Catastrophic Rankings Decline - Any thoughts?

Discussion in 'Google' started by mikerowan, Apr 27, 2011.

  1. #1
    Yesterday, on my site www.eTermLifeInsurance.net, something horrible happened.

    I sent from having over 100 competitive keywords in the top twenty to having 1. As a matter of fact, I do not know where the rest of them are, but they certainly aren't in the top 50 according to my SEOMoz tool.

    I haven't been engaging in any new link building activites, and really hadn't even submitted much new content to the site within the past 3 months.

    The only thing that I could think that could have happened is that I lost a blogroll position on a site.......but that by itself was only about 1/20th of all of my links, so it shouldn't have had such a profound effect.

    I have submitted a reconsideration request to Google, but I simply do not know what to do! :(

    This site is/was generating about $3500 a month, so I am absolutely devastated right now since almost all of the traffic came from search.

    Any help or suggestions would be most helpful.

    Thanks,

    Mike
     
    mikerowan, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  2. monosodium

    monosodium Well-Known Member

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    #2
    it could be panda, you have some verbiage in there which is obviously SEO. Like this "When you are trying to make a final decision between term life insurance companies, be sure to use the Internet’s resources to further educate yourself about the basics of the plan."

    also, how many of your pages have affiliate links? do your competitors have those? not sure if google are taking those into account... but if your competitors don't have them, and you do, that might be the factor. you may want to disguise them, or display them via javascript so the bots don't see them.
     
    monosodium, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  3. monosodium

    monosodium Well-Known Member

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    #3
    btw, it was premature to ask for reconsideration without knowing what the problem was. if you're going to make changes, you better make them asap before your site is reviewed.
     
    monosodium, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  4. mikerowan

    mikerowan Peon

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    #4
    I did some research on Panda, and it appears that it happened about a month and a half ago? On the 24th of Feb. to be exact. I would agree with you about the SEO writing, but the sentence that you gave me as an example seems innocent enough. There is no keyword stuffing going on, and I really only used term life insurance companies as a relevent term.

    I do have affiliate links on there, but my competitors do as well, and I only have 2 at most per page. How would I go about disguising them if you think that is the case?

    I am going to do some slight modfications on the site before they review, per your request.
     
    mikerowan, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  5. mikerowan

    mikerowan Peon

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    #5
    Also, another point of interest is that my site has only been gaining strength in searches since the Panda update happened. It is up about 50% since the Feb 24th update......

    I have all original handwritten content on there as well....
     
    mikerowan, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  6. yenny

    yenny Member

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    #6
    Probably not Panda as Panda been rolled out sometimes back. Hows you link strategy? not just scrapebox an xrumer I hope
     
    yenny, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  7. Adraco

    Adraco Active Member

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    #7
    Panda was introduced on the American side of Google on February 24th. Then it's set to be rolled out all over the world starting around now, the end of April/beginning of May. So depending on what geographical area you are targeting, you might have been affected or not, yet. I hope you have saved up some of that money to get yourself started with something new or diversified a bit, to rely so heavily on one site, with only one type of traffic is out right foolish and you deserve what you get for not protecting yourself better. You couldn't seriously have thought this would last forever?
     
    Adraco, Apr 27, 2011 IP
  8. monosodium

    monosodium Well-Known Member

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    #8
    His site seems to be all US traffic. Hmmm. OK, so it probably wasn't Panda. Fair enough point.

    Affiliate links are easy enough to obscure. A quick search will reveal dozens of ways. You know, you might want to remove them completely until the site recovers. In your shoes, I would probably focus on testing that parameter (affiliate links) first. Then get half a dozen fairly strong links, via guest posts or premium directory listings from strong reputable directories. Wait a week or two. If there are no changes, and your site doesn't come back at all, then maybe it wasn't the affiliate links, so try something else.
     
    monosodium, Apr 28, 2011 IP
  9. linkify

    linkify Well-Known Member

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    #9
    First of all I am really sorry to hear that!

    I've looked at the site and alexa rankings. It doesn't look like you were getting lots of traffic. I will say 2000-3000 UV.
    You've got 29 Google links and 2600 Yahoo backlinks. Main page PR is 0. Was it always 0?
    Something is wrong with that, as Google only gives you 0 PR. How old is your website and domain?

    What are your backlink strategies? I analyzed your backlinks and it looks like lots of them are coming from comments. This might explain the problem.

    Tell us more about your site. I am sure we will figure out what might be the problem.


    P.S. If you do not have any other website. It is good time to thing about creating couple more. Diversification will make you rich.
     
    linkify, Apr 28, 2011 IP