Should I say Bye-Bye to my niche site or .. ?

[mandos123]

Did some serious whitehat backlinking 30 days (every day 20-25 backlinks). Then I didnt do any backlinks for 4 days, and yesterday I continued backlinking and today my website was gone from google :P

It's not sandboxed I guess.. because if I search http:// mywebsite . com from google it still appears to be there. I was in first page, position 5 - now Im gone from top 500 :/. Should I continue backlinking or what ? Im kinda confused now..

[razorhound]

It will come back for sure if it's still indexed but no guarantee time frame. My personal experience, it doesn't matter whether you continue backlinking or not it will still come back. However, the ranking usually better if I did continue to build backlinks.

[Kakashi]

Why should you say bye-bye ?
This is the part of the game.....

IMHO, update your content regulary rather than focus on backlink ony....

[kithara]

Sounds what hap pent to me.. GOOGLE Dance!
you will come back

[lovboa]

Dont worry about it.
Usually sites (especially for newer sites) seem to fall away or disappear from the rankings when the backlinks get indexed and take effect. When it comes back, enjoy a higher position in the serps

[tomaz]

How old is your website? How much content have?

[RevSEO]

Listen, you've got nothing to worry about....

You are experiencing a Google dance, it happens to everyone at some point in their SEO career.

Here's what you need to do next:

1. Build more content

Force Google to take notice of your site, provide it some fresh, unique content. They love this stuff and eat it up.

2. Build out quality backlinks

No, I'm not talking about Franks, Bobs, or Jims profile backlinks here. I'm talking about high PageRank, contextual backlinks if possible. Nothing beats these links, period.

Finally, be patient. Your rankings will bounce back, and even better if you follow what I outlined above.

[mandos123]

Thanks for the helpful comments. I will try to get my site ranking asap!

[mandos123]

It has gone for a week now. I have updated my site daily, pinged it and also made quality backlinks. However it still gone :/. I will make a post if it comes back.

[kengperapol]

Is this Google dance?

[Cataclysm1987]

If your site is less than six months old, you can't rely on rankings to be stable at all. Stable sites only generate rankings after 6 months to a year of solid link building.

Also, none of your links are aged. Google prefers aged links and since zero of your links are aged, you are likely not receiving anything from the SERPs consistently.

Keep working.

[mandos123]

I just checked my webmaster tools and I discoverd that all the keywords that I'm trying to rank are completely gone from serps. However, some of the keywords, which I havent tried to rank are getting up in SERPS :O. Did I use too many same anchor texts?

[Ben Armstrong]

Hi Mandos,

I don't think it is the google dance. The google dance generally occurs with newer websites while google is deciding where to rank them. You'll usually find your rankings for that page are quite erratic, jumping all over the place for weeks on end.

From my experience if a page goes from a decent ranking to 100+ and stays there for an extended period, it means that particular page has been penalized. I have had the same thing happen to one of my pages when I did the same thing you have described with link building. The first penalty lasted about a month, the second lasted 3 months. Both times my site returned to where it was before or better.

You'll notice that I said "page" rather than "site". In my experience google may penalize 1 page of your site while others will remain the same. During a penalty I had I found that many of my secondary pages were outranking my main penalized page for its own keyword terms.

Just keep building links. It can be discouraging when you can't see your rank improving but just keep doing what you're doing and the site should come back.

As for what you did wrong... yes you may have used the same anchor text too many times. I don't profess to be an expert at SEO but the general consensus seems to be to use your main keyword 1 out of every 5 links you build. For the others use a mixture of secondary or long tail keywords and your website's URL.

Try to keep your link building at a steady pace if you can too. It's not natural for a site to get 100 links in 4 days then none the next 4 days which is what you described. If you can't build links every day then building 25 on the days when you do build them might be too many. Try and focus on getting a few high quality links per day rather than a whole heap of lower value ones. That way when your link building slows down it may not seem as unnatural to google.

