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Help! My SEO rankings dropped significantly!
richie88800
Posts: 5
Joined: 01 Aug 10
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20 Apr 11 12:33 pm

Help! My SEO rankings dropped significantly!

Hi,

I need help with this very frustrating problem:

I started my first AffiloBluePrint site in August 2010.

I followed the videos and started building my backlinks. I used ezinearticles, AMA and blog comments, foren etc to build backlinks.

About 8 of my 22 keywords were ranking high enough in Google to be picked up by Traffic Travis doing a SEO analysis. All 8 keywords ranked in the top 40 results with 4 of them on the top page. I achieved these rankings by the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011.

Since the beginning of March 2011(around the second week) all my keywords have fallen simultaneously below the top 100 search results in Google. At the time I had no rankings in MSN and Yahoo but now (April 20) rankings are slowly beginning to improve). However, in Google nothing seems to work.

I had also created a blog at blogspot.com and one at wordpress.com to link to my main site. The ranking of my wordpress.com site has also fallen (just like my main site) while the blogspot site has retained its first page ranking on Google search results.

I have checked my analytics account and the change in Google algorithm on 24. Feb 2011 did not seem to make any significant difference to my site.

Does anybody have any idea what happened to my site and what I can do to get back on the first page of Google search results?

Btw, the content on my site is original content that I wrote myself. I have picked up a few natural backlinks from other sites so hope its not the quality of my articles that caused this problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.
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jacaranda
Posts: 137
Joined: 12 Jun 10
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20 Apr 11 1:54 pm

 i feel your pain, really do... freakin' panda :)
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newbie-friendly Membership site for Niche Marketing:

-> http://www.nicheproftclassroom.com/
_________________________________
(second only to Afilorama.com of course :)
 
PremiumMember
cterao
Posts: 647
Joined: 18 Aug 09
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20 Apr 11 5:17 pm

 Same thing happened to me on April 11th. Google seems to be having a lot of back-to-back radical updates these days. I'm guessing that they are desperate to reclaim the search traffic they are losing to Bing.

All of these updates just show that they really have no idea what they're doing, if you've read up on the effects of the Panda updates.

It wouldn't surprise me if they did yet another update in the weeks to come. It is still hard to predict how this whole thing will shake out once the dust is settled.

It is hard to say exactly how this new algorithm works, but I know they hit Ezine Articles hard. Maybe the authority power of your backlinks from EZA got reduced and thus your SERP's decreased. Just a hypothesis...

Best of luck. I know a lot of us got hurt by the Panda update. I guess it just goes to show that we need to diversify our traffic sources.
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Clayton
I did AffiloBlueprint for one year - http://www.journeyofmyown.com/welcome-affilorama-friends/

Make $100 commissions by being my affiliate - http://exsolutionprogram.com/affiliates/
 
cecille.l
Posts: 6369
Joined: 25 Feb 11
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20 Apr 11 11:36 pm

 Hi Richie88800,

This happens from time to time, and for a number of reasons such as the website is relatively new ( a few monts old) or when Google changes its algorithm. It can be very annoying especially when you've been working at getting those rankings up but you'll just have to keep at it. These changes happen and the best way to cope is to keep working on your on-page and off-page SEO. You'll soon get those rankings back.

Hope this helps. Have a good day!
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Cecille

Building affiliate marketing websites is a breeze: https://www.affilorama.com/affilojetpack
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/affilorama
 
redmachine
Posts: 9
Joined: 14 Apr 11
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21 Apr 11 7:40 am

 Hi,

It may be because of Google Panda or farmer update. No need to worry. Keep patience.

Thanks
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tommybagboa
Posts: 1
Joined: 21 Apr 11
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21 Apr 11 9:51 am

 Hey Richie, are you back up the rankings now?
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PremiumMember
jmpruitt
Posts: 3918
Joined: 19 Jun 09
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21 Apr 11 9:34 pm

 just made a post about the Google search statistics being wonky. I know a lot of people have been seing wierd results.

