Sudden ranking collapse in Google..

[bonusbetting]

Hello folks,

I've been steadily building rankings in google.co.uk for the last 3 months.

However, as of today, I have lost all my rankings.
The pages are still indexed, but have fallen so far down the rankings I can't monitor them.

Is it possible that this is a temporary glitch? I really hope so!

Otherwise I am struggling to see the issue. I have been approved to run gambling adwords for the site, so I don't think it can be a site quality issue. The content is original, and gets updates at least once a week (at minimum).

I had a rogue freelancer when I first started who made some spammy links, but I removed all the ones I could immediately and any that are left are at least 3 months old, and they haven't affected rankings up to now.

I asked in the Google webmaster forum, but the only response I got was that perhaps my site has reached the end of it's 'honeymoon period' and has been dropped due to lack of clicks - however, in webmaster tools, the CTRs are good for the top keywords.

I'm struggling to understand this and it's obviously pretty frustrating - anyone got any ideas?

[ck8795]

Where does the page rank (check the bottom of the results first and work your way up since you know your not in the top 100) - is it the homepage or all pages? (Check internal pages as well) When did your site drop?

[alexpratt]

In the last few days Google has released an update (Panda) globally beyond the US so maybe its that?? Details here
Forum discussing ithttp://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4295468.htm
Official Line http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...ithm-goes.html
The results http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/201...lls-out-to-uk/

[ck8795]

Looks like it happened today based on your post at GWT.

I would hold off on doing anything - as sometimes its better to do nothing than something. Wait it out and see if it bounces back first.

What are they talking about copying other people's work? Have you republished articles on your site?

Your homepage is not optimized well for bonus betting. The page has all of maybe 400 words if you count navigation, table text and footer details. You need more content. You should easily be able to get that page to 1000 words excluding all the secondary stuff.

[ck8795]

Get rid of the duplicate content - get rid of the footer links and stop posting on forums for backlinks. I see some dated beginning of March and you said the freelancer was spamming 3 months ago. If you are doing this kind of stuff it won't help you.


I searched the title of your betfred page and came up with two pages - both which are near identical

http://bonusbetting.co.uk/betfred-free-bet-review.html

http://bonusbetting.co.uk/forum/10-b...t-betfred.html

and a snippet from the T&Cs results in this


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

[bonusbetting]

Thanks everyone for the help.

Regarding the post at GWT - I haven't republished any articles, not sure what that guy was talking about.
As for increasing content on the front page - I'll take your advice there.
'bonus betting' is not a particularly great term to rank for but I had been at position 2 for quite a while.

Re: the Ts and Cs - I haven't got much choice about copying these if I am going to keep them.

As for duplication between the pages and the forum - I accept this is a problem, which I will look at resolving.

These are certainly aspects I can improve, but all of them have been the same since the site started, and as I say I have 3 months of good and improving results. It just seems a bit sudden for these to be the reasons for the drop.

Re: forum links - any since February should be valid links and not spam but I will go through these and check them all, and remove any spam if I can. It's certainly not intentional.

I will look into the Panda update in more detail - it seems a likely culprit.

Thanks again for your input. My fingers are crossed that everything will bounce back soon, in which case I can improve things further.
If not, I'll have to salvage what I can...

[ck8795]

The T & C's - I don't know many that actually publish the T&C's. Just a suggestion to kill two birds with one stone. Why not rewrite the conditions on your page. List the rules so players know, tell them that they should always check the T&C's, but give them the gist of the bonus info. Then in the forum you do your own "unique" write up of the offer. Currently the page is indentical, even without the T&C's. At the end of the right up, link back to your main page. It makes alot more sense to do it that way. Now you have unique content on both pages, and you send players to the main site to have a look, and possibly see something else that might spark their interest.

With respect to the links - yeah its spam...and I'm sure you know that since many are forum links..one liners with your site, and dated in March. I would go back and delete the ones you can - looks like you've been banned by a few forums. I would also stop dropping links on blogs. Some have been deleted, but blog links, forum links is not link building - its spamming - period.

Good luck

[bonusbetting]

Kaus, I really appreciate you taking the time to review the site and help out.

I've regained a lowly #8 for the term 'compare bonus bets' (down from #1), which is interesting. It give me some hope that some of my rankings will at least regain some ground over the next few days.

I haven't posted any forum or blog links myself and I am not happy to have been banned from anywhere.
I will just have to go through them and explain, and get what I can deleted...
At least I've learned not to use cheap freelancers for link building or SEO - I thought this would give me a head start but it has just given me headaches.

Re: duplication in the forum, I am going to remove all of these. I am seriously considering whether to even keep the forum / communtiy content aspect, it might make more sense to have blogs.

I have a lot of work to do. It's frustrating - I had just reached my 50th depositor and then boom - lost my traffic. I'm trying to see it as an opportunity to rebuild the site and improve it.

[bonusbetting]

Looks like it's not going to bounce back - aaargh.

