Hey,
I ranked quite some sites during the last years and got somewhat familiar with filters, especially anchor text filters - and how to get out of them. Some sites got hit by penguin, never by panda but that's another story - As I started to make a new site. And exactly this one got pushed down 600+ spots down the serps for virtually all keywords. No rankings no nothing for not even the strangest long tails or content snippets unless in quotes.
I don't recall a site experiencing this before, well actually one some 3 years ago, but I don't quite remember the details. I thought I learned my lesson then, set and forgot, but obviously I din't do my homework well and here we are =)
So maybe somebody has some experience with this:
Competitive niche, info domain bought on ebay about 1 year ago, domain was parked. Deleted dns so it wouldn't resolve and index any more.
Waited some month, I was busy anyway. Meanwhile I had content written - really good content by top notch writers and subject matter experts, which do not even know about seo. Single problem which arises here: some text blocks written by a lawyer are pretty repetitive across some pages, but not on more than some 3-5 pages, and somewhat on a special type of let's say, individual product pages.
December 2011: submitted reconsideration request in WMT and tell them that domain was bought and parked before, I am not interested in inheriting the domain history. Just to be sure. Get standard answer: no manual actions taken etc.
February: I find some time to give way to the site, shoot a PR on one of the better sites. Link nicely to home page using the domain name, add it a second time as bare url, link a very legit web 2.0 property which links back to site with the domainname.tld
Site enters #220, 3 days later it bounces back over 100 spots and an inner page starts ranking for the domain name - instead of the homepage. This will remain like this for about a month.
Meanwhile, I add some links to inner pages from private blog network (there are never links sold), use long, descriptive anchors and some other links from established web 2.0 with each 1 article on them and blogroll links pointing at them for several months.
End of March: give another PR out. Clear URL to homepage, 1 inner page with long descriptive anchor. 1 day later the site ranks ~100, still with inner page ranking instead of homepage. 3 days later homepage starts ranking site moves up in top 80, for some days some drawbacks, again, an inner page begins to rank, but after some 4 days site enters top 50. Add a sitewide image link with not optimized alt text. High authority site, economic profile, somewhat related to my site which is personal finance.
April: Directory time: I add high quality directory links to the site, get accepted in dmoz (nice pr5 page) add more high quality directories including links to inner pages. Site moves up. A niche directory package with some 60+ featured listings, directories themselves rank well, no garbage. They even add several different titles and descriptions so it won't be all the same. Site moves up, all good. However, I see their featured listings includes on about 10 domains a sitewide link - I get thousands of backlinks - mostly with money anchors. Not cool, but site keeps moving instead of being slapped. Penguin clears the SERPs and I am in the top 10 bouncing beteen 3-6, having even 2-3 URLs in a row in the results. I also get good long tail traffic for keywords other people built sites on their own for.
Move site to another VPS, add content, make some money, push another PR using shortened URLs (301), to inner pages with generic anchors, penguin frightens the s### out of webmasters, so I wanted to be extra careful especially because all of these site wide directory links, which ought to fall of as newer sites enter the directories.
12 May: I am stuck at #6, which is uncool because there is more money above the fold. Get another well respected directory link from a well respected directory and then
14 May: site drops on 4xx for main keyword, inner page ranking, most other keywords drop into 6xx First I thought it is banal anchor text overdose, as the inner page is ranking instead of the homepage. But normally, these kinda filters still send traffic for other keywords, at least unrelated keywords. This time that's not the case.
New content gets only reluctantly indexed and will not rank for snippets unless in quotes. 600 - 700 is usually the place to find it, often not even the right page. Does not rank for titles, even if very unique, unless linked from a PR.
After some days main keyword = domain name ranks again in the top 60, but with an inner pages, all other pages are deeply buried in 600+
I start building more guest blog posts/blog posts, add another sitewide image link with no anchor text at all, mail the directory dudes to take off the sitewide links - which indeed caused an extreme imbalance in the anchor text distribution. Not cool. 160 domains and 40 different anchors on 5.5k links. wow.
They do so, I give them 50 unique titles and descriptions for another set of their fiance directory networks - without sitewide links - which they do within a week. I keep adding blog posts 1-2 day with generic anchors or domain name, site bounces a bit but basically it remains the same. Issue another PR with raw URLs, build very legit profiles on reputable sites, get retweeted by a government account, that tweet including my URL sticks on a .gov homepage for 3 days and sends me traffic, but site does not move.
I still rank #4 for "exactdomainname" main keyword moves up to 50, a synonym even in the top 40, but still no real rankings and traffic. Some 2 days ago site dropped again for main keyword, back to 4xx, this time not with an inner page ranking but the homepage. For inner pages: they are still deeply buried in 600-800, sometimes with the right page, sometimes not. Funny thing: the toughest keyword which is the main long term goal for that site didn't move during the whole time and bounced between 200-230 as it did before.
However, I have no experience with this kind of filter/penalty. There were no messages in WMT, which I deleted yesterday anyways, alltogether with analytics and changes the IP.
Long story short: What is that and how to deal with it?
