SEO Optimization resulted in Loosing Traffic & ranks -Its kiling me :(

This is getting serious, daily I am loosing some amount of traffic, and in last 20 days, it is cut to halved and this is really serious issue.

What I did, I have blog, on each post page, I used to show 6 SIMILAR POSTS, with little 10 words excerpts for each posts, lately I decided to show 6 random posts too. Now I show 6 similar posts and 6 random posts and without any excerpts on each post page.

I found that my traffic started decreasing so I thought I have so many links on every page and I should decrease page per link so that page get more value. For that I now show 6 similar posts, 4 random posts links. But I decreased links from category, now its show only those category for which posts belong so almost saved 10 links per page, then I also removed FEED link I used to show from other site from 16 to 8 per page..
So total I removed around 18 links per page but added 4 new links per page, then I removed TAG cloud shown per page, so again removed 25 links..

TO sum it.. I added 6 new links per page then found ranking being dropped, I thought its so many links so I reduced almost 42 links per page.

But still my rankings are dropping a lot. The blog is about entertainment material . I am daily loosing traffic and I think its because I am loosing rankings but still I m not able to pin point the problem.

So question is .. should I restore back to earlier shape as it was, it all started when I added 6 new link for random posts pages.

What are your views.. Please help..btw, earlier I was least concerned about SEO as traffic was rising gradually hence I was concentrating on building content and services for my this entertainment blog.. Its kind of portal now. See it SMSnShayari.com

PLEASE Advice..
Its Pinching me real hard..

I had a similar thing happen to me while performing late-night maintenance on a CMS. I had some content turned off when google visited (a look at the cached version revealed what had happened). I dropped over 80 positions for one phrase overnight. It's been over 30 days and it still hasn't recovered.

So it means I should restore side-wide links to all categories etc..
But I had impression that lesser link per page, means better value for that page.

I didnt get it what u did with your on-page seo eventually but your assumption of lesser links per page means better value for that page doesnt make sense. What that count is, Who are linking to you and who you link to. I dont know which keywords you are targeting but u need to create silos if preserving the topical relevance of your targeted pages is your aim. Frequent change in site navigation and Site wide links can be a reason for your down ranking. I played with it once and got burned. So my suggestion is to stay away from side wide links. Dont restore them. Get quality back links and dont change your site navigation so frequently. By the way i like contents on your site. You can compensate some of your traffic loss through SMO. Create a group on orkut and promote it. Your site has every chance of success among orkut visitors in India.

Actually by sitewide link I meant Navigation, actually have so many categories so keeping them all was not really practical. So now it shows only those catgory and subcategory in which you are in currently.

SO I guess as every category now get link from lesser number of pages hence may be value is reduced. I am just confused..

Btw, thanx your appreciating words, there is lot of hard work behind the site.

Btw, tried to use friendconnect.. lets see.. kind of weak at SMO..

I think you answered your own question there.

If you change something and it has a negative effect you should always change back to what worked.

It is very important to keep a record of what you change and when always noting the Google Data Centre and checking the cached version and Google webmaster tools to see which page and links are being counted.

Does having so many internal links helps or is harmful.
If I restore back then will have so many links to various categories, kind of every page will be linking to every category. (now will have even more internal links per page as categories are increased)

Then instead of content, my page will have loads of category, kind of 10% content and 90% links..

Thats why we decide well in advance at the planning stage, how a website should expand. Are you following any SDLC model. Your website is only going to become bigger and bigger and you must plan out well in advance, how you will handle the expansion without making drastic changes in ur link structure. Ideally it should have tree like link structure and click distance of any page should not be more than 3. It is a website design issue and ur designer need to be spanked

I am solely responsible for everything on this site apart of few contents for which we have people working on it.

Well, site came in existence out of no where so whatever it is today was never planned was not even possible to plan. Though now have implemented almost best way possible for this site and nothing is more than three clicks away.

But still .. if I restore all my categories .. all my pages will have lots of links ... so do you think linking every category from every page is helpful ?

I checked today morning and everything went back to normal for me after google update

according to me there was a mix up in google search results, they were displaying US search results in a .co.uk searches

Well.. for me things just seems getting back to normal from two - three days however, I still not closed to what I used to have.

Stop playing with the mechanics and revert working on content for your visitors like you were doing in the beginning. You were trying to modify your site so that Google like it better instead of doing it for your visitors.

It looks to me that you were already on your way up but you decided to play with the mechanics. Learn the lesson.

Thing is that I was doing for my visitors only, I wanted to give them more choice but again less cluttered website.

I have reverted back to old style and used Drop drop down this to manage categories. Lets see

What is happening to your RANKINGS?

Is anyone republishing your feeds?

A while back topix.com started republishing the blog feed from one of my sites and BAM... my traffic fell off of a cliff. Their pages with reposts of my content moved above my pages and guess who got my traffic.

Lucky they were nice guys and removed my feed after I got in touch with them.

IF you have a weak site and lots of people are republishing your feeds then your traffic can fall to nothing.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

The problem you have now is you are speculating and being reactionary. Google doesn't spit back real time results in light of your changes. So are you even giving yourself enough time to fully understand how things are going to shake out?

Reminds me of one of the funniest simple makes you thinks jokes I just love... (No offense to Pols as it is not intended to be offensive... it's just a joke).

And here it is:

Did you hear about the Polish Carpenter? He cut the board 3 times and it was still too short.