Hails folks! I have stumbled upon one weird thing I've never seen before. After having some aggressive promo campaign that caused getting lots of new inbound links we got our site out of Google top 100. It used to be number 1-5 for more than 30 keywords and suddenly BOOM! we are in the middle of nowhere... Question: Is there a tool to check whether the site is penalized? 1. it's in Google index (but somewhere in top 1000) so it's not banned 2. SEO works were applied properly 3. Google is strangely penalizing the INDEX page only while other ones are doing OK Any suggestions? Thanks a lot
if you still find your site within 100 position, then your site is not banned. when you launch a new site and start building backlinks, you get an initial boost in ranking due to freshness factor. that initial ranking usually dont last for long and you will see your site going back in ranking. this is not a penalty but rather normal. when you get the initial ranking, googe ranks you based on freshness factor without having enough info on your site. once you start building backlinks and keep adding content and keep promoting your site, google then have lot more info than they previously had and assign a more solid ranking that your site deserves. what you see now is what you got. now you start the real work and keep building backlinks to climb up higher
There's actual a bit of a misnomer to what has happened. If you built backlinks aggressively, Google may have taken these links in as spam. While your site has not been directly penalized, your links may have been. My suggestion is to just not worry about it and keep building links. If I remember correctly, Google made a blog psot some time back about that in 2010, aggressive linkbuilding would have some type of diminished effect.
3. Google is strangely penalizing the INDEX page only while other ones are doing OK I have seen this on one of my sites also. All pages appear to be ok except the index page. Are you completely removed from Google or just reduced rank?
This is true. When we launched the site we were quite high in the begining then went into oblivion and have now started to come back up again. We are now back where we shoudl be page one on a number of keywords.
I had the same thing on one of my sites. Went from position 1 to 101 overnight. Pretty sure it was down to building too many links with the exact same anchor text in a short amount of time. Removing some links and alternating the anchor text of the others fixed the problem and now back on the front page.
You are still indexed. Your on page 3 for the keyword you mentioned. To get to #1 takes time and work but you should be able to do it.
Erm....I have just checked it - NOPE! There is no our site on the third page of Google results. Please note - I am talking about INDEX.ASPX of the site.
The easiest way to tell if you have been de-indexed is through the site:www.?????.com command. If your homepage shows when running this command in Google then you have not been de-indexed. You might have a penalty for building links to quickly. This my theory but Google looks at linking building trends and when you have lots a links built quickly one month and nothing the next this might draw some interest from Google.
After two months I've just got the site back to life! yahoo! My conclusion - don't overuse backlink building! =) if got punished - just stop adding new links/articles/posts pointing to your site and wait.
Are you saying that you find your keywords on the first top page again? Gotta take your advice here...."No Adding Backlinks Too Quickly" Great thread