How long before calling it quits after site is penalized?

[matts5150]

Hey Guys,
I've got a site that was penalized in August by G and am wondering if it's time to just get a new domain name and start over. The site is 2 years old PR3 and sells physical products, up until July I did very little for seo except for articles and press releases. In July I started doing profile links then first of August my site dropped about 35 pages for my main keywords. Also when using site:domain I only have a handfull of indexed links even though webmaster tools says all 8,000 pages are indexed. When using link:domain it only shows I have 1 backlink even webmaster tools shows I have over 1,000, these last 2 stats happened on the day in August I was penalized and have been the same ever since.

Since then I have created approx 15 links a day profile links, articles and ontopic blog posts then bookmark each link using different accounts I've created in socialbot, still no effect, except I rank first page in yahoo and bing for nearly all my keywords now but still no love from google. I've hired 2 seo guys to help figure out what's causing the penalty, made some changes and still nothing. 2 weeks ago I emailed g from webmaster tools and they replied and said the reinclusion request was processed that if the site's still not ranking as high as it should to review their quality guidelines. At this point I'm thinking it may be quicker just to get a new domain and start over but it just burns me up to leave all those links out there especially when I now get several hundred hits a day from people that have the site bookmarked. For now I'm filling in with adwords but need to figure something out. Also if it helps I've noticed 3 of my competitors have changed domains in the last 2 months, which is really odd, 1 was a PR4 and the other a PR5. Any thoughts and or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[Allan Rich]

You can never tell when your site will show back in the Serps.... I can take days, months or years.

If your website was ranking for some really good terms then build it back up the right way.

I cringe everytime someone says their building backlinks via these Link Packs which are nothing more then irrelevant profile pages. It's most likely the reason why your site got sandboxed. It devalues your website when you start building backlinks like these. Your just spamming and manipulating the SE's.

To get out the sandbox, stop focusing on backlink building, just keep updating your website with good unique relevant content. The rest will work itself.

In the meantime, try building another site in the same niche under a different ip. There is really no telling when your site will show back in the serps.

Ps. Don't use profile backlinks! You might see good results in the beginning but it will not last.

Hope this helps.

[paulgl]

Google does not penalize sites. Web authors do.
Not pumping you up more is not a penalty and none of
their concern. They list the sites they think are much better
at the moment.

Why are you only worried about google?
Why are you letting google dictate what you do?

If you are truly building 15 quality backlinks a day, you should
be seeing quite a bit of traffic from that alone.

And if adwords works, keep using it!

Paul

[Tom Goodwin]

*sigh*

If the wrong types of incoming links was the issue I would just fire up xrumer and blast all of the top listings for my keywords and I would be on top. I bet I could get Microsoft off the top spot for "Microsoft"


To be honest, it sounds like it might be an issue with the content of your website, not the incoming links.

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

You can never tell when your site will show back in the Serps.... I can take days, months or years.

If your website was ranking for some really good terms then build it back up the right way.

I cringe everytime someone says their building backlinks via these Link Packs which are nothing more then irrelevant profile pages. It's most likely the reason why your site got sandboxed. It devalues your website when you start building backlinks like these. Your just spamming and manipulating the SE's.

To get out the sandbox, stop focusing on backlink building, just keep updating your website with good unique relevant content. The rest will work itself.

In the meantime, try building another site in the same niche under a different ip. There is really no telling when your site will show back in the serps.

Ps. Don't use profile backlinks! You might see good results in the beginning but it will not last.

Hope this helps.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

It's most likely the reason why your site got sandboxed. It devalues your website when you start building backlinks like these.

Ooooo! I have some competitors to take out then.

[Allan Rich]

Anyone would be crazy to think that your backlinks don't factor your position the serps.

If a backlink can help you rank for a keyword then obviously it can also devalue your website.

If it doesn't, tell me why Google penalizes for paid text links?

I've had plenty of personal websites completely drop out the Serps b/c of services like Text-Link-Ads.com as soon I used it, my sites dropped off the face of the earth. Research it a little, you'll see a lot of other people singing the same tune.

