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!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
PortfolioID urls appearing in my wordpress site- what to do?
Hey guys, Hoping someone may have some advice on a wordpress site. Most of their URL's are duplicates due to a PortfolioID appearing in the URLs causing a duplicate title tags
Technical SEO | | Swanny_s
It's the same page but it's being flagged as duplicate. Would you remove the portfolioID url or 301 redirect? Many thanks
Simon0 -
2 sets of stats for same site
Somehow on OSE I managed to get two different sets of results appear for my page. The column on the left (PA 34) is for mysite.com/ and the second column is for www.mysite.com/ .Note that these are the same site. Why do i have two different sets of results ?(note some things are the same such as google +1 & FB likes)Im concerned ive done something wrong and could have a bigger beast with both sets of results merged together. Any help much appreciated. Chris QFNeGh7
Technical SEO | | cjkimber0 -
301 redirect from sites closing down
Hi We have around 10 supplementary sites that have links to our site which are now closing down but are out of our control. We could have access to their domains so how could we maintain the link juice from these old sites which are going to our new site? However there will be no websites left on these old supplementary just domain names
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Multiple Domains for One Site
We are building a site for a new miniature golf course. They have a long name, which they don't want me to mention, but it's equivalent to a name like Golden State Golf and Putt. They also have a restaurant with its own name and brand that will be a part of the mini golf course and its website, much how Hotel websites have their restaurants on their sites. Before becoming our client they purchased golfandputt.com and want to go with this domain for simplicity sake. In addition to this domain name they purchased 7 others that contain the bussiness' full name in some way, such as: goldenstategolfandputt.com goldenstategolfandputt.net, goldenstategolf-guitar.com etc., As well as: 3 variations of the golfandputt.com domain 3 variations of the restaurants name They wish to have all of these redirect to the main website or the restaurant page to "help with SEO," as they told me. From what I have researched on SEOmoz it seems better to simply optimize the website for Golden State Golf and Putt and the restaurant page for the restaurant's name. Additionally, I'm worried that redirecting the domains to the site will actually hurt them in rankings. If someone can shed some light on what the best practices for this sort of situation are I'd be much appreciative. Apologies in advance for the lengthy explanation but its a bit of a unique situation.
Technical SEO | | TVI0 -
Sitemap Creation + Site speed
Hi there, I am looking for a sitemap creation tool, so I can submit my site to Google. My site is www.vallnord.com On the other hadn I would like to speed up my web. Any tip? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
How does Ping services help your site
Hi i am trying to understand how services such as pingler.com help your site. I think i understand about the google ping service which tells google that you have updated a page but how does pingler work. Pingler claims that it sends traffic to your site but i do not understand this. Any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848861 -
Site Disappeared off of Search
A friend of mine has a site (http://bit.ly/q4iWkM ) that was ranking number one for their key word (Drimnagh() and has now completely disappeared off of the ranking. I did some checking and can't see a problem. She does have duplicate meta and titles throughout but this shouldn't be a punishable offence that I know of and is something that I am going to correct with a quick plugin install. I couldn't see any redirects or code stopping search either. When you do site:URL it shows up OK as well. She is client of mine (for website not for SEO) and she is really upset about it so any help from the forum would be appreciated. This isn't even a site I did but you couldn't get a better person to work with so I am eager to help where and if possible. Guinness all round if someone solves it next time you are in Ireland
Technical SEO | | kdaly1000 -
Impact of 401s on Site Rankings
Will having 401s on a site negatively impact rankings? (e.g. 401s thrown from a social media sharing icon)
Technical SEO | | Christy-Correll0