Site SLAMMED by Google after allowing guest article

writeaway

12 years ago

Depublish the article that (you think) got you dinged. Study your competition and provide what they are not providing.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 12 years ago

You seem to be attributing causation to that, Damian?

Are you seriously suggesting that publishing a guest article has somehow incurred some kind of "Google ranking penalty"?

Originally Posted by damian5000

Any suggestions to get it back up to where it was?

I think you should start by trying to discover the cause, if possible. It seems you haven't done that - you've just come up with an extremely far-fetched theory with no apparent underlying logic at all. You can ask Google, for a start. You can also check your backlinks and think about the possibility that this is something like a Penguin penalty and entirely unconnected with your recent guest post.

I think the thread belongs here, really? Adsense / PPC / SEO Discussion Forum

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damian5000

12 years ago

There is no doubt this is what dinged me. I had been up several months and worked up to a stead 500 uniques a day and new posts getting 60-100 reads a day. Literally within hours of the post, the site was dinged down to less than 100 uniques a day and new posts almost unread... about 10 reads a week instead of 60-100 a day the first few days a new post was up...

Depressing..Any idea how long it takes Panda to reevealuate? or is it completely random and impossible to tell...

I depublished those articles about 2 weeks ago, but no change in stats...

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Alexa Smith Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

There is no doubt this is what dinged me.

It's pretty difficult to reply both seriously and politely to this comment. I must have learned logical thought from different places from you. I wish you good luck in future, anyway.

Originally Posted by damian5000

Any idea how long it takes Panda to reevealuate?

Panda?! Dear me, you really do have absolutely no idea what you're talking about at all, don't you? Look: I'm sorry this has happened to your site, but it's very difficult indeed for anyone to discuss it sensibly with you when you're so full of opinions and beliefs to start with, about which you have no room even for "doubt". Nobody can teach you anything, or even help you much at all, while you so firmly believe things that are so clearly mistaken.

Truly, your cup of tea runneth over: 101 Zen Stories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If it helps you in any way, I offer you the observation that correlation is not causation. Sorry if it's no good: it's the best I have for you.
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cashcow

12 years ago

How many articles was it? In the OP it says one article but then in the last post you say "those" articles.

I'm only wondering because it seems highly unlikely that your entire site would get a penalty from publishing one article that doesn't even have a link in it.

How is that (or those) article(s) different from your normal content?

Does it say anything in your google webmaster tools? Like maybe the person whose article you published send a bunch of spammy links to it and thats the real reason you got dinged?

P.S. I'll refrain from lecturing on how it is never a good idea to depend on SEO traffic.

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by cashcow

How many articles was it? In the OP it says one article but then in the last post you say "those" articles.

I'm only wondering because it seems highly unlikely that your entire site would get a penalty from publishing one article that doesn't even have a link in it.

How is that (or those) article(s) different from your normal content?

Does it say anything in your google webmaster tools? Like maybe the person whose article you published send a bunch of spammy links to it and thats the real reason you got dinged?

As I said, there are no links at all in the article.

The article is in line with the previous content of the site (previews and reviews of niche tech)...

He gave me two articles within a couple days. I checked stats after the 2nd article was published. Hence "articles"...

Here are some screenshots... Where you see 86 reads on example 3... His article was posted the same day... The older articles are staying unread as well... In other words, those numbers are pretty much the same as they were 2 weeks ago ...

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zerofill

12 years ago

What makes you certain that the article was the cause? That could be something that just happened in the same time frame, but totally unrelated.

When you gave the author credit, did you link out to their site? If so, did you investigate that site?

I've had sites slammed for just having non-cloaked clickbank links on them.

Removed the links, and the sites jumped back within 2 weeks. I've actually proved to myself 10+ times now that those links get you penalized.

If you're linking out to their site, have a look at the site. Maybe they have some clickbank links or similar affiliate stuff that isn't using a redirect link etc...

