themaninthejar - 11:30 am on Jul 16, 2012 (gmt 0)

So... I've spent four months de-optimising. Bringing keywords densities down to what I perceive a machine regards as natural levels, simplifying internal anchors, reviewing and focussing meta-tags and updating articles. The site's been fully cached since the changes were made but the homepage still was languishing around page 35 to 40 (last year it lived on page 1 or 2).

So on 9th July I put in a reconsideration request honestly detailing all the work I'd done. On July 12th I got a reply that there were "no manual spam actions" so a reconsideration request was not necessary.

In WMT this site which had previously been on the top of the listing of sites I work with when sorted by "health of site" was moved to the bottom of that list. So "going to the doctor" when you are healthy is obviously a mistake... I had a gut-feeling it would be, but when you're on page 40, how much worse can it get...?

Well, on 15th July the homepage dropped out of the listings altogether, well at least below the 90+ pages of ten results that Google shows for my two-word search term. I feel I've been smacked in the face once for trying to rank my site using the honest methods that worked for years... Now I've been smacked in the face a second time for trying to come into line with what I construe to be the new acceptable protocols...

And all I ever did (and would like to continue doing) was put useful, high quality information in front of people who were searching for it...