Hi Everyone, For several months, I have been climbing the ranks for my primary keyword phrase (lets call it "A B") and I suddenly dropped out of the top 1000 in Google completely. Does anyone have any idea why my site has suddenly dropped out of the top 1000 for "A B" in google? It is still #1 for "AB" run-together as one word, because my domain is www.AB.com. I wanted to rank for "A B," so I started by submitting my website to about 75 (free and paid) directories with "A B" as the anchor text. My site initially ranked at around #800 in google for "A B," and climbed all the way up to #87 for the phrase. However, suddenly my website doesn't even rank in the top 1000 for "A B" in google (but it ranks #2 and #9 in MSN and yahoo). I didn't think that targetting "A B" in my directory submissions would be a problem (in terms of an un-natural link profile) because my domain is www.AB.com, but it looks like doing so may have set off a red flag to google for this specific phrase ; I have no idea why I would suddenly drop out of the ranking for "A B" completely, especially if my domain is AB.com. I am still ranking for many other phrases, so the specific loss of the one I targeted seems fishy to me. I also used some TLAs, but not targeting "A B" so I don't think the penalty would be due to them. Does anyone have any idea what happened here? Any suggestions and advice on how to alleviate this problem are appreciated! Thanks for your time.
happens sometimes, probably nothing to worry about. Just monitor it and it will probably reappear within a couple of weeks.
Did a very large % of the links to your site have the same anchor text (ie A B)? It seems to be important to vary the anchor text quite often - I believe (but I'm not certain) that a filter is triggered if too many links have the same anchor text. I concluded that because I had a site do the same after doing a 'lots of directory submissions for a cheap price' type offer, all of which had the same anchor text. Hasn't recovered yet...(6 months later) And my anchor text was like yours, A B for sitename AB.com
Yeah, so you think those unnatural directory submissions are what caused this "removal"? Is there any other explanation? I am going to try to get back in the ranks by altering the signal to noise ratio of this key phrase with more directory submits, TLAs and PPP advertising. Would be best to target completely different key phrases ("C D") or can I still mix in my primary key phrase ("A B") in anchor text, like, "C A B D," "A B D," "A C D," "B C D," etc?
I'd go for A C, B C, B A (if it works) and A, B on their own. So yes, I'd usually keep one of the words if not both (or a slight variant on the word eg 'big' can be replaced by 'large' etc occasionally) I also think deeplinks to the site is part of the same puzzle of appearing natural and adding 'noise- which may not include A or B at all of course, depending what the pages are about. This process takes much longer to achieve good results for a particular keyword but when it does do well it's much more stable. My own site now does well for A B, B A, A C and others as a result so it does pay off in the end.
Thanks for the reassurance. I just rented 30 TLAs (PR 3 - 6) with this strategy and I am going to supplement it with HMPs, PPPs and more directory submissions. I am new to this and am not sure what works best, so I am trying to hit all angles. The last angle i'm looking at now is all these inexpensive link building services. They have always looked shady to me, but since I have done everything else, it can't hurt to check them out. Some that caught my eye so far are: newwaylinks.com alliednetworkinc.com linksjunk.com receivelinks.com What is your opinion on these types of sites? Are any of them worth risking being penalized? Thanks again
I'm not familiar with any of those sites but i did get involved with linkmarket briefly a couple of years ago. I think some more up to date link systems are more sophisticated but I avoid all of them. Personally I only ever set out to get links from related sites (plus some directories and general blogs). It's important to remember that one link from a relevant page / site is worth much more than lots of irrelevant links from 'link directories' tacked on the end of a site - most of which never get indexed, and those that do will pass little benefit. Trying to get fewer, but better quality, links seems to work better. As people have said before, the harder a link is to get, the more valuable it is. That's pretty close to the truth a lot of the time. But yes, getting links from a wide range of places - blogs, directories, related sites etc is a good idea.
Thanks for the valuable info-- you definitely saved me a lot of time and energy. If you have any more suggestions about link building that I haven't hit on, please let me know