The only thing I changed is drop my bought links, blog comments and blog articles (all from one of the best blog networks) and within 2 weeks, BAM, I’m back on top and higher than ever 🙂

I used a tool that allowed me to view all links to my site from other sites: This tool listed the keywords used in anchor text. This tool was found using Bing using the words ‘ view links to a website.’

The backlinks that are still around that point to my website showed that most of the backlinks pointing to my site featured my primary key words or search phrase too much in anchor text.

In fact over 33% of the all of the anchor text in other sites pointing to my site used this one keyword phrase. As a result, I am thinking that Google penalized my site as the high percentage of backlinks using the primary search term seemed unnatural.

What caused this?

The cause of this is two-fold.

First, I probably over emphasized my primary keywords when setting up links to my site.

Secondly, reading about what Google has done over a period of time suggests that many website owners were literally tricked into divulging the use of public link networks they used and their website url. The site owners shared this info with Google in an attempt to be helpful and avoid penalties but what happened – based on my understanding – is that Google then assigned a zero ranking to links coming from these networks that were unintentionally ‘outed’ and it’s likely that Google also found public network sites on their own as well.

The result is that may websites, who used these ‘discovered’ public link sites or networks, plummeted following Google’s actions; many sites disappeared altogether, and some sites like mine went from top five on Google to page two or three.

My hypothesis:

When many sites were de-valued and lost their page rank or disappeared from the Google index, the result is that many sites that had linked to my site ceased to be a factor. Since I was promoting my site using my primary keywords, the linking appeared to be unnatural to Google and the links were viewed as spam or devalued – along with other related links.

What to do?

Given that no changes were made to my onsite factors or contents, and that there is now a unnatural number (33%) of links to my site using just primary keywords or phrases in link anchor text, the solution comes into view.

A likely Solution

My solution, that I’m currently testing, is to cease creating links to my site that use my primary keywords and use alternate and long-tail keywords until a balance is restored in the links pointing to my site. And secondly, to go slow – at least at first – in creating alternate links.

Example:

If your site’s primary keywords or phrase is ‘tree doctor’ and you’ve found that your site rankings for that term have plummeted, probably along with other related keyword phrases, you might consider finding synonyms to use when linking to your site and use other related search terms like ‘tree health tips’ or ‘how to keep your trees healthy’ or ‘arbor tips for healthy tree roots,’ etc.

You can determine likely keywords phrases to use with the help of Google by searching using your keyword phrase and then looking at the bottom of the search result page to see other suggested search terms. Then you can cherry pick from searches shown by Google and build your links using those terms – preferably terms that don’t rely on your keywords. If all alternate search terms using two of more of your search words, consider finding synonyms and using those.

I don’t think it matters as to how you create links to your site using. You could be using a service that you know to be effective or take a manual approach. The key issue to not overdo link ranking using terms that may be dominant on your site: used in your title, etc.

What to expect (my opinion):

Once you have built varied links to your site – using varied non-keywords in anchor text, then you might be able to return to promoting your primary search terms. My guess is that your primary search terms will again be found in Google’s index when Google thinks that your linking is not being rigged. Again, the idea of natural linking is what Google is looking for.

Of course, this all assumes that your on-page website factors are OK and that you are not overusing terms that were penalized on Google.

I have followed my own advice and will be waiting to see what happens over the next few weeks
as Google seems to be visiting and re-caching my site about every two weeks on the average.

We’ll see what happens and best of luck to those who are in the same boat so to speak!

Don

Excerpt From PC World Article shown on CIO.com:

PC World — On the surface, Google’s Knowledge Graph seems like just another search feature, but connect the dots and it could become the brains behind a Siri-like virtual assistant.
In a blog post, Google’s Amit Singhal dropped a strong hint that there’s more to Knowledge Graph than meets the eye:

“We’re proud of our first baby step–the Knowledge Graph–which will enable us to make search more intelligent, moving us closer to the ‘Star Trek computer’ that I’ve always dreamt of building,” Singhal wrote.

Google has used the Star Trek reference before, when discussing its approach to speech recognition in Android. Here’s Matias Duarte, in an interview with Slashgear:

“If [Siri]’s Star Wars, you have these robot personalities like C-3PO who runs around and he tries to do stuff for you, messes up and makes jokes, he’s kind of a comic relief guy. Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It’s not that there’s a personality, it doesn’t have a name, it’s just ‘Computer.’
“Add these comments to the rumors that Google is building a virtual assistant codenamed Majel–named after the wife of late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry–and it’s easy to speculate where Google is going.

http://www.cio.com/article/706602/Google_Knowledge_Graph_The_Birth_of_a_Siri_Rival_

I have a different take on the Google changes. I’m not a conspiracy-oriented person, but am wondering if Google made a mistake – an unintentional mistake while making changes to their system and maybe some of Google’s comments are an attempt to distract everyone from the fact that they goofed. Assuming that a search result engineering staff introduced errors and hosed their indexes, how long would it take to rebuild multi-layered indexes.

Supposedly, based on news released on 5/16, Google will be providing categories to help people select a categories for their searches. The example given was someone who searched using the word ‘King.’ Search category boxes will display, allowing the searcher to select Hocky, Monarchs, etc.

This was the first real clue about forthcoming changes and might explain why search results have been so bad after Penguin and before the introduction of categories.

At any rate, in my niche, sites that are very minimalist with poor content that were primarily used as either doorway pages in the past or just languishing in terms of positioning seem to be at the top. It might make sense to take a look at these sites but I am going to resist making too many changes to my primary older site that has ranked well since the days of ‘Excite’ and I think the advice to keep your powder dry and wait for a bit may be good advice.

Cheers!

Don

Your posts are always a good read. No, wait! They’re always educational. I hope you don’t mind me “stalking” you by going through your Squidoo lenses, this blog, and your other blogs. I found someone I’d like to learn from.

Cheers!

Your new fan,
Rosie

Long term this may be good for our sites though right now it really hurts. I have 5 sites and have been taking a really honest look at them. They aren’t as good as I have allowed myself to believe they were. And the funny thing is, I’ve known for a while that there were things I should change. Now I will.

I am so encouraged to read your post. When my site tanked overnight I was shocked! I didn’t know what have I done. I am a simple writer and don’t know SEO etc. I was targeting relevant keywords and writing articles. I don’t know what you mean by saying “over stuffing with keywords”. Do you mean that the keyword density should be less or there shouldn’t be more than one keyword in an article?

According to you, I have to go back and take a look at all the articles in my website and remove keywords? Currently I am totally confused and waiting for a miracle! Penguin has taken me down badly overnight. And this is depressing…

regards

We all knew Google wouldn’t dare allow negative SEO because it’s just too easy! Get a copy of scrape box and your competition is doomed! To me the more negative SEO messes up search the quicker Google will “come to its senses”.

Believe me no matter what “ethical” SEO marketers tell their subscription base negative SEO will become the norm for anyone still attempting SEO. All of the calm ethical marketers are telling their subscribers to chill out and take a breather. Those that are left will be doing negative SEO! After a few million searches become totally skewed Google may wake up. If not another search engine will have to step in and take over!