From position 8 to position 76 in five days... Please help

[webitaly]

Hello,
I am new to this forum, and I would like to get your tips and suggestion to solve a problem I really don't understand...
I am the webmaster for a website (www.poderelecave.com) ranking in the last months between position 7-10 in Google.com for the search phrase "bed and breakfast Florence", and between position 4-7 in Google.it. I one week I have seen the ranking falling down from position 8 to position 76 in Google.com, but remaining stable in position 5 in Google.it!
I am wondering about this negative performance, and I can't understand what's happened in one week! Never used black hat techniques or any other trick till now.
Any tip and suggestion is welcome.
Thank you all for your help
Roberto

[glengara]

*Never used black hat techniques or any other trick till now.*

and

*Put your link exchange work on autopilot!*

don't exactly match up...:-)

[rogerbeta]

Originally Posted by webitaly

Hello,
I am new to this forum, and I would like to get your tips and suggestion to solve a problem I really don't understand...
I am the webmaster for a website (www.poderelecave.com) ranking in the last months between position 7-10 in Google.com for the search phrase "bed and breakfast Florence", and between position 4-7 in Google.it. I one week I have seen the ranking falling down from position 8 to position 76 in Google.com, but remaining stable in position 5 in Google.it!
I am wondering about this negative performance, and I can't understand what's happened in one week! Never used black hat techniques or any other trick till now.
Any tip and suggestion is welcome.
Thank you all for your help
Roberto

Hello Roberto,

Here are some suggestions:



-www.bedandbreakfastflorence.com/ is # 1 and has apr of 5

Why?

You have more links to your site than #1 but he has 190 pages in google
that point to his page you have only 23

The numbers reflect the number of web pages that point to the selected site.
Your higher on all the other search engines

-www.poderelecave.com
total 3073
all the web 970
alta vista 1090
google 23
MSN 990

for #1
-www.bedandbreakfastflorence.com
total 2839
all the web 536
alta vista 1640
google 190
MSN 473


Now what I recommend
Improve your linking strategy, try something like linkmetro.com or something

like that.
Check your links with this free tool
http://www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com

Another recommendation is to look at what #1 is doing and you are not

-------------------------------------------

First Your title
<TITLE>Bed and Breakfast Florence, Italy - luxury bed and breakfast

accommodation in florence and Chianti area with Podere le Cave</TITLE>
Look at # 1

<title>Bed and Breakfast in Florence Italy | Florence Bed and Breakfast

Accommodation</title>

From here you play with your description, your first and second keyword,
your h1, h2, and your anchor text they all have to be the same look at #1
______________________________________
Your anchor text; the last statement in your page should say
Bed and Breakfast Florence
Look at # 1

Legal Disclaimer | Contact Us! | Top |

Top |

..


# 1 has a smart page same as the keyword that links back to itself

So you may need to create descriptive pages in other websites that are

indexed in google to link back to your first page.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Last statement
<font color="#FFFFFF">Florence bed and breakfast

accommodation</font></body>
</html>

-------------------------------------------------------

All other pages are pr3 only the first page is pr5

One last recommendation, one link before the last one should
link to a PR8 or PR9 of a related keyword to a goverment or non profit
organization non competitive with your site.

-----------------------------

create pages with this mispelled words that link to your main page using
this tool
http://www.sport-auctions.com/spelling.php

like this ("ebd and breakfast in florence", "bde and breakfast in florence", "be

dand breakfast in florence", "beda nd breakfast in florence", "bed nad

breakfast in florence", "bed adn breakfast in florence", "bed an dbreakfast in

florence", "bed andb reakfast in florence", "bed and rbeakfast in florence",

"bed and berakfast in florence", "bed and braekfast in florence", "bed and

brekafast in florence", "bed and breafkast in florence", "bed and breakafst in

florence", "bed and breakfsat in florence", "bed and breakfats in florence",

"bed and breakfas tin florence")


-----------------------------
I hope this helps,

Roger

[webitaly]

