I re-built a site for the company I work for a few months ago now www.medp.net I tried my best to optimize my site for the keywords Medical Billing Service and California Billing Service. I wasn't doing too bad was ranked like 60 on medical billing service and higher with california. Now I'm not even found on google. I recently created a bunch of longtail keyword websites that all have very similar content and uploaded them to my sitemap without directly linking them to my website. Some examples include... http://www.medp.net/specialty/billin...diologist.html http://www.medp.net/city_and_special...ardiology.html http://www.medp.net/city_and_special...ardiology.html In total the sitemap includes about 500 websites. Did this hurt my rank? Or am I missing some important information on website optimization?
The top reasons for a drop or increase in rankings is based on new backlinks and content updates. Did you slow these two things-to-do down, 1 to 3 weeks before your change of rank? Everything else is so low on the totem pole that there is 4 feet of blank wood after the backlink and update carvings.
yea I haven't been quite as active with my search for backlinks lately. Probably about two or three weeks ago was my last addition to links or directories. The content on the page doesn't change all that much because its used for marketing purposes so the message doesn't change that often. to try and get new content I added a news ticker to my homepage. seems to be working i've been getting crawled more. The only other thing I could think of was some of the links I've aquired lately. They are questionable in their content (meaning they don't necessarily involve medical billing) could that also be a source of the drop in rank?
I wouldn't be concerned with backlinks on irrelevant theme pages. I have never seen or heard of a backlink being a penalty. It is the lack of, any, constant new backlinks that makes a site drop like a bad habit.