No Longer Showing For Searches

[grantbrott]

I have a client I did some work for and their site showed up in google search for several keywords on page 1 and 2 and now the past two weeks is not showing up for any of the keyword searches now. I checked for duplicate copy and found nothing, I checked webmaster tools and everything checks out ok there. I type the site into the search and it shows up but its just been totally dropped for the keyword searches for about 2 weeks now. Any ideas on this or anything else I might want to check to get an idea of what is going on?

[tedster]

Hello grant, and welcome to the forums.

Any purchased backlinks?

[Terabytes]

Is the site new?

[grantbrott]

Site is around 6 months old id say and no purchased links to my knowledge

[grantbrott]

Been digging around still not finding much on this, the site has links from various sites, it is just one page but is extremely long and full of information, its for a ebook product, I was thinking maybe it got dinged for being a sales type page but have not seen anything about any changes that would affect it suddenly like it did.

[tedster]

How about the backlink profile altogether - is it very strong in social media type links? Those seem to have a limited shelf-life.

[grantbrott]

The site does not have many links period, under 100 mostly directory listings. So that is probably the issue but does anyone have any idea why the site would of been ranking up in the page 2 and 3 range for several keywords for several months then just drop out of the listings totally?

[FredOPC]

grantbrott,

I feel your pain (or at least your publisher's pain)...

Here's my take on what's probably happened:

either (1) the site got penalized. or (2) the site fell into the supplemental index (e.g. google hell). search for "supplemental index" or "supplemental results" and you'll find plenty of info.

For (1), it would likely be for paid back links, a link exchange program, or too many incoming links coming from "bad" sites (e.g. directories that require a sign-up where google thinks they should penalize those who signed up.

I would say that if you don't have paid backlinks, 1 is very unlikely.

More likely the site went into supplementals (2). This can be caused by a lot of things but the #1 issue is link relevancy and value. 1 link from a PR4 site is worth 100s from unranked (PR0) or directory sites. Get a PR5-9 to link to you and you'll probably rip the site immediately out of supplementals and back into the main index.

You can determine which pages are in the supplemental index by doing this:

search for:

site:www.yoursite.com/* <- these results are in the main index.

then search for:

site:www.yoursite.com/ <- these include supplementals

if your main site isn't in the first listing, your entire site is in supplementals.

[grantbrott]

I did the supplemental searches and it showed up in the main index. I do not know of any paid links but there are several generic directory listings. Is there a way to find out if the site has been Penalized?

[FredOPC]

grantbrott, other than through a webmasters tools request, I don't know of one. This is one of the biggest frustrations on the net (and one that I personally knew the answer to right now, since one of the more profitable directories on my site is in the dumps).

Google says they don't reply to every WT request, and any action takes between 3-4 weeks to get addressed.

Best solution is to try to get a high ranking page to link in with appropriate anchor text and see what happens.

[FredOPC]

I meant to say "and one that I personally WISH I knew the answer to..."

[Shaddows]

Few backlinks, mostly from directories- thats your problem.

Sites typically enjoy a honeymoon period, which lasts for a few months. Then sites have to stand on their own two feet (which is to say, their backlink profile).

Get some links from informational sites in your niche- inline links in the middle of text surrounded by relavent keywords with focussed anchor text is ideal (but rare so don't get too hung up about hitting ALL those criteria). There are lots of ideas in the Link Dev Forum Library [webmasterworld.com] and you can throw around ideas in the Link Dev Forum [webmasterworld.com] itself.