One of the things Google seems to utilize outbound links for, is a better determination of what your content was about. Your content that was actually linking to the external content. If that makes sense...

So if the external content or site itself is considered trash... you could definitely take a hit on your end.

But then again, like I said... You could have been headed for a hit, and that was just coincidence that it was in the same time frame the guest post was published.

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by zerofill

What makes you certain that the article was the cause? That could be something that just happened in the same time frame, but totally unrelated.

When you gave the author credit, did you link out to their site? If so, did you investigate that site?

I've had sites slammed for just having non-cloaked clickbank links on them.

Removed the links, and the sites jumped back within 2 weeks. I've actually proved to myself 10+ times now that those links get you penalized.

If you're linking out to their site, have a look at the site. Maybe they have some clickbank links or similar affiliate stuff that isn't using a redirect link etc...

One of the things Google seems to utilize outbound links for, is a better determination of what your content was about. Your content that was actually linking to the external content. If that makes sense...

So if the external content or site itself is considered trash... you could definitely take a hit on your end.

But then again, like I said... You could have been headed for a hit, and that was just coincidence that it was in the same time frame the guest post was published.

Seems no one wants to believe this is the reason... Yet I was at a steady 500 uniques a day for 4 months... And literally within hours is when the ding happened...

The guy doesn't even have a site... There were zero links in the article...

It was attributed to him though "Written By: *username*" at the top of the article...

I'm not leaving it out of the realm of possibility it was something else, but going from 100 hits on a new post a day to 10-20 a week within hours of his post... I can't imagine it was anything else... My content was steady and nothing changed about the site... No spammy stuff on the site...

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paj_mccarthy

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

Seems no one wants to believe this is the reason... Yet I was at a steady 500 uniques a day for 4 months... And literally within hours is when the ding happened...

The guy doesn't even have a site... There were zero links in the article...

It was attributed to him though "Written By: *username*" at the top of the article...

I'm not leaving it out of the realm of possibility it was something else, but going from 100 hits on a new post a day to 10-20 a week within hours of his post... I can't imagine it was anything else... My content was steady and nothing changed about the site... No spammy stuff on the site...

This article isn't what caused your site to tank.

It just doesn't work like that.

What you're looking at is a mere coincidence.

About this Panda business you talk of in your previous posts - Panda is a batch algorithm that occurs as and when Google choose (recently this has been around once a month - last one was on Jan 22nd 2013). So, if you published the post yesterday and got whacked 2 hours later then it's most certainly not Panda.

Google can't run the necessary computations that's required to make ranking decisions in real time - these ranking decision occur either in batch (such as Panda, Penguin etc) or during minor index refreshes (such as when Google push out new smaller changes to their algorithm - something that happens over 300 times per year - unfortunately I can't find the source for this right now).

As humans we like simple explanations to complex problems - we all jump to conclusions because we can't rationalize something we don't understand. Unfortunately, this is what's happening here. By mere coincidence you published a post a couple of hours before a complex ecosystem of other factors came into play to worsen your site rankings.

When people didn't understand Science lightning occured when the Gods were angry. When gravity wasn't understood, the earth was flat. When webmasters don't understand that Google has a ridiculously complex ever changing algorithm of factors that are next to impossible for anyone outside of their offices to reverse engineer, they attribute cause to all sorts of ridiculous non-related reasons....such is the case here.

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by paj_mccarthy

This article isn't what caused your site to tank.

It just doesn't work like that.

What you're looking at is a mere coincidence.

About this Panda business you talk of in your previous posts - Panda is a batch algorithm that occurs as and when Google choose (recently this has been around once a month - last one was on Jan 22nd 2013). So, if you published the post yesterday and got whacked 2 hours later then it's most certainly not Panda.

Google can't run the necessary computations that's required to make ranking decisions in real time - these ranking decision occur either in batch (such as Panda, Penguin etc) or during minor index refreshes (such as when Google push out new smaller changes to their algorithm - something that happens over 300 times per year - unfortunately I can't find the source for this right now).

