Forum Moderators: open
Backlinks in Yahoo: 500
Pages in yahoo: 200
Site ranking 6/8: Top 5 out of 20M+ results for high volume 2 keyword phrase. (Rankings have held steady for about 3 months)
Changes made on 6/8 to titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords. KWD raised a little. No other changes to site. We recently became more active in exchanging links with quality on-topic sites (past 30 days).
These is no cross-linking between these 2 sites. There is 1 way linking with a few other sites. A to B to C to A.
As of today, both sites have disappeared from the SERPS. No site that wasn't there before has replaced me.
My first guess is that the on-page changes have tripped a penalty. Could simply raising the KWD of title/meta trip a filter? (If so, I should appear again if I revert back to original, unless a penalty is permanent; New changes aren't live in SERPS)
My second guess is that we exchanged links with a bad link partner. This is because I have another site in another industry I made on-page changes to and it hasn't been affected so far. Only the 2 sites in the same industry were affected.
My 3rd guess is a duplicate content penalty from content stealers. I typed in a unique content string and found about 5 sites stealing/using our content word for word. Some use cloaking and block cache. When I search for a unique string, all of the sites that are stealing the content show in the SERPS, but my original site does not. My site does appear if you type in www url.
My 4th guess is a (301?) re-direct bug. If I search with a unique string in quotes, the only listing that results has my exact title BEFORE I made the changes to the title/meta. I don't think Yahoo has even updated their index to show the title change. It shows my content as the description, but shows a link partner that uses some sort of re-direct to our site. If I click on the SERP listing, it goes to my site. This occurs for both dropped sites. (With different re-directing link partners)
Any thoughts, questions, or comments? What do you think was the cause? I'm leaning toward #4
I would especially like feedback from those that have sites in different industries and have experience in doing controlled algo testing.