[ttkim]

Originally Posted by mandos123

I just checked my webmaster tools and I discoverd that all the keywords that I'm trying to rank are completely gone from serps. However, some of the keywords, which I havent tried to rank are getting up in SERPS :O. Did I use too many same anchor texts?

You should know that nobody can give you a precise advice. In any case, try this. Go to Google and type in...

keyword yoursite.com

If your site is not ranking high, then you've most likely been penalized. You can work on fixing some on-page factors for now and see if that bounces you back up. Sometimes, Google puts you on a "time out" so keep backlinking, wait it out, and your site should back. Other times, it's just a Google Dance.

[mandos123]

Originally Posted by ttkim

You should know that nobody can give you a precise advice. In any case, try this. Go to Google and type in...

keyword yoursite.com

If your site is not ranking first, then you've most likely been penalized. You can work on fixing some on-page factors for now and see if that bounces you back up. Sometimes, Google puts you on a "time out" so keep backlinking, wait it out, and your site should back. Other times, it's just a Google Dance.

Seems like I'm penalized, since my site appeared 5th.
However, could It be because I made some blog posts and the blogs had "recent comments" section. When I check my backlinks, there are 100 backlinks from the same blog?

[ttkim]

Originally Posted by mandos123

Seems like I'm penalized, since my site appeared 5th.
However, could It be because I made some blog posts and the blogs had "recent comments" section. When I check my backlinks, there are 100 backlinks from the same blog?

Sorry, I made a minor mistake in the last post. If your ranking high up like 5th, then I believe it's not a penalty. I think you're only penalized if you see your site in the 3rd page (-30 filter), 5th page (-50 filter), etc.

[Ben Armstrong]

Originally Posted by ttkim

Sorry, I made a minor mistake in the last post. If your ranking high up like 5th, then I believe it's not a penalty. I think you're only penalized if you see your site in the 3rd page (-30 filter), 5th page (-50 filter), etc.

Where did you learn about this?

I've never heard anything like this before.

[Ben Armstrong]

Originally Posted by mandos123

Seems like I'm penalized, since my site appeared 5th.
However, could It be because I made some blog posts and the blogs had "recent comments" section. When I check my backlinks, there are 100 backlinks from the same blog?

I wouldn't worry too much about that. It's just because the recent comments part is displayed on many different pages of that blog.

I doubt google would penalize you for that as it's a common occurrence. It would just mean you wouldn't get much value from the additional links as they're all from the same IP address.

The penalty is more likely caused by your erratic link building.

[ttkim]

Originally Posted by Ben Armstrong

Where did you learn about this?

I've never heard anything like this before.

By doing some research because I also had a site that was penalized.

There are a lot of other places that talk about SEO and the Google filter. Generally, people have some sites that have been ranking #1 for months until they get penalized. They're suddenly ranked on the 3rd page, 5th page, or whatever.

Just search "Google penalty filter", and you should get some results on the subject.

[JD Warrior]

It might be the Google dance. Don't worry, just continue building backlinks to your site. And oh, continue also in posting new and unique contents to your website. Google loves unique content. From my experience, search engines rank websites with fresh and unique contents much higher than others..

[blogworker]

i also think it is just the common google dance. what you need to do is just keep update your content on your site, build links as usual, it will back soon.

[Raitei_Ericko]

It happens to me also. One of my site fly to rank 200+. But I just keep building backlinks and after few weeks it back to page 1.

[crgargan]

I have a new site too and it is rapidly jumping pages each day...wait it out and do not worry

[Johnny GotPaid]

Its just a dance, be patient and keep backlinking.

[TolyZ]

Google dance. Very common, keep building your links.

[RatRaceWatch]

Yeh I wouldn't give up that easily :0, btw the term whitehat backlinking is falsely used IMO, any artificial backlinking is against googles terms. But hey, most of us do it :0, so keep at it and if a few months go by and it's still in oblivion, only then should you think of moving on.

[cooler1]

Originally Posted by Ben Armstrong

Hi Mandos,

I don't think it is the google dance. The google dance generally occurs with newer websites while google is deciding where to rank them. You'll usually find your rankings for that page are quite erratic, jumping all over the place for weeks on end.