As humans we like simple explanations to complex problems - we all jump to conclusions because we can't rationalize something we don't understand. Unfortunately, this is what's happening here. By mere coincidence you published a post a couple of hours before a complex ecosystem of other factors came into play to worsen your site rankings.

When people didn't understand Science lightning occured when the Gods were angry. When gravity wasn't understood, the earth was flat. When webmasters don't understand that Google has a ridiculously complex ever changing algorithm of factors that are next to impossible for anyone outside of their offices to reverse engineer, they attribute cause to all sorts of ridiculous non-related reasons....such is the case here.

I'd love to place a large wager with you. I'd probably get excellent odds since most everyone here seems to feel the same as you....

Anyways... I actually would enjoy everyone being right, as I could continue to attribute his articles to him and accept more from other readers.

I will give it another 2 weeks and see if there's any bounce back... If not, I will just run them.

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paj_mccarthy

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

I'd love to place a large wager with you. I'd probably get excellent odds since most everyone here seems to feel the same as you....

Anyways... I actually would enjoy everyone being right, as I could continue to attribute his articles to him and accept more from other readers.

I will give it another 2 weeks and see if there's any bounce back... If not, I will just run them.

I'd love for you to place a large wager with me, too. Except there's no way of knowing who's right so I guess it's a waste of time.

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John Romaine

12 years ago

You sure that was the cause?

How did you come to that conclusion?

Seems a bit "reactive" to me.

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awledd

12 years ago

I agree with others that one article can not create any strange thing. At least you can check if the article is duplicate. If not the probability is almost zero. I faced similar thing once that I tweaked my page a little and the next day traffic went down. I thought that was the cause but it was not because I use it like that now but traffic is not bad. Anyways as Cashcow said it SE traffic is not reliable.

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John Romaine 12 years ago

Originally Posted by awledd

SE traffic is not reliable.

That's not what you're signature suggests.
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rosetrees 12 years ago

Originally Posted by awledd

Anyways as Cashcow said it SE traffic is not reliable.

Really?

Let's face it, Search Engines traffic is better than any other traffic source because it converts

From your own website

As to the OP - I suspect that your guest post had nothing to do with your drop in Google rank. Most likely a coincidental update or, possibly, a hosting outage when your site was crawled.
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cashcow

12 years ago

hmm.. I was wondering if you were going to say it was a crapload of articles I might agree it could be the cause, but only two articles?

I'm with everyone else in the thread - I don't think the articles are the cause.

Any clues in Google webmaster tools?

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by cashcow

hmm.. I was wondering if you were going to say it was a crapload of articles I might agree it could be the cause, but only two articles?

I'm with everyone else in the thread - I don't think the articles are the cause.

Any clues in Google webmaster tools?

Yea... I checked it out on Webmaster.. And didn't see any warnings or notices... I went through every option on Webmaster tools and didn't see any clue that would lead me to what the issue might be...

Depressing.. .I was enjoying it as well... Not making much money on Adsense... About $5 a week... but I was enjoying writing the content... No fun if no one reads it though ...

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John Romaine

12 years ago

Let's just say this is a penalty of sorts....(I doubt it, but I'll ask anyway) did you at least CHECK the articles to see if they were original, before you published them?

Oh, and was this person set up with correct Authorship? (If you say yes to that, I want to know how you set it up)

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by John Romaine

Let's just say this is a penalty of sorts....(I doubt it, but I'll ask anyway) did you at least CHECK the articles to see if they were original, before you published them?

Yes, and I actually went through and edited the article before publishing for tone and grammar (his first language isn't English, but I made it 100% legit... He was ecstatic that he could write for the site... And he has no reason to waste his time with giving un-original articles... There's no links or anything in them at all..

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by John Romaine

Let's just say this is a penalty of sorts....(I doubt it, but I'll ask anyway) did you at least CHECK the articles to see if they were original, before you published them?

