Google gave me a lump of coal for Christmas!

[siteblueprint]

Hi everyone,

Long time reader, first time poster...

I did a complete redesign of my site on Dec 14th, and Google crawled it and updated its cache of most pages on the 15th. (Good timing, or so it would seem).

Only problem is that I appear to have lost all my backlinks! I know that Google doesn't always show all backlinks, but just before the site update, I had pages of backlinks (which are still there) from 2+ years of forum posting signatures, link partners, etc.

Any ideas what happened?

Will this work itself out, or am I back to square one with my link building campaign?

The site in question is at:
http://www.siteblueprint.com

Thanks in advance!

Gary

[ADAM Web Design]

www.siteblueprint.com (fixing Gary's error).

They're not wiped out, or you wouldn't have any PageRank to begin with. You have a PR3 on your homepage. So you're not being penalized or banned for anything.

As far as backlinks go, Google only ever shows a percentage of them, which tends to vary. So don't worry if you only see a few.

[siteblueprint]

First, thanks for fixing the typo with too many w's... I've updated the post to correct it.

I understand they only show some of them, but why would they go from displaying several pages of results for links to only internal (to my site) and one external one?

Thanks for your time!

Gary

[bhartzer]

When you redesigned your site, did you change the URLs of the pages too? If so, then that's probably the issue.

[siteblueprint]

Nope... in fact, I went through each page and made a duplicate of it in my new folder on my development machine, tested and then changed over the content.

I still show the same pages/names indexed for a site: search at google, just a huge drop in the link: search.

Thanks,

Gary

[greeneagle]

IMO - Sometimes it's worth losing existing IBLs for better SERP on secondary and tertiary pages, from both short and long term perspectives. Just make sure and capture the "stragglers" with a default 401 page or action. That's just good practice for any Site.

Ken

[brian.mark]

You mentioned losing links, but you said nothing about rankings. Do you still have those? After all, those are all that really matter. The rest is just details.

Brian.

[SafariMan]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

IMO - Sometimes it's worth losing existing IBLs for better SERP on secondary and tertiary pages, from both short and long term perspectives.
Ken

Hi Ken,

First time I've read that statement. I noticed the "IMO", but why would you say that? When I first started, I exchanged links with any and every site I could (sorry) and now I don't do link exchanges at all anymore. I can understand that unrelated links may do harm, but why IBLs in general?

[glengara]

IMO Siteblueprint.com may be heading for trouble, you have very heavy internal links on empty category pages showing AS.

I've seen G penalise for this before, and noticed most of those pages are already Url only....

[siteblueprint]

glengara, not sure I follow... sorry if this is silly.

I've got links to all my pages and do have more than 100 pages to the site, is that what you mean by having lots of internal links? How do you deal with that if you really have that many pages?

Thanks,

Gary

[glengara]

*I've got links to all my pages and do have more than 100 pages to the site*

Right, but having each and every link on each page is a bit much, particularly when there's no content in more than a few.

To me it looks a bit too like artificial inflation for comfort, IMO you've two choices, fill up those empty categories, or take the AS off them.......

[siteblueprint]

Originally Posted by glengara

Right, but having each and every link on each page is a bit much, particularly when there's no content in more than a few.

To me it looks a bit too like artificial inflation for comfort, IMO you've two choices, fill up those empty categories, or take the AS off them.......

I've got links to the 6 main categories on each page, and then some more on the right side, but not every page is linked on each one. Sorry I'm not following you.

I can add content to the pages of course, I undertand that. What's take the AS off them mean please?

Thank you.

Gary

[glengara]

*What's take the AS off them mean please?*

AdSense, you appear to be artificially trying to inflate the size of your site through having basically empty pages.
That's not good, either fill those pages with content, or remove the AS from them..

[danherbert]

Last year, I made significant changes to my site and dropped out of sight. I was tempted so many times to change it back, or make changes I thought were a mistake. But I hung in there and after about two months, my site showed up on page one, and its been holding number one position on G in the keywords I want.

Patience is a virtue.

Regards,

Dan

[sibagraphics]

Perhaps it might be helpful if the issues here were addressed:

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...blueprint.com/

[kenhughes]

If you run links:www.siteblueprint.com, then you are correct, you do not have any backlinks. If you run links: www.siteblueprint.com (with a space between links: and www.) then you have 328 backlinks.

