First Page In Google One Week No Where The Next Options

[mmigliac]

First page on Google one week, no where the next My website was receiving really good rankings in Google for a few selected key words. I registered the domain name <Site remove. See Forum Rules> about 6 months ago and put up an under construction page. Last month I starting building the site and uploading a few pages of content at a time. When I got cached for the second time since building I was result number 7 for the term <keyword phrase removed for your own good>. I made a few changes the page in question to improve the on page SEO and I also added lots of other pages to the site.

I was cached last Friday and have now completely disappeared for this search term. A sub page of my site is found for this term on page 3 but the homepage that had been optimized for this has slid of the scale.

I have over 100 back links since setting up the site with the anchor text <phrase removed> pointing to the home page.

Have I been sandboxed?

Can anyone suggest anything I may have done to cause this or anything I could do to rectify the situation?

Cheers

This post has been edited by Randy: Nov 28 2007, 08:35 AM

[RiYo]

hi there, I am not 100% sure here, but as far as I remember 'under construction' is not helping you much, or to put it differently, if you put 'under construction' on your home page, Google will not even put it in the sandbox, but will just ignore it. Only when you start putting 'real' info on the site the sandbox-period will start.

I hope that somebody on this forum can confirm this or tell me that I am talking BS (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ... I have read this quite some time ago 'somewhere' ... so it could be BS.

Richard

[mmigliac]

hi there, I am not 100% sure here, but as far as I remember 'under construction' is not helping you much, or to put it differently, if you put 'under construction' on your home page, Google will not even put it in the sandbox, but will just ignore it. Only when you start putting 'real' info on the site the sandbox-period will start.

I hope that somebody on this forum can confirm this or tell me that I am talking BS (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ... I have read this quite some time ago 'somewhere' ... so it could be BS.

Richard

Sorry dont think you understood properly. The site was underconstruction but I have since added the site and was ranked on the first page after being cached. I have since then been cached after adding new content and have disappeared.

I suspect it is something to do with the time delay for new sites and i also suspect i have over optimised. Im hoping someone can tell me if this is the case and what i can do to get back up?

thanks

[adybee]

Sorry dont think you understood properly. The site was underconstruction but I have since added the site and was ranked on the first page after being cached. I have since then been cached after adding new content and have disappeared.

I suspect it is something to do with the time delay for new sites and i also suspect i have over optimised. Im hoping someone can tell me if this is the case and what i can do to get back up?

thanks

New website and new website content often appears high in the SE's and then drops - this is natural due to time delay / sandbox (Gill, randy etc. will confirm this - happens to the best (IMG:style_emoticons/default/notworthy.gif) ) - G are just giving your website a chance to be seen by searchers - if your site is good enough you'll get links naturally that will help to sustain your rankings.

just keep plugging at optimisation , adding new unique content and look for relevant links etc.

[Mhoram]

I have over 100 back links since setting up the site with the anchor text <phrase removed> pointing to the home page.

Are you paying for these links in any way, and how did you get them to all use <phrase removed> as the anchor text?  A guy named David Airey got slapped with a Google penalty partially because he ran a contest people could enter by linking to his page, and he gave them suggestions what anchor text to use.  Of course, many sites say, "If you'd like to link to us, here's some sample code to make it easy," and that includes the anchor text, so maybe this is ok if you aren't paying for the links in any way--even in a roundabout way like with a contest prize. What the others said about the time delay may be the whole answer, but I thought I'd throw this into the mix in case you're getting your links in a not-so-organic way.

This post has been edited by Randy: Nov 28 2007, 08:32 AM

[Randy]

Welcome mmigliac ! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hi.gif)

Sounds like the aging delay effect new sites experience to me. Completely normal and not something to worry over since it's outside of your control.