Frankly speaking I have never heard that exchanging links is a black hat seo... Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.
I have link exchanges like this on many other websites (more than 30) and they all are ranking very well. So, I think the problem have to be found elswhere

[webitaly]

Thank you very much Roger for your helpful tips.
I am thinking on each of your suggestion. If you find more, you are welcome!
Thank you again

[Heal3r]

This is a total shot in the dark...

based on this idea of Latent Semantic indexing (yah)

I suspect many people will see their rankings drop. If I understand it correctly. Those who focus on a particular phrase and get tons of links for that phrase, may not fare as well as those with a diversity of key word phrases links.

and again, for the record...

I know nothing.

[zephyrireland]

Have you made any changes to the content on your site ?
Adding extra content, or changing your text content without reviewing your search engine strategy / optimisation , can have an impact on your SE Results.

[Web-Weaver]

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

Your anchor text; the last statement in your page should say
Bed and Breakfast Florence
Look at # 1

Legal Disclaimer | Contact Us! | Top |

Top |

..


# 1 has a smart page same as the keyword that links back to itself

So you may need to create descriptive pages in other websites that are

indexed in google to link back to your first page.
----------------------------------------------------------------

rogerbeta, I agree with most everything you said but I'm not so sure about the idea of using a single period to link to a keyword-rich html page name. I know the #1 site did it but what does Google think about it? Seems a little risky to me.

Also, creating other web sites in order to link back to your own site is referred to as creating "gateway pages" is it not? I thought that was also a risky grey hat proposition, particularly if you don't have the savvy to host them on different IP blocks. Was I understanding you correctly?

I'm certainly not saying you're wrong...just thought I knew my stuff and was surprised by these suggestions from someone who sounds like they know their stuff too. If they are valid SEO techniques I want to use them too!! ;-)

Mark

[activeco]

Originally Posted by webitaly

Frankly speaking I have never heard that exchanging links is a black hat seo... Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.

Nothing is carved in the stone. What worked yesterday doesn't have to work today.
You may be interested in this Google link.

Summary:

...even though improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links, there still seems to be some confusion within the market about what the most effective link strategy is. So when taking advice from your SEO consultant, keep in mind that nowadays search engines reward sweat-of-the-brow work on content that bait natural links given by choice.

[rogerbeta]

Originally Posted by Web-Weaver

rogerbeta, I agree with most everything you said but I'm not so sure about the idea of using a single period to link to a keyword-rich html page name. I know the #1 site did it but what does Google think about it? Seems a little risky to me.

Also, creating other web sites in order to link back to your own site is referred to as creating "gateway pages" is it not? I thought that was also a risky grey hat proposition, particularly if you don't have the savvy to host them on different IP blocks. Was I understanding you correctly?

I'm certainly not saying you're wrong...just thought I knew my stuff and was surprised by these suggestions from someone who sounds like they know their stuff too. If they are valid SEO techniques I want to use them too!! ;-)

Mark

Yes you are right, but your
webweaverservices.com links to your other two sites which are on different subjects.

It is no just IP blocks, but you can use different hosting companies.

Anyway you can get a #1 listing in yahoo and msn and keep it for many months, with google is different, you need to create more and more pages with content, I heard that you need at least 50 pages, and how old is your site and how fast you build it, it is a long term process, and before you do anything check google rules.

The best technique to get links is to write or buy articles related to your keywords, and submit them to the different Article Directories, and at the same time putting a small summary at your keyword named blog, just like this quitsmokingaudio.blogspot.com the articles link back to the article page and to the home page.

You can also create a resource page where you can link to 3 or 4 of your sites like this one -www.quitsmokingaudio.com/resource.html

[Instigator]

If you check allinanchor:bed and breakfast Florence in google.com, you will see your site is at #106. The slump is likely caused by a page that was linked to your site which contained those keywords, has become deindexed, or your link has moved from it.

[Web-Weaver]

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

It is no just IP blocks, but you can use different hosting companies.

