Sites Using BMR Just Dropped

[36burrows]

Originally Posted by kindsvater

There are various reports of late about all sites linked in a G account, and only those sites, suffering rankings drops.

Since you're building new sites, don't add them to your account. See what happens.

This probably has nothing to do with BMR. But you've told Google 1 person owns several sites. If Google has issues with one or a couple, all of them are at risk.

.

It seems there was an algorithm update and many of the links to my sites which were boosting my rankings were either off the high PR page, or had been deindexed.

I'm leading towards that this is the reason for my rankings having a sudden drop.

Most of my links also contain a lot of the exact anchor text for my keywords, so I'm now trying to diverse my link anchor texts and seeing if this helps.

Sucks though, feels like I just moved back 3 months in time.

[onepace]

@36burrows

Just think, it could have happened 3 months from now when you had even more #1 rank sites...consider this a good thing, learn from it and build back up.

If you can do it once you can do it again. They took away a few sites, they didn't take away your skills.

[Greenfatman]

I don't think is BMR... Google is updating all the time, I saw some changes in the end of each month, I have a site with 2 keywords #1 spot on google that disappeared 2 months ago, guess what? it just came back to the top again some days ago.And my best site was on #2 spot dropped to #6 2 days ago...I never used BMR(yet).

I just think it depends of the keyword and competition, google tries different sites and see how long people stay on those sites, if people leave those sites quick than yours,google will bring back your sites again to the top, of course, if there's little or no competition for your keyword, it stays on the top for a long time assuming you have great content on it.
Never have more than 10 sites on the same IP address, it risk!
...And forget about the backlink problems, is a myth...Keep building links.

[Aaron Elliott]

An authority site of mine dropped all rankings 5 days ago. The site had many #1 rankings pulling in over 8K visits per month. I checked webmaster tools and the backlink count went from 8K to 2K. At the time rankings dropped the site had a theme error where the site looked very bad, and this didnt get fixed until 5 days. Its possible they did a manual review and sore the crappy code, or maybe just the recent update didnt like the backlinks or use of similar anchor texts... When panda first came out all sites jumped up, now I have small loses from a lot of sites and major loss of this authority site.

[36burrows]

Originally Posted by Aaron Elliott

An authority site of mine dropped all rankings 5 days ago. The site had many #1 rankings pulling in over 8K visits per month. I checked webmaster tools and the backlink count went from 8K to 2K. At the time rankings dropped the site had a theme error where the site looked very bad, and this didnt get fixed until 5 days. Its possible they did a manual review and sore the crappy code, or maybe just the recent update didnt like the backlinks or use of similar anchor texts... When panda first came out all sites jumped up, now I have small loses from a lot of sites and major loss of this authority site.

Yeah I just checked and this happened to my site. Dropped from over 10k links to under 4k overnight in Google.

[Clyde]

Originally Posted by 36burrows

Yeah I just checked and this happened to my site. Dropped from over 10k links to under 4k overnight in Google.

Any idea what kind of links got discounted?

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by laptopwarmonmylap

That's what I asked the fella. I have a feeling they were mostly BMR links. With with all of these blogs within the BMR site network full of what must be mostly derivative 150 word posts, I can see how these links could disappear over night.

I could be way off base - but I honestly don't think so.

No, there is no way they would have been all BMR links. BMR hasn't been out long enough for him to have had that many links from them for one site.

Off the top of my head BMR went live in Feb 2010. If he started with it at the very beginning he would have just had around 5500 links from the BMR network. THAT IS ONLY if he did the 10 posts a day. ( this is approximate of course ). His previous posts would indicate that this was not the case.

-- Jeff

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by laptopwarmonmylap

Thanks for that. I've read many of your posts, and I understand that you pretty much exclusively use this BMR service for backlinks. If I am wrong, please forgive the misunderstanding on my part.

But if I do understand correct - in your view, why do you think that you are seeing such good results with BMR and some here are claiming that they are not?

Besides some automated tactics through wpsocialpipes and hootsuite yes, BMR is my main backlinking tactic.

