Continue SEO for my site or create a new one?

by 12 replies
14
I got into affiliate marketing 2 years ago and created a site with about 6 articles promoting different items in my niche. I did the typical SEO backlink building (blog and forum posting, social bookmarking, web 2.0 articles, etc) consistently for about 5 months. My site climbed the google ranks up to page 2-6, depending on the keyword. All was going well until all of the sudden, my site dropped in ranking very quickly (if I remember correctly I couldn't even find it anymore without typing the domain name into google). It frustrated me so I took a break from my site for what ended up being 1.5 years.

I just recently took interest in my site again. It does not come up within the top 100 results on google. What surprised me was when I checked my site's backlinks, some of them were to spammy/porn sites. Though I had certainly gotten backlinks from sites unrelated to my niche, I know I didn't link to porn sites. This made me wonder if possibly my rank dropped 1.5 years ago from SEO sabotage by one of my competitors.

At this point I am just wondering if it is even worth trying to bring my site back up in the google ranks, or if I should just cut my losses and start a completely new site.
I know that because my site is 2 years old, it's age could help with ranking potential. I just don't know if too much damage has already been done that it would take more work than it's worth to salvage it.
#search engine optimization #backlink #continue #create #sabotage #seo #site
  • Banned

    You have 6 pages & rank in the top 100 of the SERPs, I kinda doubt any competition was messing with your site.

    Doesn't sound like you were very serious about the site.
  • Start from scratch and build an authority site, have more than 6 pages. Build a solid blog which provides value.
  • Just start over. It's way easier to start fresh with the right type of SEO than it is to recover from penalties and spammy techniques from the past.
    • [1] reply
    • Hi,
      Your website looks shallow. Even if you start ranking, you need to work upon the look and feel in order to increase the user engagement.
      Secondly, If Google penalized your website for spamy links, then it'll take hell lot of time for you to regain the trust and build your online reputation again. Just adding fresh content won't work for you.
      So I would suggest to have a brand new website, update fresh content regularly, take links from high quality website and establish a decent network.
  • It can be extremely difficult to recover from a huge drop such as the one you describe, and dropping the domain and starting again is an option to weigh up (and suggested as an option by Google's Matt Cutts.) You can try the new Google Disavow tool (Bing have one too) to try to discount the spammy links and see if that brings some recovery, and submit a reconsideration request from Webmaster tools.
  • According to me you need to create a new website as you told us that your website has backlink from porn sites, it should be better if you can avoid old website and create a new website with fresh content, the content should be user friendly not promotion one.
  • 6 pages? Now wonder Google thinks your site is full of spam. Yeah, better create a new one, it won't hard to create a new 6 pages site.
  • Simply use Google disavow to remove the bad links and move on.

    Also, mind your anchor tactics.
  • If you can't wait then it is better to start a new website.
  • i'd say start over as well...you probably just wasting your time otherwise..
  • Bring more authority for your site. It's already aged. Get some quality backlinks and of course make your content to be viral. Check your loading speed also.
  • Thanks for the advice guys.
    JezWebb, I've heard of the disavow tool, but if I used it wouldn't it negatively affect the way search engines and other sites view my website even once I've disavowed the bad links?
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed

  • 14

    Continue SEO for my site or create a new one?

    I got into affiliate marketing 2 years ago and created a site with about 6 articles promoting different items in my niche. I did the typical SEO backlink building (blog and forum posting, social bookmarking, web 2.0 articles, etc) consistently for about 5 months. My site climbed the google ranks up to page 2-6, depending on the keyword. All was going well until all of the sudden, my site dropped in ranking very quickly (if I remember correctly I couldn't even find it anymore without typing the domain name into google). It frustrated me so I took a break from my site for what ended up being 1.5 years. I just recently took interest in my site again. It does not come up within the top 100 results on google. What surprised me was when I checked my site's backlinks, some of them were to spammy/porn sites. Though I had certainly gotten backlinks from sites unrelated to my niche, I know I didn't link to porn sites. This made me wonder if possibly my rank dropped 1.5 years ago from SEO sabotage by one of my competitors.