The guy stated that his website was 2 years old, which were ranked for good keywords. He dropped out the serps heavily when he started his "spammy" backlink building. If it was his content which caused the drop, then why 2 years later? lol.

At the end of the day, people will do what they think is best for their sites.... and I'll do what I think is best

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

I cringe everytime someone says their building backlinks via these Link Packs which are nothing more then irrelevant profile pages. It's most likely the reason why your site got sandboxed. It devalues your website when you start building backlinks like these. Your just spamming and manipulating the SE's.

To get out the sandbox, stop focusing on backlink building, just keep updating your website with good unique relevant content. The rest will work itself.

In the meantime, try building another site in the same niche under a different ip. There is really no telling when your site will show back in the serps.

Ps. Don't use profile backlinks! You might see good results in the beginning but it will not last.

Hope this helps.

LOL! haha....

Stop putting up confusing and non-tested words when you don't really know anything about it...! You have no idea how to really rank your site, so please stop telling people what to do and what not to.

I had some websites I want to "sandbox", if you are so sure you can "sandbox" them with backlinks, I would love to pay you or anyone who can do it!

Backlinks won't get your site into trouble - Unless your site is below 6 months old and have yet gain any High Authority links! If your site don't fit this profile, no links will get your site into trouble!

Few things to check here:

1. Your site posts - must be all unique, if you happen to double post any articles, it is time to fix it!

2. If your page ranking is dropped, **DON'T** do any on page optimization for that keyword you are building backlink to it, or your site may end up in the filter for a long long time!

3. Any links from your site to bad neighborhood? Please check carefully...

Google filter a site because of on site factor, and unless your site is new, Google will only ignore links that they don't count, they will **NEVER** punish a site because of bad links to it!

Many people had the bad impression that only spam links won't work or they work short term! While some are true, but most marketer do different level of "spam", some call it link building, some call it off page optimization.

I don't want to talk about pure white hat technique here, too much to talk.

Just to clarify few things:

1. Spam links do work, but High PR authority link works a lot better!
2. Spam links will work if the page is on a High PR authority site.
3. High Domain PR profile links work great - Google for Angela's Backlink and see how many Warriors use them with success! All testimonials are on Angela's WSO!

You also need some good content, not only SEO optimize, but also visitor friendly, or your traffic will not convert.

My Suggestions:

1. Continue to use your domain, and now is time to re-structure your sites for better SEO and user friendly content.

2. Build more authority profile links to your site, 100 / day for the next 3 months!

3. If you need traffic, build LinkWheel with proper long tail keywords content, backlink to all linkwheel to make it rank well for long tail keywords and get traffic within 3 weeks.

4. Create some great content on your site, bookmark and digg it to attract links and traffic..

5. Continue to do more backlinks with Blog and forum comments, directory submission and other backlinks, make the link source varies!

6. Don't just build all backlinks to your home page, build more backlinks to inner page as well. Varies the keyword a bit (10%), don't always use the same keyword, because you are building links to your own site, not to an article on authority site!

If you don't mind, PM me your site and keywords, I will take a look and let you know what might went wrong...

Forgive me if I can't reply you immediately, sometime PM just too many !

Kok Choon

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

If a backlink can help you rank for a keyword then obviously it can also devalue your website.

If it doesn't, tell me why Google penalizes for paid text links?

Are you sure that's the only factor???

I've never seen any real case that backlink can devalue your website, unless your site is new!

Google already state clearly - no buying links! However, I must stress this, how would Google know if I sell links...???

The only obvious place to get your site dropped is when Google find that your site only have links from Text-Link-Ads.com without other Authority links, they will know you are messing around with them!

Publicly and mass selling links don't work anymore, but you still can get good links from DP or any forums that don't publicly advertise their site!

Mixing link source from various link type is very critical, you can't rank high on competitive keyword with only one type of link! You need to varies your link type!

Kok Choon

[Allan Rich]

I respect your opinion so please respect mine.

