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Changing site URL destroyed my rankings

Starting from scratch is tough...

         

Jim_F

8:03 pm on May 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Last summer I was one of several fan sites targetted by Major League Baseball for "trademark infringement". I ended up having to change the URL and name of the site, and in doing so went from a PR6 to a PR4. My main keywords are very competitive with the likes of sites like ESPN.com, sports.yahoo.com, the NY area media sites, etc., but I used to show up on the first page of search results.

Now, I'm happy that I advanced from the 18th page to the 16th page, and it's ridiculous. There are pages coming up waaaaay before mine that are about the team that the site is about "sucking", and also lame-o EZBoard registration required sites. I don't think I was ever as low as I am now, even before.

I've been lurking here ever since then, and have hoped for good results after I've done most if not all of the optimizations that I've read here, but still nothing. I finally got re-added to Yahoo at the end of February, which I thought would have helped the PR, but not enough.

I've invested a lot of time and money building my site, and now seeing it get blown out of the water by tripod and freebie sites in the Google results for my main keywords is hard to take.

This is partly a venting thread, and partly a "what can I do?!?" thread. I've masked my dynamic urls, I've replaced all the font size=4 with h3 or h2, I've linked back to Google, and the list goes on and on.

Has anyone else ever had to deal with anything similar? How did you handle it? Did you ever get back to where you were?

Thanks,
-jim

Jane_Doe

11:06 pm on May 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Consider hiring an SEO expert. There is a commercial exchange forum on this site where you can solicit bids.

SinclairUser

11:37 pm on May 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Jim,

I am a UK SEO and just love baseball. I have seen the NY Yankees play at Yankee Stadium a couple of times. We get MLB here in the UK on Sunday night (well actually it's real early in the morning - 1am till the game ends!).

If I can help (in any way) just sticky me and I would be please to try.

Jim_F

11:53 pm on May 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



SU,

Thanks - I appreciate your help. There's a sticky on the way.

-jim