I have a website about traveling the world. Up until a few days ago, I ranked high on a number of keywords I wanted to rank high on. For example, I was #10 for "how to travel the world" and #2 for sample travel itinerary. I was pleased with my good fortune. Now, for a number of key phrases I ranked high for (more than just the above two), I am no longer anywhere near the first page. Heck, I'm so far under, I gave up looking for my site that's how bad it is. Why did this change happen? Have I been sandboxed? Did I get blackballed? Why would I go from being ranked to being hating in a matter of days? I didn't just drop a few positions, I fell off the face of the earth! Any help on why this happened and what I can do would make my day!
To start of with the website is fairly new, started a couple of months back. New websites are mostly characterized by instant rankings on some keywords and then a sudden drop, essentially called the Google sandbox effect. The sandbox is nothing but an aging filter that evaluates the website on various parameters. Keep up the good work and the website would come out of it sooner. Stop doing work and it will stay there longer and when it eventually comes out, it will be nowhere to be found - as good as staying in the sandbox. Keep up with your regular SEO activities(both on and off page) and you would see some encouraging results. I did not scrutinize the website for long but here is what I found. The title of the home page is repeated in all other pages - not advisable. The title of each page should be unique and keyword. Caution: Don't make it look artificial by stuffing keywords in it. Make Alt tag description more informative and keyword rich. The "caution" applies here as well and in general should be used everywhere. I recommend you read Google SEO starters guide. Search for it and have a read. Will help you sort most of the on page factors.
Relax... If you still have keywords that rank , most probably you're not banned, sandbox or blackballed.. I think this might be the google dance.. After few days your keywords will be back, just continue build links...
Merely 4 months old site, FORGED PR4, way too quick backlinking (more than 15000+ backlinks), Not a good idea, Google has penalized you, I believe. Also, your website is in sandbox too. Now, work slowly and naturally. My suggestions - Try to update the content only Don't build more than 1 unique link on alternate days. Don't go for paid links at all (at least for next 2-3 months) Take help of few most popular bookmarking sites like Digg, technorati, Reddit etc. Don't try heavy bookmarking too. It'd help you, I hope. Relax and Cheers!
A lot of this links come from places like digital point forums or my friends blog pages that update and update (like every archive page seems to be counted as a link?). Is Google going to penalize me for having lots of forum posts? I got a lot of my friends to add me to their blog roll and many of those sites are pr4 and 5s so I suspect that is why I have such a high pr right out of the bat. I do a lot of article submission per week (about 3 articles to 10 sites). Is that too much? @Nancy: Thank you for your help. What do you mean the title is different though? I use the meta title to change it? How do I change it more?
As far as I can see this bit "How to Travel and Backpack the World on a Budget" is repeated in the title of every inner page. For example: Your about us page title is "About Us | How to Travel and Backpack the World on a Budget". (The highlighted text is repeated). Wherein the title of each page should be unique,relevant to page and for SEO purposes keyword rich. Page title is the one of the most important on-page factor for ranking. As mentioned before, read Google SEO starter guide. Will be of great help. Cheers.
No matter from where the links come, too many links in such a short span is anyways considered as spam in google's eye. I didn't understand how your friends' blog pages update can add links to your backlinks count. Are you asking them to place your anchored texts in their posts. If so, it is not a good approach too. In anyway, keep your link building campaign on a slow pace for sometime until Google takes it natural. Make sure of the quality of your friends' blogs that are giving you blogrolls. Keeping a forged PR is not legitimate. 3 articles per week is alright. No issues in that. But for some time, you can go with only top 3-4 article directories like Ezinearticles.com, Buzzle.com, Hubpages etc. Too much of everything will get you down. Go natural, your site is good and can work really well. But with this speed, Google may be annoyed.
I've been told that my site is being penalized because of lots links really quickly. But a lot of the links I have look like this: http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html Dec 31, 2008 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html Jan 2, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html Dec 24, 2008 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html Jan 1, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html Jan 2, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html Dec 29, 2008 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html Dec 28, 2008 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html Jan 3, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html Jan 1, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html Jan 3, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html Jan 1, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html Jan 3, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html Jan 2, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html Jan 4, 2009 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html Dec 31, 2008 http://escapenewyork.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html Dec 29, 2008 Am I being hurt for my friends blogs being counted? It didn't seem to hurt my other blog. Looking for some other opinions on this topic and my problem.