Everyone has their own techniques when it comes to SEO.

Regarding your statement that says I don't know how to rank my sites is just absurd. You don't know me nor any websites I run.

The majority of the advice your giving him is to keep spamming the SE's, it's exactly the reason why his ranking dropped in the first place. Your never going to keep a SE position with crappy irrelevant backlinks over an authority website(s).

Ya, lets keep spamming the SE's, might as well pick a copy of Xrumer and get those backlinks fast. Do more profiles, 100+ a day!

Originally Posted by kkchoon

LOL! haha....

Stop putting up confusing and non-tested words when you don't really know anything about it...! You have no idea how to really rank your site, so please stop telling people what to do and what not to.

I had some websites I want to "sandbox", if you are so sure you can "sandbox" them with backlinks, I would love to pay you or anyone who can do it!

Backlinks won't get your site into trouble - Unless your site is below 6 months old and have yet gain any High Authority links! If your site don't fit this profile, no links will get your site into trouble!

Few things to check here:

1. Your site posts - must be all unique, if you happen to double post any articles, it is time to fix it!

2. If your page ranking is dropped, **DON'T** do any on page optimization for that keyword you are building backlink to it, or your site may end up in the filter for a long long time!

3. Any links from your site to bad neighborhood? Please check carefully...

Google filter a site because of on site factor, and unless your site is new, Google will only ignore links that they don't count, they will **NEVER** punish a site because of bad links to it!

Many people had the bad impression that only spam links won't work or they work short term! While some are true, but most marketer do different level of "spam", some call it link building, some call it off page optimization.

I don't want to talk about pure white hat technique here, too much to talk.

Just to clarify few things:

1. Spam links do work, but High PR authority link works a lot better!
2. Spam links will work if the page is on a High PR authority site.
3. High Domain PR profile links work great - Google for Angela's Backlink and see how many Warriors use them with success! All testimonials are on Angela's WSO!

You also need some good content, not only SEO optimize, but also visitor friendly, or your traffic will not convert.

My Suggestions:

1. Continue to use your domain, and now is time to re-structure your sites for better SEO and user friendly content.

2. Build more authority profile links to your site, 100 / day for the next 3 months!

3. If you need traffic, build LinkWheel with proper long tail keywords content, backlink to all linkwheel to make it rank well for long tail keywords and get traffic within 3 weeks.

4. Create some great content on your site, bookmark and digg it to attract links and traffic..

5. Continue to do more backlinks with Blog and forum comments, directory submission and other backlinks, make the link source varies!

6. Don't just build all backlinks to your home page, build more backlinks to inner page as well. Varies the keyword a bit (10%), don't always use the same keyword, because you are building links to your own site, not to an article on authority site!

If you don't mind, PM me your site and keywords, I will take a look and let you know what might went wrong...

Forgive me if I can't reply you immediately, sometime PM just too many !

Kok Choon

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

I respect your opinion so please respect mine.

Everyone has their own techniques when it comes to SEO.

Regarding your statement that says I don't know how to rank my sites is just absurd. You don't know me nor any websites I run.

The majority of the advice your giving him is to keep spamming the SE's, it's exactly the reason why his ranking dropped in the first place. Your never going to keep a SE position with crappy irrelevant backlinks over an authority website(s).

Ya, lets keep spamming the SE's, might as well pick a copy of Xrumer and get those backlinks fast. Do more profiles, 100+ a day!

LoL... haha..!

This is getting interesting! You really don't know anything about XRumer!

There are many ways to use XRumer, one is launch bunch of spam links to web 2.0 site and get traffic and links from the web 2.0 site!

Even with XRumer, you can't spam and de-list a site, do you know that?

I'm sure many people would like to spam and filter their competitors! Won't you want that? I would!

But the fact is - XRumer can't filter your site, try it yourself!

I don't mean to disrespect you in anyway, but what you are saying here is very misleading.

Let's talk about some black hat technique -

Google don't like black or grey hat, but they can't do much about it when you know how to cover your tracks and blend into legitimate link building process!

