Well, still not making much progress as of late but that is primarily to some physical issues that were either caused or inflamed by too much time on my laptop. So I have been taking some time off which was tough, but also a nice mental break.
One thing that has been bothering me is the drop in rankings for my main niche site. I started that site in October 2008 and have about 40 pages of content and 200+ backlinks showing. That was the one site I have spent most of my time on building a lot of backlinks from Angela & Paul’s packets. The homepage spent a few weeks on page 1 of Google for my main keyword while a few inner pages were ranking on page 1 and bringing in some traffic (which seemed to be clicking my ads).
But now my site is back on page 3-7 for the homepage and the inner pages which had ranked well are now too far back in the results to even hunt down. Is this just normal shuffling or did in my backlinking cause this? I wish I knew.
One thread I noticed on WF described a sudden drop in rankings. But more interestedly, according to another thread, it appears that Google is modifying their algorithm (see here also). Through that thread you can check your sites with the new algorithm and my main site was ranking better, so for now I’ll wait and hope for the best. Plus I would like to see what happens over time (if this is normal shuffling) so I am holding back from making any changes to the site or adding any backlinks for now.
One thing this has emphasized for me is diversification. You may get a site ranked well and making money, but that could all change in a blink of an eye. I also noticed that when I was on page 1 of Google for my main keyword (#8) that I still wasn’t getting much traffic. That’s a bit concerning, but maybe I just need to be at the top of the page. However, that won’t be easy as there are some high PR, older sites in the top spots. Just another reason to diversify – you never know how things will work out even if you are on Page 1.
The good news is that I have next week off from work so I am hoping to get a lot of site work done. I am going to go back and try to recover some old domains to see if any will stick, start some new sites, and then do some research on new niches. Mostly I need to just start generating content. And I need to learn to write faster!
By the way, both my adsense and eHow earnings are terrible this month. Most of my adsense comes from my personal site which gets decent traffic, but is not a profitable niche. This month though the CPM is terrible and I’m wondering if I have been smart-priced. Since I’m only running adsense on may main niche site (and the traffic has dried up), I’m not going to worry about it too much for now, but I think soon I’ll have to look into alternatives (adbrite, chitika).
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I have noticed that when I put up a new niche site with literally no content, if the domain is strong enough, it gets ranked in google on the first page right away. However, once I start ADDING content and backlinks, that page one ranking goes away quickly. Now I am having to slowly build my back up to the first page. Very frustrating!
I’m noticing the exact same problem, sites that used to live on the front page, mysteriously disappearing deep into the back pages of google. A few of them have come back, most haven’t recovered yet, I’m hoping this is just temporary.
Google is a fickle mistress.
I had and article that topped Delicious and Stumbleupons most popular list a while back and Google sent massive traffic my way. When the social media traffic died down so did the traffic from Google. I think it is still on page 1 but it hasn’t seen the amount of traffic that it once enjoyed. Good luck on getting your ranking back.