Oh, and was this person set up with correct Authorship? (If you say yes to that, I want to know how you set it up)

He's not set up with Google Authorship at all, but I am..I was considering this as the issue... That he didn't have google authorship...

Though my site didn't receive much of a difference in hits going from when I didn't have authorship myself to getting authorship status.

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John Romaine

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

He's not set up with Google Authorship at all, but I am..I was considering this as the issue... That he didn't have google authorship.

Okay so let's step back and think about this for a moment.

1. There were NO links in the article at all
2. Authorship wasn't in place
3. You confirmed the article was original

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by John Romaine

Okay so let's step back and think about this for a moment.

1. There were NO links in the article at all
2. Authorship wasn't in place
3. You confirmed the article was original

I don't know .. I'm only going off what happened...I was steady at 500 uniques a day for 5 months and immediately after publishing his article i went down to a steady 100 a day, with new posts getting almost no hits at all...

Also went from #1 on the 1st page for a niche keyword Google search to page 15... ugh. I'm also the only person in the first 20 pages to have google authorship...But still showing up on page 15 instead of page 1 as I was before the post...

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John Romaine

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

I don't know .. I'm only going off what happened...I was steady at 500 uniques a day for 5 months and immediately after publishing his article i went down to a steady 100 a day, with new posts getting almost no hits at all...

Also went from #1 on the 1st page for a niche keyword Google search to page 15... ugh. I'm also the only person in the first 20 pages to have google authorship...But still showing up on page 15 instead of page 1 as I was before the post...

Forget about the post. I can assure you it wasn't that.

Question - What changes have you made recently? And when I say recently, I mean, within say the last 3 weeks.

Oh, and here's a BETTER question. Apart from Google, where else are you getting traffic from?

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cashcow

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

Any suggestions to get it back up to where it was? Should I start all over again with a new site?

This is probably going to sound snarky and I don't mean it that way but why not keep the site but try to build back your traffic from other methods?

Starting over on a new site that depends on search engine traffic is just going to expose you to the same whims of google that apparently got your site in trouble.

You seem to enjoy the site and adding content, so seems like you should keep it but focus on getting your traffic from other places (maybe guest blogging, article syndication, social media).

Google is just a software program, it makes mistakes so even if you think you are doing everything all white hat and above board your site can get dinged.

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by cashcow

This is probably going to sound snarky and I don't mean it that way but why not keep the site but try to build back your traffic from other methods?

Starting over on a new site that depends on search engine traffic is just going to expose you to the same whims of google that apparently got your site in trouble.

You seem to enjoy the site and adding content, so seems like you should keep it but focus on getting your traffic from other places (maybe guest blogging, article syndication, social media).

Google is just a software program, it makes mistakes so even if you think you are doing everything all white hat and above board your site can get dinged.

It doesn't sound snarky... I appreciate the positive advice.

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BIG Mike

Banned 12 years ago

[DELETED]

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Alexa Smith Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by BIG Mike

If so, it was just coincidence that you published the article before the update.

Noooooooooo ... not the "c-word" again: he doesn't like that one.
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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by BIG Mike

First of all, Google doesn't rank sites - they rank pages. Assuming this particular article was on it's own page, they may not have indexed it, ranked it very low for any number of reasons, but they wouldn't have slammed your entire site (every individual page) unless something else was happening.

Ask yourself this - did Google recently do a major update? If so, it was just coincidence that you published the article before the update.

It was on Jan 10 give or take a day that his article was published...

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TanyaRebrov

12 years ago

Well, based on my super quick analysis, it is a pure coincidence that you get hit pretty bad by this recent week. have you ever realize that you have a competitor and they are fastening their seat belt after knowing you page have a better page view and rank.
Try this:
1. Search you competitor, if you are a tech blog enthusiast, where will you go?
2. see their page rank, are these guys even worth your attention.
3. Learn your strength and weakness by comparing with your competitor.
4. evaluate your strategy, rinse and repeat when problem occur again.
Keep doing your best, don't give up, or you will let down Winston Churchill.

