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The site is about 6 months old. I have added relative backlinks, about 5 a week since the site started up. Total of about 40 backlinks with PR of 2 to 5. I purposely added the backlinks slowly to avoid the so called sand box stuff.
I optimized the site (not overly so I thought) for a 2 and 3 word phrase using the state that the site services. In other words...
2 word ---> state widget
3 word ---- state widget whatever
As of last week the site was slowly creeping up the ranks. Started in the 700s about 5 months ago, was at 158 as of Friday for the 2 word phrase. Number 78 for the 3 word phrase.
Last week I decided to change the home page file name to state-widget.html. Also another 3 backlinks were added with a PR of 3,4, and 5.
Today for the 2 word phrase, gone. Nothing in the serps. for the 3 word phrase, I actually gained a couple of positions.
I don't think this can be the sand box thing, the site is still indexed. It just totally dropped for the 2 word phrase. So you think I hit that edge that we are not supposed to go over with optimization?
I noticed that googlebot started a deep crawl, got about halfway through the site then stopped and it hasn't been back since.
I also deleted all the 301 redirects on the site except for a redirect from www.mysite.com to mysite.com. The reason I did this was because for some odd reason, googlebot was starting deep crawls and then just stopping at these redirects and not going forward anymore. I thought there might be a problem with that. I had about 6 301's added to pages that no longer existed. The site gets fresh info on it almost daily exept for the home page.
Is this proof of the so called and very contreversial overoptimization filter?
Just wondering.
Do you think I should wait and see if it returns? It just freaks me out that it's gone for the 2 word phrase.
Thanks!
Agreed. I have walked the edge of this myself. One tweak can send you over. It's finding the edge and staying there that gives SEOs a job.
