Since 2008 I've been building up a strong authority site in a competitive niche.
It was a pretty basic content site I'd say was kinda thin. It ranked very well - #2 for one of the most competitive terms... which costs $20+/click in adwords.
In August 2010 I redesigned it to add more useful content like training, tutorials, etc... my coders really screwed up the site so there were hundreds of pages with duplicated content (archive type pages) that I didn't know existed. There were also many 404s created and it took me months to get all the 301 redirects set up by going through webmaster tools. On August 29th, 2010, I went from #2 for that term to #24... Then every 2 weeks I kept falling. Now it's around 207.
Many of my other rankings have suffered. In particular, the "reviews" section of my site got removed from top 500 after the redesign. So I tested 301 redirecting it to another category name like "reviewed" and the pages shot back up for 30 days or so...then kicked down again. This happens every month since March 2011. I'm so sick of this site.
Note that a "my site name" search is filled with my site at #1 plus many social results, citations and references etc under it.
So I'm not banned.. Just seem to be punished more and more every month.
My same linkbuilding/quality content strategy works on all my other sites so far. But since the redesign, this site seems to be doomed/cursed for life.
If you were in my situation, what would you do? Keep building quality links and adding quality content? I have full time employees who write without search marketing in mind.... just useful content to help my audience. My competitors are all spammy.
This is my biggest site - should I just stop trying on it, and spend all my budget on building up the "on the way up" properties?
It was a pretty basic content site I'd say was kinda thin. It ranked very well - #2 for one of the most competitive terms... which costs $20+/click in adwords.
In August 2010 I redesigned it to add more useful content like training, tutorials, etc... my coders really screwed up the site so there were hundreds of pages with duplicated content (archive type pages) that I didn't know existed. There were also many 404s created and it took me months to get all the 301 redirects set up by going through webmaster tools. On August 29th, 2010, I went from #2 for that term to #24... Then every 2 weeks I kept falling. Now it's around 207.
Many of my other rankings have suffered. In particular, the "reviews" section of my site got removed from top 500 after the redesign. So I tested 301 redirecting it to another category name like "reviewed" and the pages shot back up for 30 days or so...then kicked down again. This happens every month since March 2011. I'm so sick of this site.
Note that a "my site name" search is filled with my site at #1 plus many social results, citations and references etc under it.
My same linkbuilding/quality content strategy works on all my other sites so far. But since the redesign, this site seems to be doomed/cursed for life.
If you were in my situation, what would you do? Keep building quality links and adding quality content? I have full time employees who write without search marketing in mind.... just useful content to help my audience. My competitors are all spammy.
This is my biggest site - should I just stop trying on it, and spend all my budget on building up the "on the way up" properties?