Adding new content killed rankings?

I got 5 different PBN sites, which I treated like a money site - as it should be done. Means unique content, premium theme etc. I was adding around 5 articles in these last year and beginning of this year. They started to rank pretty well by themselves. Top 10 and even Top 5 for many keywords. I didn't build any link. I actually didn't update those PBN sites since a pretty long time. I saw by coincidence they were ranking very well, because one of them was competing with my money site.

However, I thought to myself "wow, seems like they got some authority over the time" and started adding more high quality articles and did some internal linking. The new articles were indexed pretty fast and started ranking well. Until all of the sudden everything started to fall apart. The rankings went from the Top 10 straight to the page 5,6,7 for every keyword. The websites are still indexed well, but it seems they got an algo penalty.

This happened to all of the websites after I created content and did internal linking. I didn't build any link.

Whats the matter with this? Somehow I got the feeling if I would still leave the sites alone without adding content, they would still rank well.

Generally adding new fresh content to a blog or website is very good for the SEO rankings; generally speaking of course

Usually adding content is beneficial for a site, but in this case, maybe (a big MAYBE) it was harmless. Probably the algo only targetted sites that were getting traffic, and if they weren't having traffic they wouldn't be hit with the latest update. Just my 2 cents, I know I could be wrong though.

I’ve never seen a case that adding new (good) content harmed rankings for existing pages. Are you sure there are no backlinks issues? And are you sure this is really high quality content?

You could try removing the added content and see if rankings recover.

It really seems like there must be other issues though. And the most typical way to get hit sitewide like that is backlinks problems or site quality problems, in my experience.

Also, how long has it been? I’d give it some time to make sure it isn’t some weird temporary anomaly.

Could just be dancing around. Give it a little time. I recently did this why many pages on my sites. They were ranking for KWs on the first page towards the bottom. I just added some content geared towards those words... Many jumped up from the 6-9 spot to 2-4... then a week later dropped down.. a few went even lower than they were... but over time it evened out where they were higher than they were previously. This all happened over several weeks.

Its amazing some ranked higher within hours.. some sank lower than they were previously (temporarily). Some jumped and stuck.. others bounced for weeks.

kegnum said:

Could just be dancing around. Give it a little time. I recently did this why many pages on my sites. They were ranking for KWs on the first page towards the bottom. I just added some content geared towards those words... Many jumped up from the 6-9 spot to 2-4... then a week later dropped down.. a few went even lower than they were... but over time it evened out where they were higher than they were previously. This all happened over several weeks.

Its amazing some ranked higher within hours.. some sank lower than they were previously (temporarily). Some jumped and stuck.. others bounced for weeks.

Click to expand...

Yes, it should be like this. What really annoys me is how Google keeps everything so fucking unpredictable. Normally if I have decent rankings, add more content and do internal linking, the keywords should rise in the rankings and my website should get more traffic and authority, but for now it seems the opposite. Website gets punished first for new content/internal linking and EVENTUALLY after an uncertain amount of time ranks higher than before. This is something I usually know from building strong links. Before I never had a Google dance for adding new content.

No, updated content never kill your ranking to your website.Updated high quality content is always helpful to get better result.

As others have said, updating your blog with fresh content should improve its uniqueness and subsequently, the ranking power. In light of the current Google update, it could be that it was just a coincedence. Or better still, it might just be a Google dance. Before you think of modifying anything, leave it be for sometime (maybe 3-4 weeks).