Isolating Cause Of Loss In Serps, How to know why your ranking suffers Options

[jargonaut]

I have searched all over this forum and all over the Net trying to figure this out.

I have a site I have been working on since August 2007. By October, it was ranking Page 1 for the 2nd most competitive industry term and page 2 for the top term on Google. I achieved this ranking my building recipricocal links (only about 100). But all of these were from very relevant sites. I also wrote articles. All the articles were completely original, high quality articles--I wrote about 1 a week for a few months.

I have a blog on my site and my whole site gets indexed by Google every 3-5 days

Around January 7th, my page 1 and page 2 rankings became page 13 and page 15 rankings respectively. I didn't know what caused this, but I un-changed some recent changes I had made to my site. On January 14th, my page 1 and page 2 rankings returned. I thought all was good again. On January 17th, the rankings went back to page 13 and page 15. The site also now ranks poorly for more targetted keywords.

In trying to isolate WHY this is happening, these are my speculations:

1. Around December 20th, I changed many of the of my footer links from normal html anchor text links to dynamic links (a href javascript links). I did this because I didn't want Google passing PR to some pages in my site. After the January 7th incident, I thought this was the most likely cause for loss of SERP (I thought maybe Google saw this as cloaking), so I changed all these back to text links. A couple days later, my rankings came back up. But, of course, the reverted a few days after that without any changes being made.

2. I had a bunch of inbound links from craigslist from some craigslist advertising I did last year. These links were recognized by yahoo in my link searches. These pages expire after 45 days and I suspected that this could be leading to my problems. I'm not so sure that craigslist inbound links had an affect whatsoever. I wasn't linking on the ads for SEO purposes, but for advertising.

3. Just before losing SERPs I added an outbound link to a page in a 3-site arrangement. I received an inbound link from a PR5. I was thinking that possibly the network of sites I linked in with had a bad rap with Google or something. I don't think this is likely but I'm suspicious.

4. Around December 16th, I paid an Indian to add my site to about 80 free directories. I could have been penalized because I had never submitted to so many directories before or because one of these directories may have a bad reputation. What do u think?

5. Google may have changed an alorithm. This is a possibility, but most of the page 1 and 2 rankings for my keywords have stayed exactly the same except for mine.

I just want to figure out WHY so I can handle the situation. I wasn't engaged in any spamming but it seems that I've been penalized as if I were.

It's a good thing I still get traffic from obscure searches (from my blog entries)... but this traffic isn't nearly as lucrative.

My PR for my home page is still 3. The PR on my other pages has jumped around but this has happened in the past.

Any help figuring out why my site is suffering is GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks, jargonaut

[Randy]

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

First, I wouldn't be making any significant changes at this point. Not enough time has passed to determine much of anything and it's the nature of the beast that site rankings go up and down constantly. Especially when you're dealing with newer sites that don't have years worth of history and good will built up.

The jump down, back up and back down again over a few days tell you nothing, so don't be concerned at all about that. You cuold have simply been connecting to different datacenters and they're never fully in sync with each other.

Now, some questions for you...

The ranking changes have been on Google only? Do you still maintain your rankings on Yahoo!, MSN/Live and Ask? If all of the rest are still okay I would say it's a pretty safe bet you haven't done anything too wrong. Or at least nothing that cannot be recovered from.

Paying someone for the free directory submissions won't have helped much, if any at all. However I seriously doubt it's hurting you as long as you're not linking back to them. Could have they watered down your previously spotless backlinks record? Yes. But Google knows you have no control over who links to you. Only who you link to.

Has Google had an algo update? Possible, but many times they don't announce those. They're constantly updating something or the other though.

re: the Craig's List links. Whether they are still there or not, they may have simply stopped helping you. Google has made public statements over the past few months that they're actively trying to discover and automatically discount Paid Links. If I were Google paid ads at well known places like Craig's List would be the first one I'd take out. Or, the folks at Craig's list could have appended a nofollow instruction to all of those old links to stay on Google's good side, which would have the same effect.

So if those links were in fact helping you and now aren't, it could be the main answer you're looking for.

re: the javascript links. Trying to sculpt your PageRank is a lot more fraught with potential trouble than it's worth. Seriously, why would you want Google to abandon some pages of your site when you're linking to those same pages from every page on your site?!? Makes no sense.

Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account? If not, get one. It'll often tell you if they are having technical problems with your site and sometimes tell you if you've done something to run afoul of their Quality Guidelines.

I rather doubt you have though. My hunch is you're simply taking to much of a short-term view instead of building for the long haul. Add into this that some of your previously good links may not be counting as much or at all for you anymore --the Craig's list ads, any other paid ads you had out there and even your articles falling deeper into other sites that may have posted or referenced them-- and it makes sense that you may have seen a slight fall. SEO isn't a one-time thing after all. It's something you need to do constantly to keep up with the Jones', especially when you have a site that's very young in the grand scheme of things.

