Google Dance or Penalty? Rankings suddenly dropped!!!

[invic]

OK, so about two weeks ago i launched a new site, targeting local dentists. It is a simple, one page site with a nice, unique article on the importance of going to the dentist.

The plan was to get it ranking on the first page for 'town name' dentists, and then contact some local dentists to sell ad space on the site.

I started off with some bookmarking and that submitter script thing that submits your site to 3000 places or something. Then i made a quick squidoo lense with more unique content and link back to the money site. Anyway, all was good, within a couple of days I was one the first page for a few of my main keywords.

However, I was getting no traffic in position 7-9, so I wanted to increase rankings. (supposedly this search term gets 1000 searches per month).

I loaded up scrapebox, harvested some niche related blogs and posted away. (Yes I span names, comments etc).
At the moment I am running scrapebox on my home pc with a slow connection, so I wasn't too worried about doing any damage. I split the comments 50/50 between my money site, and the squidoo lense.

I posted mainly on Wordpress blogs, and am very sceptical about the number of comments that are actually live. Backlink watch says I have 32 backlinks, but I expect this number to grow as google finds and indexes my backlinks.

I did notice that the anchor text for almost every backlink is the same - could this be a problem. I also forgot to use proxies once during a scrapebox blast.

I wrote a fresh article and submitted to ezinearticles - it has been live for a few days now. I also added new unique content to my site, a couple of new pages with good info.

So anyway, yesterday, my rankings suddenly dropped, now i'm hovering around page 6 -7 for my keywords.

It is a low competition search term - the first 5 positions are google places results

The rest of the first page is just standard business directories, with no real content.

Since I was ranking so well to bgin with, is it likely to be a penalty, or am i in the dance?

 

[invic]

Also, what do you recommend I do know?

Should I keep building backlinks, keep building content or just wait.
What about requesting reconsideration to google?

Thanks for any help

Invic

 

[newss]

Damn. You got so many things going on here I don't even know where to start....

First of all a new site will move around quite a bit as google is evaluating where to rank it. It's not uncommon for a brand new site, especially if you have an exact match domain to rank extremly high at first. And then fall down to the 3-5th page, where google has determined its ranking is accurate.

To start off with, CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT. One page isn't going to cut it, google likes sites that have content on them and are linked well. Start developing your site, create additional pages and write more content.

Then start off with solid link building, submit articles to ezine and other high PR article directories. Look for dentist forums that are high pr, and actually create an account and interact while putting a link back to your site with a signature. Make 10-15 manual posts.

Then gradually start building up links. Scrapebox is a great tool, but 1000 PR0 nofollow backlinks aren't going to help you get ranked.

 

[Kickflip]

Dont request anything from google unless you are NOWHERE to be found. It is ALWAYS recommended to keep building links and content. Probably page 6-7 is your true ranking right now, not a dance and not a penalty. If you keep building links/content, you will slowly climb higher, but you wont fall any lower.

 

[albaniax]

OK, so about two weeks ago i launched a new site,

I read the first sentence, and it was enough to know why your rankings dropped
Your domain is new, and you hit the Google sandbox. This can take now anywhere from 3 months to 9 months to get out of it.

Now you have 2 choices:

- Continue building links
or
- Buy a old domain which is already out the sandbox

That's it.

 

[Kickflip]

Your domain is new, and you hit the Google sandbox. This can take now anywhere from 3 months to 9 months to get out of it.

I really disagree with this.

First of all a new site will move around quite a bit as google is evaluating where to rank it. It's not uncommon for a brand new site, especially if you have an exact match domain to rank extremly high at first. And then fall down to the 3-5th page, where google has determined its ranking is accurate.

I really agree with this.

 

[rabbitgirl]

Don't worry! Rome wasn't built in a day...You're most definitely going to get back to the top. I'd rather you go for more content than backlinks. cheers

 

[aporellos]

 

[tomlondon]

I really disagree with this.



I really agree with this.

I agree with the above - I don't think there such a thing like an automatic sandbox. Just keep posting new content and build quality links at a steady pace and you should make it back to 1st page sooner than you think!

 

[sonamondal]

1) It is possible to rank the site higher than the google maps results?

google map's ranking comes first, then adwords result, and then organic result.

 

[JinxY]

I loaded up scrapebox, harvested some niche related blogs and posted away. (Yes I span names, comments etc).
At the moment I am running scrapebox on my home pc with a slow connection, so I wasn't too worried about doing any damage. I split the comments 50/50 between my money site, and the squidoo lense.

I posted mainly on Wordpress blogs, and am very sceptical about the number of comments that are actually live. Backlink watch says I have 32 backlinks, but I expect this number to grow as google finds and indexes my backlinks.

I did notice that the anchor text for almost every backlink is the same - could this be a problem. I also forgot to use proxies once during a scrapebox blast.

All the sites that Ive blasted with SB in the past 2 months have dropped like bricks so it could be the same situation...

 

[neutralhatter]

same thing here.... a money making site just went to page 6 from being nr 1 for a few months
something changed the last few days... not sure what...

 

[elscapo]

A lot of people including myself are experiencing recent significant SERP drops on google it seems, there are a lot of posts on here and other forums.

 

[invic]

Well i'm back on page 1, with slightly better rankings than before. All is good.

I think i'm going to going to build a solid base of good content and high quality backlinks before bringing out the blog spam again

Thanks for the advice everyone.

 

[newss]

Well i'm back on page 1, with slightly better rankings than before. All is good.

I think i'm going to going to build a solid base of good content and high quality backlinks before bringing out the blog spam again

Thanks for the advice everyone.

No problem, always focus on high PR links, tools are great but you have to remember than with WP 3.0 I think it started in 2.9 all comments are by default nofollow, so having 1000's of PR0-1 nofollow links is not only going to look spammy but also not have as great an effect as solid white hat high PR link building.

Especially when it comes to local listings, where generally in most cases your competition isn't that hard to beat.