The More Links I Get the Less Traffic I See!

Can Links Kill Traffic?

[msbaby]

My site is a little over a year old. I've tried to do everything by the white hat seo book, building links through link exchange, forum and blog posts (even though most don't follow) and by publishing articles on related topics to my site for the links.

In July, I saw a nice traffic surge. This encouraged me to rev up the directory submissions starting with Yahoo as this was the first time I had some money to shell out for the fee, but kept submitting to free directories, too.

One might think that things would continue at a steady pace to improve or at the very worst stay the same, but to the contrary my traffic decreased by over 50%!

The not so funny thing is that I had started another site and let it languish to focus on building more content and links for the older site and guess what? It's doing better than my older site.

Can anyone with more experience explain what I may have done wrong? Where could I start looking for reasons for this previously decent site going south on me?

[dickbaker]

Some of the directories you submitted to may be on Google's bad neighborhood list.

I wasn't aware of this "list" until I read a thread about it here a few weeks ago. The thread is either on the Links forum or in the Google forum. It's worth the read.

[msbaby]

Does it matter if they link to me so long as I don't have an outgoing link from my site to the directory?

[msbaby]

In reading some other threads I saw the following questions asked so I thought I'd answer them in case somebody could spot something

-How many pages? 392
-Toolbar PR [ as an indicator of page strength ]? pr3
-Link sources, are they consistant? Not sure what you mean
-Do you have any duplicate content? No
-What did you do recently / any changes? Nothing major.

-Any other clues?

[martinibuster]

I've tried to do everything by the white hat seo book, building links through link exchange, forum and blog posts...

I don't think some people would consider those techniques white hat. Probably the first thing to do is lose the hats and understand the techniques according to the following strains:

1. A citation of your website
2. Links that are not a citation (which is what the above three techniques fall under)

[msbaby]

So, the only link building that I've been working on of which Google approves would be the articles that I write on my site's topic?

The exchanged links are all on topic, but when I check to see which sites Google considers to be related to mine by entering related:www.your-domain.com in a search, the only links that show up are posts in a topic related forum, the directory submissions and my articles.

So, I suppose as long as the directory submissions feature my site on a page with other sites in my topic that they do help somewhat?

[Maxnpaddy]

You may simply have more targeted links on one of your sites. Mass linking just to get links, will mean most links are low ranked and untargeted for your needs.

Avoid anything untargeted is the safe option.

[msbaby]

I'm very new at this and I just realized that I did the related site search incorrectly by allowing a space after the colon.

When I searched with no space, I came up with 3 pages of sites that have nothing to do with the topic of my site! Out of the 3 pages, 8 listings were even close to what my site is about. How on earth do you start to fix such a mess?

[Maxnpaddy]

Ok - from now on ensure you check every site you link to (doesn't matter for general directories).

You want to link to:

Car site links to Car site. Get the idea..

Link to quality looking sites, and buy as many on-topic links as you can afford, without risking too much cash. I also advise you forget Google, and link for the traffic and your visitors.

And never, ever link for pagerank purposes - ever.

[msbaby]

The odd thing is that I have done what you have said. I have only linked/exchanged links with sites and commented on blogs and forums that were on topic with my site and make it a point not to link to any directories at all.

The only paid link that I have is on a site that sells products that I write about. They put my link under their heading of resources and it appears site wide. Is that a red flag that will get me penalized?

[jdancing]

Sounds like your are suffering from being a new site and having a bunch of low quality links. Traded links and article links are practically worthless.

If your site can't attract one way links on its own, start buying some one way links in existing content to your site on quality sites.

[msbaby]

Isn't this what everybody's talking about that has Google dumping sites? What's the best way to do this without getting slapped in the knuckles for it? I have always thought of it as paid advertising but now I'm scared. I was afraid that the one paid link I have was getting me in trouble.

[Maxnpaddy]

Google won't dump you if you are paying for adwords.

Why don't folks forget about staying in Google's good graces and just PPC? Then you need not worry about loss rankings.

What are we talkig about here, a few pence per click. $30 per month will do it.

[kidder]

Google won't dump you if your paying for adwords? Why would you even say something so far off the mark? Break the organic or PPC rules and google will hand you your ars.

[Maxnpaddy]

Put it this way, I'm not dumped yet hehe. Have you ever heard of "don't mess with paying clients?" - if you do they tend to go elsewhere and trash whoever upset them.

-- I hear that Yahoo got trashed one time, yes I remember the terrible Alexa reviews about Yahoo's customer service. Rest my case.

[edited by: Maxnpaddy at 3:37 pm (utc) on Nov. 8, 2007]

[kidder]

I had a site banned from the organic serps that I was spending 5- 6 k per month on. It did not stop them from dropping the site and BTW I still have to buy the traffic.