SERPs dropping, what did I do wrong?

Hello,

Looking for some assistance from the BHW community.

Mail order bride website hired us and we commenced work back in mid October.

At the time, they were ranked #12 and #19 for "mail order brides" and "mail order bride".

They fired us a week ago for not achieving results. To be fair, their rankings hadn't budged after 3 months. They refused to pay us our outstanding invoice for January.

Now their rankings have dropped to #28 and #27 respectively.

Back on Oct 15, here were their site stats:

Page Authority: 54/100
Domain Authority: 44/100
Total Links: 6,593
Total Internal Links: 910
Total External Links: 5,683
Google Analytics Code: Installed
Ranking for keywords:
Mail order brides ? 12
Mail order bride ? 19

In the first month we provided recommendations to improve their onsite SEO factors. We also changed their Title and Description tags to be less spammy and more grammatically correct.

Our analysis showed that their site didn't have enough links built for inner pages; we recommended creating content for them and then building links to those pages.

Our team wrote pretty good, original content for 2 new inner pages around "common myths of mail order brides" and "tips for online dating". About 450 to 600 words, with a few outbound links sprinkled in to authority sites.

We also wrote 2 other new pages called "Ask Anna" that were like "Dear Abby" in a question and answer format.

Client claimed Ask Anna was useless and a couple days ago told me they took it down, to our objections.

Client also was mad that we were using target keywords that weren't the core ones they wanted, but I had to explain that over-optimizing anchor text is a big red flag. We mixed in long tail, branded, and ones like "click here" and "learn about" for more a natural look.

We started link building to those inner pages, using a rotation of different keywords, not really wanting to rank those pages higher but just to increase the depth of the links to the site.

Over the course of the next two and a half month, we did the following:

-One Hoist Rocket from HoistSEO to the homepage
-10 authority profiles on Linkvana
-20 .edu links and pyramid push on Link Chicks
-3 Link Pushes from linkpushing(dot)net, one for the homepage, 2 inner pages
-purchased social media clicks
-20 .edu links, .edu/.gov wiki links, 100 mixed links, bookmarks, 200 microlinks for inner pages from Link Chicks
-3 Link Pushes from linkpushing(dot)net for 3 inner pages in January
-dotEDUlinks(dot)com, 3 packages for $150 each targeting 3 inner pages in January
-I realize some of the benefits from link building in early January shouldn't show up yet as it's too early.

But any idea what I did wrong here? Even if the client fired me, I want to do right by them and figure out if I can help them in any way.

Thanks in advance for your input.

You didn't join BHW years ago.

Revolate said:

You didn't join BHW years ago.

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Point taken..haha...but I'd still like to know where I went wrong.

edyang said:

-One Hoist Rocket from HoistSEO to the homepage
-10 authority profiles on Linkvana
-20 .edu links and pyramid push on Link Chicks
-3 Link Pushes from linkpushing(dot)net, one for the homepage, 2 inner pages
-purchased social media clicks
-20 .edu links, .edu/.gov wiki links, 100 mixed links, bookmarks, 200 microlinks for inner pages from Link Chicks
-3 Link Pushes from linkpushing(dot)net for 3 inner pages in January
-dotEDUlinks(dot)com, 3 packages for $150 each targeting 3 inner pages in January

Click to expand...

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Out of what you've mentioned here probably only Hoist Rocket has any value.

But even Hoist are fucked up in a way. When I tested them, more that 50% of links were no-follow and 100% of their profile links were on DLE platform where profiles are blocked by robots.txt (!!!) so their whole third tier of links was going to profiles that will never be indexed. What a waste.

You are killing the site. Stop now.

Linkpushing gets great reviews and I have used them successfully for over a year for other sites.

cash202 said:

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

Out of what you've mentioned here probably only Hoist Rocket has any value.

But even Hoist are fucked up in a way. When I tested them, more that 50% of links were no-follow and 100% of their profile links were on DLE platform where profiles are blocked by robots.txt (!!!) so their whole third tier of links was going to profiles that will never be indexed. What a waste.

You are killing the site. Stop now.

Click to expand...

What he said.
With such a high comp keyword as that you need to be looking at the high pr links.
Its not something you can win by buying a few social bookmark gigs off of Fiverr

I appreciate the honesty. I've looked at the "SEO Blueprint 2012" thread that shows building a structure similar to both Hoist and LinkPushing. As I said, I've used both services for clients in the past. But you're right, this is a very high comp category.

Are there link building providers who you guys would recommend for high PR links? We do manually go after links ourselves using strategies such as those touted by LinkMoses newsletter and Backlinko, but we look to augment it with outsourced link pyramids/pushes which would be too time consuming and costly to set up ourselves...