Just Google for some medication, you will find a lot of black hat site ranking on top 10! How the *** that happen if Google already state no spamming, and no link buying?

The problem for Google is - How do they know if that site is a spam site? and how many computers do you think Google need to process those kind of judgment?

What Google can do and will do, update their algorithm periodically and add more filter to it! Unless Google change the foundation of ranking - Backlinks, Google can't implement too aggressive filter to kill all legitimate site!


Let's talk about the Pure White Hat way -

White hat site focus more on content and natural links, they setup link bait like free software, free articles, free service, free scripts or funny contents to attract natural links.

These content focus sites like authority blogs and forums are great way to attract natural content (comments) and links, they don't need much "artificial" links to jump start their site!

You keep building good content and free stuff, eventually your site would rank very well, and get tons of traffic in a year or so!

The key to pure white hat technique is - collect bunch of high authority sites in your niche that accept comments and guest posting, create great content with good resources, link it back to your site and start gaining tons of free traffic and links!


Let's talk about the grey hat way -

When you combine both black and white, I get grey hat...

I would collect all white hat resources, build as much great content and link bait as possible, at the same time...

I would backlinks to all my posts "artificially"! (How would Google know?)

My authority site would rank high in 2 to 4 months, while I build tons of linkwheels and start getting traffic in 3 weeks!

I can have the benefit of both worlds, why should I just use one??

As a marketer, you are there to sell stuff, who cares what hat is that? I personally don't like mass spamming software like XRumer, but I don't deny the power of XRumer!

If my site has a PR4 and 6 months old, I would build links directly with XRumer and my site won't had problem ranking ! The domain authority (PR) is very important, you just need "trust" rank to make most of this works!


Conclusion

Spam links do work, and High Domain PR links are not mass spam links, it works even greater!

Please try it yourself, if you are worried about getting into trouble, try to use new domain for testing, you need to know how search engine works before you can "leverage" it...

Please accept my apology if this offended anyone !

Kok Choon

[Allan Rich]

All is fair

I'm not sure what you mean by the Xrumer comment? I said you might as well use it to build more spammy backlinks, which is exactly what it does.

This discussion has been talked about numerous times on the web. People agree, people disagree.

If you link spam an high authority site then no it's not going to effect the website. It has too much authority in the SE's.

But your website can be devalued because of your backlinks, I believe even Matt cutts even touched on the subject.

Watch Out For Backlink Sabotage | WebProNews

The OP stated his site's rank dropped heavily in the serps after his backlinking campaign. Please tell me another logical reason why his rankings dropped? You honestly think that his backlinks had nothing to do with it?

Originally Posted by kkchoon

LoL... haha..!

This is getting interesting! You really don't know anything about XRumer!

There are many ways to use XRumer, one is launch bunch of spam links to web 2.0 site and get traffic and links from the web 2.0 site!

Even with XRumer, you can't spam and de-list a site, do you know that?

I'm sure many people would like to spam and filter their competitors! Won't you want that? I would!

But the fact is - XRumer can't filter your site, try it yourself!

I don't mean to disrespect you in anyway, but what you are saying here is very misleading.

Let's talk about some black hat technique -

Google don't like black or grey hat, but they can't do much about it when you know how to cover your tracks and blend into legitimate link building process!

Just Google for some medication, you will find a lot of black hat site ranking on top 10! How the *** that happen if Google already state no spamming, and no link buying?

The problem for Google is - How do they know if that site is a spam site? and how many computers do you think Google need to process those kind of judgment?

What Google can do and will do, update their algorithm periodically and add more filter to it! Unless Google change the foundation of ranking - Backlinks, Google can't implement too aggressive filter to kill all legitimate site!


Let's talk about the Pure White Hat way -

White hat site focus more on content and natural links, they setup link bait like free software, free articles, free service, free scripts or funny contents to attract natural links.

These content focus sites like authority blogs and forums are great way to attract natural content (comments) and links, they don't need much "artificial" links to jump start their site!

