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Question for Experts: Did I get penalized for too many Google +1's??

by hansdesjarlais
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

I am posing this question to any and all advanced or expert SEO's out there.

I have been doing SEO for our company for over 6 months now and I was in position 13-15 for our target keyword. I was not using any blackhat tactics, just trying to build quality backlinks and writing quality content.

At the end of October I added the Facebook, Twitter and buttons to our site in order to get people clicking to increase our "social signals".

I used Fiverr.com to get 1000 Facebook likes and 75 Google +1's.

The idea behind this being that people would be more inclined to click since many people "apparently" already had. Sort of the "no one wants to go to the party who no ones there" sort of thing.

At around that time I dropped into position 300-400. Not sure exactly but definitely not in the top 100.

Traffic on our site is less than 50 uniques per day.

I wanted to ask, did I make a mistake my getting those FB Likes and G +1's??

And if so, how do I fix this?

Thank you.
#experts #google #penalized #question
  • Profile picture of the author nathansaputra
    Originally Posted by hansdesjarlais View Post

    Hello,

    I am posing this question to any and all advanced or expert SEO's out there.

    I have been doing SEO for our company for over 6 months now and I was in position 13-15 for our target keyword. I was not using any blackhat tactics, just trying to build quality backlinks and writing quality content.

    At the end of October I added the Facebook, Twitter and buttons to our site in order to get people clicking to increase our "social signals".

    I used Fiverr.com to get 1000 Facebook likes and 75 Google +1's.

    The idea behind this being that people would be more inclined to click since many people "apparently" already had. Sort of the "no one wants to go to the party who no ones there" sort of thing.

    At around that time I dropped into position 300-400. Not sure exactly but definitely not in the top 100.

    Traffic on our site is less than 50 uniques per day.

    I wanted to ask, did I make a mistake my getting those FB Likes and G +1's??

    And if so, how do I fix this?

    Thank you.

    do they ( fb likes and G+ ) can boost your SERP ? no for me , i never use social signal to boost ranking , what for ? do seo normally
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  • Profile picture of the author Suir1980
    Why oh why do ppl still use Fiverr for seo purposes? Are you guys really that dumb? Sorry, OP, buy you shouldn't be doing SEO for your company if you buy +1s especially from Fiverr! That's super newbie stuff right there.

    There are other ways to get +1s that will stick and Fiverr is not one of them.
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  • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
    My personal opinion is that it your +1's did not have anything to do with the drop.

    Are the +1's the only element that has been added to the site? Maybe there were some backlinks that kicked in... Maybe your anchor text profile is over optimized and there was a penguin refresh. Where there any public updates going on at the time of your drop?

    Is your site an exact match domain?

    Unless isolated, no one can say for sure that the +1's are the culprit. My guess is that for now, they don't affect the serps positively or negatively, but I haven't tested extensively this theory.

    - Gabriel
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  • Profile picture of the author kimseo
    I second the above comment Facebook and google plus likes should not effect your SERP . It must be something else. It would be hard to say anything without scanning the domain
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    SEO Expert in Canada
    Article Rank : A premium article directory.
    Vancouver wedding photographer
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    • Profile picture of the author hansdesjarlais
      @gabibeowulf and kimseo,

      Thanks for the constructive reply.

      It's really hard to tell exactly what the issue was. I try to maintain a 15-25% backlink anchor keyword ratio and I know that at one point it was as high as 45% but I have fixed that since.

      The Google +1's have since disappeared, I think Google removed them. So that is why I was asking that. I thought maybe I had been penalized.

      At around that time I had sent out a PR, updated my htaccess file to redirect some pages I removed from the site to my homepage and added those Google +1's and Facebook likes.

      I was in position 20-30 for 3-4 months and then moved up to 13-15 for 2-3 weeks then it dropped out of the top 100. That was around the end of October.

      I would be surprised too if I had been penalized for that but I guess I am being a little paranoid.
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      Sincerely,
      Hans Desjarlais

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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by hansdesjarlais View Post

        It's really hard to tell exactly what the issue was. I try to maintain a 15-25% backlink anchor keyword ratio and I know that at one point it was as high as 45% but I have fixed that since.
        Wasting your time trying to maintain some artificial percentages. There is no magic number.

        Originally Posted by hansdesjarlais View Post

        The Google +1's have since disappeared, I think Google removed them. So that is why I was asking that. I thought maybe I had been penalized.

        I would be surprised too if I had been penalized for that but I guess I am being a little paranoid.
        Really? You would be surprised?

        Google has been on a rampage against spammers this year. Not only were you spamming +1's and trying to manipulate the SERPs, but you did it using their own platform!

        You should have just handwritten them a letter telling them that you were trying to artificially inflate your rankings through methods they explicitly are against.

        The fact that the +1's disappeared is a pretty good indication that they caught on to what was happening.
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      • Profile picture of the author kimseo
        Originally Posted by hansdesjarlais View Post

        @gabibeowulf and kimseo,

        Thanks for the constructive reply.

        It's really hard to tell exactly what the issue was. I try to maintain a 15-25% backlink anchor keyword ratio and I know that at one point it was as high as 45% but I have fixed that since.

        The Google +1's have since disappeared, I think Google removed them. So that is why I was asking that. I thought maybe I had been penalized.

        At around that time I had sent out a PR, updated my htaccess file to redirect some pages I removed from the site to my homepage and added those Google +1's and Facebook likes.

        I was in position 20-30 for 3-4 months and then moved up to 13-15 for 2-3 weeks then it dropped out of the top 100. That was around the end of October.

        I would be surprised too if I had been penalized for that but I guess I am being a little paranoid.
        I sorry to say that but your site might be penalized for some other reasons. If you are talking about your signature links(or sites), They are exact match domains and i believe they got victimized of EMD update.
        Check this out
        Google's EMD Algo Update - Early Data | SEOmoz
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        SEO Expert in Canada
        Article Rank : A premium article directory.
        Vancouver wedding photographer
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        • Profile picture of the author hansdesjarlais
          @kimseo,

          I see you are in MTL, so am I. What's the best way to contact you?
          Signature

          Sincerely,
          Hans Desjarlais

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  • Profile picture of the author typoo999
    Make your site human consumable and if you do backlinking, do it naturally. Be careful with these kind of Fiverr gigs. They hurt more than help.
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    Boom shakalaka!
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  • Profile picture of the author jasono
    It would be a waste of time and money if you normally do those fiverr gigs. At most, you should have done it naturally. It's a waste to get n number of likes and followers if they aren't the target audience.
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