Bizarre ranking problem

why are my rankings so poor?

[allanp73]

I was hoping that someone could help me. I have a network of sites which were all top20 five months ago. I heavily crossed linked them. Then I was told this was bad and removed the cross links; however, Google had already crawled. The sites pr went from pr6 to pr4. The rankings dropped to top200. I figured that the sites would recover after several crawls. For good measure I added the sites to many high pr directories and added 200 pages to each of content.
The sites still haven't shown much recovery. I'm wondering if there is something other than the weakened pr that is causing the sites to rank poorly. There are many sites with less pr, fewer links, less keyword density, that lack keywords in title and barely mention any of the keywords, or with are weak in all of the following that are ranked higher. I wonder if I could have over-optimized or if there is some problem that I have over looked.
Thanks for any suggestions. :)

[edited by: Marcia at 10:39 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2003]

[nancyb]

allanp73,

Cross linking seems to be a penalty that can take a very long time to recover from. Have you tried writing Google to let them know you made a mistake and have corrected everything? Sometimes that has helped. Good luck!

[WebGuerrilla]

I don't think you have a penalty for cross linking. I think your PR has dropped because you stopped cross linking.

Google might not like site networks that are heavily cross linked, but that doesn't mean there is an automated penalty that happens just because you get crawled.

[deejay]

(other better ranking sites have) less keyword density

What density are you using?

The rule with keyword density is 'more is not better - closer to Google's ideal is better', and I firmly believe Google has dropped their ideal keyword density significantly in the last six months.

It doesn't address your PR issues I know, but it always makes me cringe a little when I see people assuming that higher density should give them an advantage.

[Shane]

deejay,

I am curious. What was Google giving top marks for and what is now the new target?

Thanks,
Shane

[allanp73]

Thanks for the comments. Actually, I think Webguerrila was right about the crosslinking. I don't feel that I was penalized. However, I do feel that the way I crosslinked weakened the sites. The pr of the internal pages show some recovery. However, my main problem is not solely a pr problem. There are sites ranked above mine which do not better pr and are not relevant to the keyword search term.
I used keyword density tool to check and found that I have the following:
12.6% over all density for phrase "city widget"
8% in visible text

16% over all density for widget
10% in visible text

I believe that this fits within what Google likes.
I just can't understand why the rank so poorly. There are listed near sites that aren't even related to the search term.

[whatson]

There are some strange things going on with PR and rankings lately. I have noticed some competitive search terms where most of the sites in the top 10 have PR 6 or 7, then there will be one with a 2 or 3. And others there that hardly have the keywords on the site at all.

I am not sure if you can get penalized for cross-linking, because if you link to a site (maybe another on of yours) that is relevant it is likely there to help your visitors, not just your rankings. And I am sure Google knows this, so they cant penalize you