Anyway you can get a #1 listing in yahoo and msn and keep it for many months, with google is different, you need to create more and more pages with content, I heard that you need at least 50 pages, and how old is your site and how fast you build it, it is a long term process, and before you do anything check google rules.

The best technique to get links is to write or buy articles related to your keywords, and submit them to the different Article Directories, and at the same time putting a small summary at your keyword named blog, just like this quitsmokingaudio.blogspot.com the articles link back to the article page and to the home page.

You can also create a resource page where you can link to 3 or 4 of your sites like this one -www.quitsmokingaudio.com/resource.html

Yes, this is all in line with what I've learned too. What I was most curious about though is the tactic of linking to keyword-rich page titles with a single period as the link text. Seems as though this trick is about as sneaky as the single pixel keyword-stuffed image.

Mark

[glengara]

*Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.*

Have a look at

http://www.poderelecave.com/bed-brea...ks.php?this=20

and then check the Google cache

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache...en&lr=&strip=1

[AuctionHugh]

Why would google treat this favorably? Does google correct misspellings when it considers links?

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

create pages with this mispelled words that link to your main page using
this tool
http://www.sport-auctions.com/spelling.php

like this ("ebd and breakfast in florence", "bde and breakfast in florence", "be dand breakfast in florence", "beda nd breakfast in florence", "bed nad breakfast in florence", "bed adn breakfast in florence", "bed an dbreakfast in florence", "bed andb reakfast in florence", "bed and rbeakfast in florence", "bed and berakfast in florence", "bed and braekfast in florence", "bed and brekafast in florence", "bed and breafkast in florence", "bed and breakafst in florence", "bed and breakfsat in florence", "bed and breakfats in florence", "bed and breakfas tin florence"

_________________________________
Let Kathleen rescue you when your website workload gets overwhelming. Fast, careful, and hits deadlines! Call about contract work pricing: 1-888-572-7627
Kallen Web Design, Small Business Web Development

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

-----------------------------

create pages with this mispelled words that link to your main page using
this tool
http://www.sport-auctions.com/spelling.php

like this ("ebd and breakfast in florence", "bde and breakfast in florence", "be

dand breakfast in florence", "beda nd breakfast in florence", "bed nad

breakfast in florence", "bed adn breakfast in florence", "bed an dbreakfast in

florence", "bed andb reakfast in florence", "bed and rbeakfast in florence",

"bed and berakfast in florence", "bed and braekfast in florence", "bed and

brekafast in florence", "bed and breafkast in florence", "bed and breakafst in

florence", "bed and breakfsat in florence", "bed and breakfats in florence",

"bed and breakfas tin florence")


-----------------------------
I hope this helps,

Roger

Roger, I fully disagree with this part! I wrote an article about this, and published a few days ago on our web site: http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articl...ell-check.html

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by webitaly

Frankly speaking I have never heard that exchanging links is a black hat seo... Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.

Full stop. That is the most insane statement I ever hear.

If you exchange links with other related sites, that is sure not black hat SEO. That is a very healthy linking strategy. You start moving to those dark SEO techniques, when you start linking to/back to, non-related web sites and you do not use the "nofollow" attribute at least.

Just my last cents about this.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Heal3r

This is a total shot in the dark...

based on this idea of Latent Semantic indexing (yah)

I suspect many people will see their rankings drop. If I understand it correctly. Those who focus on a particular phrase and get tons of links for that phrase, may not fare as well as those with a diversity of key word phrases links.

and again, for the record...

I know nothing.

Great post Jason!

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

First Your title
<TITLE>Bed and Breakfast Florence, Italy - luxury bed and breakfast

accommodation in florence and Chianti area with Podere le Cave</TITLE>
Look at # 1

<title>Bed and Breakfast in Florence Italy | Florence Bed and Breakfast

Accommodation</title>

From here you play with your description, your first and second keyword,
your h1, h2, and your anchor text they all have to be the same look at #1
______________________________________
Your anchor text; the last statement in your page should say
Bed and Breakfast Florence
Look at # 1

Legal Disclaimer | Contact Us! | Top |

Top |

..


