Rank fell significantly

so i hired this guy to do build one-way links for me and he easily got my site on the first page of google within a few months, i was already on page 30 before then.

anyway, i noticed today that now my site is on page 3 instead of being on page 1. i was on the bottom of page 1 for my main keyword.

when i asked the link builder guy to tell me why the site fell so significantly, he simply said that he stopped working on link building last week and that is why the site rankings fell.

He indeed did stop working on the link building last week but the ranking falling so much in a week does not make any sense to me. is that possible? maybe he is not telling the truth as he wants me to continue getting links from him.

please advise and comment on this situation. experts? SEO vets?

thank you

google did some algo updates recently (2 days ago i think). a lot of people (including me) had dramatic losses. but as of a few hours ago, my ranking is back to where it was originally.

just be patient.

i want fine until today but then it moved to page 3 when i just checked.

I hav seen

Google SERP Update July 2007

Google SERPS have been updates nearly 9 july 2007 and their seems to be major changes that one can see in the search engine rankings. Some of the evident changes in the recent updates are as follows:

* Sandbox lifted: It is clearly evident with the new results that new websites have come into SERPs and sandbox penalty have been lifted from websites.
* Freshness: It is also notices that websites who have been regularily been updates and are catering the website with new and fresh content are turning out to be clear winners.
* Structure: Website architectures are playing a very big roles in this update.
* Domain Factor: Age of the document is playing an important role.

Something huge is going on in Google..... Let wait and see what happen... May be your website fall because fo this solid and hard update....Link building is important but simulteneously freshness and other factor are also important to make website strong presense in SERP result...

Dont worry Big G is dancing LOL

Well I am not an expert or a vet. So maybee you do not want my opinion.....

The problem with paying link builders is the way it mainly works is they give a link from a directory they have to the person they are asking for a link from in exchange for a link from the site they have asked for an exchange to their clients site. There is no guarantee that people will keep your link. There are many reasons for this but the most common one is people forget the deal over time. They than check there backlinks in google webmaster tools and find that they have no link from you and ditch your link. The link builder only guarantees you getting the link not keeping it.

The second problem is google has been devaling directory links and identifable link scheemes. If a person thinks the link they have been given is now worthless because it comes from a site with no PR they ditch your link.

The third problem is if google has identified a pattern from the link building scheeme than all links that fit the pattern could be devalued at the same time. The end result is all/most of the links they have got you have become worthless.

The fourth problem may be if these links were not related to your site. Google has just been changing its algorythm. One of the changes is meant to be a furhther devaluation of unrelated links. You might have been the recipiant of this devaluation.

The fifth problem may be that your competators have been working on gaining qulaity links. Their LJ is now greater than your LJ. It is not you have dropped but thay have increased.

The cause would not be because he has suddenly stopped getting you links. Google takes a few months to value new links. Any link building done over the last couple of months would not have taken effect on your site yet.


My advice is that mostly/often these scheemse are not a good long term option for a novise to gain rankings.

But having said all that maybee a SEO expert or VET will come on and give you better advice..........

A lot of my sites have dropped in the rankings over the last 2 days...

Google is definitely updating its index. Have a look at this article gazzahk recommended earlier today:

http://www.seo-news.com/

I don't believe everything it says, but it seems to be right in a couple of things.

there is definitely some issue with the link builder guy because with his link building my site fluctuates a lot.

sometimes it completely dissapears only to reappear after a few days and then it will jump around on the first 5 pages.

i dont see this with any other sites that rank on my keywords. does that happen to anyone?

Sometime google is so hard to understand. Link building is the best way to maintain your ranking, but you have to get quality links from related sites. The more links from related sites you have the more possibilities that your site can stay on it's position even google keeps on updating it's algo.

Check which data center the results are coming from (view the IP address on the cahced link).

If the site is up and on one DC then down on another this is the change ion algorithm between the two data centers.

When Google implements a new algorithm it switches between data centers a lot, presumably making subtle tweaks each time it rolls out a new alogrotihm.

I saw a #6 serp yesterday completely drop out and was back today on the same data center so don't got too woried until things have settled down a bit.

As an additional note, was your link builder doing mainly reciprocal linking or one ways?

It is clear from your results that link building has had a dramatic effect.

One thing I have noticed with this recent algorithm update is that sites that rely heavily on reciprocal linking have suffered quite a lot.

only one way, thanks for the insight

If I was going to add one more thing concerning the drop. It has been mentioned before Google wishes to offer results based on what they may think your habits are. Results are to be a range of sites, take weight charts as an example - a person searching that term may see not the best optimized pages for that term but the best optimized pages from various niches where the term has relevance. The result may now include health sites, paper weight sites and military standards sites (you get the idea). So those which used to compete only against their specific niche may now be over-shadowed by sites that those type terms were an after thought. I only say this because I just jumped to page 2 for weight charts and height weight charts when previously I was lucky to see the light of day for the term.

From the article "Inside the Black Box"

check you anchor link does it match your keyword? If i want to optimizer a website for a particular keyword then i would change the anchor link matching the keyword.

Issue with the link builder guy? That sounds like passing the buck. He could be doing exactly what you hired him to do.

If you hire somebody to build links and they go get you links on free for all spam pages - your fault. If you hire somebody and they get you links on unindexed pages - your fault.

The issue is for you to have enough knowledge about how you spend your money so that you spend it wisely and get great value.

Learn what kind of links you want, what kind of links you don't want and then hire someone who will do that - and check their work.

It seems that you are on the road to this now. Money spent so far is not wasted - it was tuition.