Google acting weird with new affiliate sites - any input?

Hi all!

I've been creating affiliate sites, but over this year I've been noticing some weird things:

One of my 1-month old affiliate sites is showing weird rankings. Let's say the homepage is targeting "food processor reviews".. In my SERP tracker, it is a post review that's showing as #60 - homepage is nowhere.

Let's say the post review is "Breville xxx review"... That ranks at #60 above the homepage for "food processor reviews".. even though it isn't targeting that phrase (it's targeting a product name).

Yet, when I search for the product name, e.g., "Breville xxx review", the post above doesn't show.. Another review post shows instead at #50 or so..

I've built 10-15 PBN links, which are pretty strong.. It's been like this now for weeks..

Anybody noticing some changes? Maybe longer sandbox, or dancing? Just seems like Google can't figure out what content to rank, or what to rank it for... My homepage is a good 1.5k of unique content, so definitely strong..

It is pretty much common these days, especially with affiliate sites.

Anyway, there is a sandbox for sure and do not expect to reach page 1 for any keyword with more than 5000 monthly searches within 4 months. Then you start will face big SERP jumps.
I am telling you this from personal experience. I have been pushing my website with High PR links, Web 2.0s and contextuals, and social signals, and site never reached page 1 for any keyword. After 3 months, websites started ranking on page 1 for a lot of long tail keywords. Now I am about to enter 4 months old website and I started jumping on page 1 for keywords with 5000+ monthly searches. I hope when I pass 5-6 month old website, I will be able to jump on page 1 for keywords with 20 000+ monthly searches.

The point is that Google is trying to destroy websites that are using PBNs, but if you have good SEO strategy and quality High PR links, keep building them first 6 months to get as much as possible authority and link juice, and cover that with a lot of Web 2.0s and contextuals for diversity (also these links helps to hide black hat links and techniques).
That is what I am doing and I can say that my rankings are increasing every day, and I get like 2-3% increase of visitors from Google search every day.

I've been in the affiliate game now for 1-2 years. I have a strong PBN of 80-100 domains, and had no problem ranking new affiliate sites last year. Feed them 10-20 links are they are page 1.

Now, new affiliate sites just struggle to get into the top 20-30 at all... Perhaps it is just a waiting game now.. I know my links are beating out the competition.. Google just won't push me up there

If you do it properly, there is not reason to worry about. Google is just trying to demotivate SEOs like they are doing something wrong. A lot of them also run of the money if they are paying for a links on a monthly basis. Patience became the most important part after building quality website with strong backlinks that passes enough authority.

My competitors have backlinks PR0 and PR1, the worst crap links I've ever seen. 2 months back, I came with 1500 SAPE links PR1 to PR7, spent more than 1500$ monthly on SAPE links, and was not able to outrank them. I had power from links to outrank maybe some tough keywords in highest competitive niches, but I simply failed due to waiting period. Now I just waiting my site get old and going with 400 SAPE links PR1-PR3, and 100 SAPE links PR4-PR5 with high PA/DA. All these links followed by tons of Web 2.0s, contextuals and social signals. Also getting backlinks directly from competitor websites ranked in top 5 for my keywords. Now my website is almost 4 month old, waiting it reach 5-6 month old mark then I will outrank all of them I am pretty much sure.
I am still stuck on page 2,3 or 4 for main keywords with 10 000+ MS, but slowly started reaching page 1 for keywords with 1000-5000 MS.

I have a 1 month old affiliate site. It is indexed but not ranking anywhere and the SEO competition is medium at most.

I am baffled about this. I am thinking of dropping the affiliate links to see what happens.

This time last year I was making sites and within a week they were in the top 100 from just on site SEO.

Any ideas?

It didn't start this year. I've built and ranked many sites and I can say with the utmost certainty that this has been going on for over 2 years now. I don't know when it started though.

I noticed sometime last year that whenever I built lots of spam links or a few strong links to my site, the homepage would disappear from the SERPs and an internal page would replace it.

They do come back after a few days, so just be patient and wait.

This is very common I see it all the time


have you try linking that post to the main page so the main page can get some link juice?

I have only about 100 links built to my 1 month old site and still nothing! It's indexed alright.

Very strange...not sure whether to keep building links or wait and see.