# 1 has a smart page same as the keyword that links back to itself

Are you really aware what you are giving for a tip? Or are you out-of-date?

Repetitions of keywords in the title is dangerous. PERIOD! And please do try to provide me examples. But if you still want to, do not provide me examples with authority sites, rather sites with very low PageRank (PR).

And who says that h1,h2,h3... should look the same? Building a link list at the bottom of the page with
tags? Or adding a smart page?
Do your speak HTML or XHTML and CSS? Did you ever hear the keyphrase "Semantical Markup"? Do you speak Web Navigation?

If this should turn out to a debate, start a new thread and invite us here. :)

[Peter (IMC)]

Well,.. I think the drop in rankings is the result of a couple of things.

Links definitely are a factor, but before you even start thinking about links, I would advise you to redo your complete website. One thing that´s really needed is to have consistancy within the site. Right now the lay-out changes from page to page, it´s really messy. Sometimes a page is so different, I actually feel like I am on another website.

Create a single template for all your pages and build all pages, always using that single template. Your menu should be in that template of course, amoung some other obvious things.

HTML coding is also a good one to pay attention to. I saw pages where the complete main menu was sitting in between H1 tags. That doesn't make any sense.

Then you need to learn about keyword focus. Per page and site wide. You can't focus a page on too many different keywords. (Note. This does not mean that a complete page can mention just 1 keyword. As mentioned before, semantics are important!)

[Ellygator]

I love the blunt honesty at this forum. This is exactly what we are looking for...that is where truth is found...it is sometimes ugly...but the truth will set you free :D.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Sometimes a page is so different, I actually feel like I am on another website.

Create a single template for all your pages and build all pages, always using that single template.

Some people are so afraid of duplicate content filter that they use many technics to avoid it.

[lunartcorp]

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

You have more links to your site than #1 but he has 190 pages in google
that point to his page you have only 23

The numbers reflect the number of web pages that point to the selected site.
Your higher on all the other search engines

I used the tool and it returned 190 for #1 in Google as you said. Then I went to the links returned for those 190 and I found they are like any other websites.
What is special on those websites to consider their links as "Google" category?

[scanmonkey]

Originally Posted by webitaly

Frankly speaking I have never heard that exchanging links is a black hat seo... Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.
I have link exchanges like this on many other websites (more than 30) and they all are ranking very well. So, I think the problem have to be found elswhere

Google is Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges

Google has made it Official. Posted on the Google Webmaster Central blog is the statement

improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by scanmonkey

Google is Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges

Google has made it Official. Posted on the Google Webmaster Central blog is the statement

improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links

Did you really read the article yourself?

[scanmonkey]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Did you really read the article yourself?

I came across it first here
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006991.html

Matt Cutts said in the comments:

"People create a pattern that is sometimes the equivalent of a geodesic structure amid a forest full of trees, then wonder why the pattern is detected. .... My advice is the same as it's always been: build compelling content that can attract links as a result of editorial choice; those links are among the most useful because users are choosing to make them."

[edhan]

Many people are still concern about ranking and highly targetted keywords will tend to have more activities than others. Frankly, I think it will be better if we can concentrate in building up a quality content / products site that can bring in targetted audience and not to be too concern about search engines. If you have been building up your site and have already generated some sort of traffic, you should carry on to provide quality content so that they will come back again and again. What you want is to have visitors come back to your site regularly instead of just having higher ranking than no one visits. Therefore we should be more concern of quality so that Google will also reward your site accordingly.

Hope this helps.
Cheers!

[rogerbeta]

Originally Posted by AuctionHugh

Why would google treat this favorably? Does google correct misspellings when it considers links?,

Yes it does
for example go to google and search for

smokng

it will say

Did you mean: smoking

and then the first site that appear is

smokng.com

the second is
smoking-cessation.us



At the end of the page

Did you mean to search for: smoking

On the right of the page all adwords ads are for
smoking
no smokng

[rogerbeta]

Originally Posted by AuctionHugh

Why would google treat this favorably? Does google correct misspellings when it considers links?