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John Romaine 12 years ago

Originally Posted by TanyaRebrov

Keep doing your best, don't give up, or you will let down Winston Churchill.

Yes, of course. Do it for Winston. If not for him, for the sake of the children.
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Blaine Smitley

12 years ago

How old is this site?

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damian5000

12 years ago

Originally Posted by kid carson

How old is this site?

About 7 months...

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techbul 12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

About 7 months...

It's not that old. Bouncing is quite regular in the first year. Keep posting quality content and you'll see your site outgrowing its recent best.
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- Jesus Perez 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by techbul
  
  It's not that old. Bouncing is quite regular in the first year. Keep posting quality content and you'll see your site outgrowing its recent best.
  
  I'm still bouncing around and it's been 3 years.
  This is normal.
  
  If you were slapped, all your traffic would be lost. You'd be at 0-2 visits per day.
  
  You probably had 1 or 2 posts ranking first place and they got shuffled further back. Now you think the guest post was responsible.
  
  Stop ignoring the solid advice you're getting. It wasn't the guest post.
  
  And more importantly, stop giving up so easily.
  
  Oh...and find other ways to monetize that blog. $5/day is terrible. List your site on ProjectWonderful.com. I'm sure you'll double or triple that income.
  
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JohnMcCabe

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

I don't know .. I'm only going off what happened...I was steady at 500 uniques a day for 5 months and immediately after publishing his article i went down to a steady 100 a day, with new posts getting almost no hits at all...

Not too many other ways to say this. If the article was as you say it was, there was nothing in it to trigger any kind of penalty. The timing was a matter of bad luck.

Originally Posted by damian5000

Also went from #1 on the 1st page for a niche keyword Google search to page 15... ugh. I'm also the only person in the first 20 pages to have google authorship...But still showing up on page 15 instead of page 1 as I was before the post...

My guess is that you are getting the two events backwards. Your traffic went down because of the loss of rank, not because of a couple of innocuous articles with no red flags.

The only conceivable explanation I can come up with for the articles being the cause is the fact that you are running Adsense on the blog. Several years ago, during the big MFA crackdown, one of the triggers for a potential MFA site was content with no outbound links.

Those old butt-ugly template sites were set up so that the only way to leave the site was via an ad click or the back button.

You could test this by adding a simple link to Wikipedia or dictionary.com or something. I doubt this was the reason, but it's the only way I can connect the two events in my mind.

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writeaway

12 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

The only conceivable explanation I can come up with for the articles being the cause is the fact that you are running Adsense on the blog. Several years ago, during the big MFA crackdown, one of the triggers for a potential MFA site was content with no outbound links.

This makes a lot of sense. Theme and link patterns do look like red flags. Great points, John. I'm going to link out more to authority non-competing sites.

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Cosmit 12 years ago

Unless the author put a piece of Javascript code into your article without you noticing what you're talking about is not possible.

As far as i'm concerned this is either a JS injection, coincidence, or a troll question to see what kind of ridiculous answers people will come up with.
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Anton543

12 years ago

Highly unlikely it was that, especially since you say the your wasn't even linking to the guest site?

If a site is designed t sell only guest posts, then I won't be surprised at all if you get hit, but the coassional guest posts shouldn't be a problem.

A guest post should complement your site and should look like your normal content.

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Jason Perez O'Connor

12 years ago

Noone has asked this, but what else have you been doing to the site? Just writing content? Or have you been upto anything else (be honest)? Have you checked what keywords brought in the traffic you were getting?

You better had, that way you can check where the traffic went. Have you had a look at whether someone else has targetted your site? new links that you haven't created?

Also if you rank for a keyword, there's always a chance a few others are doing the same, are the rankings still the same for the sites who were below you, or are there new sites?

You've not really given anyone much to go by, and your claim that a guest post tanked your site is beyond ridiculous. Sites don't even get penalized for using duplicate content (syndicating), let alone unique guests post lol

Think reasonably and answer the above questions with honesty, and perhaps someone will be better qualified to help you.