I cant say for sure why some people aren't having good results. There are a ton of factors. Maybe they aren't using BMR enough. If you aren't making AT LEAST 100 - 200 BMR posts a month then you are wasting your money with it.

They recommend to target 1 keyword at a time, for some reason there are too many people who don't do that.

Sometimes the site itself might not be up to par, as in not optimized properly.

The way I have my sites optimized helps every page in it. I do just the right amount of deep linking that each page/post helps each other out. I don't just deep link to the main keyword pages like some people do, I deep link to the supporting pages and posts as well. That way all the juice gets thrown around properly.

But to be honest, without seeing the site, and knowing their entire off page seo tactics I can not say why they fail. But, in my opinion, I doubt it has to do with BMR.

There are a ton of people that use it, and we only hear from a small fraction of them. 9 times out of 10 you only hear from people that have problems with something. People love to spread negativity; it is easier to remember than the good things; simple psychology.

I am not saying that they are complaining to complain, but it is just how things go.

The only time that I see people WILLINGLY say good things about something is because there is something in it for them; they are an affiliate ( especially in IM ). Sometimes the same thing goes for saying bad things too.

( I am not selling anything, nor am I an affiliate of BMR. I don't have a WSO on the horizon, nor a product launch of any kind. I don't delve into the MMO niche to make my money. All the info I give out now or in the future is based on the RESULTS that I have gotten from my own endeavors, this includes BMR. )

Since I use BMR exclusively ( besides the initial automated back links to each post ), if I ran into problems BMR would be a big target for my problems. However I am not going to hold my breath on that.

-- Jeff

[Mrstallioninc]

do I need to caution for mini sites?

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by laptopwarmonmylap

Thanks, Jeff. Really appreciate the feedback. I admire your forthrightness and enjoy reading your thoughts on what is working for you. I love working with Adsense and really like hearing from people who do as well, and are doing well with it - as it appears you are.

You are more than welcome. I am doing well enough to be able to do this full time, yes.

I know how hard it is to start out, and am more than willing to part with any info that I may hold that might help you on the road ahead.

-- Jeff

[Mrstallioninc]

Have you found out why your BMR dropped?

[Aaron Elliott]

Originally Posted by 36burrows

Yeah I just checked and this happened to my site. Dropped from over 10k links to under 4k overnight in Google.

I only had 200 BMR posts towards this site, the other links where article network, blogs, comments, doc share, video. I think my site may have been dropped due to manual review and at the time the site was looking horrible due to a theme error which lasted 5 days. Its been a week now and no rankings are back, never seen this before not sure what to do but start again?

[sandra98]

Check out this post, which said that a Google spokesperson confirmed a panda update the past week. Looks like lots of sites got hit.

DaniWeb Loses Over Half of Traffic: The Panda is Back. | WebProNews

It sucks... I saw declines in rankings for a few of my newer sites that are 6 months or less. The older ones seem to be fine, and a couple even seemed to have improved.

[georgerey]

I never had problems with BMR. Is your content 100% unique on your sites?

[Aaron Elliott]

My site lost all its rankings on 24th SEP. In place some very popular online retailers have taken my place... Some sites even rank twice on page one. Ive read the quality guidelines and I cant work out why this site got hit so hard. Its possible the backlink networks took the hit and this is why, other sites of mine all took small its 3% or so.

[xnice]

You need link diversity, if your all of your link depend on BMR, you can drop ranking when some site of BMR de-index.

[Mike Anthony]

Guys you just can't sit on quick links. BMR is great but whenever a site gets reviewed that uses just them Google is going to slap it silly. I mean how difficult is it to spot a service with a bunch of links in 150 word articles? Adding profile links and social bookmarks etc isn't going to change anything either.

IF you ever want to any longevity and the ability to enter into competitive niches you are going to have to get some solid links with PR that do not just exist to give links

Guest blogging
getting webmasters to link to you (without being reciprocal) from authority pages
Low OBL pages

at least some natural looking stuff.

[tj_inreality]

Originally Posted by sandra98

Check out this post, which said that a Google spokesperson confirmed a panda update the past week. Looks like lots of sites got hit.