_________________________________
Let Kathleen rescue you when your website workload gets overwhelming. Fast, careful, and hits deadlines! Call about contract work pricing: 1-888-572-7627
Kallen Web Design, Small Business Web Development

Originally Posted by AuctionHugh

Why would google treat this favorably? Does google correct misspellings when it considers links?,

Yes it does
for example go to google and search for

smokng

it will say

Did you mean: smoking

and then the first site that appear is

smokng.com

the second is
smoking-cessation.us



At the end of the page

Did you mean to search for: smoking

On the right of the page all adwords ads are for
smoking
no smokng

[rogerbeta]

Roger/quote]

Roger, I fully disagree with this part! I wrote an article about this, and published a few days ago on our web site: http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articl...ell-check.html[/quote]

Yes I agree with your article, it is about your home page, we are talking about getting links from other sites that have these groups of words.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by rogerbeta

Yes it does

No, it doesn't.

the second is
smoking-cessation.us

Take a G cache of that site and you'll see this:
"These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: smokng"

On the right of the page all adwords ads are for smoking
no smokng

Adwords users can bid on misspellings and that is exactly what happened here.

However misspelings could help in bringing additional traffic.

BTW, do you guys read the rest of replies before posting?

[sunbedkid]

I have a website www.beachwear.net that has been up and down the google charts like a yo yo for years. It has been #1 for 'beachwear' and other terms. This last few weeks it has been out of the index completely and then back and forth but never higher than page 4.
I have tried many things to get it back on track, and have come to the conclusion that relevant back links are the only way to come up for your search term.

I think its a good idea to not target a specific term with your back links, but target several, to keep in with the new semantic algorithm.

[webitaly]

I want to say thank you to you all for taking the time to analize my problem. All your suggestions may be helpful for me.
By the way, I see a question that seems you have not fully considered: my website is STILL RANKING #6 in google.it for the same keyword (bed and breakfast florence).
How is it possible? If there is something so wrong to fall down in page 8, how is it possible to remain stable in first page in google.it?
This si what I don't understand...
What is your opinion about this?

[Tolis]

Dear All
I follow all the topic and want to say that I have the same problem. I am running the site http://www.herodion.gr that for the phrase 'hotel Athens Greece' was in positions 1-4 till last week. The site has pagerank 5. Now the site disapeared from the search results. We had the same problem another time but the results came back to the normal position. Do any one know about new algorithms in Google?
Tolis

[activeco]

Originally Posted by webitaly

By the way, I see a question that seems you have not fully considered: my website is STILL RANKING #6 in google.it for the same keyword (bed and breakfast florence).
How is it possible? If there is something so wrong to fall down in page 8, how is it possible to remain stable in first page in google.it?

There are a lot of misconceptions about Google results, even among those more knowledgable.
Google takes a lot of parameters when returning the search results, so your perception of Google.it doesn't have to be valid.
Among other things, search from different geo locations will return different results even when using the same address (e.g. Google.it).
One of more important parameters is your language settings in your browser. I have reproduced your results only when I changed the default language to Italian, otherwise I saw you at third page (@Google.it).
Looking for an English search phrase in the "Italian market" doesn't have a lot of competition, so your position there is not really difficult to achieve.
On a global scale, however, recent implementation of linking filters from beginning of December most probably hit you hard, while not having a lot of influence to your local position.
One can only speculate about the reasons; maybe you have valid links from your geo zone, where the filters - discounted links do not have much of importance...