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Malcolm Thomas

12 years ago

I don't think it had anything related to do with the guest post that got published on your site. Your website if anything is probably simply experiencing a Google Dance. I would just be patient and continue to publish high quality content.

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IM Ash

12 years ago

Around the time that your traffic dropped there were reports by many webmasters regarding a possible algo tweak or update, but Google did not confirm this. I personally witnessed major changes in the SERPs during this time (3rd Jan - 10th Jan). You can read what other webmasters were experiencing here: Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2013 Google SEO News and Discussion forum at WebmasterWorld

I highly doubt the articles you published were the reason for the loss in traffic!

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Isabellas2007

12 years ago

I had a site that was getting a hundred per day and then slammed to 2-10 per day. I think it is just an update on Google. Not your guest post which you had did.

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jxam69

12 years ago

Damian - did you sneeze when you looked at your website, did you scratch your nose the day you published the guest post?

The reason I ask is because using your logic these could also have caused the problem.

Do you now see now how assigning causation just because of coincidence doesn't make sense?

You have a bunch of knowledgeable people here trying to help - but you keep ignoring them.

If you won't listen to the answers, or refuse to accept them, then why bother asking the question in the first place?

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aygabtu 12 years ago

Google doesn't react that fast to changes. It would take at least several days.
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jordanwarrior

12 years ago

Google does not always take several days to respond. I've had articles indexed in minutes, and showing up in hours. This becomes more true when you're running a high powered news site, etc. Google has synchronized their entire data network worldwide and updating it is almost an instantaneous affair.

You may have been hit by one of the algo updates. They're going around like the flu, and I've seen the SERP's in my niche change almost completely overnight. Also, if you were using any type of linking service, no matter how clean, that may have had an impact as well. It could have been any of a million possibilities, and the list is too long to go over.

Anyway, all this is speculation. I suppose you'll have to wait and see.

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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

Even If the single article was a duplicate there's no way it would tank an entire site in the SERPs for multiple ranked keywords.

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Sue McDonald

12 years ago

I would suggest that you keep going and keep posting original material and look at ways to drive more traffic to your site. It is a fairly young site so it may jump around for a while till you start getting your traffic flowing back there.

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paulgl

12 years ago

Nobody can say why it tanked without looking at literally dozens
of things. Probably not guest posting.

But I have always been against guest posting, unless you have some
very high profile blog, high profile readers, and a high profile person
to guest blog.

Most people here do not fall into those categories. If your blog needs
a guest post, how lame is your blog? If someone needs to guest post,
then how lame are they? It's like doing link swapping, 2013-style.

Paul

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jordanwarrior

12 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Nobody can say why it tanked without looking at literally dozens
of things. Probably not guest posting.

But I have always been against guest posting, unless you have some
very high profile blog, high profile readers, and a high profile person
to guest blog.

Most people here do not fall into those categories. If your blog needs
a guest post, how lame is your blog? If someone needs to guest post,
then how lame are they? It's like doing link swapping, 2013-style.

Paul

THAT ^^^

.

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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Nobody can say why it tanked without looking at literally dozens
of things. Probably not guest posting.

But I have always been against guest posting, unless you have some
very high profile blog, high profile readers, and a high profile person
to guest blog.

Most people here do not fall into those categories. If your blog needs
a guest post, how lame is your blog? If someone needs to guest post,
then how lame are they? It's like doing link swapping, 2013-style.

Paul

I know you don't like guest posting but I think it could actually be a darn good business model. I might create a separate thread to explain why I like the idea.

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MP80

12 years ago

WOW.. Just, WOW.

And I thought that this section of the forum was where the SEO 'experts' gathered. :confused:

Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Damian, fwiw, I don't think you are completely crazy but, judging by the calibre of responses here, I suggest you search elsewhere for answers.

For instance, start here: Why*Blogs that Allow Guest Posts Will Be Penalized in 2013 : @ProBlogger

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IM Ash

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MP80

WOW.. Just, WOW.