[ddm]

@OP, I'm not seeing any real backlinks pushing link equity to your site (assuming it's the one in your sig) -
opensiteexplorer is actually reporting a whopping SIX domains linking in to all pages on your site...
Therefore I doubt you can expect any serious ranking w/ these metrics, apart from some low competition longtail stuff.
It's quite also quite possible that your rankings have been lost due to people with more authoritative domains adding new content to their site (which will make them rank better for your kws.)

[PremTips]

The Panda attacks!

Get rid of the duplicate content - get rid of the footer links and stop posting on forums for backlinks. I see some dated beginning of March and you said the freelancer was spamming 3 months ago. If you are doing this kind of stuff it won't help you.

I would take the advice above first and foremost if you want to get back in the rankings. Why you would be using such tactics I do not know, but hey.

[bonusbetting]

I have done. Just to be clear, I am not spamming and I never will. There are a small number of bad links still up that were posted by freelancers from Odesk who assured me they would build relevant whitehat links. It's not a mistake I will make again.
Neither am I stealing anyone's content - the duplicate content was mainly an issue with my articles being reproduced in my forum. I have removed all dupes from the site now and made a few improvements.

I identified a pretty major issue - a number of pages were being indexed as both /index.php/file and /file.html, due to a change I made in Joomla. I've resolved this with 301 redirects.

Hopefully I'm not far off re-submitting now.

[grem]

have you checked your google webmaster tools account?

maybe you have a message in there

[bonusbetting]

No message in Webmaster Tools. I've never had this happen before - is it normal to get a message if you're hit by a penalty?
It seems more likely I just got slapped by the Panda.

[bonusbetting]

Fixed issues, recovered rankings

[myriddin]

That's great news! It also shows that google adapts pretty quickly to changes for the site. .

[PokerSpnsor2-0]

Hi your problem is simple you have spammy links or bad neighbourhood link association like,

xttp://www.linkspal.co.uk/bonusbetting-co-uk-compare-fr

xttp://www.alwayslinks.com/index.php?c=301

Also most of the other links you have are either forum posts, member sites and blog comments, try heading over to the GPWA Links Store and get yourself some same niche high PR backlinks. Keep it slow and steady for a few months and you will see an increase in your sites rankings, also links that are removed after a short time will have a bad impact on your search engine results information on this can be found over on Matt Cutts blog which is commonly known as the best SEO resource.
Anyway start building up links and remember to vary your anchor text otherwise Google will think you are spamming backlinks, I suggest to use at least 3 different keywords for building backlinks if you do this and build your links up to the 500-1000 mark you will be fine and start to rank higher in Google.
PS - The links store is the best place for gambling related links

[bonusbetting]

That's interesting. As I've said a few times, I never intended to have any spammy links and I am well awae of the problems they cause. My problem was trusting a cheap SEO consultant.

As it turns out, this was not the issue, and I was never penalized. The issue was a technical one - due to a change in my CMS my site was duplicating all pages.

I am a bit concerned that you have responded to my PM by searching through my posts, as you said. My issue with your initial suggestions is that they were completely off, and you had obviously not actually read my site. That's why I won't be buying your services or your links.

Hi your problem is simple you have spammy links or bad neighbourhood link association like,

xttp://www.linkspal.co.uk/bonusbetting-co-uk-compare-fr

xttp://www.alwayslinks.com/index.php?c=301

Also most of the other links you have are either forum posts, member sites and blog comments, try heading over to the GPWA Links Store and get yourself some same niche high PR backlinks. Keep it slow and steady for a few months and you will see an increase in your sites rankings, also links that are removed after a short time will have a bad impact on your search engine results information on this can be found over on Matt Cutts blog which is commonly known as the best SEO resource.
Anyway start building up links and remember to vary your anchor text otherwise Google will think you are spamming backlinks, I suggest to use at least 3 different keywords for building backlinks if you do this and build your links up to the 500-1000 mark you will be fine and start to rank higher in Google.
PS - The links store is the best place for gambling related links

[PokerSpnsor2-0]

That's interesting. As I've said a few times, I never intended to have any spammy links and I am well awae of the problems they cause. My problem was trusting a cheap SEO consultant.

As it turns out, this was not the issue, and I was never penalized. The issue was a technical one - due to a change in my CMS my site was duplicating all pages.

I am a bit concerned that you have responded to my PM by searching through my posts, as you said. My issue with your initial suggestions is that they were completely off, and you had obviously not actually read my site. That's why I won't be buying your services or your links.

Yes you have fixed the CMS problem but you are still not ranking as high as you can do, FYI I do not sell any links from any of my websites I pointed you to the GPWA links store where you can get links from other GPWA members if you think that is a bad service then why are you even on GPWA.

[bonusbetting]

I am well aware that I am not ranking as well as I can do. For a start, this site is only 3 months old. I have a lot to do. That's why I asked you for a health check, I was considering using your service.

I have no issue with the GPWA links store. You did not point me to the links store. You asked me what my budget was for links, and when pressed, you said that you would buy links from GPWA members. It's all there in black and white, and if it comes to it, I will post your PMs publicly, because I am beginning to get annoyed with this.