Best thing to do is 1 stop relying on any 1 source of traffic, including google, and 2, pay attention to quality of your links rather than quanitity.

those two things will help you stay more stable in search and will give you a better chance at surviving even if you do lose a few search ranking with all these updates.
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Do you want to use your online content to Educate others, inspire them to action, and run a profitable business for yourself and your family? I can help you get started
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvDlGM242pI2D5TUOCWd7A
 
richie88800
Posts: 5
Joined: 01 Aug 10
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26 Apr 11 2:45 am

 Hi,
Thanks for your replies.
Tommybagboa, yes rankings are still bad.
So, the only thing I can do is keep building links?
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fastnobull
Posts: 26
Joined: 26 Apr 11
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26 Apr 11 5:51 am

 Jmpruitt was right with not relying on one traffic source.

Social marketing is booming right now, you might wanna study up on that with some free resources.
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lizatailor23
Posts: 47
Joined: 26 Apr 11
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26 Apr 11 5:59 am

 Sometimes it happens because of some fluctuation. You can improve your ranking by a couple pages for that keyword, although I saw it took a dip back to around where it was for a few days then it was back up and has been consistently around the new position.
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melovemoney
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Joined: 02 May 11
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02 May 11 3:07 am

 Like some others said, the Panda update is most likely responsible for this.

But unlike them, I agree with the Panda update. Panda was meant to improve the quality of content in the Google search results and I believe that Panda helped do so.

My rankings were not effected at all, they have actually been rising. You know why? Because I focus on the content on my site. I focus on inter linking within my site (build my links with my own site mostly). I also focus on putting out frequent content (update often) and just keep adding content and adding content.

Like the saying goes, content is king. Back links are important, but maybe you should focus more on quality content!
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PremiumMember
jmpruitt
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02 May 11 3:01 pm

 Hey melovemoney, i agree quality content is critical, but if you read my post I shared, you would see that I am ranking for keywords that are TOTALLY irrelevant to my niche, and it is screwing up my results on the site. Across most of my sites, my rankings have gone up, and most are ranking really well, but some of them are ranking for stuff they have no business ranking for. I don't call that quality listings on Google's part.
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Do you want to use your online content to Educate others, inspire them to action, and run a profitable business for yourself and your family? I can help you get started
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvDlGM242pI2D5TUOCWd7A
 
kakaboo
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Joined: 11 Jul 10
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11 May 11 8:47 am

 Funny how we all often complain about google doing funny stuff when we want to actually depend on them for the bulk of our income.

The only real way forward is to start building a real business and create a real authority site with a brand.. imagine if you just wrote 5 great quality articles for content on your site, in 5 years you would have close to >7,500 articles on your site.. by then you would probably have gained a lot of authority and trust and withstand all these crappy updates by Google.

But alas, not many people will be able to stand for so long without see any real earnings on their website...

Now don't get me wrong, the methods taught in AB and AJP certainly do still work to some extent at this point of time... but for how long more? What if one day google decides to take backlinks completely out of their metric for determining search engine rankings?

That's something we should all start thinking about now... before it is too late to start doing anything.. Internet marketing is harder now than it was 5 years ago, and you can definitely be sure that it will be even harder in the next 5 years than now as it grows exponentially
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cecille.l
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12 May 11 6:40 am

 You have a point. However, Google is not the only search engine to rank in, nor will they be the only one ever. Google continuously raises their quality bar because they want to remain above all other search engines.

Five years from now, will we still be using Google? Will it still be the most popular search engine?
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Cecille

Building affiliate marketing websites is a breeze: https://www.affilorama.com/affilojetpack
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kakaboo
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13 May 11 7:00 am

 Yup thats why I say I think the only way forward would be to learn how to build a business or even just a branding for your website, something that people will search for automatically such as Affilorama.

Of course, sites taught in AB AJP still work pretty well now, but we should also consider to channel some of those earnings towards building a real brand or business if possible
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