Hello, I recently had one of my domains get penalized, I believe, as it no longer shows up for any of my keywords. I had re-written an article kinda half-arsed it, and i'm sure some of the phrases were the same. I'm not exactly sure why it was penalized as it's not like google told me but it definitely no longer shows up for keywords it was #1 or #2 for. I can't find it any of the pages up to whenever I gave up looking. Anyway, my question is if I removed the content will google put me back in the serps? And start putting up more original content? Or is that site pretty much dead as far as google is concerned?
It is definitely worth trying. You want to avoid using duplicate content. Your website isn't necessarily dead to Google. Just work at earning their trust back. If you don't have a Google Webmaster Tools account, sign up for one and submit your xml sitemap. Keep getting more links and keep adding new unique content. If the problem doesn't clear up in 2 or 3 weeks you might want to try submitting a reinclusion request with Google and explain the issue. You can PM me the url and I can check it out. Certain penalties knock your site back to the 5th or 6th page. A more severe penalty puts you past page 10. If you can't find it at all, it could be completely banned, but may still be recoverable. Have you tried a site:www.domain.com search?
The site is still indexed, and yes i have a webmaster tools account, one of the first things i do with any site I get, to submit sitemaps. It's just strange the site is dropped from most of the obvious keywords I was going for (including the domain name for instance). There's no notifications or notes from google on my webmaster tools account. It was number 2 for my main keyword at one point, i just don't get it. The site is PR3, none of the competing sites on the top 10 are pr3 or better. It's confusing.
You can get a penalty while retaining PR. PM me the url and I can check it out. When you do get a penalty Google won't notify you in any way.
I have always believed that Google would not "penalize" a site for duplicate contents, but rather, simple use the site that had the contents FIRST. However, if the duplication is BLANTANT, then they might penalize the site with the most recent copied contents.
It was not very blatant. I'm more trying to figure out what happened as I had been doing things to promote the site a lot during the week prior to it being dropped in the serps. NOT too much, i've done much more links for other sites and not got penalized. I can't figure out what I did wrong, really I'm just trying to narrow it down.
I don't think you got penalized due to duplicate content. Think about it from other angels too. Though you can certainly try to remove copied content.