My site keeps getting owned by Google

[Cowboy]

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Yesterday it was in the top 10 for a few search terms and now it has just disappeared, the same thing happened before and it took a few months to get back up, I don't know what it is though that it doesn't like any ideas?

UK Computer Shop Directory | Search For Computer Shops | itshops.co.uk

[tbp]

First of all, if it's been gone a day don't panic too much yet. Results are always chopping and changing and results vary depending on which google server you hit. It can take a while for them all to get in sync, and even then they may not be in sync for long. So if its gone for a week, then theres a problem.

Saying that though, your site really needs some work on it for SEO:

Biggest problem is if you go to the front page, theres very little text. The front page is obviously the most important one on the site, as it's the normal entry point for a user. Having such a text light page can indicate to google that theres not much relevance to users as there's very little content.

On top of that, the less text you have, the less search terms you cover so the less chance of coming up with any searches.

Ideally, you need at least 500 words, with your desired search terms peppered throughout.

Again, once you get inside the site, it's just a list of names and addresses and while this can be useful to users, again google is going to see it having very little relevance as there's no blocks of text and again no search terms.

The daily offers page is just a page of adverts really. What you could really do with is adding reviews of the products on offer for example, which will give more relevance to your page in google, and at the same time added value to your users.

You really need to go through the site and think of ways to add more text containing your search terms to the site.

I hope you don't mind me criticising, I don't like doing it as I know people work hard on their sites, but the above is something you really need to do if you want to get a decent ranking and hanging on to it.

There are other less important SEO bits you can do, but the first priority is to get the content sorted.

[Cowboy]

Don't worry about the critique - thanks! I know I need to do something about the content. I don't know why it has suddenly disappeared from all the result pages though, I think there must be something on it that google really doesn't like, would an out of date RSS feed have any effect?

[tbp]

The RSS feed shouldn't make a difference. How long was it at the top for?

If its a relatively new site, had gone in at a decent position and then fallen, that would be expected. Normally, new sites go into google in a high position initially which has no bearing on the quality of the site / seo. After a couple of weeks they then fall back into their natural position, based on the quality of the site.

Got no idea why this happens, and can't think of a sensible reason, but it does happen and has been noted by huge numbers of people.

If you work on the lack of content, and then once thats sorted do a bit of SEO, the site will rise back up.

[MrCatz]

Google have been out to devalue self-promotional backlinks. How did you do your link building before?

Just a tip - try to vary your anchor texts in building your backlinks. This will make your links more natural.

[Cowboy]

I have had the site going for about 8 years and I did a lot of link generation back in the day when it was "ok" to link to everyone. The site was at the top for about 2 months. I think it must be some dodgy backlinks I get so much spam to my addresses and I can't think of any other reason it would get punished so severely.

[Brendon]

>> and can't think of a sensible reason

It makes perfect sense in googles model of the WWW. A new site appears, and they give it benefit of the doubt in the form of increased rankings. If, over time, it does not "justify" those rankings with increased activity / backlinks etc, then it's rankings will be altered, until they reflect the supporting data the site DOES have

Cowboy, you seem to have a lot of near duplicate pages - I strongly suggest you may have lost a fair bit of your existing link juice (a link: command brings up alomost nothing), which has hit your indexing. You may wish to consider a 2 part strategy

1) deduping your content - no more autogen title / descriptions - at the very least, mulitple skeletons, randomised, then fixed
2) more links - but not too many, or too fast, or too focussed anchor text, or with a "bad" mix of targets (home vs deep)

[tbp]

A new site appears, and they give it benefit of the doubt in the form of increased rankings. If, over time, it does not "justify" those rankings with increased activity / backlinks etc, then it's rankings will be altered, until they reflect the supporting data the site DOES have

In reality though, if Google want the best search results then it should be the other way round, otherwise you are going to get some c**p sites at the top of the rankings until they drop.

Would produce better results if a site went in low, leaving the know quality sites at the top of the rankings, and then once it's proved its self it moves up the rankings to the proper ranking.

[Brendon]

Well, doing it this way round allows sites like YouTube / FaceBook to break quickly, which produces the best possible results.

You're rarely going to see a brand new site top 10 for a "big traffic" phrase just from the fresh boost, so from G's point of view they get those handful of star sites quicker, and the great mass of dross doesn't benefit greatly - job done

[Cowboy]

Hi Brendon, what do you mean by "mulitple skeletons, randomised, then fixed"? And by adding links do you mean outbound or inbound or links to and from pages within my site?

[Brendon]

>> what do you mean by "mulitple skeletons, randomised, then fixed"?

Use several different stems for title / descs. Ranodmise them initially, to get a mix, but keep them stable once they have been assigned, so the spiders see consistent info about a page

>> And by adding links do you mean outbound or inbound

Inbound. You need to be very careful with outbounds now

[Cowboy]

>> what do you mean by "mulitple skeletons, randomised, then fixed"?

Use several different stems for title / descs. Ranodmise them initially, to get a mix, but keep them stable once they have been assigned, so the spiders see consistent info about a page

>> And by adding links do you mean outbound or inbound

Inbound. You need to be very careful with outbounds now

My site is a directory, so it has loads of links, do you suggest I hide them? and what method of adding inbound links do you suggest? I've got other sites with links on them maybe not as much and similar meta tags on all the pages but none of them seem to be as yoyo as this

[MrCatz]

It makes perfect sense in googles model of the WWW. A new site appears, and they give it benefit of the doubt in the form of increased rankings. If, over time, it does not "justify" those rankings with increased activity / backlinks etc, then it's rankings will be altered, until they reflect the supporting data the site DOES have

This is a good scenario of the sandbox effect. Since the OP mentioned his site as 8 years old, this could be discounted.

Cowboy, any chance your directory have been penalized? Maybe for several links (dofollow) that Google sees as a bit manipulative in terms of PR and SERP?

[Cowboy]

I definately think it has been penalised, this exact same scenario happened a couple of months ago it was competing very well then all of a sudden it just got taken down - strange... but I have addressed the links with a redirect so hopefully that will have some effect. It is back up for one of the lesser terms but not for the main ones.

[moredial]

I definately think it has been penalised, this exact same scenario happened a couple of months ago it was competing very well then all of a sudden it just got taken down - strange... but I have addressed the links with a redirect so hopefully that will have some effect. It is back up for one of the lesser terms but not for the main ones.

Do you have load balancing or something? NetCraft are showing that your IP address has recently changed from xx.xx.xx.168 to xx.xx.xx.167

Do you still have access to the old IP address?

What has happened is that all the PR your site had is still sitting with the ghost cache on the old IP address. The site at the new IP address is seen as a clone of the original.

At the old IP address you need to give a gone response. I usually give empty content with nocache and links to the full http: //domain.tld/page.html for a month or two before giving the gone response so that the old site can be removed from the cache.

PM me for more specific help and description of the IP address change gremlin.