And I thought that this section of the forum was where the SEO 'experts' gathered. :confused:

Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Damian, fwiw, I don't think you are completely crazy but, judging by the calibre of responses here, I suggest you search elsewhere for answers.

LMFAO...

Let's see... the article you are referring the OP too begins by saying:

I predict that Google will hurt sites abusing guest blogging in 2013.

Great help to the OP, isn't it! Some guys prediction is where all the answers lie :rolleyes:

Before you come in here and berate the members of this forum - at least have some sort of substance to back your arrogance.

Did you even read this thread? If you did you would realize that there were no outbound links in the guest post because the guest poster has no website and if you actually watched the video by MC you will realize how much more useless your comment is.

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MP80

12 years ago

Originally Posted by IM Ash

Before you come in here and berate the members of this forum - at least have some sort of substance to back your arrogance.

Hmmn.. Maybe I should have used more smiley faces???

Originally Posted by IM Ash

...you will realize how much more useless your comment is.

So, just add it to the other 45 or so (including yours.) :p

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Mike Anthony

12 years ago

Originally Posted by MP80

So, just add it to the other 45 or so (including yours.) :p

Well I think what makes it of low value is because you tried to back it up with a link whose content defies the premise. the video shown there

What is Google's view on guest blogging for links? - YouTube!

pretty much states its a matter of quality not a matter of "guest posts" in general being bad.

The problem is that marketers think they can milk a different kind of link setup with the same lazy no real writing skills crappy content and don't want to admit its the content that was always the problem not the kind of link. Right now marketers are looking at Guest posting the same way they looked at article directory SEO. Its not amatter of changing the name of the kind of link its a matter of better content and a serious approach to writing content for readers.

Try to just put a new name lipstick on your pig content and Goggle will still roast it to char.

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MP80

12 years ago

Originally Posted by patco

That's bad... But I am really curious how can Google understand that this is a guest article... Could the article be NOT unique?

Well, they do own a search engine.. I'm sure they know how to find them. Perhaps they could just use the keyword "guest post" or "this is a guest post"?

They are also not against doing a manual review of sites, or penalizing whole domains. For all we know, they may (or may not) be currently targeting sites with guest-posts that do not meet their standards.

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Well I think what makes it of low value is because you tried to back it up with a link whose content defies the premise. the video shown there

What is Google's view on guest blogging for links? - YouTube!

pretty much states its a matter of quality not a matter of "guest posts" in general being bad.

The problem is that marketers think they can milk a different kind of link setup with the same lazy no real writing skills crappy content and don't want to admit its the content that was always the problem not the kind of link. Right now marketers are looking at Guest posting the same way they looked at article directory SEO. Its not a matter of changing the name of the kind of link its a matter of better content and a serious approach to writing content for readers.

Try to just put a new name lipstick on your pig content and Google will still roast it to char.

Hi Mike,

I agree with most of what you have said here, but my point wasn't to be right or wrong, it was to help the OP determine best practise when it comes to guest-posts. The article, 88 comments, AND video (I didn't just link to a video) provide plenty of food for thought and certainly more than this thread, imo.

It doesn't sound like some sort of link setup is the problem here... but perhaps the fact that the guest-post doesn't have links is the problem, i.e. not correctly attributed, or it could be something else (coincidence, google-dance, whatever.) But Google no doubt has an idea of what a quality guest-post should look like, and the OP needs to meet their standards if he wants to play the SEO game.

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TheFBGuy 12 years ago

"a guest blog tanked my site" hahahahaha, wow... funny stuff.. lol
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- iMassMarket 12 years ago
  
  It's not guest posting if there were no outbound links associating your site with poor, useless content. And it is not guest posting if this is the first guest posting done on your site with no outbound links.
  
  End of story.
  
  Seriously.
  
  You're wasting time if you really think this. As some have suggested, the real problem is something else that you have done. And it could be farther back than you can currently think of. Months even.
  
