Google dance?

Hey guys,

I'd like to get some opinions on what might be happening with my rankings.

Since August of this year, I've utilized a mix of SENUKE and high PR blog comments to promote 36 keywords for my ecommerce site. Up until this past weekend, my rankings have been improving fairly steadily. From not being ranked, we've been able to rank 3 keywords onto the first page and another 10-15 or so onto the second page. We were at this stage for perhaps two to three weeks.

Two weeks ago, I purchased a BH2 package for two keywords that have been ranked 15+ for a bit. This past weekend, my rankings for all but 3 keywords have dropped out of the top 100. The 3 in question include the 2 I provided to BH2 and have all dropped in rankings significantly, down to 40, 80 and 90.

The site is 8 months old but has not experienced this sort of movements in rankings previously. Is this the Google dance? I was always under the impression that the dance happened way earlier, as keywords first begin to become ranked.

Perhaps because it's the weekend, but I have not received any notice from Google. Webmaster tools does not show anything unusual, although the data is not yet include the dates in which the rankings dropped.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Bruce

Certainly sounds like it.
It happens all the time to sites I'm working on and it never fails to induce a mild panic. The sites can take anything from two days to a month to recover, but fear not. Sit tight, keep doing what you're doing. They'll be back in their rightful positions (if not higher) soon enough.

This is frustratingly normal. Especially when the site starts making money and next thing you know you're bounced out of results. I have some sites that have been bounced out of rankings for months only to pop back into first spot. Then disappear again for a week or two, come back, disappear, come back....arrrrgh it's annoying but not unusual.

Recently had one site that was on the first page for 2 main keywords for 3 weeks. Started making me like $50 a day and all of a sudden Google lost the links somewhere again. Been 3 days now and I'm gritting my teeth waiting for it to come back.

This is happening to me right now as well.
I started backlinking my buffer sites with comment blasts and also with a second tier of web 2.0s...Main keyword is now out of the top 100 and some of the more minor keywords have dropped as well.

Fingers crossed that if I just keep building out the structure everything will come back!

Hey Bruce, as I've mentioned in a couple posts this morning, there was a big ranking shift yesterday afternoon (that's when I first noticed it). A lot of my client sites and personal sites moved up.

I've been saying it for a long time, but web 2.0, blog comments and most automated link building methods aren't effective because they're so heavily spammed.

Thanks all for the helpful feedback.

I suppose the natural response to this type of issue is to over analyze it. But SEO is certainly a patient mans game, so I'll keep focused on doing what I have been.

At BHopkins, what sort of strategies do you employ that you think work better than these automated systems?

Google dance?!? Google makes the tango a tangle, right?