Cheers
I ranked quite some sites during the last years and got somewhat familiar with filters, especially anchor text filters - and how to get out of them. Some sites got hit by penguin, never by panda but that's another story - As I started to make a new site. And exactly this one got pushed down 600+ spots down the serps for virtually all keywords. No rankings no nothing for not even the strangest long tails or content snippets unless in quotes.
I don't recall a site experiencing this before, well actually one some 3 years ago, but I don't quite remember the details. I thought I learned my lesson then, set and forgot, but obviously I din't do my homework well and here we are =)
So maybe somebody has some experience with this:
Competitive niche, info domain bought on ebay about 1 year ago, domain was parked. Deleted dns so it wouldn't resolve and index any more.
Waited some month, I was busy anyway. Meanwhile I had content written - really good content by top notch writers and subject matter experts, which do not even know about seo. Single problem which arises here: some text blocks written by a lawyer are pretty repetitive across some pages, but not on more than some 3-5 pages, and somewhat on a special type of let's say, individual product pages.
December 2011: submitted reconsideration request in WMT and tell them that domain was bought and parked before, I am not interested in inheriting the domain history. Just to be sure. Get standard answer: no manual actions taken etc.
February: I find some time to give way to the site, shoot a PR on one of the better sites. Link nicely to home page using the domain name, add it a second time as bare url, link a very legit web 2.0 property which links back to site with the domainname.tld
Site enters #220, 3 days later it bounces back over 100 spots and an inner page starts ranking for the domain name - instead of the homepage. This will remain like this for about a month.
Meanwhile, I add some links to inner pages from private blog network (there are never links sold), use long, descriptive anchors and some other links from established web 2.0 with each 1 article on them and blogroll links pointing at them for several months.
End of March: give another PR out. Clear URL to homepage, 1 inner page with long descriptive anchor. 1 day later the site ranks ~100, still with inner page ranking instead of homepage. 3 days later homepage starts ranking site moves up in top 80, for some days some drawbacks, again, an inner page begins to rank, but after some 4 days site enters top 50. Add a sitewide image link with not optimized alt text. High authority site, economic profile, somewhat related to my site which is personal finance.
April: Directory time: I add high quality directory links to the site, get accepted in dmoz (nice pr5 page) add more high quality directories including links to inner pages. Site moves up. A niche directory package with some 60+ featured listings, directories themselves rank well, no garbage. They even add several different titles and descriptions so it won't be all the same. Site moves up, all good. However, I see their featured listings includes on about 10 domains a sitewide link - I get thousands of backlinks - mostly with money anchors. Not cool, but site keeps moving instead of being slapped. Penguin clears the SERPs and I am in the top 10 bouncing beteen 3-6, having even 2-3 URLs in a row in the results. I also get good long tail traffic for keywords other people built sites on their own for.
Move site to another VPS, add content, make some money, push another PR using shortened URLs (301), to inner pages with generic anchors, penguin frightens the s### out of webmasters, so I wanted to be extra careful especially because all of these site wide directory links, which ought to fall of as newer sites enter the directories.
12 May: I am stuck at #6, which is uncool because there is more money above the fold. Get another well respected directory link from a well respected directory and then
14 May: site drops on 4xx for main keyword, inner page ranking, most other keywords drop into 6xx First I thought it is banal anchor text overdose, as the inner page is ranking instead of the homepage. But normally, these kinda filters still send traffic for other keywords, at least unrelated keywords. This time that's not the case.
New content gets only reluctantly indexed and will not rank for snippets unless in quotes. 600 - 700 is usually the place to find it, often not even the right page. Does not rank for titles, even if very unique, unless linked from a PR.
After some days main keyword = domain name ranks again in the top 60, but with an inner pages, all other pages are deeply buried in 600+
I start building more guest blog posts/blog posts, add another sitewide image link with no anchor text at all, mail the directory dudes to take off the sitewide links - which indeed caused an extreme imbalance in the anchor text distribution. Not cool. 160 domains and 40 different anchors on 5.5k links. wow.
They do so, I give them 50 unique titles and descriptions for another set of their fiance directory networks - without sitewide links - which they do within a week. I keep adding blog posts 1-2 day with generic anchors or domain name, site bounces a bit but basically it remains the same. Issue another PR with raw URLs, build very legit profiles on reputable sites, get retweeted by a government account, that tweet including my URL sticks on a .gov homepage for 3 days and sends me traffic, but site does not move.
I still rank #4 for "exactdomainname" main keyword moves up to 50, a synonym even in the top 40, but still no real rankings and traffic. Some 2 days ago site dropped again for main keyword, back to 4xx, this time not with an inner page ranking but the homepage. For inner pages: they are still deeply buried in 600-800, sometimes with the right page, sometimes not. Funny thing: the toughest keyword which is the main long term goal for that site didn't move during the whole time and bounced between 200-230 as it did before.
However, I have no experience with this kind of filter/penalty. There were no messages in WMT, which I deleted yesterday anyways, alltogether with analytics and changes the IP.
Long story short: What is that and how to deal with it?
Cheers
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