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Please Help with Sandbox - Penalty - Google Dance Question

by PGA
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I know that there are some who think that the Google Sandbox doesn't exist while others say it does. Recently I had three of my sites take a major plunge in Google. One site is one year old while the other two sites are about two months old. They are all well optimized, on and off page with original content.

I recently hired the services of an SEO company who targeted one page on each of my sites for a couple of keywords. A few days later both sites lost all of their high Google rankings. I'm still ranking high in Yahoo and Bing. I did check and I'm not de-indexed. There are some that tell me that Google lowered my sites because of all the new backlinks I'm getting. I've been expecting my one year old site to come back but it has been 2 months and it's still on page 10 for the keyword I'm targeting.

Question:

1. How will I know if I'm being Sandboxed, Doing the Google Dance, or Being Penalized?

2. I'm considering removing the one page from my one year old site that I used the SEO company for. If I remove this page or set it to "no follow" "no index", do you think that it will help bring my site back up to it's original standing in Google or will it remain low since I've already set the Google alarm off?

Thank You
P
#dance #google #penalty #question #sandbox
  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi PGA,

    I think you are looking at the wrong things. You say your targeted page, on your 1 year old site, is also 1 year old right? Has that page changed at all during the past 6 months? If it has, then there is your answer.

    Search engines do not rank websites, they rank individual web pages, therefore removing an individual web page will never lead to that same page being ranked. If the page you are thinking of removing has content that violates Google's webmaster guidelines then fix the page content, there is no need to remove the page, just the offensive content.

    In your post you did not mention what that SEO company did on your behalf. Did that add or change content on your web page? Did they duplicate your content and post it on other websites? Did they add a bunch of competing pages to the SERP page?

    Give us a few more details and we may be able to narrow down the possibilities for you.
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    • Profile picture of the author PGA
      Hi Don,

      Thanks for the quick reply!


      I think you are looking at the wrong things. You say your targeted page, on your 1 year old site, is also 1 year old right? Has that page changed at all during the past 6 months? If it has, then there is your answer.
      My site is one year old but the page I added was about 2 months old. I have about 10 pages on that site. I used the SEO company to target the newer page but not the homepage or any other pages on that site.

      Search engines do not rank websites, they rank individual web pages, therefore removing an individual web page will never lead to that same page being ranked. If the page you are thinking of removing has content that violates Google's webmaster guidelines then fix the page content, there is no need to remove the page, just the offensive content.
      The newer page doesn't violate any guidelines that I'm aware of. I checked everything on that page to make sure it was good after this incident happened. Before I added this one particular page, I was making consistent sales from visitors directly to my homepage. After adding the newer page and hiring the SEO company, my whole site plummeted. I assumed that since this one particular page was the cause of the problem, I could remove it or deindex it and everything will return to as it was.

      In your post you did not mention what that SEO company did on your behalf. Did that add or change content on your web page? Did they duplicate your content and post it on other websites? Did they add a bunch of competing pages to the SERP page?
      The SEO company did the following for me: High PR Link Packets - a few thousand profile links - Blog Comments - RSS submissions - pinging
      They didn't do anything to my website and there were no article involved. It was all links, no articles involved.

      I don't want to blame the SEO company because they it looks like they have great reviews.

      I hope I provide enough info.

      Thanks again for the help!!
      P
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      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Originally Posted by PGA View Post

        Hi Don,

        Thanks for the quick reply!




        My site is one year old but the page I added was about 2 months old. I have about 10 pages on that site. I used the SEO company to target the newer page but not the homepage or any other pages on that site.
        Okay, this is what I suspected. It sounds like you have experienced the temporary boost from QDF, which wears off and then your page drops to it's current earned ranking.


        Originally Posted by PGA View Post

        The newer page doesn't violate any guidelines that I'm aware of. I checked everything on that page to make sure it was good after this incident happened. Before I added this one particular page, I was making consistent sales from visitors directly to my homepage. After adding the newer page and hiring the SEO company, my whole site plummeted. I assumed that since this one particular page was the cause of the problem, I could remove it or deindex it and everything will return to as it was.
        How about the bridge page policy? Does this page fit Google's description of a bridge page? Do you have links to external websites? Could any of your outbound links be to what might be considered bad neighborhoods?

        Google has had a series of significant algorithm changes that seem to coincide with the timing of your web rankings decline, perhaps it has more to do with that than the new page or the SEO activity.



        Originally Posted by PGA View Post

        The SEO company did the following for me: High PR Link Packets - a few thousand profile links - Blog Comments - RSS submissions - pinging
        They didn't do anything to my website and there were no article involved. It was all links, no articles involved.

        I don't want to blame the SEO company because they it looks like they have great reviews.

        I hope I provide enough info.

        Thanks again for the help!!
        P
        Again, it is important to understand that search engines index and rank individual pages, not websites. Likewise, PageRank is not assigned to websites, but instead is assigned to individual pages.

        Profile links, because they are new pages, rarely if ever have high PR. Most so called "high PR link packets" don't give you high PR links, instead they give you links on websites that happen to have high homepage PR, and rarely will the pages that your links are placed on have any significant PR.

        Most mass commenting packages place comments on pages that have been devalued by search engines due to unmoderated comments. So, while you may see your backlink count go higher, most of those backlinks tend to be low value and nearly worthless.

        Based on the information you shared, my best guess would be that your promotional efforts to date have not been strong enough to overtake your competitors. After the temporary boost from QDF wore off your pages sank in the SERP. Your low quality link package are not enough, you need to get backlinks from relevant, high PR pages.

        A better approach, IMO, don't even worry about PR or SERP ranking. Instead focus on building targeted traffic by getting direct link traffic from highly relevant pages. In doing so the SERP rankings will improve without you even needing to pay attention to it. You will also have reliable targeted traffic that doesn't depend on search engines, however search engines will recognize your pages' popularity and rank it higher in the SERP as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author zoobie
    Well, how many incoming links you are getting for that web page? Sometimes too fast linking may ruin the site ranking.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by zoobie View Post

      Well, how many incoming links you are getting for that web page? Sometimes too fast linking may ruin the site ranking.
      Hi zoobie,

      Search engines don't rank sites, they rank individual pages.

      So you are going with the theory that when your website does well it will be ruined by that success? I have never seen a website that was ruined by incoming links. Who would of thought that your webpage going viral would "ruin the site ranking". :confused:
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      *       Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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      • Profile picture of the author ElectronPlumber
        PGA, I've been working on an FAQ for EXACTLY this sort of question, as it gets asked here quite frequently.

        Check out: http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...deindexed.html

        If you don't find your questions answered, please ask them so I can add them to the FAQ to help others!
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        The Electron Plumber
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      • Profile picture of the author bermuda
        Originally Posted by dburk View Post

        Search engines don't rank sites, they rank individual pages.
        This point is absolutely right and I hope more and more people get aware of this fact because a website, such as Wikipedia, can contain tens of thousands of pages and each of them having top ranks for the targeted words due to their strong links stats.
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        Banner Perfect | Logo Mansion
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