Sudden drop in SERP for targeted keyword

Be careful about jumping to conclusions.

The fact that you added an article to someone else's site does not sound like a reason for your website to drop massively in rankings.

Usual reasons include:

1 - Links you had have been devalued
2 - Links you had have got your site penalised
3 - Your competitors have up'd their game
4 - Your sites freshness has worn off as you aren't adding new content

Adding content somewhere else is unlikely to give you this result.

You have to be careful when buying automated link building services. Google prefers manually built links by real people. Who knows which websites you are linked to in that service? That's why my clients only get high PR5+ backlinks from trusted websites that have been on the internet for years.

Here's how to fix this:

1. You need a complete site audit to make sure you are following the 10 basic guidelines of page titles, meta tags, sitemap, xml sitemap, alt image tags, proper header tags, good robots.txt, nofollow bag links, a working mobile site, and authority backlinks.

There are no shortcuts here. You will have to pay a premium for this service but it will keep your rankings at #1 or #2 because your competition is too lazy to properly optimize a site.

2. No spun content - The best way to build backlinks is through contextual links on high rankings pages. Spun content doesn't read properly and it gets marked as spam.

3. When you properly optimize your website and build backlinks, you will maintain rankings because your trust is much higher.

Couple changes you need to make:

1. Faster loading site - your website loads at 4 seconds. You need under 2 seconds or less.

2. Brand in page title - You don't rank #1 in google for your brand. This is a bad sign and Google will punish you for keyword stuffing.

3. Image optimized - Your images need to add alt tags and be SEO optimized.

If you need help with all this, please send me a PM.

Would anyone be willing to take a look at the links he created for me? I can send them via a text file... he sent me a list after he did it... it hasn't effected any of my other keywords...

I checked open site explorer and seomajestic... and I didn't notice any new backlinks either... plus I checked the pages content for plagiarism and I didn't notice anything unusual...

So at least it doesn't seem as though my competitors have done anything...

I have now removed the backlink from the recent article I posted.... Perhaps that will make a difference... as I only noticed the drop soon after I guest posted that article...

This could also be a link bomb from your competitors.. One of my clients recently informed me that he would like to get his site "back" to the 1st page because he was bombed by a competitor with thousands of spammy backlinks... No idea, just check this!

If you never had a manual penalty in your webmaster tools or an email, you are hit with an algo demotion which means you are basically screwed by either panda, penguin or hummingbird, they are hard to fix because google doesnt inform you want is wrong and why your site traffic dropped big time.

I have the same problem my site has never recovered yet I have never had any manual penalties

found this on t he web
Google Can Tell Us If Our Sites Are Impacted By Panda Or Penguin But They Don't:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-a...lty-17703.html