DaniWeb Loses Over Half of Traffic: The Panda is Back. | WebProNews

It sucks... I saw declines in rankings for a few of my newer sites that are 6 months or less. The older ones seem to be fine, and a couple even seemed to have improved.

Thanks so much for posting this. I'm one of the people who was hit hard by the latest changes. One great thing I gleaned from this article is to noindex, nofollow search pages, which I hadn't been doing.

[PhilJensen]

My two cents....

I haven't seen any drop in sites that I've used BMR with, however I don't use BMR exclusively, therefore I may not be seeing the full effect.

This does however highlight the need to diversify your link building strategies as you would never want to rely on on method or service for such and important part of SEO.

Phil

[Jeannie Crabtree]

I don't use BMR, but wanted to ask if you use SEO Search Terms Tagging 2.
I was and the affiliate blogs I had dropped way down about mid September.

If you look at this thread, towards the last, I brought out that the plugin maker
now suggests that you don't do some of the hyperlinking with it that he originally
set it up with, as he believes Google no longer accepts what this plug in was
doing (hyperlinking tags, keywords, etc).

Very Cool SEO Plugin!


Jeannie

[evaseidel]

I have read from different posts here that BMR doesn't work anymore.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Jeannie Crabtree

I don't use BMR, but wanted to ask if you use SEO Search Terms Tagging 2.
I was and the affiliate blogs I had dropped way down about mid September.

If you look at this thread, towards the last, I brought out that the plugin maker
now suggests that you don't do some of the hyperlinking with it that he originally
set it up with, as he believes Google no longer accepts what this plug in was
doing (hyperlinking tags, keywords, etc).

Very Cool SEO Plugin!


Jeannie

That's not true,

Google doesn't have a problem with WP-Tag pages which is exactly what STT2 is doing (If you use that plugin hyperlink option).

I keep all my STT2 keywords as plain-text, & everything is working great.

You have to throttle the amount of keywords per page no matter what text/hyperlinks are on your web pages, with or without any plugins.

It's up to the webmaster to control their content, the STT2 allows full control of the keyword content/links.

BTW, If you remove the plugin footprint like I recommend in that thread/link Google will never know in a million years your running a keyword plugin. The plugin is php running server side, Google doesn't read server side code, all they see is the html source code.

[MaverickUK]

Originally Posted by evaseidel

I have read from different posts here that BMR doesn't work anymore.

They're liars and/or idiots, ignore them.

[36burrows]

Originally Posted by evaseidel

I have read from different posts here that BMR doesn't work anymore.

No it works, and works great. However, you need to be using other sources of backlinking.

All of the pages I've been using BMR for have dropped, my home page dropped as well but not nearly as much because I frequently use other sources of linking to my homepage.

It's just the inner pages that I haven't been using other sources of links, simply because BMR was doing such a wonderful job with them by itself.

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by kindsvater

There are various reports of late about all sites linked in a G account, and only those sites, suffering rankings drops.

True.

It's shameful BUT true. Just proves Google needs a huge lawsuit from webmasters: they can't penalize ALL sites in one account simply cause 1 site is against something.

I dropped ALL G things for good: webmasters tools, analytics, etc etc. And I advice everyone to do the same - otherwise you're risking your business in the hands of ONE company that can KILL your business overnight.

Food for thought.

[Jeannie Crabtree]

I am not suggesting not to use the plug in at all. Plain text is what I meant to say. Sorry if it seemed otherwise, as it is a valuable plug in.


Jeannie

Originally Posted by yukon

That's not true,

Google doesn't have a problem with WP-Tag pages which is exactly what STT2 is doing (If you use that plugin hyperlink option).

I keep all my STT2 keywords as plain-text, & everything is working great.

You have to throttle the amount of keywords per page no matter what text/hyperlinks are on your web pages, with or without any plugins.

It's up to the webmaster to control their content, the STT2 allows full control of the keyword content/links.

BTW, If you remove the plugin footprint like I recommend in that thread/link Google will never know in a million years your running a keyword plugin. The plugin is php running server side, Google doesn't read server side code, all they see is the html source code.