  Added any domains, redirects, sub-domains, linked to low quality, changed adsense ads, added adsense, have unlocked folders with write permissions, any php scripts added that you haven't added, change a theme (ie. bought the greatest adsense theme ever), posted any unfavorable content full of affiliate links, added new plugins or removed any, have full disclosures, etc. etc. etc.
  
  Have you loaded a previous backup from moths prior and used compare/changes or similar to detect changes? Any big differences?
  
  On the other hand if your blog contains lots of guest posts of low quality, from low ranked sites, mfa sites, directories containing the majority of such I would say you're on the right track. But from what you have posted... no. That's not it.
  
  But some of you guys and gals and some guys pretending to be gals make me laugh with comments like "Google doesn't work that fast, or Google only hammers sites in batches, SEO is not important, and Guest posting is the backlink virus of 2013... yada yada yada.
  
  Happy hunting and don't let it get you down.
  
  Thanks
  
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Mike Anthony

12 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Most people here do not fall into those categories. If your blog needs
a guest post, how lame is your blog? If someone needs to guest post,
then how lame are they? It's like doing link swapping, 2013-style.

Paul

I guess freelance writers should all just hang it up and the hundreds of magazines that accept part timers should give it up as well. Agreed with you up to that point but the point that putting up a piece by someone makes your site lame is weak. It all comes down to quality. The idea that the person has to be famous or high profile is not a strong one either except as a marker of quality, Google Authorship will play a role in that but that has not been rolled out yet in anyway that would give good enough algo signals

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damian5000

12 years ago

Thanks for all the positive posts and recommendations.

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andrewkar 12 years ago

Well that's why you should focus on different traffic sources. One Google's fart and you are in trouble...
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kaytav

12 years ago

Originally Posted by damian5000

Went from 500 uniques a day to less than 100 overnight... All of my new posts getting about 20 views every couple weeks as opposed to 100 views a DAY.

I accepted an article from an enthusiastic reader. It contained no links at all. But I did credit him the article. Immediately... Overnight the site got hit hard by Google.

It's a niche tech blog, and I was actually really enjoying writing for it, but now I've lost all my steam when I know that it'll only get 10 reads a week... I often spend a huge amount of time on my articles...

Any suggestions to get it back up to where it was? Should I start all over again with a new site?

Just 1 article as a guest post won;t hurt your site that bad. You should probably find the real cause for this dropdown.

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gearmonkey

12 years ago

I'm not convinced the guest post is the issue. What else have you done?

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Stuart Walker

12 years ago

So now you've realised that search engine traffic can't be relied on so either start doing paid advertising or work out where your target audience / customers and promote to them directly. Once you start doing this you'll wonder why you ever bothered with SEO.

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jamesboulay

12 years ago

You could've found an update to an algorithm. I'd check out the whole site in its entirety (note I'm not an SEO expert, however I am an expert at analyzing and finding problems), look for stuff that doesn't make sense to you (like why the hell would I put that link in there?), I've been hacked before and that's how I noticed it was they left an obvious link that didn't make sense to my niche (how to get six pack abs at home type of site linked to a graphic designer).
Look at the sites linking into you would be a good route to go as well, see if they're looking more black hattish or against Webmaster Guidelines as could be the case if that site was sold.
If any of my sites with those numbers got hit out of the blue and I couldn't hypothesize a reason I'd consider paying a legit SEO expert, especially if the traffic was converting.
That's what I would do. Also it's not a bad idea to check out your site and review it once a month or so.

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FreshAndThemes

12 years ago

Kepp going bud, same happened us a while back within a month of continued articles we were back on page one. Other have suggested it, it may be just a google dance...

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patco

12 years ago

That's bad... But I am really curious how can Google understand that this is a guest article... Could the article be NOT unique?

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Backlinko

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Chris Kent

Coincidence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I lol'd.

But seriously, if you're willing to give up on your site already...how good could it have been in the first place?

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