3 replies to this topic

[rlopes]

On Saturday my rankings/traffic dropped about 30%.

I've hired someone to create backlinks on the last month, so I'm suspecting this could be the problem.

On the other hand, I was searching for duplicate content and I just saw that many sites have copied my content.

Should I rewrite my content (5 pages only)?
Should I stop the link building?

[danielmarriott]

Dont rewrite your content, it sound like it was working well before.

Go after the sites that have STOLEN YOUR content. Ask for it to be removed.

No! You should not stop link building, keep it going.

Link building is very important.

Also the 30% drop, this could just be a one time thing. traffic can increase and decrease randomly.

it really depends on what people are looking for, e.g. my blog started with 20-50 visits a day after i first stated it and yesterday i ended up with 2K+ just from posting a link on a site.

[Michael Martinez]

I suspect it's the link building. Too many people advocate aggressive link building when it's really not necessary. You probably need to review the kinds of links your vendor provided and compare them to Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

If you find the links are in violation of those guidelines, you'll need to file a detailed reconsideration request.

Google recently deindexed many thousands of SEO blogs used for link building. If you received those kinds of links and have not received a penalty notice in Google Webmaster Tools, you probably just lost the link value. I would not repeat that pattern, however.

With only 5 pages of content it's hard to be competitive and depending on links for success is a poor SEO strategy.

[qwerty]

I agree with Michael, and I would add that seeing a drop in rankings half a week ago is not really a sign that you're in trouble. Rankings fluctuate all the time for a lot of different reasons -- not necessarily because you've done anything wrong. If your rankings stay in the same place for a month and you find that your organic traffic is down, that may be cause for concern, but a few days of lower rankings is not something to draw any conclusions about.