[Kelvin12]

One of my sites, that began getting over 400 unique visitors a day, took a massive hit about 3 days ago. I now get about 40 visitors a day !! :-(
I was doing about 6-10 BMR links a day (varied keywords), but I think the problem was that most of them were going to the homepage.
Let's give it a couple of days and monitor the rankings.
I was getting excited because the revenue increased by 400% or so....

[retsek]

Originally Posted by Masterminding

Now this sounds like a challenge! Here are several things I would do if I were you:

1) You mentioned authority sites. Well, they certainly don't have 30 pages. Authority sites have hundreds, thousands or millions of pages. Plus, how long are your pages? I've seen many a study (try Seomoz for example) where longer posts tend to outperform shorter ones in the ranking. I hear people complain about 600 words, but uhm... I write 1,000-2,000 words per article and never see my rankings drop. I'm almost always on page 1 too...

2) Interlinking: are pages from site A that you own supported by site B that you own, and so on and so forth? Google doesn't like that very much as it's artificial linkbuilding: gaining value by linking from one of your sites to the other. Sure, some links won't hurt... but hundreds or thousands will.

3) Linkprofile: do you always get links from the same sources? And when you get links, is the link text always the same? And when you get links, are they on the homepage of that site, 1 level deep, 2 levels? In short: if it doesn't look natural, you get your but kicked.

4) Quality: don't know who said it that Google looking at site trust is a bunch of baloney, but guess what the Panda update was? It was the first use of a self-learning mechanism to ensure quality in the search results, meaning sites give off a certain set of signals if they're of high quality and the algorhytm now refines this set of signals itself similarly to how Yandex the Russian search engine works. Don't believe me? Google Yandex, Panda update and go through the seotheory posts and seomoz posts. BTW: they started the learning by checking sites for quality by hand, looking for answers to questions like would you give your creditcard info to this site?

5) Advertising: more ads influences rankings in a negative way.

6) Occam's razor: sometimes the biggest problems are caused by the smallest things. Is your sitemap still up-to-date? Does your robots.txt still tell Google to index your pages? Is there no no-follow or canonical crap in the header of the entire site?

This should help

Quoted for Truth.

I hope you guys read that post above. I agree with everything (except the # of pages definition of an authority site, it doesn't have to be thousands).

Google started a new series on their blog last month where they list the algo changes they made the previous month. Look out for it in early jan to see the december changes.

Follow the points above and in most cases your sites will be safe from panda.

• Most important are the quality of your pages. Always have it in your mind, what would a human Google quality rater think of my site if they came across it. Chances are they never will, but it's a good baseline. Then you cater to your readers.
• Focus more on increasing the time they spend on your site, and decreasing the bounce rate.
• Number of ads per page and how many above the fold will become a bigger negative signal. So fix that if you haven't already.
• If you have been pandalised already in a previous update, your best bet depending on how established the site is would be fix your content and improve user experience, then move the site with a 301 redirect to a new domain.
• If the site is too well established, consider switching from www to non-www or vice-versa with 301 redirects.
• Separate your good content from bad. If you don't want to get rid of the bad ones, put them on sub domains.
• Do not abuse the wordpress tags system. A tag should have at least 3 posts or it doesn't deserve to be a tag.
• Put stuff like forums and other user-generated content on subdomains

[chrislangley]

It wouldn't come as a surprise if the search engines have amended their algorithm to target BMR type sites

[Kelvin12]

That would suck.

[Petesla]

Similar thing happened to me with BMR, but in a more comtrolled experiment. Two keywords got slapped down but not the whole site. In fact, not just more obscure pages on this site show up for these kywords.

I have two very similar sites, reviews of the same line of products. Different content, but same keyword targets.
I've been using BMR on both, as well as directory linking mostly, though there'd been articles and bookmakrs along the way. The BMR keywords were climbing nicely.
Then a few days ago, two pages/keywords that were nearing the first page were totally slapped off the first 100 pages. The other site is in #1 spot and has been for awhile, no penalty.
The other keywords on the slapped site remain in place, and they're also getting a light touch with BMR and climbing steadily.
The one that got slapped has way more content, has blog posts updated frequently (1 to 3 times a week). It's also on a nicely done template. And a facebook page and twitter account.

