Confusion with Google

Hi,

Just wondering if someone could help me try to understand what has happened to my website.

I run funkyfancydress.com (sorry, cant post direct links yet)and overnight on the 7th October my website literally dropped all of its ranking for the majority of keywords. Some dropped from #5 to #17 in the serps. Other words went from #12 down to #278. Others have either stayed on top of the serps or dropped 1 or 2 places.

I have spoken to a couple of people and they have said its google dance and simply wait a few days and things will return to normal. Its now a week on and nothing has changed. I have held off making changes to my website in the hope that 1 day i will wake up and see it all returned to normal. I have submitted a reconsideration request to google but no outcome from that.

The website did get hacked a week before the drop but this was tidied up after a couple of hours and cleared by google. I dont believe google will penalise for a 1 off hack from what ive read.

Is there anything else i should be doing or looking for?

Many thanks

Paul

You look to have a backlink profile that may be changeable.

What did you do to promote the site?

My linking strategy has been the same for over a year now. I try to split my links on a 70%/30% in favour of blogs and forums. Other links are generated by answering questions at places like yahoo, directory submissions, social, articles and PR. This strategy has worked for a long time and i was about to start uploading videos to youtube and also try a few other ideas. Ive held off for now to see if it will revert itself but after a week im getting a bit concerned.

Ive been doing alot of analysis between all of my competitors and been trying to apply the same strategy as them, which until last weekend was working very very well, then all of a sudden, literallly overnight i lost almost everything.

I have also noticed that google isnt displaying my titles in the serps, it seems to be replacing them. Is this normal? Could it be related?

Many thanks

Paul

One problem is that blogs are becoming increasingly abused and it is hard for Google to detect automated blog posting.

I've never seen a page title changed like that. Very interesting. I will post that as a new thread in Google Optimization.

We did design work for legavenue.co.uk and they have some good links from their supplier catalogue (Princess Distribution)

Can you get any of your suppliers to link to you?

That will give you much better link juice than the methods you have been using. The whole article posting and blog comment thing has been done to death.

I am getting away from blogs but they are a good way to get some quick relevant links. I always comment of relevant blogs and ensure the title is relevant where possible.

As for teh title, if you search for 'funky fancy dress' then google has replaced my normal title with 'funky fancy dress'. you can search for 'dress up ideas' and google will show a title of 'Dress up ideas - funny fancy dress' I have no idea where that comes from.

It has completely baffled me and i dont know if i should see about making changes or simply wait to see if google is going to revert and my listings will return??

Thanks

I have never seen what you described with the titles and have started a separate thread.

Don't mess around with the pages, your problem is almost certainly in your backlink profile.

See the comment above, get some REAL links, suppliers, industry partners, other companies that are related.

Another good idea - if a company has helped you, offer a testimonial for them, with your link included in it.

Check out here how that was done effectively for legavenue.

http://www.crehelp.com/testimonials.php?page=2

A lot of folk on here will just offer link juice schemes but real links are harder to get, take more imagination and are more powerful.

Don't follow the herd, do something different, you are losing out to people who are more imaginative in their marketing mix.

Many thanks. I have loads of great unique ideas and strategies that i have built up but never started. I have to admit that i have got caught up in the success of what was happening. It was an attitude of 'If it isnt broken, dont fix it'. Everything i have done up until now has worked, and worked well. It had to happen at halloween too, i was position #5 for 'halloween costumes' and things were good! now im bottom of page 2. This has destroyed halloween for us but i guess ive got a year to start implementing new ideas and get myself back up there for next year.

Ill keep an eye on the titels thread youve created and see what thats all about too.

Many thanks for your help. I expect you will see me around here alot over the next few months.

Paul

The fact you are at the the bottom of page 2 for an upcoming holiday could mean your competition has been more effective at SEO than you.

Hi JBacchi,

I would agree with you if this had happened gradually or there had been other signs but it was disaster overnight for nearly all rankings. Some of the other drops were 'fancy dress costumes' went from #9 to #45, 80s costumes #1 to #8, 60s fancy dress #8 to nowhere, but the worst was 'fancy dress' #12 to #280+. I dont believe this is just competitors being better as the drop is site wide rather than a few areas.

Im still wondering if it is google imposing some kind of penalty for being hacked. Malware was detected about a week before this happened. I had cleaned up the website within hours but i could still have been penalised?

Why is this sudden drop in backlinks even though my site was not hacked? Is this due to change in some google algos?

Backlinks - over 50% have no anchor text , rather a screen shot of the site as the link. 80% of the links have over 40 outbound links from that page. One example is from :resources.organicmall.com/services.asp - correct anchor text "fancy dress costumes" but there are 1063 outbound links.

There are quite a few "nofollows", from blogs.

As to the Title Tag description, I am confused as you are. I have searched all source code for exact text and even if you search the exact title it appears with your correct title tag.... a google conundrum.

If the title tags have been changed, the old title will show until the pages get crawled and the new title is indexed.

This is true, but I thought it was mentioned that they had not been changed, my mistake if they have been changed recently.

that would make sense then !

Ive made no chanegs to title tags on these pages for months. I believe google has indexed recently.

Ok.. So was that the original Title Tag for the page ?

If it was then this makes sense !!

I would change the title tag anyway :

View All Fancy Dress Costumes | Fancy Dress Ideas | Funky Fancy Dress