Hey guys, thanks for reading this as I'd really appreciate any ideas you have on my situation! Quick Background: I bought a well established blog in Dec. 08. It was a PR5 and Google sent about 16K visitors that month. I worked hard and in Jan. Google traffic increased to over 22K. Not bad! Then on Feb. 1 the Google traffic dropped sharply. I can see it on my analytics and it is quite dramatic. Ever since then Goog traffic has been closer to 5K a month. The Problem? In Dec. I sold several (about 4) sitewide text links. The sold links content varied and only one could be considered "related" content. The previous owner had setup lots of different link trades but had never (to my knowledge) sold any. Currently there are three "sold" text links on the site. I have since moved them under the heading "sponsored links" but I doubt that helps. Btw, in the last PR update, my site dropped to 4 which wasn't a huge deal. I just want my traffic back and for my posts to rank high again for keywords. Any ideas?
The links must have effected the traffic. Secondly if you have links coming from bad neighbourhood like Porn, Casino , that will hurt too you cannot afford to take that risk. Also check your outgoing links if you have a site related to web design giving out links to a furniture site doesent that sound fishy? Try to make the outgoing links as relevant as possible. Also was the previous owner buying traffic? I heard many buyers sell sites with Fake Traffic. Get that checked. Remove those outgoing links and start adding new content and get juicy contents submitted to social bookmarking sites only top ones.
My advice would be to get rid of any non relevant links.using black hat methods will only do more harm than good and you run the risk of that PR dropping to 0. Your focus really should be on relevance for links both incloming and outgoing.
Sponsored Link is not a good idea at all. Basically you admit you're selling backlinks! Think about it. There isn't much to do in your case. Remove the backlinks if possible and wait 3-6-12 months for your penalty to expire.
With paid links you can end up with PR of zero. Remove them if you want to maintain your current status. You'll find more information here on my blog
i have never seen traffic decreasing bcoz of selling links.I wonder why.i have only seen the PR getting reduced.This is something else.You better check if you lost traffic for some major keywords and build links to that page.
I would check those links very carefully and make sure they are respectable sites, you dont want your site to be associated with a bad neighborhood. Check the sites you are linking to, but also check the sites they are linking to. You can be held responsible for anything on their site technically.
You sold links. So this might be prime reason for drop in Google traffic. Are you engaged in other black hat SEO activities?
Thanks a pile for the feedback. NO blackhat methods were ever used - not before and not now. The site doesn't need it. It is updated daily with good content and has good incoming links. That's why it had a PR5 and good SE traffic to begin with. Anyway, to update you - I have removed and refunded the two paid links (they still had 7 months left). Sorry again to the buyer! Lesson to anyone reading this: Be extremely careful when selling links. If they were indeed what caused my traffic to drop, then they were not worth it. BTW: The only other thing I can think of that changed is the ad networks I use are slightly more "risque"... but I can't imagine that's it. Educated guesses really are all we have with this stuff... Thanks again!
IMHO, selling a couple of links is not the end of the world and is not what caused the drop. Google sees it as you saying, "Hey, I like these sites. You might to." Especially if you don't have some automated payment process and verbiage that says, "Buy a link here. Click the buy button." What it could be though is the seller removed all his rented links. Do a backlink checker and see if they've changed since the site changed hands. If that's not it, check your competition. Did they just do something to outrank you? What was it? Repeat but improve on the technique. Good luck.
it is not allowed to sell links, maybe that is the reason. you'd better remove the links as soon as possible.
Well said, all you can do is find all factors that changed not too long before the drop and guess which one is responsible. Selling links can become nasty, especially if some friendly competitor reports you and in contrast to what nanovation assumes it can hurt your ranking alot. To speed up the process you could write a nice reinclusion request, tell them that you removed the sold links, you won't do it again, you are a good guy with a nice site and hope they remove the penalty without having to wait for it to expire.
As a member of the Web Guild, I was at Google once a month for meetings and got to hobnob with some of the employees that shared lots of tidbits of data thanks to the open bar. As the Director of WW eCommerce Sales, I also got to meet with several higher level employees that were willing to share more thanks to the $1M a year advertising budget I had for Google AdWords. One of the things I learned was that unless you're using a bid for placement script or explicitly say "BUY A LINK HERE" on your website, Google has no way of knowing for sure which links are genuine suggestions and which ones are paid for. Even if one of your competitors reported you, again, Google has no way of knowing for sure if the links are real suggestions or paid for. Thus, they do not ding your PR. However, if you email Google and tell them you were selling links...well, if I was working at Google and got handed your email, I'd be sure to permanently remove you for good.
I must say that selling links is one of the best ways to earn fast cash online but i live in constant fear of getting on the bad side of Google. I don't know how big G does it but some of my friends have been caught and punished. Of course, they were already able to sell a couple of links before they got clamped down