You keep building good content and free stuff, eventually your site would rank very well, and get tons of traffic in a year or so!

The key to pure white hat technique is - collect bunch of high authority sites in your niche that accept comments and guest posting, create great content with good resources, link it back to your site and start gaining tons of free traffic and links!


Let's talk about the grey hat way -

When you combine both black and white, I get grey hat...

I would collect all white hat resources, build as much great content and link bait as possible, at the same time...

I would backlinks to all my posts "artificially"! (How would Google know?)

My authority site would rank high in 2 to 4 months, while I build tons of linkwheels and start getting traffic in 3 weeks!

I can have the benefit of both worlds, why should I just use one??

As a marketer, you are there to sell stuff, who cares what hat is that? I personally don't like mass spamming software like XRumer, but I don't deny the power of XRumer!

If my site has a PR4 and 6 months old, I would build links directly with XRumer and my site won't had problem ranking ! The domain authority (PR) is very important, you just need "trust" rank to make most of this works!


Conclusion

Spam links do work, and High Domain PR links are not mass spam links, it works even greater!

Please try it yourself, if you are worried about getting into trouble, try to use new domain for testing, you need to know how search engine works before you can "leverage" it...

Please accept my apology if this offended anyone !

Kok Choon

[Allan Rich]

I never said that your backlinks is the only factor to your rankings in the serps.

I made the statement regarding the paid links because backlinks can/will make a difference towards your ranking. This was just an example.

Google has already stated that a paid backlink will devalue your website. So obviously backlinks will effect your rankings in the serps. Get what I mean? A paid backlink is a backlink which you can get penalized for. So your backlinks do effect your position in the serps. I just used paid backlinks as an example.

Originally Posted by kkchoon

Are you sure that's the only factor???

I've never seen any real case that backlink can devalue your website, unless your site is new!

Google already state clearly - no buying links! However, I must stress this, how would Google know if I sell links...???

The only obvious place to get your site dropped is when Google find that your site only have links from Text-Link-Ads.com without other Authority links, they will know you are messing around with them!

Publicly and mass selling links don't work anymore, but you still can get good links from DP or any forums that don't publicly advertise their site!

Mixing link source from various link type is very critical, you can't rank high on competitive keyword with only one type of link! You need to varies your link type!

Kok Choon

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

All is fair
I'm not sure what you mean by the Xrumer comment? I said you might as well use it to build more spammy backlinks, which is exactly what it does.

XRumer is basically a forum spamming tool, sold for $500+ and $10 monthly fees! No refund or what so ever!

You can use it to spam forum profiles and comments, there are many techniques involve here, you can harvest some really nice resources and backlinks it to your site, permanently! (Most XRumer service only have a stick rate of 5% or less, I think you can increase it to 30% or more when you harvest the right sites!)

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

If you link spam an high authority site then no it's not going to effect the website. It has too much authority in the SE's.

Nope, not just authority site, but any old site with good trust rank (many authority links) or site above a year old!

You can build as many links to it as you want, you may see the page experiencing Google dance, but it will be back within a week with a raise in keyword ranking!

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

But your website can be devalued because of your backlinks, I believe even Matt cutts even touched on the subject.

Watch Out For Backlink Sabotage | WebProNews

The OP stated his site's rank dropped heavily in the serps after his backlinking campaign. Please tell me another logical reason why his rankings dropped? You honestly think that his backlinks had nothing to do with it?

Please do your own test, some time Google just release misleading information to discorage spam.

There are many reasons to a site dropped in ranking, and links just don't happen to be one of it, when a site has "trust"!

Originally Posted by Allan Rich

I never said that your backlinks is the only factor to your rankings in the serps.

I made the statement regarding the paid links because backlinks can/will make a difference towards your ranking. This was just an example.

Google has already stated that a paid backlink will devalue your website. So obviously backlinks will effect your rankings in the serps. Get what I mean? A paid backlink is a backlink which you can get penalized for. So your backlinks do effect your position in the serps. I just used paid backlinks as an example.

