Simple site lost all ranking in Google... Need someone to help me sort through the madness.

11 years ago

Since your site is WP based it automatically has a robots.txt file to hide files that you wouldn't want search engines to see. Now it might be possible that this file blocked all your pages rather than useless files. You should fetch your site as Google with Webmaster Tools and see what it says. If it says something like the file won't let Google fetch it then remove it. Also when Google has fetched your website successfully submit it to Google and all the linked pages to get indexed again. I also had my site de-indexed for no reason but it was only for a day. If this still doesn't work get back to me and I'll make sure there isn't any negative SEO related to your website.

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yukon

Banned 11 years ago

You have 443 pages indexed: site:www.lifeafterthearmy.com.

Not sure about the 9,156 blocked URLs in WMT.

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risingrank

11 years ago

that means that it is a seo problem. not that google banned your site.

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ProSence

11 years ago

My sites also lost ranking, and I am using new technique now to build links using social media, varying anchor texts etc.

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Liam Hamer 11 years ago

Your site looks really good, and has pretty much all the functionality needed for a good user experience. It's interesting to see the response you got to your reconsideration request. I submitted one a few days ago for one of my sites, and I tend to think I'll get the same response.

I don't know anything about the blocked URLs, but I had a quick look at your backlink profile in ahrefs. In terms of your anchor texts, 33% of them have no text and 27% of them have 'life after the army'. Those 2 combined = 60% of your anchor texts. I wonder if that is anything to do with it. It seems unlikely(and would be unfair, in my opinion), but I wouldn't rule it out.

Really hope you get to the bottom of this - that's a very good site you have there
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Warock

Banned 11 years ago

Your websites looks good ... hrm... backlink profile is the problem.

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themesplice

11 years ago

Don't freak out guys, everyone is having a hard time these days... stay cool and keep making backlinks...

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ronnieavelino

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Curtez Riggs

Shortly after the latest algo change, my site lost all of it's rankings in Google. My site is Life After The Army | Helping Military Service Members Prepare To Transition : Life After The Army. My site and pages are still indexed, but it's no longer receiving any traffic from Google.

Earlier this month I removed my advertisement page, and submitted a reconsideration request. I received the following from Google:

Dear site owner or webmaster of Life After The Army | Helping Military Service Members Prepare To Transition : Life After The Army,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider Life After The Army | Helping Military Service Members Prepare To Transition : Life After The Army for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.

Now, according to my webmaster tools under blocked url's I have approximately 9,156, from this robot.txt file http://www.lifeafterthearmy.com/robots.txt

I'm looking for some help to get a better understanding of what exactly is going on with my site.

I would greatly appreciate any help... Willing to compensate the right person for a solution.

So, there's no problem with penalization at all.... What are you doing with your site aside from creating good content? Do you also build links? If yes, is it quality?, If no, then build quality links on it. Try do some keyword research (ofcourse related to military) with good amount of searches then write a good articles and optimise it. It might need a good push to make it on the top.

Regards,

Ronnie

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Curtez Riggs

11 years ago

[quote=Hovaku;7264915]You should fetch your site as Google with Webmaster Tools and see what it says. If it says something like the file won't let Google fetch it then remove it. Also when Google has fetched your website successfully submit it to Google and all the linked pages to get indexed again. QUOTE]

So I fetched the site, and it returned successfully, and I resubmitted the site.

Originally Posted by yukon

You have 443 pages indexed: site:www.lifeafterthearmy.com.

Not sure about the 9,156 blocked URLs in WMT.

Yukon! Take a look at this image please, to get a better idea of what I'm talking about: Webmaster Tools Screen shots | Life After The Army : Life After The Army

Originally Posted by Liam Hamer

I don't know anything about the blocked URLs, but I had a quick look at your backlink profile in ahrefs. In terms of your anchor texts, 33% of them have no text and 27% of them have 'life after the army'. Those 2 combined = 60% of your anchor texts. I wonder if that is anything to do with it. It seems unlikely(and would be unfair, in my opinion), but I wouldn't rule it out.

Very interesting and I see exactly what your referring to. I intentionally stayed away from SEO on this site just to see how things would work.
So would your suggestion be to build links to dilute the volume of the other anchor text?

Originally Posted by Warock

Your websites looks good ... hrm... backlink profile is the problem.

