Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Our site is doing really well on Yahoo..
Have been stable on Google..For our main keywords we where listed on pages 2 and 3, same listings for the past 6 months..
I was happy with the fact that our listings where stable, but of course I wanted our site to reach page 1.
Anyways, so we had this company that called us and offer a free trial on linking. And we figured, why not give it a shot?
For the first time in six months our main keywords have dropped 5-10 pages. It has affected mostly keywords linked to our home page and has not affected any keywords linking to inside pages. (the compaign was for 3 main keywords linking to 3 inside pages.)
Well, of course I got all frustrated and upset about this whole link building, I called them and was told the following:
"Almost every client we have went through this approximate time line:
Phase one: not much movement
Phase two: some advance in ranking
Phase three: drop in ranking, then raise above previous ranking
Phase four: rankings settle in, happy client, client converted to subscription
Depending on the competition of your keywords each phase can last a week or two. The more competition a keyword has the longer the phase.
Your rankings are in Phase 3 “drop in ranking”.
We see this pattern with many of our clients and it is perfectly normal."
Is it normal? Should I continue with them?
Please advise,
Thanks
But I hope others will chime in with their experience.
Is it possible the drop is not related to the new links?
(we have dropped for some keywords that we have not targeted at all..Neither had we made any major changes on our home page that could of caused the drop in rankings)
BUT i have no idea how they are building your links.
I would ask for a time frame.
Normally I won't give it more than 2-3 weeks before I re-evaluate if it's a penalty or not.
-----------------
People need to remember that Goog 2.0 basically works the same as old Google but MUCH FASTER.
In the past, people would notice the above issues as
Honeymoon Period --> Sandbox ----> Quality rankings.
Which could take a year or more.
Now this happens in about a month or more.
This applies to just about all the "upheaval" that's going on nowadays.
Same Google patterns...just much, much faster.
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
But will stopping the links do more harm?
The reason I am asking is because I know Google wants to see a steady flow...
Having many links point to you at once and then stopping at once may be very dangerous with Google...
Am I right on this?
[edited by: F_Rose at 5:01 am (utc) on June 25, 2008]
I personally have not experienced that.
>>>Having many links point to you at once and then stopping at once may be very dangerous with Google...
Happens every day with sites that are temporarily relevant for something because they are newsworthy (they get the newsworthy bump).
they get the newsworthy bump
And, based on Google Patents, they have a "newsworthy" search profile too. :)
Anyways, so we had this company that called us and offer a free trial on linking. And we figured, why not give it a shot?
Oooh, that phone call itself should have been a warning. But who knows, you may see some positive results. The thing is, there has been a time lapse since then. Also, you've done something to upset the "link profile" of your site hence the movement in the SERPs. I too have never seen anything go down like this with the exception of something that is on its way out of the index. In another life, we'd refer to that as being relegated to the Supplemental Index or SI.
I have a site that every time I published new info/link bait it would receive a burst of links because of that and rank number five for a quite important four letter word. Then it would sink back to page two or three. That's the news bump, and it was mostly receiving links from blogs, not news sites.
Luckily this major drop has been for some keywords only, and we are doing pretty well on others..
However, we haven't worked on links for some time on our site..
We have optimized our site well, have some articles and blog posts on our site etc..
I do found that we get new links to our site here and there...
Should we go out and find sites that want to link to us, or just have them come in naturally?
