Honest Website Crippled

[s00tie]

Firstly, thank you Visio for your "I have lost my rankings...." sticky. I have read it and a number of other posts from this forum and tried to understand how any of the content could be related to my issue, but I'm still stuck.

I run a very simple and probably by the standards of the guys on this forum - amateur blog. I won't post the URL yet as I'm not sure if it violates the policy here.

Basically, things were going ok but as you can see from this image from Google Webmaster Tools:

(Sorry it seems I'm unable to post links or images yet, basically the graph shows constant overall Google impressions of around 500-600 per day and then as of 29th Sep, a drop to around 10 which has slowly climbed to around 50)

..when the update at the end of September hit (well I assume that's what it was) the site didn't just loose a few rankings, it died on its backside.

I have kept posting the odd article in the hope that this was just a Google dance but so far and 2 months later, I'm still not seeing anywhere near the number of impressions I once had.

I would love someone to give me an opinion on the site, to see where I may be going wrong or even just a pointer in the right direction - but as stated previously, until asked I won't post the URL.

I'm happy to field any questions or provide any further information.

Thank you in advance for you help.

[KernelPanic]

until asked I won't post the URL.

post the url

[s00tie]

Thank you for the quick reply.

The URL to my blog is www dot epinionated dot co dot uk

(Not able to post links due to new account and I refuse to go spamming the forum just to get the post count up )

[tstolber]

What are the links to your site like? Are there a lot of low quality links to your site?

Have you changed anything recently?

Did you move server or change hosting?

Did you upgrade your blog software?

Are you getting any errors more recently that you haven't before?

Any messages in Google Webmaster Tools?

And yes - please post the URL in the form of www (dot) domain (dot) com

[s00tie]

Since finding the issue, the site has had its version of Wordpress and a few addons updated.

Other than trying to re-optimize the advert layout, nothing has really changed.

No errors - I even submitted a Google request through Webmaster tools but it came back with no manual spam action.

No moving of server or hosting.

Hope some of this helps.

[KernelPanic]

what was it ranking for?

[s00tie]

To be honest, it was ranking pretty well for a lot of key words, nothing intentional - mainly around the Billion 7800N router and Sky.

If you look in bing for "billion 7800n sky" its pretty high, just like Google was - then after the update - boom - all gone

It was the same for a lot of the articles I posted, particularly the tutorials.

[s00tie]

Something I'm not sure is relevant is that I host the site on a VPS and it runs another 3 sites (2 phpbb forums and another WP blog). There seems to be something affecting their rankings too, one of them, my football forum is not getting any querries now, despite having around 90 pages indexed.

I just can't put my finger on whats wrong - every guide I've read or followed just doesn't seem to apply.

[KernelPanic]

Something I'm not sure is relevant is that I host the site on a VPS and it runs another 3 sites (2 phpbb forums and another WP blog). There seems to be something affecting their rankings too, one of them, my football forum is not getting any querries now, despite having around 90 pages indexed.

I just can't put my finger on whats wrong - every guide I've read or followed just doesn't seem to apply.

The page that is ranking on Bing but not on Google has content that is duplicated on many other sites.

If you want to rank on Google, rule #1 is do not copy other people's stuff.

[s00tie]

That is my original work, not copied from anywhere. Even the screenshots are from my router.

[s00tie]

That is my original work, not copied from anywhere. Even the screenshots are from my router.

The #1 rank in Google for that is a forum post I made to point to the blog.

[KernelPanic]

The #1 rank in Google for that is a forum post I made to point to the blog.

My apologies for the other people's stuff crack then but the point remains valid, Google is really, really bad at giving credit for text to the original site. They have identified that forum as being more authoritative and dropped you like a bad habit.

You should not promote your awesome content by posting it on other sites brother.

That's what I am guessing the problem is.

[Test-ok]

I believe KP found the issue, never give good content to someone else. Or copy it and spread it around to different sites you own.
That should be a no brainer.

[s00tie]

That should be a no brainer.

Thank you for your insightful response, only I didn't give them anything other than a highly relevant link back to my article from a high ranking forum.

[KernelPanic]

Thank you for your insightful response, only I didn't give them anything other than a highly relevant link back to my article from a high ranking forum.

yeah, but you duplicated your text and that kills it.

It's not the end of the world, you still have your highly relevant link. Just rewrite the text on the page that it links to so that it is just as good but 100% unique. Then BOOM, you got your ranks back. Unless of course you have duplicated your text all over the www. Then, not. Then you have to get busy and get all your text original again.