Go back to doing all of the good things you were doing for users before and I suspect you'll get Google's attention again.

[glengara]

Of the things you've mentioned as possible causes, no.3 would strike me as the most likely suspect....

[jargonaut]

Thanks for the useful reply.

The ranking changes have been on Google only? Do you still maintain your rankings on Yahoo!, MSN/Live and Ask? If all of the rest are still okay I would say it's a pretty safe bet you haven't done anything too wrong. Or at least nothing that cannot be recovered from.

Yes, they are mainly on Google. Although I don't have very good rankings on Yahoo and MSN, I do get traffic. I don't monitor actual rankings because they don't account for much of my traffic. With my Google Analytics account, I see that traffic from Yahoo and MSN has maintained steady, but Google traffic is about 20% of what it usually is.

re: the javascript links. Trying to sculpt your PageRank is a lot more fraught with potential trouble than it's worth. Seriously, why would you want Google to abandon some pages of your site when you're linking to those same pages from every page on your site?!? Makes no sense.

yeah, i realize that now... i read Dynamic Linking (the ebook) recently and got caught up with the idea... I won't be using that anymore.

Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account?

Yes, I do. It says there are three pages it is unable to find.

I was browsing around the tools and went to "analyze robots.txt" it says the status of this file is "404 (not found)"... this is interesting because I definitely remember adding the file and uploading it. I just found it's no longer in the directory. Could this have something to do with the serp problem?

Anyhow, thanks for the advice. The good thing is my good rankings for such a time made me good enough money that I can now re-strategize. I just launched another site with a different SEO strategy... this way I have diversified my traffic and things are a bit more redundant.

I think your advice on having long term view is smart. I shouldn't worry so much about the intra-week ups and downs.

Thanks!

[jargonaut]

Of the things you've mentioned as possible causes, no.3 would strike me as the most likely suspect....

As I mentioned, I added the link, suffered in rankings, removed the link, bounced back up. But then I suffered in rankings again (without the link)... because I suffered without it, I added it back again because I figured it hadn't caused it in the first place and I wanted to benefit from the PR 5 relevant link. What do you think?

[Randy]

I was browsing around the tools and went to "analyze robots.txt" it says the status of this file is "404 (not found)"... this is interesting because I definitely remember adding the file and uploading it. I just found it's no longer in the directory. Could this have something to do with the serp problem?

Typically, no. robots.txt gives the spiders exclusionary data. So if there is no robots.txt they'll default to their Spider Everything mode.

As I mentioned, I added the link, suffered in rankings, removed the link, bounced back up. But then I suffered in rankings again (without the link)... because I suffered without it, I added it back again because I figured it hadn't caused it in the first place and I wanted to benefit from the PR 5 relevant link. What do you think?

Either I'm reading this wrong or you're a bit confused.

Linking to high quality sites can say something about your site, but is not going to increase your PageRank/Link Pop. There would have to be links from those sites pointing towards your site to see any gain on that front.

[jargonaut]

Typically, no. robots.txt gives the spiders exclusionary data. So if there is no robots.txt they'll default to their Spider Everything mode.
Either I'm reading this wrong or you're a bit confused.

Linking to high quality sites can say something about your site, but is not going to increase your PageRank/Link Pop. There would have to be links from those sites pointing towards your site to see any gain on that front.

I am in doubt as to whether or not linking to another site from one of my main pages might have caused my rankings to plummet. Any data?

[Randy]

It's impossible to guess without the details. Though it would be a pretty rare situation. You'd have had to found and linked to a site that had already been part of a bad neighborhood for doing something shady.

Is it safe to assume you're linking to those sites because they add value for your visitors? If so, you're probably pretty safe. Though I guess it wouldn't hurt to take a deeper look into those sites to make sure they haven't run afoul of Google's rules of the road.

[jargonaut]

It's impossible to guess without the details. Though it would be a pretty rare situation. You'd have had to found and linked to a site that had already been part of a bad neighborhood for doing something shady.

Is it safe to assume you're linking to those sites because they add value for your visitors? If so, you're probably pretty safe. Though I guess it wouldn't hurt to take a deeper look into those sites to make sure they haven't run afoul of Google's rules of the road.

So it's been almost a month since I lost position for my site. This is really hurting my business now. Today I requested the scrupulous link to my site to be removed. There are over 100 outbound links from that page and although it was a PR5 a month ago it is now a PR3. This is suspicious and I feel like that is what caused all the trouble to start with.

Is there a way to tell if a site is part of a "bad neighborhood"?

Two other speculations for the loss in rankings:

1. I stopped writing 1-2 articles a week. I was doing this regularly for several weeks and recently stopped for about a month. But I was still ranking page 1/2 before the article writing began.

2. Possibly the tags on various social media for my blog postings have become staledated and fallen back to lower PR links.