I highly recommend the SAPE network links.
Ive only been with them about 4 days but my rankings have shot up

dr.pepper said:

I highly recommend the SAPE network links.
Ive only been with them about 4 days but my rankings have shot up

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I like the fact they don't provide full reports according to their website. Also, they don't specify what types of links they secure. In fact, their entire website is pretty flimsy on information...

edyang said:

I appreciate the honesty. I've looked at the "SEO Blueprint 2012" thread that shows building a structure similar to both Hoist and LinkPushing. As I said, I've used both services for clients in the past. But you're right, this is a very high comp category.

Are there link building providers who you guys would recommend for high PR links? We do manually go after links ourselves using strategies such as those touted by LinkMoses newsletter and Backlinko, but we look to augment it with outsourced link pyramids/pushes which would be too time consuming and costly to set up ourselves...

Click to expand...

A) Look at what I wrote before. Hoist are amateurs. They don't even know their profile links are blocked by robots.txt
B) Linkpushing is overly simplified link pyramid of 2009. Sorry, it's 2013.
C) I can't believe you've read all 50+ pages is just a few minutes. Post was written in 2011, it is still being updated. So, you don't know what you are talking about.
D) Send some SAPE links at the site and the ranking will improve but, as you don't know what you don't know, this will be the last nail in the coffin. RIP.

You need high PR and you need strategy. You have neither.

Crapping the site with random shit will only sink it further.

edyang said:

I'm not sure if I like the fact they don't provide full reports according to their website. Also, they don't specify what types of links they secure. In fact, their entire website is pretty flimsy on information...

Click to expand...

SAPE provides all the link placements in the project tree. Where you are looking at? If it's not in Cyrillic, it's not SAPE.

edyang said:

I'm not sure if I like the fact they don't provide full reports according to their website. Also, they don't specify what types of links they secure. In fact, their entire website is pretty flimsy on information...

Click to expand...

You can say that but you can't disregard the fact that they deliver results?
And no offence but you need all the help you can get

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

cash202 said:

A) Look at what I wrote before. Hoist are amateurs. They don't even know their profile links are blocked by robots.txt
B) Linkpushing is overly simplified link pyramid of 2009. Sorry, it's 2013.
C) I can't believe you've read all 50+ pages is just a few minutes. Post was written in 2011, it is still being updated. So, you don't know what you are talking about.
D) Send some SAPE links at the site and the ranking will improve but, as you don't know what you don't know, this will be the last nail in the coffin. RIP.

You need high PR and you need strategy. You have neither.

Click to expand...

A) Thanks for the heads up.
B) Ditto.
C) I just realized you were the OP of that thread. I read the first 5 pages, then the last 5 pages to see what had changed in the year since you wrote it. Yes, there's likely a lot I missed in between. I read that and your social media how-to guide. They were fantastic. Unfortunately, I only read those yesterday.
D) That's why I'm on BHW. I'm trying to learn from my mistakes from the best and the most knowledgeable from people like you so I can try and improve.

Agreed on the high PR.

If you ever end up offering a paid service to implement what you outlined, I'll be the first in line. Until then, I'm going to do my best to figure out a way to set up what you outlined step by step.

dr.pepper said:

You can say that but you can't disregard the fact that they deliver results?
And no offence but you need all the help you can get

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Point taken, and point taken

edyang said:

I appreciate the honesty. I've looked at the "SEO Blueprint 2012" thread that shows building a structure similar to both Hoist and LinkPushing. As I said, I've used both services for clients in the past. But you're right, this is a very high comp category.

Are there link building providers who you guys would recommend for high PR links? We do manually go after links ourselves using strategies such as those touted by LinkMoses newsletter and Backlinko, but we look to augment it with outsourced link pyramids/pushes which would be too time consuming and costly to set up ourselves...

Click to expand...

Just a quick post to give a bit of credit to you for handling pretty sharp criticism well. (Though they are mostly right in their basic facts)

cash202 said:

SAPE provides all the link placements in the project tree. Where you are looking at? If it's not in Cyrillic, it's not SAPE.

Click to expand...

This line on their homepage. From what I read, all link tools like Majestic, ahrefs, etc only show at most up to 30% of backlinks:

About Reports:No report because we want to ensure we offer the privacy of our service in the eyes of Google and our competitors. We'll show you the 25% links and show you how to display the rest with services like Majestic SEO or ahrefs.

bigbong said:

Just a quick post to give a bit of credit to you for handling pretty sharp criticism well. (Though they are mostly right in their basic facts)

Click to expand...

No point beating around the bush


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High PR/Authority guest blog posts on related websites.

As an SEO company if this is not an intricate part of your strategy you are doing something wrong.

bigbong said:

Just a quick post to give a bit of credit to you for handling pretty sharp criticism well. (Though they are mostly right in their basic facts)

Click to expand...

Bigbong, if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that there's no point denying the obvious. The only way I can improve in all things is to learn from those smarter than me. Which is why I posted on here knowing there was a good chance I'd get a lot of flak

Just outsource a service from BHW, many of them are great and you get honest reviews.
You'll get nice prices as well.