[Tolis]

Dear All
I follow all the topic and want to say that I have the same problem. I am running the site http://www.herodion.gr that for the phrase 'hotel Athens Greece' was in positions 1-4 till last week. The site has pagerank 5. Now the site disapeared from the search results. We had the same problem another time but the results came back to the normal position. Do any one know about new algorithms in Google?
Tolis

[Tolis]

Sorry for posting many times but was geting server error message

[webitaly]

I agree partially with you. It's true that Google results are always depending on the datacenter you get, but It's a matter of fact that since last week I was getting #8 in google.com and #6 in google.it with the same browser settings. A week later I get a stable position in Google.it and a disaster in google.com!
About the competition... Well, I see that google.it return 1.730.000 results, while google.com returns 1.820.000 results... Not a big difference. More: in both cases, 98% of these pages are from Italy!
So... I still remain perplexed...

[activeco]

http://del.icio.us/tag/linkexchange?setcount=100

from Dec. 06, made in a really bad moment.
Although your server returns 404 now, Google shows a lot of controversial results: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%...st%2Flinks.php

[link.master]

Hi,
I have reviewed your site, and found this mistake,
you have added a comment before body tag which is same as used in title, I suggest you to remove this comment tag asap, becuase google may consider it as a black hat like keyword stuffing trick and you are dropped in ranking.

I think this will hep you out.

Thanks

[rogerbeta]

Originally Posted by webitaly

Thank you very much Roger for your helpful tips.
I am thinking on each of your suggestion. If you find more, you are welcome!
Thank you again

You can try to use the (title="Bed and Breakfast Florence") to have your keywords more on your page like these for example :

<h1 title="Bed and Breakfast Florence">Bed and Breakfast Florence</h1>

Bed and Breakfast Florence

[Saurabh Uttam]

While I am checking, your position for your keywords is 14.
A lot can be done easily for improvements.
But If you seriously want to have long term solution to your problem, Have a blog for your website hosted in the subfolder of your website. Have keyword related categories. A proper strategic approch would put you ahead of competion and lot many keyword positions.
Chill and blast in NewYear.

Saurabh

[Saurabh Uttam]

Webnauts wrote:
scanmonkey wrote:
webitaly wrote:
Frankly speaking I have never heard that exchanging links is a black hat seo... Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.
I have link exchanges like this on many other websites (more than 30) and they all are ranking very well. So, I think the problem have to be found elswhere


Google is Discounting Reciprocal Link Exchanges

Google has made it Official. Posted on the Google Webmaster Central blog is the statement

improved algorithms have promoted a transition away from paid or exchanged links towards earned organic links

Did you really read the article yourself?
BUT..
There is lot more than what Google discloses in its blogs.
First thing is that Google can itself can never discount reciprocal links, built discourages to promptly exchange of links just for link popularity. With growing technology on its side along with site structure, approximate link policy of the particular site, variations in inbound links and much many things.
Basically if you were linking for the benefit of the visitor of your site, why would Google disregard them, and if it’s done for SEO, then Google knows it.
An exchanged Link from high ranked authority sites would never be discounted.
Overall link analysis is bit complex and Google is very well equipped to measure those links. It does say in many ways like those quoted above just to discourage insane link exchanges people do.

Saurabh

[scanmonkey]

Write some articles about your city, tourist attractions, festivals, things to do etc and submit to social bookmarking sites

http://digg.com
http://del.icio.us/
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/
http://www.furl.net/
http://www.shadows.com/

Google Webmaster Central blog states that

One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com

[Mads Dam]

*Expecially if I exchange links ONLY with related sites.*

Have a look at

http://www.poderelecave.com/bed-brea...ks.php?this=20

and then check the Google cache

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache...en&lr=&strip=1

__________________________________________________ __________

I looked at the cache and I noticed this entry on the list of your former links:

"Fake Diploma plus fake college degrees
Fake university diploma sets including fake transcripts - any university."

Really, I don't think that is 'related'.
Maybe the drop in rankings is not so weird after all...

[incrediblehelp]

You rank in the top ten in Google Italy:

Is it your goal to rank top 10 Italy and Google .com? If so you simply need more back links from .com and .it to rank higher. The tactics to get these links are many.