[mmigliac]

Are you paying for these links in any way, and how did you get them to all use <phrase removed> as the anchor text? A guy named David Airey got slapped with a Google penalty partially because he ran a contest people could enter by linking to his page, and he gave them suggestions what anchor text to use. Of course, many sites say, "If you'd like to link to us, here's some sample code to make it easy," and that includes the anchor text, so maybe this is ok if you aren't paying for the links in any way--even in a roundabout way like with a contest prize. What the others said about the time delay may be the whole answer, but I thought I'd throw this into the mix in case you're getting your links in a not-so-organic way.

I have no paid for any links. I have been obtaining links from industry relevant forums. Whilst they are not highly ranked sites they are driving relevant traffic. I have also been posting links is yahoo answers by suggesting good advice and providing a link to get more help.

I have faced up to this beinfg the ageing delay factor, but im not happy to wait indefinately. I feel like google has slapped me in the face for all my hard work. I get the impression no one really understands what has happened and this is just lots of opinions. there must be a more scientific explination of whats going on?

[Mhoram]

There's a scientific explanation, but you'd have to have access to Google's algorithm code to know what it is.  All we can do is observe how Google reacts to our sites and changes we make, pay attention when they do make pronoucements about things, and pool our knowledge to try to make sense of it all.  So yeah, it ultimately comes down to a lot of opinion; but when I started researching SEO, it wasn't too hard after a while to tell which people were basing their opinions on real testing and research.

[Hyperformance]

People, people, just calm down a little...

This is the second post in a few hours about the same thing. Is nobody reading the 'be patient' part of the SEO Truth?

You find yourself one day, or for a few days... and you feel like you are "owed" that position? The explanation IS that you are NEW - Your website is under one year new - not old. Google has swallowed your website, now they are chewing on it and tasting it and sharing it with others. Many do not make page one even when being digested by Google.

You are not "owed" ANY position, and you will find many more times than not that you WILL NOT land on the first page even after the sandbox - not to say you have not put effort into your website, but you are being very naive to believe that all the others in that category are not as well. And you should just POP into page one and stay there...?

It will take time for strong and consistent results - and usually "inner-pages" of your site end up in the good serps because home pages generally cover a lot of material, while inner-pages are usually more dedicated to specific terms, topics or content.

I get a little irked when many believe they are owed that SPOT they first saw their website come out under. Patience my friends and hard and continuous work and improvement will move you there - OVER TIME. NOT over-night.

- Scott

[mmigliac]

fair comments scott!

the only annoying thing is that the website that is in the number one spot has only 2 pages and is hardly optimised at all and has only a handful of back links. I appear to have done everything better than him but still do not even get close.

It appears the only thing this webiste has in its favor is being 5 years old. surley good optimisation and backlinking should out score the one factor of age?

[BBCoach]

Welcome to the board mmigliac. I like many that have responded to you been building web sites for a long time and one thing I've noticed since 2000 is that a brand new site will take between two or three years to rank well in the major search engines and stay there. Prior to 2000-2001 you could easily "trick" search engines into ranking your site very high, but that game is long gone. It's not only their algos, but also their human reviewers. This aging delay is not the same for web sites that have been live for 5+ years that undergo a redesign.

Several people here have given you the answer BE PATIENT and they're 100% correct. There's nothing you can do to change that in the near future. Build your site right in the first place with valuable content and if you get some high value link backs to your site, then you'll see the results in the SEs you're looking to achieve. Continue adding valuable content and things will continue to get better over time. Until then, you'd be wise to start a PPC.

If you believe us to be spitting un-scientific opinions, then I suggest you go read the patents filed by the SEs. Our opinions are based on these and on what we've observed from our log files from years of data. An opinion yes, but it is an informed opinion. Good luck with your site.

[Hyperformance]

Mmigliac - And with time, all else equal - you may be right. But it is important we don't run and change all kinds of things based on these initial observations - you could hurt yourself and not even know yet that - that is what you did (hurt yourself).

Good Luck!

- Scott

[Jill]

Might want to also read this from our SEO FAQ: Why Does Google Hate My Site