Need Advice.. I made mistake and now in Sandbox ?

[Ricky]

Hi,

I know google frawn upon too many backlinks created in short span of period as well too many links from single domain.. however, here what happend with me.. and now I need advice..

I working on a website from few months and then after all hardwork I finally launched it, hired a content writer etc and started working on it and everything was fine for a week and I even started receiving SE traffic but then suddenly site refused to open even for exact terms.. I investigated and I think I found myself in a FIX ..

What I did wrong that I used one of my established forum and used an 336x280 advt. to drive traffic to new website as I also have option for forum in this new site. If forgot to do rel="nofollow" which I generally do in such cases.

And now instead of increase in traffic its 0 .. the more I investigate, more it looks like sandbox thing.

I also advertised it on couple of other place (where I get again so many links at once) I completely forgot that I had plan to do it gradually..

So, now how do handle this situation, I m planning to remove all ads and also will no more build link for next 2-3 months (but I can't do about many current ones I already recieved)..

I don't think advertising your own site on another site you already own is bad and spam.. I know google knows this.. but now how I get out of it.. it really feels dreams like shattered after months of hard work (I know there are other SE but google always sends me around 80-90% of traffic )

[DarrenHaye]

So you launched a site and after a week it isn't ranking for anything? is that a surprise really or..

[NathanielB]

I wouldn't just the gun mate, simply sounds like your site may have lost rankings due to being new, not because of your advertising!

Think about it, a lot of new sites will advertise a lot at the start, its called advertising for the simple reason that that's what you do with anything new, how else would people know about it!

If I was you I would leave what you have done, don't remove them (unless they are on spam sites of course, but that don't sound like the case here), and continue to build links in a natural manner because I would place me bet on your loss in rankings simply being down to having a new site (its the norm) and not because you have advertised its launch well!

[Ricky]

First of all thanks guys for replying, it feels good when someone is to listen you. I would have not worried but I have done various website and for all of them, I have see that even if you are new, you are visible "Exact Search" but in this case it is not, also from Analytics I can see that on launch things were going as usual but as links built up, its stopped showing even for exact keywords.

Yes, its clear I should stop link building for a good time , rather have them built up naturally.

@DarrenHaye ,
Domain is about 1 year old, site is about 2 month old now. I hope that explains


Also, I would love to hear anything similar if you guys ever felt..

I am also worried that my one of the legit site was hit by this Sept27 Panda update (seriously) and only reason is that so many people are using my designs which I released for free and have link back to my site (so that I can get more work.. and thats not spamming).. so I am worried is it same happening with my new site ?

[ClickyB]

Hi,

I know google frawn upon too many backlinks created in short span of period

Hmmmm... that's not true though!

Read this post for more info'... it might give you the answer; (no need to stop linkbuilding, just do it the right way).

It's not the sandbox either... that was a filter, not penalty and would not have stopped you matching an exact search term from your site (unless it was a "major keyword"). It's also long gone and the term has been picked up by the seo myth machine to label any problems with new sites dropping in rankings (which happens to almost all new sites after their "honeymoon period").

Are you (and your site) registered with GWT? If not you should probably do that (and get a sitemap submitted asap)... That might also shed some light on the situation.

[Ricky]

Ok that posts has some good facts , infact I liked it very much when you said that a site can go viral and can have lots of back links.
In my case, I may have links with same anchor text and mostly through forums as I develop modes, templates etc primarily for forums. I have decided to change link building pattern and slow it down.

However, I have noticed one interesting thing, if you have well established site, you can actually build lots of back links with anchor text and it will give you good ranking but if its new or relatively small, you will get penalized.

PS: I register sites WMT always.. thats where I am taking cues most of the times along with analytics.

[ClickyB]

However, I have noticed one interesting thing, if you have well established site, you can actually build lots of back links with anchor text and it will give you good ranking but if its new or relatively small, you will get penalized.

It's not about the age of the website. It's all about the backlink profile. If you follow ther guidelines set out in my (linked) post, you will not have any problems.

[Ricky]

Alright, that means you go gradually but what about situation where sometimes people links to you from spammy site which is out of your control , how to handle that situation ?

[Ricky]

Well, It feels very ridiculous, working so hard and no result, generally for this much of work I would have received already lots of good traffic.
Should I continue to work on this or leave it as future is uncertain, what if Google doesn't give it value ever ?

[Ricky]

There was another project of similar nature I started at similar time but I had done no promotion etc for it.. and that site is doing as expected.. infact it was not promoted as was not ready.

I today saw that my site has 60K backlinks and all have them from site where I promoted , I think my promotion ate this project.. but I have decided to continue working on but will force on other project and will not advertise at all unless they are well established or atleast few months old.. or advertise through JS based ads only.. like openX or google adserving plateform.

What do you think ?

[bruce99]

I cant see that you did anything wrong, including the whole no follow tag you say you need.

The whole point of viral is indeed a site taking off,

The only thing I question is how grey or black hat all the links you are talking about were.

Typically if google bounces you down and you stop grey hat processes of link building (auto posted links to junk blogs and forums) ... it may take some time but Google usually doesn't punish you forever.

IS there something else in your strategy that you have not told us that Google may not like?

[Ricky]

I advertised it on my few established website as mentioned earlier as well as inserting link on some free templates I provide.

[grgmathew]

You looks to be very confused on your own. What is exact problem with you?

Is it that you feel advertising in forum have affected your ranking?
Is it that creating whole bunch of backlink created have affected things?
or
The exact search term not showing in search engine has disheartened you?
Basically you must wait and see for atleast a month to understand whether you really ranking well for certain keyword and getting consistent traffic. Although you did received quite good SE traffic for a week after launch but that does not mean that you have optimized your keyword perfectly and you would stay on there for a long time. Being a new site, it always a tendency that it would jump up and down in SE results and as time would pass, it would be back to its place, exactly what happened with you. Stay calm and do onpage and offpage optimization for longer period of time. Just do not jump on what has happened in first week of your site launch and beyond that.

[Ricky]

Thanks for your comment however, I am confused and that is why I am here, I am confused why my site receiving benefits despite of good quality content and efforts. Anyways, its been few months now and its pretty evident my that particular site is penalized and reason what I think is excessive link building which came through advertising on my existing sites.

[Dr.Marie]

It sounds to me like you are shooting in the dark. You can't fix the problem until you know what it is.

Do you have any warning messages in your WMT? If so, that's the place to start.
If not, you need to look at recent algorithm changes. You mentioned that the site plummeted about a week after being launched. Does that date coincide with a Panda or Penguin date? (A quick Google search will tell you the Panda dates.) There was a Penguin refresh October 5.

If so, then you know what direction to go. Panda is about on page factors and Penguin is about backlink quality.

You mentioned that you built a bunch of anchor texted links. My guess is that you were affected by Penguin on Oct 5. Penguin affects sites that have manipulative backlink profiles. But you need to be sure that this is what is affecting you before you go slashing backlinks and even then you have to know what you are doing in order to slash backlinks. If this is a brand new site and you have killed it with overoptimizing anchor text then it may be best to start over.

If it's not coincidental with Penguin then it may just be that the site is new and doesn't deserve to rank or maybe it just needs more time.

You can share the url (do it like example dot com) if you want us to weigh in more.