I had similar problem with my article directory "postarticlesplus.net", it was on first page of Google then suddenly it disappeared from SERP.. it was not even in 200 but I kept building link slowly. From last one month it is on the first page on 5th position in Google with keyword "post articles".
If your penalised by google, and sandboxed by the sound of things, then the only thing is leave the site for at least a month. Start linking and Make sure it is seen as consistent and natural by google. 1000 backlinks in the first few days of promotion, followed by 2-3 links the next week, followed by another 1000 backlinks. Highlights to google, that this site may be spam, even if that isn't the case. A steady stream of backlinks and blog posts is the answer.
What are the terms you are targeting for faitshandyman ? Have you set up your page titles and are you using the appropriate anchor text?
If all is well with your backlink quality, then certainly other factors did harm to your website. There is a rule in seo "The more the better". But wrong deeds in the "more" efforts, will set you back.
Just have a consistent link building, if you stopped for awhile of course your competitor will outranked you.
I had this problem with one of my websites, The website was new and was ranking on the first page of google for a pretty competitive keyword. everytime i built new links aggressively my website went down 10-50 pages. but with consistant backlinking and patience it always came back up within 2-3 weeks and it came back up higher in the rankings. So keep up the link building and be patient.
I think the best for you to do now is to keep up the backlinking but keep the number to not more than 50 a day. Consistency is the key. Vary the keywords, and get the links from various type of sources: social bookmarks, profile page, articles, blog comments, etc. Do this for the next few weeks and see how it goes. Get the backlinks from quality sites. Stay away from the ones that you think can give you problems.
There are a couple of questions I have here: What problems can one pick up from incoming links? I understand that you only have to worry about the sites you are linking to from your site. And where do you find 50 links a day? Or so many more for that matter? What value do you get from quantity? I have been schooled to believe that it is the expected life value of the link you get, that is important. And that it is better to spend the time it takes to find sites where your link will get the time it needs to mature and grow. Finally how important is anchor text? Is there any point in building thousands of links which don't link the host site directly to key words in your page title?
Just try to build more links with different keywords and you will be in a better position when you site gets back up.
It appears that everyone is good to give advice but do not have the experience. My site bounces up and down, in position 1 on google for 6 months then in position 11 (second page) now, I have been doing ethical link building (article submissions), getting no more than 30 quality links per day most days, week in week out. So don't worry if you have done nothing wrong, as I have heard people saying that your competition could have linked poor sites to your site and this may affect you - ignore them, I have tried it and it does NOT work! Be patient, give it a few days to see what is happening and maybe you will see your site higher than before. Good luck!
Thanks, everyone. I am getting from this thread that consistency and patience are the two most important attributes in the link building process.
Yes, very much true. Posting 50 links one day and none the next is no good... Search Engines need to see constant links being added.
An article, a press release, makes sense. But as a link lbuilding technique? What is the point of many copies of the same article? Do these not get flagged as duplicate content? And even if other webmasters pick it up and use it, do the resulting links help with positioning without the anchor text link builders are required to use.