New site started doing well, now it's tanking

[youngmaster]

Im confused by activity from a site I opened less than a month ago. I ranked in the top ten for the local version of my primary phrase. Within two weeks I was up to number two. I created a few new pages without content in order to build age. I also paid for a pair of clearly marked classified ads at trusted sites thatprovide traffic from potential clients.

Next, I stated revamping my pages by revising and editing content.

my site has dropped like a brick. My content is the best it's been and improving daily.

Im not sure what to do. Should I start over? Do I keep improving my site and give it a few months? Would anyone be willing to review my site and provide a few tips? Fyi, I understand some of my pages need more content.

my formatting is a mess with iOS 7 on iPad.

[Czubmeister]

1. Website - When developing your site, be sure to check how it looks in Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox. For mobile IPAD, Iphone and Android. If you have issues, it's probably with your CSS. Many websites use what they call responsive designs. They adapt to the type of device you are using. Even with responsive designs, they require tweaks here and there to get things looking right.

2. Website Tanking - Just to rule out a few items, take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools and see if there are any manual actions (messages) done on your site. Also check Webmaster Tools under section Google Index->Index Status to make sure all your pages are indexed.

3. Local Directories - At a minimum, make sure you are listed in these key directories: Axiom, Infogroup and Localeze. After that, claim/add your information in Citysearch/Citygrid, Local.com, Manta, Primeplace Nokia, Yellowbook, Yellowbot, Yellowee,Yellowpages,Insiderpages,Kudzu, Merchant Circle,Supermedia. There are more but this should keep you busy for a while.

4. Claim your Google Plus, Yahoo Local and Bing Listings

5. Know your competitors. How well does your website look against theirs? Does your site look trustworthy?  Use <cite>www.opensiteexplorer.org/</cite> ‎to check your backlinks against theirs.

Unfortunately, trying to rank isn't a set it and forget it operation. Keep updating your website, post to your Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Website Blog with engaging content.

[zoicaremus]

Hi Jovan,

Very nice that you started working on improving quality of your website. That's a good thing and you should do it with no restrictions in the future.

However, as a SEO it's very important to stop worrying about ranking results on short term. 1 month is certainly to low. Google wants you to focus most energy bringing quality stuff to the users. It discourages over-optimization and even has a patent filed in 2012 (if I'm not mistaken) which de-values websites that do a optimization changes for a wile, just to see how the owner of the website react to lower rankings. If the owner removes the last websites changes after seeing low ranking - google might be facing people who -> optimize for search engines, not for users. We don't actually know if this happens in reality or not, but It certainly encourage us to check for results less - and focus on quality stuff.

So create the best content you cant with all the guidelines in mind and if in 3-6 months you can't see any results, then start worrying and what went wrong.

[Jonathan1979]

New sites can rank very highly for a month or two due to the freshness factor.  Once this wears off, refreshing content can help a little, but ultimately you will need to get backlinks \ social engagement.

If you haven't done any black hat \ paid backlinking, then your best bet is to keep at it, and work on your content, do some guest posts, circulate some content in the social media channels to get social engagement.

If you want more specific advice you will need to post your url, so we can check out what is going on.