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Need help determining how much damage I've done to my SERPs...

by leave
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi guys..

I'm very new to SEO, but dived in with both feet a couple of weeks ago after purchasing a domain for my new business.

I'm a photographer, and my new business was a niche of photography, where the keyword was in the domain name. Competition wasn't particularly massive, only 1900 searches a month in my local area, so I spent about two hours reading about SEO, then got to work.

I laid my site out with about 2.5% keyword density, and started building backlinks. I registered on hundreds of business directories, manually, etc, until I got bored. Then I created web 2.0 content, spun a couple of articles from my blog, and uploaded them pointing back to my site. Bought some facebook followers, manually earned myself 500 twitter followers in a week. It was all going great.

I jumped on Fiverr, and bought a couple of the well ranked gigs, and had some good success.

At the end of the third day, I was ranking on the first page and occasionally slipping down into the second. This was 20 days ago.

Recently, stupidly, I now realise, I purchased a package from another forum, with 15k backlinks. The guy ended up giving me 28k!

Anyway, links were all terrible. Random blogs, porn sites, etc.. Huge mistake on my part. I ended up having my url put on the Askimet spam list (removed today). This wasn't some bozo, by the way, it was someone getting rave reviews on another popular SEO forum.

SERPs instantly took a hit, and have been dropping since. 5 days in, and I'm now down to page 6, and I assume it'll go lower.

Question is, how much damage have I likely done to my site, and what can I expect to happen in the short term and long term?

I've been concentrating on building quality links since, but slowly this time.

Has anyone got any advice, or can anyone tell me what's going on? Is this the Google dance, or have I just killed my site?

Is my site ever likely to return to its original position? If so, how long?

Lesson learned, before anyone calls me a dumbass for buying the links!

Thanks

John
#damage #determining #serps
  • Profile picture of the author tjcreation
    It will take time. Keep creating new links and adding good, quality content to your site. Eventually, you should rise up again. It shouldn't be permanent
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  • Profile picture of the author dadamson
    Yea it is likely some form of the Google Dance.

    What you need to do is worry less about the jumps up and down and concentrate fully on building high quality consistent links.

    ~Dave
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  • Profile picture of the author leave
    LOL, wow, just checked again, and for the first time this week, I'm now #15

    I'm totally confused by this. I #43 this morning.
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  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    Those kinds of links are now only good for one thing. Next time instead of pointing them to your site, send them to the Web 2.0 pages you created.
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  • Profile picture of the author leave
    Ah, I see.

    So I create a 2.0 page, with a few links to my site, and then I backlink the hell out of the 2.0 page? Do I take it Google then assumes the links on that page are authorative? Does that avoid the risk to my site?


    Thanks for the replies, guys
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    • Profile picture of the author retsek
      Originally Posted by leave View Post

      Ah, I see.

      So I create a 2.0 page, with a few links to my site, and then I backlink the hell out of the 2.0 page? Do I take it Google then assumes the links on that page are authorative? Does that avoid the risk to my site?


      Thanks for the replies, guys
      all types of link building are risky. all are outside google's guidelines. all are unnatural.

      avoiding thousands of spammy links or directing them to a intermediary location like a web2.0 page, reduces the risk and gives you an overall cleaner link profile.
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
    You probable didn't take any hit at all. If it were that easy, people could just order a 20,000 backlink blast and have all of their competitors penalized. It doesn't work that way and rightly so.
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    • Profile picture of the author seolvl1
      It's google dancing,

      give it a few weeks to stablize.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheFBGuy
      Originally Posted by Paul Gram View Post

      You probable didn't take any hit at all. If it were that easy, people could just order a 20,000 backlink blast and have all of their competitors penalized. It doesn't work that way and rightly so.
      Stop reiterating old information, you can indeed take down a competitor's site in certain niches and certain sites. Yes he definitely took a hit.
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  • Profile picture of the author mikest4u
    Agreed That It Takes Time to Stable your keywords, currently your site is performing Google Dancing! To Stable These keywords you have to make new road map which works perfect for you!

    Create Many Web 2.0 blogs and interlinked with each other as well as your home page as well! For Advanced you should create Link Wheel for interlinking your web 2.0 sites and your main site!!
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