Did you use only paid links? did you mix the link sources, using articles and directories or bookmarks?

If you had only one link source, good luck to your site!

And as I mentioned before, publicly advertised selling links is "stupid", most PR link seller don't show their site publicly, they will only show it when customer asked!

If selling links won't work, why DP still have so many people selling it?? And How would Google know those site are selling links?

Some big name like Jeff Johnson and Dori Friends use their own blog network to "virtually control" the SERP, and it work for a million times!

Kok Choon

[dotslash]

Also if it helps I've noticed 3 of my competitors have changed domains in the last 2 months, which is really odd, 1 was a PR4 and the other a PR5. Any thoughts and or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I think this might be the biggest clue, I think the links are a red herring. Is there a possibility that Google has changed the type of content it is looking for in relation to the keyword search? It sounds like it's changed the sort of content it delivers up in relation to that search term.

I'd study the new high ranking sites and see if there's a pattern. Are they using very different LSI keywords than you did previously (and your competitors). I think some careful tweaking of your on page optimisation might be needed.

I use one of Jack Duncans tools to look for keywords and themes to help with ranking. It might be just time to adjust your content slightly, certainly wouldn't give up on your domain yet.

Just my thoughts

Neil

[kkchoon]

Please update us about your findings!

[matts5150]

Hey Guys,
Thanks for all of the suggestions, I really appreciate the different views of perspective. After reviewing the top10 sites in my niche's backlinks using backlinkwatch let me tell you I don't think it's my backlinks, some of these guys are obviously not only using paid site-wide links, profile links and spun articles. #7 even has a ton of blog posts where they didn't include the last } lol

I think my issue may be that I really need to work on diversifying my links and mainly I need more content. I really like the idea of creating a blog network to be able to control the serps at will as it will pay dividends in the years to come. Here are my plans, let me know if you have any additional recommendations I should do.

1. Create 2-4 minisites in wordpress on different ip's a week updating each one 4-5 times a week initially then maybe once a week once it has some decent info.
2. Increase articles posted to 4-5 a week.
3. Create accounts in my nich on relevant sites that allow you to include a poll, start at least 1 poll a week asking memebers for their oppinions which item they like best.
4. Update site item descriptions to focus on content and keywords.
5. I think I will also start to work on creating 2 other websites to diversy however, it will not only help to focus on marketing to a different group but will help me sleep easier at night : )
6. Add Profile links pointing to all above links for main keywords
7. Lastly bookmark all new links in different accounts using socialbot.

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by matts5150

Hey Guys,
Thanks for all of the suggestions, I really appreciate the different views of perspective. After reviewing the top10 sites in my niche's backlinks using backlinkwatch let me tell you I don't think it's my backlinks, some of these guys are obviously not only using paid site-wide links, profile links and spun articles. #7 even has a ton of blog posts where they didn't include the last } lol

I think my issue may be that I really need to work on diversifying my links and mainly I need more content. I really like the idea of creating a blog network to be able to control the serps at will as it will pay dividends in the years to come. Here are my plans, let me know if you have any additional recommendations I should do.

1. Create 2-4 minisites in wordpress on different ip's a week updating each one 4-5 times a week initially then maybe once a week once it has some decent info.
2. Increase articles posted to 4-5 a week.
3. Create accounts in my nich on relevant sites that allow you to include a poll, start at least 1 poll a week asking memebers for their oppinions which item they like best.
4. Update site item descriptions to focus on content and keywords.
5. I think I will also start to work on creating 2 other websites to diversy however, it will not only help to focus on marketing to a different group but will help me sleep easier at night : )
6. Add Profile links pointing to all above links for main keywords
7. Lastly bookmark all new links in different accounts using socialbot.

Great! Please update us your progress, if possible !

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Ooooo! I have some competitors to take out then.

Unfortunately, people ignore logical comments like that, and go off in
all useless directions. They never learn. so they keep posting, asking,
and giving the same old stuff. Pretty soon the band wagon is filled
up for the next thread. And the beat goes on. Viral mythology.

Paul