I've noticed this recently with my sites. I think someone fixed a bug which wasn't there in the first place.

[suntzu]

Websites can be temporarily sandboxed after a redesign. Especially if the HTML extensions have changed from asp or cold fusion etc to another extension. Like danherbert said he was out for two months before getting #1 positions on key phrases he was targeting.

Good Luck.

[razer1001]

Hi Everyone
I am new to this site and I appreciate any suggestions. this topic is of interest because I have been visited by google several times but there are no backlinks showing and I have been builing them and should have 30-40 and most are with highly relevant sites and 15-20 with PR3 and up.

The site is www.silverlandjewelry.com

Thanks

[siteblueprint]

Originally Posted by kenhughes

If you run links:www.siteblueprint.com, then you are correct, you do not have any backlinks. If you run links: www.siteblueprint.com (with a space between links: and www.) then you have 328 backlinks.

I've noticed this recently with my sites. I think someone fixed a bug which wasn't there in the first place.

Wow, thanks for that info. Interestingly, if you search google for www.siteblueprint.com (not with the links: part) and then choose the "Find web pages that link to..." option, it shows the same as the option above, without the space... looks like they "fixed it" on the servers but not on the site.

I appreciate everyone's time and thoughts.

Thanks,
Gary

[greeneagle]

IMO - I wouldn't disregard what sibagraphics had to say above!

Ken

[siteblueprint]

Originally Posted by greeneagle

IMO - I wouldn't disregard what sibagraphics had to say above!

Ken

Understood... sorry sibagraphics, didn't mean to not acknowledge your input... my brain is just flying around trying to get all angles to this one.

Everyone's help is greatly appeciated.

Gary

[incrediblehelp]

siteblueprint,

Is the website content (articles) original and written by you or nothing more than regurgitated article vomit?

Looks like nothing more than copied content to me. Why should Google rank or index the same info more than once?

Yours:
http://www.easyfitnessinfo.com/8_Sec..._Trainers.html

Someone else with the same idea?
http://fitnessforprofessionals.com/e...-top-trainers/

[greeneagle]

incrediblehelp:

"Is the website content (articles) original and written by you or nothing more than regurgitated article vomit?"

This is a point that should be well taken.

Now, more than ever it is important to add enough relevant expert commentary to every article republished to avoid dupe content filters and propel into top SERP, often above the original author's position.

Ken

[siteblueprint]

The site in question is not the one in the sig... it is siteblueprint.com.

I appreciate your thoughts on the dupe content item however.

Happy New Year to all.

Gary

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by bhartzer

When you redesigned your site, did you change the URLs of the pages too? If so, then that's probably the issue.

As Bill mentioned here did you properly 301 redirect the old pages to the new? Maybe not?

It looks like many of your pages are in the supplemental index in Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...om+dreamweaver

[siteblueprint]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

As Bill mentioned here did you properly 301 redirect the old pages to the new? Maybe not?

It looks like many of your pages are in the supplemental index in Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...om+dreamweaver

Actually, I didn't change the page names at all.. for example, the main page with dreamweaver templates was and still is named dreamweaver-templates.asp.

The main concern was links "disappearing" (when http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...eblueprint.com was performed)... putting the space in there like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...om&btnG=Search shows much more as suggested by kenhughes.

I still need to clean up some DTD issues though.

Thanks,

Gary

[incrediblehelp]

FYI:

This query shows you an incomplete list of back links to your websites from Google

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...eblueprint.com

By doing the operator with a space in it, it just shows OTHER websites that have links to www.siteblueprint.com

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...om&btnG=Search

[siteblueprint]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

FYI:

This query shows you an incomplete list of back links to your websites from Google

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...eblueprint.com

Thanks incrediblehelp... it was a timing issue I guess, as I had always used (or thought I used) the link search without the space.

Gary

[sibagraphics]

Originally Posted by siteblueprint

Understood... sorry sibagraphics, didn't mean to not acknowledge your input... my brain is just flying around trying to get all angles to this one.

Everyone's help is greatly appeciated.

Gary

No worries.

I've been wondering of late whether Google isn't picking up validation warnings in regard to the lack of background colors or colors in CSS - if the W3.org validator can pick up the problems, it is feasible that Google might also, and apply penalties if text color isn't noted as substantially different from background color.

What I find annoying with the W3.org validator is that it doesn't allow inheritance when a background is designated as transparent.