Huge Drop in Rankings After Using TextLinks.com

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I have a 7 month old site in low-medium competition niche, which was climbing in steadily.

Month ago: main keyword - #16, two other terms around #19 - all for homepage, 5 other pages on first page in five top. Two weeks ago homepage reached 1st page for main term.

A Week ago I got links from textlinks.com. An two days later I was #4 (two positions up). Two more days and I was on page 11 for three terms, and nowhere on other 11 I was ranking for.

Anybody has familiar experience with textlinks.com or other networks? What are your thoughts?
#search engine optimization #drop #huge #rankings #textlinkscom
  • I have no experience with textlinks.com, but I've used similar networks. A 7 month old site isn't very old. Often google ranks new sites higher for a little while, and then they spend some time ranking poorly. Sometimes when you send new links to a site it jumps around a bit.

    I'd keep sending links to the site and wait a few months. Get links from other sources, too. Add content, make your visitors happy, and your site will come back up.
  • While I have not used textlinks.com before I can tell you that your listing moving around could be normal. The reason I say "could be" is because this depends upon the type of links and on what site they are posted.

    The Google dance (stupid name I know) is what marketers call what is happening to you. If your links are in relative and good neighborhoods then your listings should return stronger than before.
  • If you read the stories, Google did recently changed its algorithm and thank god, all my websites got from PR0 to atleast PR1 as well as PR2.

    When U build links to your website, ping them so that google indexes them.
    and usually Google dance will happen since your site is not that much old plus if your competitors are building backlinks too.
    Just update your site on a regular basis +get a few High quality PR.. U will surely suceed.
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  • I know about textlinks.com but have only used the trial (free). My Google PR improved greatly though I can not confirm its because of textlinks since I been using a range of other SEO techniques. My site is also relatively new (5 months).

    My advise to you is diversify and most especially put a lot of efforts on content. Update your content regularly, include a blog on your site if possible.

    My first site (now about 1 year and 10 months) improved in rankings by just content and few links (less than 20) and now gets a great deal of traffic I cannot compare with the newer site thats got a deal of links. REGULAR FRESH UNIQUE CONTENT can do wonders.
  • You have to be really careful with building links these days. A regular customer of mine came to me last week having joined a blog network an after 2 weeks ALL his pages had either lost rank or been de-indexed.
  • There's been a lot of crazy stuff going on with the algo late last month till now.

    I wouldn't be so quick to try to scapegoat what's going on with a name and shame. That seems quite irresponsible on your part.
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    • I agree. It's easy to associate one event with another, but many times, it's not what actually happened.

      I used to have two beautiful rottweilers. Lady was 12 years old, but the picture of health. She had never been sick a day in her life. Then I took her to the vet to get a rabies shot (as required by NYS law to renew her license). I was worried about it, but the vet assured me that Lady was in amazingly good health for her age and it was completely safe to vaccinate her. Within days of getting the shot, Lady began dropping weight and displaying terrible symptoms. She was wobbling when she walked and vomiting. I was sure that the rabies shot caused these symptoms and the sudden and dramatic decline in her health. Within a few months, she was dead.

      A few months later, the town sent me a notice that Harley, our 9 year old rottweiler, had to get an updated rabies shot. Harley was healthy as a horse. I was so paranoid that Harley was going to get sick and die too after he got the shot. He was scheduled to go to the vet that Wednesday and get his rabies shot. However on Tuesday, the day before his appointment, he became violently ill and died at 3am before we could get him to the emergency vet. We don't know what caused his death, the vet said it sounded like a poisoning (our neighbor is a gardener and I saw him spraying something a few days earlier). The vet said it could have been a case of secondary poisoning where Harley may have found a dead mouse in the yard(who died of poisoning) and ate it. Or it may have been a stroke or heart attack.

      But the point is that if Harley had died the day after he got his rabies shot, I would have never given any of my dogs the rabies vaccine again. I would have come to the conclusion that the rabies vaccine killed both of my precious dogs. I would have lived like an outlaw and never licensed any future dogs.

      I think about my dogs whenever I think that something caused something else. I'm not saying that Textlinks didn't cause this to happen; maybe it did. I've never used textlinks. But I think that you have to look into it further before you assume that they're the culprit for your drop in rankings.

      I hope it's just the google dance and your rankings come back soon. I'm having a similar problem with one of my websites that is PR3 and about 3 months old. It rates well for certain keywords, then drops suddenly to nowhere. This goes on all the time; I hope it stabilizes soon.
  • Two days later seems too quick to be related, IMHO. Have you been building other links too?
  • Textlinks is NOT worth the try. They won't help you in your ranking. I tried them for 1 month and after a full disappointment with them, I cancelled my account. I prefer building my backlinks manually (and sometimes Scrapebox helps!)
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    • Thank you for sharing. I am sorry to hear about your dogs. I had a dog that died of poisoning too, it's hard to let go. But I agree with all you said, and I am going through other possible factors right now, as I mentioned in a post above. I'ts just weird to see all these crappy, low-quality sites above me!

      Thanks for the feedback. I agree, their websites seem to be of low value to SEO. Though, I don't think I lost my rankings because of that anymore.

      Maybe it is to early to say, but it did come one after another. It was 4 days not 2 after building those links.
      I also built about a dozen WPMU links myself. And I ordered a SenukeX gig (about 40 links) about 10 days earlier from seller I always had good results with.
      I am less and less inclined to think that reason lies in linkbuilding. Because, this way I could to fiverr right now, and order same links to my competitor. I think Google is smarter than that and doesn't penalize for cheap low-quality links, but in worst case devalues them.

      Other sites in top ten or even top 20 didn't seem to move a bit, so it doesn't seem like big algorithm change. I am hoping it's an infamous Google dance. If that's the case how long can it last from your experience?
  • I used textlinks for a few of my own sites and reviewed my results, most sites seen a decent increase. A few lost rankings but this was due to other factors, probably Penguin and Panda. I used 175 credits in their system.

    Some of the blogs are low quality, you have to take the time and find the better blogs in their network to place some of your links. It's not cheap but almost hands free backlinking.

    Of course be aware that any of these blog networks could be found out at any time but if you get a ROI then thats ok.
  • I can't really say if textlinks is the major reason why your site has lost its ranking. Too soon to conclude. I suggest you to observe really carefully and keep building links.
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