13 replies
  • SEO
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Hey guys. So i was doing pretty darn well in the rankings when now suddenly all my keywords are slowly dropping off. the big change i made was change my background to black and my text to white.
Do you think that is what did it?
#dropping #rankings
  • Profile picture of the author Joannerao
    ya. that's what i was thinking. anyhow. i just changed the background to dark blue.
    Also - google webmaster tools shows as me having a ton of 404's caused by the 'wp-no-external' links plugin. I uninstalled the plugin, but don't know how to clean up the links now .
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      The background color has nothing to do with your rankings.

      To fix the broken links you could either create a page for each broken link and do a redirect back to your homepage, or you said you were using Wordpress. There are Wordpress plugins that will do it for you. I've never used any of them, so I can't vouch for any.
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  • Profile picture of the author Audi
    Create a 404 page to redirect to your main site.

    This isn't caused by you changing your background color, unless you were using the same color of text and stuffing keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
    A real 404 page has a purpose that will be lost if you just redirect people to the homepage. Just add a link to your homepage on your 404 page.

    Clean up those links from your sitemap and also make sure no pages on your site are linking to them.

    Your background colour has nothing to do with your rankings dropping.
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    • Profile picture of the author peexter
      Yes, i don't think background color change affect on ranking. Fix your broken urls and continue your seo work.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joannerao
    the 301 redirect isn't working. I finally am redirecting 404's to the homepage. maybe that will help.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joannerao
    ya. no more pages are linking to those links.. so don't do the 404 page? kinda confused now .
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  • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
    A 404 error is generated for a reason. As long as the links are removed from any other page then keep the 404 as is. You can customise a 404 page if you want...give a nice message to your visitor and let them know they can head to the homepage to find more info.
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  • Profile picture of the author Audi
    Just put a 404 page with a custom 404 not found message, and then have it redirect back to your main site within a certain amount of seconds.
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  • Profile picture of the author arshavin
    what is a 404 page?
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  • Profile picture of the author simonbuzz
    Banned
    Use this plugin to redirect your 404 page WordPress › 404-to-start « WordPress Plugins all you have to do is just install it and by default it will automatically redirect your error pages to your home page. Hope that helps..cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author ~kev~
    Originally Posted by Joannerao View Post

    Hey guys. So i was doing pretty darn well in the rankings when now suddenly all my keywords are slowly dropping off.
    What kind of content are you posting on your site? Are you using just text articles?

    Or, are you using images, videos and text?

    On average, how many words do your articles have?
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