From my experience if a page goes from a decent ranking to 100+ and stays there for an extended period, it means that particular page has been penalized. I have had the same thing happen to one of my pages when I did the same thing you have described with link building. The first penalty lasted about a month, the second lasted 3 months. Both times my site returned to where it was before or better.

You'll notice that I said "page" rather than "site". In my experience google may penalize 1 page of your site while others will remain the same. During a penalty I had I found that many of my secondary pages were outranking my main penalized page for its own keyword terms.

Just keep building links. It can be discouraging when you can't see your rank improving but just keep doing what you're doing and the site should come back.

As for what you did wrong... yes you may have used the same anchor text too many times. I don't profess to be an expert at SEO but the general consensus seems to be to use your main keyword 1 out of every 5 links you build. For the others use a mixture of secondary or long tail keywords and your website's URL.

Try to keep your link building at a steady pace if you can too. It's not natural for a site to get 100 links in 4 days then none the next 4 days which is what you described. If you can't build links every day then building 25 on the days when you do build them might be too many. Try and focus on getting a few high quality links per day rather than a whole heap of lower value ones. That way when your link building slows down it may not seem as unnatural to google.

Does this penalty only apply to new sites below a certain age?

It doesn't seem logical that Google would impose a penalty for too many backlinks or the use of the same anchor text too many times because people can build links to any site they want.

[PandaPoacher]

Yeah just keep at it, because it'll take time. You site will flip-flop all over the results so it's part of the whole process. Good luck!

[mandos123]

Good news is that I'm back in MSN and YAHOO searchengines. However, I'm still completely gone from google.

[mandos123]

One of my subpage is getting higher on google, but still not 1st page. Should I start backlinking my internal pages since my main page is completely gone from serps :O?

[mandos123]

It's been a month now. Main page completely gone from serps.

What I have done to fix this?
1) Added more content
2) Build new backlinks
3) Changed snippets/titles
4) Deleted some of the keywords, so there cannot be any keyword "stuffling" anymore

And absolutely nothing has been changed.
If someone could say HOW to get my website back to page 1, then I'm even willing to pay some money.

Thanks

[razorhound]

Sometimes it takes more than a month.

[trustumar]

manual backlinking is not white hat. Once one of my over optimized keyword was penalized while my site kept ranking for other keywords.

Is the page ranking for the other keywords?
What type of links you created?

[Barry Unruh]

Originally Posted by mandos123

if I search http:// mywebsite . com from google it still appears to be there. I was in first page, position 5 - now Im gone from top 500

Originally Posted by mandos123

It's been a month now. Main page completely gone from serps.

Ok, so which is it really? You are telling two different stories all through this thread.

In some statements you say "gone from serps" then you say "gone from top 500", then you say "found for other keywords"...

If you have just fallen out of the top 500 then you are still indexed and still RANKED. Your ranking just is not where you want it. It could be due to quality of content, your backlink strategy, or numerous other things...

You may have been in position 5 due to factors which worked before, but now Google's "tweaks" have decided your site belongs at position 501+. That is not equal to "gone from serps".

What should you do? First give us accurate information about what is REALLY happening with your website.

Second, increase the quality of your website.

Third, increase the quality of your backlink strategy.

Fourth, be honest with yourself, where does your site DESERVE to be ranked for the AVERAGE HUMAN SEARCHER? Not where you wish it would be ranked. Not where you think your backlinks and "optimization" should have it ranked. Where should it be ranked for providing VALUE?

[mandos123]

1) Yes it still ranks for some of the keywords (but only subpages, not main-page)
2) I dont think my website should be on the first page, but why not in 3-4th page.
3)my site is not deindexed, but the main page will not show up in 1000 results

My strategy was to build backlinks via social bookmarks, article submissons, blog comments and directory listings. I was also adding new content weekly. But now I have stopped it.

[Barry Unruh]

The question of "why not in 3-4th page" can only be answered by looking at your site in comparison to those above you.

How does your content optimization and QUALITY compare?

