Huge Drop in SERP Rankings

[Lewis187]

Hey guys,

After following some great advice on this forum, I created my first niche website reviewing physical products on amazon. After around 5 weeks I hit #10 on the first page of google for a search term that gets 6,600 exacts. GREAT...

However around 1 week later my site bombed down to 800th+ position.

I have searched for some answers and have done the following;

=> Check for duplicate content elsewehere in google (some content was written by a VA) but all articles seem to be unique.

=> Removed the link cloaking tool I was using and set up PHP redirects for all affiliate links and added a no-follow to that location for the SE's.

This Link cloaking tool for my affiliate links was to make them look nicer, not to deceiving as I stated that I am reviewing all my products from Amazon on my site.

=> I noticed that , due to my inexperience, I built all of my backlinks to point at my root domain (which I have since learnt is incorrect and I should spread them out)

=> I have started to build some backlinks to other pages on my site

=> created and scehduled new content twice weekly

Do you guys have any thoughts on this?

In my head I am thinking, too agressive in backlinking and it didn't look natural or Google didn't like me cloaking the links, however I have seen this done elsewhere?

I'm not sure where to go from here?...Any ideas guys?

Thanks in advance

[Rsberg]

Could be the "dance"...

How long has your site been down in position now?

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Rsberg

Could be the "dance"...

How long has your site been down in position now?

There is no dance.

Google stopped dancing years ago. It just changes constantly now.

OP - it's probably because you were cloaking links and you've been slapped. Changing it won't bring your site back.

Just take the hit and keep building links and it will eventually get back up.

Also if it is just a thin affiliate site and the reviews are low quality then you're asking for trouble too. Also if it was overly optimised on-page that could've hurt you too.

If you followed someone's blueprint - talk to them - others probably had similar experiences too.

It's common for people who don't really understand SEM to go overboard in giving on page SEO advice that will hurt you. So be careful who you listen to.

Andy

[David Ogden]

Have you been adding new content to the site, without new content the spiders visit less frequently and you will drop down the results. It is not unusual for a new site to rank high when there is fresh data, but you need to continue adding spider food on a daily basis, month after month, so I hope there are plenty of products in your niche to review

[Nick Walker]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

There is no dance.

Google stopped dancing years ago. It just changes constantly now.

OP - it's probably because you were cloaking links and you've been slapped. Changing it won't bring your site back.

Just take the hit and keep building links and it will eventually get back up.

Also if it is just a thin affiliate site and the reviews are low quality then you're asking for trouble too. Also if it was overly optimised on-page that could've hurt you too.

If you followed someone's blueprint - talk to them - others probably had similar experiences too.

It's common for people who don't really understand SEM to go overboard in giving on page SEO advice that will hurt you. So be careful who you listen to.

Andy

As Andy stated you must have overly dont on-page optimization.
if you keyword stuff over 4% then you may have gotten google-slapped.

[Lewis187]

Hi guys thanks for your replies,

How long has your site been down in position now?

It's been down around 3 weeks now.

Yes I think I may have overdone on-page and maybe too many keywords on each page.

Should I change the content and make the keywords more longtail, along with building backlinks and adding regular content?

I do think the reviews are of good quality, however I will concentrate on writing my own now and see how I get on.

It's common for people who don't really understand SEM to go overboard in giving on page SEO advice that will hurt you. So be careful who you listen to.

Cheers Andy, there are so many conflicting pieces of information out there I may have followed the wrong advice!

Do you with all my backlinks are pointing to the root domain and none to the other internal pages, this could have also effected my ranking?

Cheers all for your help so far, much appreciated.

[Lewis187]

Originally Posted by David Ogden

Have you been adding new content to the site, without new content the spiders visit less frequently and you will drop down the results. It is not unusual for a new site to rank high when there is fresh data, but you need to continue adding spider food on a daily basis, month after month, so I hope there are plenty of products in your niche to review

Thanks David, yes there are plenty of products for me to review. I will concentrate on high quality and helpful content on a regular basis. Hopefully Google will learn to love me!

[Lewis187]

Originally Posted by Nick Walker

As Andy stated you must have overly dont on-page optimization.
if you keyword stuff over 4% then you may have gotten google-slapped.

Hi Nick - Just been looking over my site and I am reluctant to believe that I have overused the Keywords.

In my articles they appear 3/4 times per 500-600 word article.

However I have also used them in title and description and Alt tags etc. My home page sidebar also has it for each category eg:

Category 1 Keyword
Category 2 Keyword
Category 3 Keyword

Do you think this could also effect it? Should I remove the keywords from the Anchor Text?

Thanks for your help

[pacelattin]

Who knows the reason. Do you have a competitor that could have turned you in?

[barbling]

This is one reason why I've given up regarding SEO stuff; I used to build 100s of portal sites when it was easy to rank high.

Now, I focus mainly on authority sites instead and am in it for the long-term. It was glorious while it lasted....

[wolfez]

Did your site drop also from Yahoo and Bing results? In my case I dropped from all 3 down to almost nothing. I find this very disturbing since I had unique articles and very good on-page seo and really limited backlinks slowly coming in... If I compare to my competitors that are ALL still there at the top, I just cannot understand the meaning of this since most of them have below average websites..

[williamtan]

While I'm still very into SEO, I do agree strongly that the focus should be the effort put in to gear the site towards being an authority site by pumping good solid unique content that real visitors (and spiders) love. When the visitors stick to your site, the spiders will do their job.

Originally Posted by barbling

This is one reason why I've given up regarding SEO stuff; I used to build 100s of portal sites when it was easy to rank high.

Now, I focus mainly on authority sites instead and am in it for the long-term. It was glorious while it lasted....

[Rsberg]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

There is no dance.

Google stopped dancing years ago. It just changes constantly now.

Which is essentially a "dance"...

I still have sites that dance, especially new sites but they usually come back stronger after the drop.

I think what you're referring to is basically the same, kind of like saying tomato or tamato.

[Lewis187]

Originally Posted by pacelattin

Who knows the reason. Do you have a competitor that could have turned you in?

This is a good question!

I did some reverse engineering on the backlinks for the site ranked number 1. I found a high PR forum and postd a welcome message with a linky in my sig.

Well they were not very receptive to say the least (can't blame them really) and it turns out that the site ranked number 1 is by the same owner of this forum...!!

My site dropped massively after this not-so-nice exchange of forum messages about my backlink building antics.

So if it was something to do with them, how would they "turn me in"?

[36burrows]

Using a link cloaker gets you slapped? Complete BS!!

[marketm]

If you're website have good content you will get back on the spot. The problem is with your website age. A natural website grows in months, you have tried to achieve good rankings in weeks and that does not look natural.

[Lewis187]

Originally Posted by Izaya

Build more links, write more content. Make sure content is good. Don't cloak your url. Do this for 1-2 months and your rankings will return even stronger.

Thanks guys I am sensing a reoccuring theme here

@eurek - you are right I will have a read and understand. I didn't realise about cloaking links. I was using pretty links to make it look nicer than a huge affiliate link!

@marketm &izaya - thanks for your input and advice. I will follow and hopefully by the start of the new year I will see some results.

Do you know if people can report you to Google I.e a competitor as mentioned above?