The one with the #1 spot has far fewer pages, more outgoing affiliate links, and no blog posts - and it's using an ugly affiliate template!
Weird. Love to hear any theories.
I've done a directory blast to both of them, but considering how many of those types never get approved or are approved at different rates it's hard to point to that - and both sites had one.
Mystery to me. But that's why I keep many sites and experiments going. I wasn't happy to see it happen since these to two KWs were getting near the first page, but now I'll experiment on getting it back with nothing to lose.
Any ideas?

[chintangurjar]

Good to hear that you stay away from link explosions, not sure why people like them so much when they do so much damage.

[mikemunter]

Hey man,

Both my site and a client site that i've built probably 100+ bmr links with for kw's have dropped dramatically the last few days.

BMR was my main source of link building until bout a month ago when i started hitting AMR hard (but not for all the same kw's).

Trying to figure out whats going on - and of course, John stopped new BMR customers today.

Any luck getting rankings back? Any other thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike

[amiramin]

i have also seen a drop from #3 to #11

[GGpaul]

I've seen an increase on all of my pages. I'll be creating a thread soon with pictures and everything.

[JeanneLynn]

Originally Posted by GGpaul

I've seen an increase on all of my pages. I'll be creating a thread soon with pictures and everything.

That's great news! What position are your Keywords in now? Are you submitting the max posts each day?

[HKSEO Rotzee]

Originally Posted by mikemunter

Hey man,

Both my site and a client site that i've built probably 100+ bmr links with for kw's have dropped dramatically the last few days.

BMR was my main source of link building until bout a month ago when i started hitting AMR hard (but not for all the same kw's).

Trying to figure out whats going on - and of course, John stopped new BMR customers today.

Any luck getting rankings back? Any other thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike

There are other Article networks out there and other ways to get HighPR backlinks...

There area also other's that do BOTH =)

[satrap]

Originally Posted by 36burrows

One of them was ranked #1 for a tough health keyword, it dropped to #5 for that one, rest of the pages dropped too.
...

To be honest, that doesn't seem like anything really unusual. I mean, going from 1 to 5 is normal especially in a competitive niche as health niche. I mean, you have competition and while you are working on SEO, they are not sitting on there behind either. So, your site goes down, you do more, it goes back up.

I am in "make money online' niche and I rank #2 for make money online keyword, but there are days I go down to number 6 and same with many other keywords I rank for. The more competitive your niche is, the more up and down you can expect as there are big competitors who are working hard to get ahead. I would just continue to work on SEO as much as possible.


I wouldn't think BMR alone has anything to do with that. There are so many different things that can factor in here, that it is almost impossible to pin pint the exact cause.

But, of course as human we want to know and we are always quick to find a suspect.

[Cantbedone!]

Originally Posted by 36burrows

Yes they all have this

This might be a very telling factor. If Google slapped one of your sites and saw that they are all on the same analytics account, they may take a closer look at all your sites and see if there are similar patterns that they disapprove of.

When you have all your sites in Analytics, you have to make sure they are all pretty compliant and really legit because it wouldn't be the first time that they slap all of an owner's sites for the folly of one.

[HKSEO Rotzee]

For what its worth, in BMR's defense. I am not aware of any High PR links hurting anyone. Your more likely screwing up somewhere else if this is happening.

[Rollmodl]

Don't put your eggs in one basket. Link-building sites like BMR should be used in moderation as there are much safer methods. The problem lies in the fact that it's easy and quick, which is not the best long term strategy.

[TerryL]

All of my sites that I use BMR with are still holding steady with high rankings. Most of them are on page 1 of Google, some with top 3 or 4 positions for their keywords. I use BMR pretty consistently with all of my sites and have only experienced excellent results with them.

