My site went from page 3 to page 40! Can someone explain why?!

[nick1980]

Hi everyone,

I recently got slapped in the chops by big bad Google and I was hoping some of you kind souls might be able to help me understand why.

I'm a copywriter and the site in question is Home | Freelance Copywriter. I had risen to page 3 for the keyword "freelance copywriter", and pages 2-7 for other keywords, such as "website copywriter", "copywriting services", "copywriter", etc. A few weeks ago my homepage fell all the way back down to page 40 for "freelance copywriter" and my other pages experienced similarly painful results!

I'm struggling to understand why because I write all of my own content myself, and it's completely unique. All I've ever done is submit articles to article directories in an attempt to obtain backlinks...

BUT, I've been told that this could be the problem, because I took A LOT of my existing blog posts and then used the exact same posts as articles, which I submitted to article directories like ezine, go articles, amazines, articlebase, etc. This was pretty much all I was doing, and it seemed to be working, so I kept doing it!

Anyway, a friend of mine has recently started doing some SEO work for me free of charge (to repair some of the damage). I wrote 3 unique articles for him, and sent them over. That was 2 weeks ago now and since then my site has risen from page 40 to page 23.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I might have done wrong (so I can avoid doing it in the future) I'd be very grateful!

Thanks in advance,
Nick

[trytolearnmore]

Originally Posted by nick1980

Hi everyone,

I recently got slapped in the chops by big bad Google and I was hoping some of you kind souls might be able to help me understand why.

I'm a copywriter and the site in question is Home | Freelance Copywriter. I had risen to page 3 for the keyword "freelance copywriter", and pages 2-7 for other keywords, such as "website copywriter", "copywriting services", "copywriter", etc. A few weeks ago my homepage fell all the way back down to page 40 for "freelance copywriter" and my other pages experienced similarly painful results!

I'm struggling to understand why because I write all of my own content myself, and it's completely unique. All I've ever done is submit articles to article directories in an attempt to obtain backlinks...

BUT, I've been told that this could be the problem, because I took A LOT of my existing blog posts and then used the exact same posts as articles, which I submitted to article directories like ezine, go articles, amazines, articlebase, etc. This was pretty much all I was doing, and it seemed to be working, so I kept doing it!

Anyway, a friend of mine has recently started doing some SEO work for me free of charge (to repair some of the damage). I wrote 3 unique articles for him, and sent them over. That was 2 weeks ago now and since then my site has risen from page 40 to page 23.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I might have done wrong (so I can avoid doing it in the future) I'd be very grateful!

Thanks in advance,
Nick

Hey Nick,

I'm pretty sure that you submitting the exact same article to article directories wasn't the reason for such a ranking plummet. Many people recommend doing that (although you must make sure that your article was indexed on your website first), including Craig Mako who is a respected warrior here.

[christiehemme]

Originally Posted by trytolearnmore

Hey Nick,

I'm pretty sure that you submitting the exact same article to article directories wasn't the reason for such a ranking plummet. Many people recommend doing that (although you must make sure that your article was indexed on your website first), including Craig Mako who is a respected warrior here.

Hello Nick,
I also agree with trytolearnmore.May be your site went page 3 to page 40 because of Google Panda. Google has made two major changes to its algorithm -- first to target spammy/scraper sites, followed by the larger Panda update that targeted "low quality" sites. Plus, Google penalized JCPenney, Forbes, and Overstock.com for "shady" linking practices. Please don't mind, check your site quality. And also you can do one more thing. Try to start blog commenting, it will boost your quality link and also affect on ranking. Good luck.....

[owenlee]

how long has it been happen..you gotta wait a few more days to see if it is google dance...

[nick1980]

Hi guys, thanks for your replies. It's really appreciated. I always made sure that the blog post was indexed first, to ensure that my website got credit for the content before the subsequent article. And yes, I think I'll start looking into blog commenting then. I haven't done any of that as yet. Thanks again.

[Peter Gehr]

Personally, I wouldn't be too surprised by that sort of fluctuation in Google PR.

I see this all the time with my sites.

Just give it time, and you may not need to change or improve anything. In fact, it may be a waste of time putting effort into it. If it's only been a few days, I wouldn't stress too much about it.

I've had sites ranking on page 1 in Google for months at a time, and all of a sudden they take a plunge, but back again in a few days or so.

[nick1980]

Hi Owenlee,

When my site went down to page 40, I left it for a good few weeks to see if it was the "Google Dance". It's probably been around 5-6 weeks now since it fell.

[nick1980]

Hi Peter,

That's exactly what I thought at the time. I was sure it would come back and be fine, but it's been quite a few weeks now.

[nick1980]

Expinfo - Yep, that's what I'm thinking. I managed to undo all the hard work of writing unique articles and posting them to article directories, because in doing so I completely devalued the backlink! Oops

[trytolearnmore]

Originally Posted by expinfo

It could have been due to the simple fact that you had used similar contents of your blog and posted in article directories. This might have lowered your quality backlink from article sites.

If this was true, imagine how easy would it be to manipulate your competitors into plummeting in rankings. A person could take your articles and blast them through thousands of directories, and then watch how your website goes down.

[umrbd]

Don't worry about the uniqueness of the content as soon as the author is same where the content has placed than I am sure the content will not be considered as copied. Only thing which you need to take care is that the the article should be indexed on your blog first and this is what you are already doing. I think problem is in your link building strategy or may be their is something black hat in your website. Check webmaster tools for more information. Promote your site also on social media platforms and a social widget is must now a days

[nick1980]

Trytolearnmore - that's a really good point actually! It can't be the fact that I used the same articles can it, because then, as you said, anyone could ruin someone's rankings.

UMRBD - social widgets. Yes, thanks for the heads up. I'll get an FB/Twitter icon added.

[harro1]

@nick1980

its been 3-4 months you created this thread, i saw your ranking came back to page 2 now

what did you do to get back your ranking? or was it just google dance?