One week after a BOTW listing my site went from page 1 to page 4

[1affinity1]

Hi all,

I have my site listed in the first page for few keywords, then I bought botw paid directory listing (before one week), now my site lists in fourth page for the keywords which gave first page results in past week.

How to avoid this penalty? I don't want a ranking improvement. I just want to retain my old ranking.

Thanks.

[tedster]

Hello 1affinity1 - welcome to the forums.

I'd like to caution you about assuming the directory listing actually caused a penalty. When one event follows another, that does not mean that the first caused the second. In this case, it would be extremely unlikely. BOTW is one of the highly respected directories on the web, even mentioned by Matt Cutts as an example of a directory where you are paying for editorial evaluation - not a guaranteed link.

Although a 3 page slide is dramatic, it does not necessarily mean a true penalty. In fact, Google is in the middle of some serious algorithm changes which we are discussing in some other threads - particularly: this thread about Matt Cutts blog post [webmasterworld.com].

[1affinity1]

Hi Tedster,

There was no other reasons which can cause the penalty from my side, I didn't do anything other than the directory listing.

What you say become true if google algorithm change happened in the past week. Is it happen in past week?

What Matt Cutts say about BOTW maybe relevant in the past year. because many of my colleagues got ranking boost by listing in BOTW in 2010 and 2009.

But what now? not sure. I got a ranking decrease.

Not sure what to do. Very depressing.

[rowtc2]

Maybe isn't just BOTW link, have you got another links in this period? How many?
I am thinking you've made excessive link building perhaps.

[1affinity1]

No, I don't had other links in this period. No linking campaign at all.

[TheMadScientist]

Wait... It's not fun, but unless you know where and what the problem is IMO the best thing to do is NOT try to fix it... I think people often have a ranking decrease, not because they did anything 'wrong' or 'got penalized', but rather because Google made a change and when those people try to fix what's not broken (their site) they end up making the matter worse than it would be if they let Google sort things out.

AFAIK there are many top sites with links from BOTW, so IMO there is not much chance that link caused your site (page) to lose it's position. IMO it's much more likely Google made a change...

Personally, I would keep building and working the site as you have been and continue to grow the inbound links and user base... I would not worry about the link from BOTW. IMO you should keep building, don't 'tweak' things back an forth, continue adding content (or whatever it is you have a site about) and keep getting new links.

[Robert Charlton]

1affinity1 - We know very little about your site and when the change happened, so it's hard to comment except to say that over the past weeks some big drops have happened on many other sites that I'm sure did not get listings in BOTW. I've also seen sites listed in BOTW maintain their rankings extremely well. And even without an algo change, it's possible that other factors caused your drop.

How old is your site? How long has it been on the first page for your keywords?

What kind of inbound links do you have? Are they editorial links on sites that you don't control? Are they fixed links, or are they blog or news links... links that might have rotated off the first page of the linking sites?

Is your content unique and original? I say this both because Google is increasingly targeting dupe content, and I've seen some sites with syndicated content take a 3 or 4 page drop recently.

So, there are lots of possibilities. Without getting into specifics, can you describe the situation of your site in more detail... and tell us roughly what date your drop happened on, so we can compare it to ranking changes that others have reported.

[internetheaven]

Plenty of speculation on this for my liking. I've bought more than 100 botw listings. it's not 100% that drop ... but the actual percentage is scary and I would not like to post it as it seems too high to be true.

If you've got enough strength, then botw paid links can't hurt you. i'm not seeing any benefit though for sites with minimal backlinks to begin with.

[rhwd2003]

Did you buy a sponsored listing for your category or just a regular listing?