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1 reply

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Liam Hamer

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Curtez Riggs

Very interesting and I see exactly what your referring to. I intentionally stayed away from SEO on this site just to see how things would work. So would your suggestion be to build links to dilute the volume of the other anchor text?

Yes, but before you do that, I'd advise you to take a detailed look at your link profile. This is a really good article on how to conduct a link audit:-

How To Conduct A Link Audit

You can then start to clean up your profile(if needed). If you have any links on low quality/spammy sites you can perhaps try to get them removed. For one of my sites, I bought some 'high PR blogroll' links(to a specific page) that were sitewide, and as a result had the same anchor text for thousands of links. I contacted the people I bought them from(Fiverr sellers) and most of them removed them.

There is also the new Google Disavow tool:-

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A new tool to disavow links

I don't know if any on-page factors have contributed to your rankings loss, but these days I don't bother with meta keywords(for the site itself or individual pages/posts), and don't even think about keyword density any more. If I do target keywords, I have more than just the phrase I am targeting in my title and description.

For example, say I was posting a new article that was a review of a dog training product called Dog Training 101, I'd do something like this:-

Title - Dog Training 101 - Does It Live Up To The Hype?
Description - I put the brand new product on the market through its paces to see if it really can make my dog the most obedient in the neighbourhood.
(I would leave the keywords field blank)

I haven't had a detailed look at your site, so I don't know what your approach is in terms of on page SEO, so maybe this isn't relevant, but I thought I'd put it out there

You mentioned your rankings dropped between September 29th and October 6th. That means it could have been the EMD update or even either the Panda or Penguin refreshes.

Google Algorithm Change History | SEOmoz

I'm in a similar situation to you, and am working to get one of my sites to recover. Like I said earlier, I submitted a reconsideration request, but am not expecting anything from it. I've done pretty much all I can to get the 'bad' from my backlink profile, so it's all about getting more 'good' into it now. I don't depend on Google(far from it these days, in fact), but I do miss that autopilot traffic it used to bring. Hopefully we'll rise again - success stories seem to be few and far between though.

Edit: Sorry, I missed the part in your reply where you said you stayed away from SEO for your site intentionally. Will leave the on-page stuff up though, it may help others. I do wonder how much the blocked urls thing has to do with things though. I have no idea how to fix that, but it could be that it could make a huge difference. Hope someone comes along who can shed more light on it.

Thanks

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kindsvater

11 years ago

After which algo change did you lose rankings? That itself may tell you the issue.

Possibility - copyright issues / duplicate content. Where are you getting your pictures from? Some long quoted material from other, authority news sites, is showing in copyscape.

.

.

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Curtez Riggs

11 years ago

Originally Posted by kindsvater

After which algo change did you lose rankings? That itself may tell you the issue.

Possibility - copyright issues / duplicate content. Where are you getting your pictures from? Some long quoted material from other, authority news sites, is showing in copyscape.
.

Thanks for the reply.

Traffic initially feel on the 29th of September by 90% from Google. I recovered on October 4th... Traffic disappeared completely on October 6th.

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jfambrini

11 years ago

It is generally a bad idea to submit your site for reconsideration. Generally this puts you on Google's radar that you might be doing something wrong. One of my sites 2012 2013 Toyota Vigo 2011 2010 2009 2008 Toyota Hilux Vigo new used Mitsubishi L200 Triton Nissan Navara Toyota Fortuner Mitsubishi Pajero Sport from Thailand most trusted 4x4 pickup SUV dealer exporter Amin Motors Thailand 4x4 diesel pickup SUV dea was hit by Penguin and/or Panda and I submit for reconsideration. I received no message but my site simply disappeared from SERPs. It used to get thousands of hits and now it receives negligible traffic from Google. Interestingly two of my other sites also got hit just a day or two after this BUT i did not submit those two sites for reconsideration. These sites have started recovering on their own with simple organic link building.

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aizaku

11 years ago

ON page SEO: make your site faster by using WP super cache plugin.

Here is a video more on the subject of on page SEO
http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...breakdown.html

Off page SEO: build backlinks via guestblogging and web 2.0, but more GB. you can start at myblogguest.com - stay in your niche.

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Simple site lost all ranking in Google... Need someone to help me sort through the madness.

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