Is my site penalized by Google?

Our site was #3 on Google's first page, when I searched for certain keywords. Now we are on page 7. It sure seems like Google has penalized us. It's an image-heavy site but the problem seemed to occur once certain sites started linking to us. What are we doing wrong? Anybody have any suggestions or ideas?

Could you please tell us your website URL ?

It could probably because you did a change to your website or changed the design which has caused this.

Actually, sites linking to you, without you back-linking to them does not have negative effect. Imagine if evil guys were doing this on purpose, putting links in blacklist sites just to ruin your reputation? Would be too easy.

On this forum I have been unable to post URLs because it says I am a new user, so I will leave spaces after the periods. But the site is www. kristinelombardi. com

We don't have much text because the nature of the business is illustration. But I can't see why that would get us a PR of 0.

NB: PageRank is related to links, not content.

The main issue is that you have Zero backlinks from other sites! You are very lucky to have any ranking at all.

The second problem is that your homepage is 99% flash. You need to add some more html text to the page.
Thirdly... you need to add a meta description tag to the homepage.

These will help very much with rankings.

Description Tag is not going to effect your ranking.

Not much to say, but basics are voilated:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enIN253IN254&q=site%3Akristinelombardi.com

Similar titles for all the pages
Similar descriptions for all the pages
lack of content

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kristinelombardi.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s

8 backlinks will not make you land up that high on SERPS.. Could be that you checked your ranks while you were online on your google account? Or could be the new site effect..

Add an articles section or a blog, without content, things would not be so easy..

You can focus on image optimization in case the illustrations are important to you..

You can add some content for your visitors on what technology you use, what Ideas you can work on, how do you make those, importance of the illustrations.. I can think of around 30-40 pages of content on such topics.

Backlinks have enormous wieght, but they lacking badly..

Domain Created on:
October 31 2007

Domain age (approximately):
4 Months, 26 days.

Not much time has passed by, start your links building campaign as soon as possible to sustain the domain or in the long run, you will land up selling it..(WorstCaseScenario)

Are you providing anything for free to your customers? You are new in the market, you have to think about the business development since its inception..you have to build your customer database at first..you have to drive traffic towards your website.. you can refer to my posts and many more out there as to how to gather traffic..

http://forums.seochat.com/showpost.php?p=517218&postcount=32

Recently, it has been discussed and proved that One has to think beyond the Link Baits. Getting on authorative websites and being dicussed in by the maestros in your industry builds credibility and natural links as well..(impression has to be +ve)..

Should help you..

-LKS

Hey thank you, that was a great reply. The main purpose of the site is to show certain magazine editor's the selected illustrations and then also to showcase the work to others outside the magazine world, like children's book publishers. Unfortunately images mean very little to Google; it does not see it as content though it might pick up on some alts. Maybe adding a blog is a cool idea, that might generate something. I was reading this which seemed to make some good points

www(dot)growler(dot)com/Pro/SEO/aaSEO2/Google-penalties.htm