What to do next with my site gamblingsites.co
-
So I have this site gamblingsites.co, which I launched about a year ago (I think.) This used to be internetgamblingsites.net (a domain I bought, but never managed to get in the index, and it appeared to violate the T/Cs after asking in GWMT) and before that the site used to be casinowarehouse.eu.
After moving to gamblingsites.co, the pages were indexed almost instantly. I kept a 301 in place until today as I had some links pointing to internetgamblingsites.net.
Now, until a few weeks ago, everything was fine. The site was ranking top 10 for gambling sites (8-10) and I had some traffic everyday. This site wasn't my top priority, so besides adding new unique content, I didn't do much with it. In each case no shady link building or what-so-ever.
On February first of this year, however, it lost all of its rankings, and I have no idea why. Much worse site appear in the top 50, where a sub page of my site appears somewhere on the 9th SERP for keyword 'gambling sites.'
Last week I started contacting some people and asked them to update my links. I also used my own sites (all on unique hosting accounts) to build some branded links, i.e. 'GamblingSites.co' and similar terms to down tune the exact match. I also decreased the instances of the exact match on the homepage, to avoid over optimization. Finally, I removed the 301 from internetgamblingsites.net, since the better links have been changed (or are about to get changed soon.)
Now, couple of days later... no changes, but it's probably to early to judge. My question to you: "What would you do next, to try to save the site and at least get some traffic to it?"
Thank you for your help,
Giorgio
PS: Feel free to ask for more information.
-
First of all, I would say you made the wise choice by removing the 301 from internetgamblingsites.net, especially if it had a shady backlink profile, as I've seen evidence of Google passing penalties through 301s.
That said, I'm not sure how long it would take to recover after removing these links. I'd give it a couple weeks to a couple of months to be sure. Google may have to recrawl and reindex all those old pages that contained the bad links before it gives you credit for removing them.
Here's another possibility: A few weeks ago Google deindexed several large link networks. Even if you didn't use link networks like BMR for your backlink profile, it could still affect you as a secondary effect if the folk who linked to you were hit. It's sorta like you once had rich friends, but now they are poor because they built shady backlinks, and now they can't pass any link juice to you. In the gambling niche, this is common these days.
Regardless, seems like your one the right track. I'd let the dust settle for awhile before making any judgement. One way or another you'll need to work to build up more high quality links. And diversify your anchor text, as it appears like a very highly optimized profile:
Best of luck with your SEO.
-
OK, frankly I left some important info out. When I moved the site, I did it properly with all 301's in place. The few pages that did get a new URL structure, were manually 301'ed in the htaccess, where the rest was 301 to the same location on the new domain.
The 301's were not part of the problem. That's for sure. The new domain, gamblingsites.co, got indexed real quickly after moving the site, and after the first toolbar PR update it also got the PR updated accordingly.
Furthermore, the site started to rank decently. Not in the top positions, but still on the first SERP, and more importantly bringing some traffic too. Like I wrote in my previous message, this all stopped on February 1st 2012, and I can't find any reason for it.
In the mean time I have contacted web masters to update the most important links that were pointing to pages on internetgamblingsites.net, to make them point to gamblingsites.co. (Please note that OSE is not showing this yet, since it was only done in the past few weeks.) The past week I also build a couple of links from other (related) sites I own, mainly to mix up the anchor text distribution.
I don't think this site has a penalty or so, at least I didn't get any notices in GWMT.
So, I would like to ask again for some advice how to proceed forward. Or what could have possibly caused the site to vanish for its exact match ranking.
Thanks,
Giorgio
PS: The guide you linked to is about the same way I took care of my move.
-
Google have a good article about moving your site, did you use a single redirect to direct to the new site? As google says doing a page-to-page redirect will help preserve page ranking!
More information about moving your site here
moving your site - webmaster tools helpHope this helps!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unable to site crawl
Hi there, our website was revamped last year and Moz is unable to crawl the site since then. Could you please check what is the issue? @siteaudits @Crawlinfo gleneagles.com.my
Technical SEO | | helensohdg380 -
301 domain name to another site
I had 2 websites. I decided not to maintain one of them and set it to 301 to my main website. However, i see people getting 404 errors when they land on my main website but with a page name from the old site. How can I set things so that anyone who tries to go to the old site goes to my homepage of my main site? http://siteA.com http://oldsiteB.com/oldpagename sends them to http://siteA.com//oldpagename = 404 - I want them to go directly to homepage on siteA.
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Switching site from http to https. Should I do entire site?
Good morning, As many of you have read, Google seems to have confirmed that they will give a small boost to sites with SSL certificates this morning. So my question is, does that mean we have to switch our entire site to https? Even simple information pages and blog posts? Or will we get credit for the https boost as long as the sensitive parts of our site have it? Anybody know? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | rayvensoft1 -
Why did Google stop indexing my site?
Google used to crawl my site every few minutes. Suddenly it stopped and the last week it indexed 3 pages out of thousands. https://www.google.co.il/#q=site:www.yetzira.com&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:w&sa=X&ei=I9aTUfTTCaKN0wX5moCgAw&ved=0CBgQpwUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=cfac44f10e55f418&biw=1829&bih=938 What could cause this to happen and how can I solve this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Site getting referral traffic from its self
Buon giorno from zero degrees C freezing fog Wetherby UK On this site http://www.collegeofphlebology.com i ran a referral report via Google Analytics and was surprised ro see referral traffic being counted from its own url, illustration here http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/referral-anomoly.jpg So my question is please how can a site get referral traffic from the same url? Grazie Tanto, David
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Feedback for the onpage seo for this site
Hi, Can the seo gurus here, suggest me if any on page factors affect my site? http://www.ridpiles.com/ Recently i have added, the following post to the main home page, http://www.ridpiles.com/2012/02/different-types-of-cures-for-piles/ This page is somewhat different than the title keyword. As the main page titile is "hemorrhoids treatment". The newly created blog post is on "cure for piles" Does this blog post has any affect on the on page factors due to different title? And do i require any changes regarding the on page seo? Will be waiting for your replies.
Technical SEO | | Indexxess0 -
Brand New Site Penalized?
I recently launched 2 completely separate and unrelated websites at the same time. Both are new domains and hosting accounts. neither have any links. One is ranking for a branded search and the other is not. The interesting thing is that I tested both sites on the back end of my server before launch. The site that is not ranking for branded search IS ranking still on the back end of my site for the branded search. I have removed all content and 301 redirected the testing urls back to my portfolio page. Could this be do to Google indexing one but not the other. Does it have anything to do with testing on my server first and my DA being higher than current new sites? Or is it something completely different I'm missing completely. Is this a Penalty?
Technical SEO | | CDUBP0 -
The course of action to move my macro site to some mini sites- justin if you can help
We have a site that we want to break up into mini sites but keep the old site for the major brands. Empirecovers.com is the major and we want to break it off into Empire Truck Covers and Empire Boat covers. What I am thinking of doing is linking from the home to Empiretruckcovers.com instead of a mini page on the site and 301 redirect the mini page to empiretruckcovers.com. Than (there wont be duplicate content) making a small page for truck covers on empire just so people do not get confused. Is this the best way to go or what do you suggest? We are doing this because I feel there is seo value in having mini sites and also the user experience will be cleaner and people will trust it a lot more than inside a big site. The other problem is I have some great rankings on the pages so I want to do it so there is as little damage as possible. I guess once I start I will do all the free directories, yahoo directory and try to get links as fast as I can. Any suggestions would be great. I am going to do a/b testing to see if my adwords convert better on mini site or on the big site for certain keywords too
Technical SEO | | goldjake17880