How does your link strategy and link QUALITY compare?

How does your link diversity compare?

How does your length of content compare?

Stopping might be your best option for a few weeks, or even months. You might discover the site comes popping back up into higher rankings after a while.

If it were my site, I'd probably continue with a very slow pace of building backlinks choosing only sites which were relevant to my niche as backlink sources. I'd try to find a couple PR3+ links per week to add. I would add a couple new pieces of content per week just to keep the freshness up. Then I'd watch for a couple months and see if it began a recovery or not.

Just so you are very aware...every one of your listed backlink strategies have been greatly devalued during the post-Panda era. Which of course means your site should have tumbled. You need to start building in-context links from better sources.

[seopintar]

you need more high quality content and stop backlink.After Google system update to Panda, I've never looking for any backlink to my site. Just writing content to shooting my keyword target. It's work because content is the King for Panda

[jacksite]

I agree that playing with google is a dangerous game. I am also depressed because recently my adsense account has been disabled for no reason. crap!

[superzjn]

Yes, google is never friendly...

[trustumar]

I think it is page level penalty. You may find this article useful.

Page-Level Algorithmic Penalties On The Rise From Google | SEOmoz

[mandos123]

By adding new content do you mean adding NEW content to MAIN PAGE or making new posts with new information? I'm using wordpress btw.

[3000]

Originally Posted by mandos123

Did some serious whitehat backlinking 30 days (every day 20-25 backlinks). Then I didnt do any backlinks for 4 days, and yesterday I continued backlinking and today my website was gone from google :P

It's not sandboxed I guess.. because if I search http:// mywebsite . com from google it still appears to be there. I was in first page, position 5 - now Im gone from top 500 :/. Should I continue backlinking or what ? Im kinda confused now..

My new sites do that all the time. Just keep doing what you're doing and continue to update your site.

[JeanneLynn]

I was over on the google webmaster forums and I read that google doesn't actually allow you to do any paid backlinking. I guess it has to be completely natural, like a site linking to you. I went over to see if I could find out any information about BMR and apparently any kind of paid backlinking is frowned up by google. It's like walking on eggshells!

Now that I've got about 40 pages of content on 2 of my blogs, I'm wanting to do some promotion, but I don't want to get in trouble. Right now, 90% of my traffic comes from Google. Only 10% comes from Yahoo and Bing according to my CPanel stats. I don't want to risk getting sandboxed.

[Daniel Wilson]

I wouldn't waste my time on it. Wait for a few months and if doesn't show back on first pages just quit.

[mandos123]

My site came back after 1,5 months beeing gone from serps (dancing around in 500-1000 position). It NOW came back and was on first page ( as well as my competitor site) for 2 days. Today I checked, and it's gone again. At first I was really-really happy that it really came back. But now I'm kinda stressed again...

[tylerjaysen]

Yeah I agree with many of the posts here...focus on building more content (unique and good quality) and drip feed that content over time. Relax for now on the link building and continue adding killer content. Then check back in a few weeks to see where you site is. Sounds like google may have seen the adding too many links too soon...and their algorithm decided to rank your site lower....just a guess though.

But yeah I wouldn't abandon the site just yet...especially if it is or has generated some revenue.

[onlinemarketer23]

hey mando123,

dont worry.. as many mates said on this thread.. your site get back to the starting point.. just take notice that google regularly updated its algorithm.. so some sites holding top positions like your moves down to lower spots in search result pages.. so patience.. if your site would get banned.. not displayed on the result pages.. take care!!

cheers to all...

[coloradojaguar]

Keep creating fresh quality content especially related to your niche site. Your rank will rise again. Blogging has excellent value with Google right now.

[maestrooffinance]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but are you sure you were doing 100% "whitehat" stuff?

Or, maybe you need to focus on links that are really difficult to get? I've never seen a website stick at the top by just getting backlinks from blog comments or dropping them in social bookmarking sites. Sure, there's an initial push to the top. Then, you have to either keep building those backlinks at an unsustainable rate or give up and go minus 500.