[Agoge Warrior]

I laugh every time a bunch of ya'lls site's drop in the Google SERPS and you start complaining about this service or that service or BMR or ALN or whatever. The fact of the matter is NO ONE knows why their site dropped but the one thing we do know is that there was probably a Google algo shakeup of some kind.
I've had sites drop a few notches after a Google algorithm update but thenthey go right back to where they were a few days or maybe a few weeks after that.
So far, I've used BMR like it was going out of style, plus other types of backlinking as well for diversification. But all of my sites continue to rank well or rank where they have been lately. Nothing drastic, and even if I had sites that did tank to page 10, I would not go and panic and come flying to the WF board moaning and groaning about it's this or that why my site tanked.
I keep working diligently on my sites and continue to backlink to either keep them at the top or improve their current rankings.
Coming on here wasting time about why or if BMR is to blame is a waste of your time. Period!

[HKSEO Rotzee]

Originally Posted by Rollmodl

Don't put your eggs in one basket. Link-building sites like BMR should be used in moderation as there are much safer methods. The problem lies in the fact that it's easy and quick, which is not the best long term strategy.

Very true, diversity is always good business....but in THIS business...its a necessity for longevity.

[dminorfmajor]

It's just Google dancing guys, sites that life off of "natural backlinks" drop often too. Just keep working it boys.

[GGpaul]

Originally Posted by JeanneLynn

That's great news! What position are your Keywords in now? Are you submitting the max posts each day?

One of my keywords went from rank 4 to rank 2.

Another one was flagged or completely gone now in page 5.

Most of them are toggling between pages 1-2.

I'm submitting 4-6.

My posts are too thin though; in other words I'm backlinking all keywords (10 different pages on the site).

I should just focus one at a time with a variety of anchor text.

[JeanneLynn]

Originally Posted by GGpaul

One of my keywords went from rank 4 to rank 2.

Another one was flagged or completely gone now in page 5.

Most of them are toggling between pages 1-2.

I'm submitting 4-6.

My posts are too thin though; in other words I'm backlinking all keywords (10 different pages on the site).

I should just focus one at a time with a variety of anchor text.

I'm only using BMR on 2 of my sites. One of the sites is doing real well, up to page 2 for a very competitive keyword. Prior to using BMR, this site couldn't even be found in the first 20 pages. This site is only PR1 and it's 6 months old. This site has about 30 pages of unique content.

My other site is not doing as well. It's a PR3 and it went up to the first page of Google and stayed there for about 2 weeks (position 6) for a very competitive keyword. However, last week, it completely dropped into Google oblivion. It's now on page 12. This site has 10 pages of unique content, but the articles are very long and detailed. One of the articles is 7500 words, the other 9 articles are between 800 and 2000 words each.

I've got to get a little more focused. I'm getting a little frustrated because the site that has dropped has had the most BMR posts. I've done about 240 BMR posts for this site and used keyword variations for diversity. I'm going to keep going and see what happens. Plus, I really want the site to do better as the keywords are more profitable.

I'm thinking it's the Google dance. The site isn't a thin site and it doesn't have many ads on it. This site is still on the first page of Yahoo and Bing, just fell out of Google.

[GGpaul]

Originally Posted by JeanneLynn

I'm only using BMR on 2 of my sites. One of the sites is doing real well, up to page 2 for a very competitive keyword. Prior to using BMR, this site couldn't even be found in the first 20 pages. This site is only PR1 and it's 6 months old. This site has about 30 pages of unique content.

My other site is not doing as well. It's a PR3 and it went up to the first page of Google and stayed there for about 2 weeks (position 6) for a very competitive keyword. However, last week, it completely dropped into Google oblivion. It's now on page 12. This site has 10 pages of unique content, but the articles are very long and detailed. One of the articles is 7500 words, the other 9 articles are between 800 and 2000 words each.

I've got to get a little more focused. I'm getting a little frustrated because the site that has dropped has had the most BMR posts. I've done about 240 BMR posts for this site and used keyword variations for diversity. I'm going to keep going and see what happens. Plus, I really want the site to do better as the keywords are more profitable.

I'm thinking it's the Google dance. The site isn't a thin site and it doesn't have many ads on it. This site is still on the first page of Yahoo and Bing, just fell out of Google.

That's normal. One of my keyword was completely gone, not even in top 300 and that was using BMR. Now it's on page 4.