not you can apply for a reinclusion. Best of luck. --
You're not alone. Read this for an opinion on the re-inclusion request. Google just slapped my whitehat site too. Read this if you are interested. I lost all serp rankings within seconds. Then they all came back after a few days for a few hours. Then they were all gone again. All you can do is the re-inclusion request as far as I know. I doubt it will ever be read, but that's the only way to "appeal" with G, As for your link farm, there is nothing wrong with it as long as you no-follow the outbound links. That is my understanding of it anyways. It's a lot of crap though. Virtually every freaking blog has a blogroll with all of their friends' sites, or related sites they like. So is G going to remove virtually every blog from their dumb index???????? Good luck man. I feel ya.
Many, many thanks for your help everyone! +rep to you all! I have spent the last two days following your advice-- 1. I filled out the request on Google's webmaster tools 2. I made all of my link pages nofollow (my sincere apologies to my link partners-- I will be trying to contact those that I can.) 3. I added some fresh, non-duplicate content 4. I wrote a snail mail letter to google explaining my situation. I know they probably won't give much attention to a snail mail letter, but I figured it can't hurt. I'm depsperate here. You guys rock... thanks again for the advice. Now I guess it's just wait and see for me. - Tim