s0c0 Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 I was ranking on the 2nd page for Utah Web Development and Salt Lake Web Development on Google. Now my site cnizz.com is no where to be found? The only thing I've done is submit my site to about 200 paid-for directories that yes do look like SPAM directories. Good this have caused me to lose my rankings? Any ideas? What am I doing wrong? Please advise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maq Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 Depends on how many times and how frequently you do this. Some search engines may consider this spam, but if you submit to directories it shouldn't matter. Are these the only changes you've made? Ranked on which search engine? Have you checked the others? Cause "they" don't banish you from ALL search engines, the search engines have you ban you individually. You rank 19th on Yahoo! And for Google... I didn't see your site for 5 pages and stopped looking. (this is all for "Utah Web Development") This may just be a Google issue but I'm no SEO expert. p.s.- there are scripts out there to tell you exactly what you rank on specific search engines so you don't have to sift through them manually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s0c0 Posted December 31, 2008 Author Share Posted December 31, 2008 I only check Google. Aside from the directory submissions I've been occasionally replying (not spamming) to blogs in an effort to obtain back links. This is the first time I've used a directory submission service. Prior to that I had submitted my site by hand to maybe 10-20 directories. The only other changes made have been very minor changes to text, very nominal changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randisist Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 Google has free webmaster tools that you can use to see how what your site looks to Google. Welcome to Webmaster Tools This links to the Free Google Webmaster Tools on the Google domain. Yahoo and MSN also have free webmaster tools you can use and I use them all and get good hits from all three search engines. Randisist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 s0c0, Good news! I quickly found you on Google when searching using Utah Web Development. Bad news...it's on page 19 (second last entry from the bottom as of this writting). If your ranking was much better prior to this directory system you subscribed to, then perhaps give it sometime, and if the benefits of such a service is not yielding much business (or if you value SEO results / business generated from that above the current way of doing things), then perhaps remove yourself from the subscription and see if it changes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
448191 Posted January 1, 2009 Share Posted January 1, 2009 The only thing I've done is submit my site to about 200 paid-for directories that yes do look like SPAM directories. Good this have caused me to lose my rankings? Any ideas? What am I doing wrong? Please advise. The only thing I did was shove 2 kilos of cocaine up my behind (moderated for the pre-teens around here). Could that be the reason I'm being asked to follow that Airport Security guy with the plastic gloves? Well, unless he wears a hairnet as well, I think it's safe to assume he's not the cafeteria lady. All joking aside, if what you say is true, there can be only one answer to the question could this be reason: yes. Very likely. Now I don't know Google's exact policy, but it might be easier to just get a new domain name. Google is supposedly famous for constantly battling link farms and other black hat SEO, and also for dropping your pagerank to 0 or even permanently banning domains. Neither of that has happened to your site so why exactly it is not showing up I the SERPS I don't know. Hell, who other than Google really knows how Google does things. Certainly not those so called SEO "experts". What I do know is that Google wants to give accurate search results, and these "directories" hinder that goal, as such, they will fight it. You yourself admitted these directories look like (SERP) spam. You submitted your site to 200 of them. What did you expect would happen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s0c0 Posted January 4, 2009 Author Share Posted January 4, 2009 s0c0, Good news! I quickly found you on Google when searching using Utah Web Development. Bad news...it's on page 19 (second last entry from the bottom as of this writting). If your ranking was much better prior to this directory system you subscribed to, then perhaps give it sometime, and if the benefits of such a service is not yielding much business (or if you value SEO results / business generated from that above the current way of doing things), then perhaps remove yourself from the subscription and see if it changes? Eh, I'll give it a month or two before taking any action and see if the problem corrects itself. Most of my business is word of mouth or from other sources anyways, I was only getting about 1 lead per month from the site. I'm not hurting on business, thanks for your responses. Especially your colorful one 448191. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sKunKbad Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 I used to swear that the Google sandbox conspiracy theory was true, and I still believe new or recently new sites are penalized. You could be feeling the effects of this. I'm not trying to start an argument, this is just my opinion. One thing I know is for sure, Ranking/placement doesn't change quickly. You are likely stuck in your current position for 1 to 2 months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nrg_alpha Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 I used to swear that the Google sandbox conspiracy theory was true, and I still believe new or recently new sites are penalized. You could be feeling the effects of this. I'm not trying to start an argument, this is just my opinion. It's not just your opinion.. apparently it is fact (from what I'm reading anyway). New sites will not rank as high as older more established ones (as least, not in general, at the start).. There are many aspects taken into consideration with regards to ranking.. (site age, how long a domain is registered for.. how many reputable inbound links are involved, how well structured URL's are, whether black hat techniques are employed or not, etc.. etc... etc..) The list goes on apparently, with too many variables to mention (or even know about). Apparently, even in the event of a older and established site changing hands (someone selling a site to someone else, and thus change of registration with a registrar [and perhaps changing hosting server as well]) is enough for search engines to rank that site as brand new and thus the site must rebuild its ranking status from the ground up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atticus Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 Hi, have you researched "Link Diversity". I was recently hit with this for one of my client's sites. Google changed some of its algorithms. Link Diversity: 50/50 rule: The max percentage of inbound links should only total 50% of your total inbound links. The other 50% of the links should go to other pages on your site. When submitting to directories, it is easy to violate this rule. Anchor Text: Since Google's filters are trying to weed out unnatural links, it will filter out sites that are obviously link building for a specific keyword phrase. My course of action would be to get inbound links deep into my site and focus on keywords you would not normally use to improve your diversity. Make sure you have an HTML sitemap with a link in the footer of every page. This way, you can pass the link juice from the links you get deep into your site to the anchor text you want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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