Take a look at the HUGE decline in searches in the pic below. Also, another issue is, say the keyword I'm trying to hit is ADFASP.It's very unique and based on a recent news article. I was the first one to write about it, plus I got many backlinks due to getting linked in other forums and big news sites. However, I am not even in the top 15 pages of Google. Rather, other sites that just post the news an hour or two ago get page one status. By the way my domain is 2 months old. Am I getting pennalized by google?
I assume you mean that your domain is two years old. Most domains that are 2 hours old don't get quite that much traffic. LOL! It looks like you may be experiencing some kind of google punishment. I'd try to think of all the things google might not like about your site and correct them. Examples: Do you have a lot of outbound links? If so, make them nofollow. Maybe google is slapping you for them. Are you selling ads? Or do you have external links in footer? If so, remove them. Any black hat or gray hat stuff going on? If so-- fix it. Did you make any recent changes to the content of your site? If so, change it back to the ay it was. I had a similar situation about six months ago. I went in and took out everything that I figured google may not have liked. And, sure enough, I popped back up to where I should be. It took awhile, but I did return to my place near the top of my niche. Good luck to you.
I meant 2 months old guys sorry. I have 7 links on the right that are not paid, but I put them there and they clearly have nothing to do with the site, so they are nofollowed like this: <a href="http://www.buytemplates.net/WordPress-web-templates.aspx" rel="nofollow">Wordpress Templates</a> Also, I do make outbound links quite a bit, probably 1-3 per post but they are all relevant and not fake at all The most recent big thing that happened was I got linked on Digg, which turned into a linkback from gizmodo and lifehacker as well. I haven't made any drastic changes since. Is there somebody I can pay or someway I can find out why I am being punished? I don't have time to scan my entire site to see what I've done wrong. I don't use any blackhat methods. I think some guy said he would submit my site to directories (I never told him to but he wanted to because I helped him), but I have talked to him recently and he said it hasn't been done yet. Would that be the reason?
Ok I think I know how I broke the rules. I offered a contest, and anybody linking back to my page would get some points and additional ballots into the contest. I have seen many blogs done this though, why would I get punished for doing the same? Please check out this post, just scroll down to the different ways to win and it's the 3rd or 4th one http://windows7center.com/windows-7-news/windows-7-center-left4dead-giveaway/
i think u need to check your main keywords ranking in google where traffic is coming, the keywords are down ?
It looks like that you are getting some punishment from the big G. Try to lessen your outbound links by converting it it to nofollow.
I will consider doing that but the links are all relevant and not forged in any way. What about the contest? I've seen tons of make money blogs do similar contest but I also believe that was why I was punished. What do you guys think?
Am not sure if you are getting some kind of ban by Google, but here is my advice... You need to do one very important change for your website/blog, you need to set some redirections... Make sure which version of your website you want to use in the URL, with OR without the www before the domain name and set a L301 Redirect in your .htaccess file to the required URL.. This way called 'URL Canalization' and am sure it will help your site focusing the power of the links and PR distributions, however.. you can also avoid any 'Duplicate Content' penalties.. REP is most appreciated
To be honest, what you did takes a LOT of courage. I for one do not have enough courage to take out everything from my website. Perhaps, the difference is that you might have a couple of things that you knew were kind against Google's guidelines but for a guy like me, I have followed every god damn guideline provided by Google and I used to rank very high but then G slapped me for "NOTHING". I recently got back to page 1 for my niche but then again got slapped and now I am way down below. I have no idea what wrong I have done, or what I am missing and sometimes when I even think of starting over, it scares the sh** out of me! I am glad it worked well for ya!
it happened to me too. i started to get many visitors from google and suddenly it changed. my domain is 3 months old and i have nothing bad on my site. i think it is about domains age. so i decided to wait.
Whats your URL? have you dropped any backlinks recently? Site age? Does it rank for its own domain in google? .