Crushing blow from Google... Why?
- SEO |
About 2 weeks ago I made an awful blunder. I uploaded a new sales page with "noindex, nofollow" tags. Naturally, the page was de-indexed.
A week ago I discovered the problem and corrected it. To speed up recovery I've created several new pages of content, ran a massive backlinking campaign and submitted a new sitemap.
About 3 days ago my index page reappeared but way, way back in the search positions. I've lost every one of my Page 1 SERPs that I've worked 5 years to achieve. Naturally, traffic and sales have taken a nosedive.
Everyone tells me to be patient, that the page will recover its former positions in a few days. Well, it's been 3 days now and, if anything, the page has slipped further.
What's more, it's gone from PR3 to PR2. I don't care about page ranking but this tells me there's some kind of penalty going on.
WHY???
I have NEVER spammed or used any kind of blackhat techniques. The new sales page is clean as a whistle. I've changed my pages dozens of times without it ever affecting my rankings.
The only big change in my new page is that I shortened it by replacing some of the content with a video. But there's still tons of keyword-rich content (my content section is 2,500 words).
And I thought Google was favoring videos!
I can't understand such a severe penalty (if it really is a penalty) for the mistake I made. According to others who have made the same blunder, their pages quickly returned to normal.
I don't even know how to find out if there is a problem with my page. I'm still hoping it will recover as others keep saying but there's been no movement at all.
I've tried the Google webmaster forum but nobody has replied.
With about 75% of my business coming through searches this is killing me.
Got any suggestions?
A week ago I discovered the problem and corrected it. To speed up recovery I've created several new pages of content, ran a massive backlinking campaign and submitted a new sitemap.
About 3 days ago my index page reappeared but way, way back in the search positions. I've lost every one of my Page 1 SERPs that I've worked 5 years to achieve. Naturally, traffic and sales have taken a nosedive.
Everyone tells me to be patient, that the page will recover its former positions in a few days. Well, it's been 3 days now and, if anything, the page has slipped further.
What's more, it's gone from PR3 to PR2. I don't care about page ranking but this tells me there's some kind of penalty going on.
WHY???
I have NEVER spammed or used any kind of blackhat techniques. The new sales page is clean as a whistle. I've changed my pages dozens of times without it ever affecting my rankings.
The only big change in my new page is that I shortened it by replacing some of the content with a video. But there's still tons of keyword-rich content (my content section is 2,500 words).
And I thought Google was favoring videos!
I can't understand such a severe penalty (if it really is a penalty) for the mistake I made. According to others who have made the same blunder, their pages quickly returned to normal.
I don't even know how to find out if there is a problem with my page. I'm still hoping it will recover as others keep saying but there's been no movement at all.
I've tried the Google webmaster forum but nobody has replied.
With about 75% of my business coming through searches this is killing me.
Got any suggestions?
Who says you can't earn money as an eBay affiliate any more? My stats say otherwise