My Sites Are In A Free Fall ~ HELP!

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by Nathan, Oct 27, 2005.

  1. #1
    I've been tracking all my stats through digitalpoints webmaster tools.
    Over the last 10 days I've seen a free fall in my backlinks, page rank, and indexed pages. It's happening accross the board on all my sites.

    My main site ContractorTalk.com is taking a major hit.

    As of 10/17/05
    Search
    Engine /
    Back Links / PageRank / Pages In URL
    Google: 713 / 5 / 1,970
    Yahoo: 1,851 / N/A / 40,148

    As of 10/27/05
    Search
    Engine /
    Back Links / PageRank / Pages In URL
    Google: 451 / 4 / 1,850
    Yahoo: 195 / N/A / 23,447

    Changes I've made:
    * About 2 months ago I switched to a dedicated server with a New IP address dedicated to the site.
    * Added a (TM) to the page title on all pages
    * Removed "powered by vBulletin" and added "Where Tthe Trades Meet" on the homepage only.

    Any ideas on what I did to mess things up? I'm really scared that my traffic is going to take a hit next. I took a hit like this in March and its taken this long to catch back up and now its happening again. Last time the only change I made was to add a (TM) to the title and then I removed it once the traffic dropped.

    Last, what would you suggest for me to improve my Page Rank, indexed pages, and backlinks? Buy backlinks or something else?

    Thanks for your input. [​IMG]
     
    Nathan, Oct 27, 2005 IP
  2. aaron_nimocks

    aaron_nimocks Im kind of a big deal Staff

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    #2
    Your backlinks jumped again since I looked at it.

    From looking at your site it dont look like you are having a traffic problem. 1 thing I would do though is do a redirect from ContractorTalk.com to www.ContractorTalk.com

    Seems like 1/2 of your links go to one or the other. So redirect it so you combine them both.
     
    aaron_nimocks, Oct 27, 2005 IP
  3. jward

    jward Active Member

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    #3
    @Nathan:

    Google's Jagger update has been scaring a lot of people. I would wait until it stabilizes before getting too worried.

    FYI Nathan's suggestion is great. You should definitely put the redirect in place.
     
    jward, Oct 27, 2005 IP
  4. Nathan

    Nathan Peon

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    #4
    I never even thought of redirecting that. Thanks for the suggestion.
    Any particular way to do it best or just use a simple html redirect?

    Yea, Traffic has been going through the roof... but it still worries me.
    Thanks for the input!
     
    Nathan, Oct 28, 2005 IP
  5. jward

    jward Active Member

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    #5
    Use a 301 redirect with .htaccess if you are on an Apache web server.

    Oops. I meant to say "Aaron's suggestion".
     
    jward, Oct 28, 2005 IP