Dropped from serps/promoting help please.

[mrcrowley]

I have a really big problem with promoting my general directory (Allskytv SEO Friendly General Directory) at the moment. Some weeks ago my directory was ranking high on quite a variety of keywords. Then google suddenly drops it from the serps for all relevant keywords.

I had a chat to temi about this and was recommended to use more varied anchor text. I did already use some varied anchor text but since then i've used even more varied anchor text.

But the problem has got worse. Google seems to have dropped my site for every anchor text i have attempted to use in promotion.

This leaves me wondering, should i try promoting my site with a completely irrelevant anchor text??? Then this way i might at least get ranked on the keywords found in my site. This may sound a bit silly but its got me pulling my hair out (I'm not kidding). Maybe i should stop promoting it completely for a while?

To make things worse my link bid site Bid All Your Links - Home which was ranking really well in google.com for related words has been dropped, it doesn't even rank for its domain name. This seems to be as a result of submitting to a handful of bidding dirs in the past few days (using site title as anchor text).

Please does anyone have any suggestions? Please save me before i pull all my hair out! :yikes:

Thanks
Jamie

[OldDarkstarAccount]

1. you could try to add some text - content - a sort of description of your site and use h1 h2 tags . ( the text on the top is not enough )

2.Submit your sitemap to google again if you have changed something at the site in the past days.

3. I don't know if it's a must , but I think that you should use the word in meta description on the page. What is the value of the description if the words do not appear on the page ?

If I'll get more ideas I will let you know.

[maldives]

Many directories are currently facing the same problem. I think it should get back to normal few days later.

[Bagi Zoltán]

I have one idea, but not really sure about this, which may be true if both of your sites are hosted at the same server. If there are some spammer site at the same place i can imagine that every site relevancy was devalued. Not sure, it is only a though.

[gkd_uk]

All should be ok in a few days.

Many sites have been affected this way

[mrcrowley]

Darkstar: I will try your suggestion to try adding more text content and include H1, H2 tags. About using the meta decription in the page. I actually considered doing this a lot but i don't see many other sites doing this. In the end i decided to write something similar rather than an exact copy. I will take your advice on this though.

About sitemap. Yes i have submitted one to google, the only major change was to add an seo friendly mod to the details page (makes the url reflect the listing title). I figured google would eventually find the new urls. Is there an easy way to compile a sitemap for this?
EDIT: Forgot to mention i have a php sitemap which is linked in the footer Allskytv SEO Friendly General Directory- Directory sitemap But it does not include things like details pages (only categories).

Bagi do you know any way i could find out if other sites are hosted on the same server? I do know both dirs are on the same server. They are both on midland internet.

Maldives and GKD: I'm aware of the recent problem of google dropping well promoted directories from the serps but my directory has been effected by this for quite a while now.

Thanks for responses

[maldives]

Originally Posted by mrcrowley

Darkstar: I will try your suggestion to try adding more text content and include H1, H2 tags. About using the meta decription in the page. I actually considered doing this a lot but i don't see many other sites doing this. In the end i decided to write something similar rather than an exact copy. I will take your advice on this though.

About sitemap. Yes i have submitted one to google, the only major change was to add an seo friendly mod to the details page (makes the url reflect the listing title). I figured google would eventually find the new urls. Is there an easy way to compile a sitemap for this?
EDIT: Forgot to mention i have a php sitemap which is linked in the footer Allskytv SEO Friendly General Directory- Directory sitemap But it does not include things like details pages (only categories).

Bagi do you know any way i could find out if other sites are hosted on the same server? I do know both dirs are on the same server. They are both on midland internet.

Maldives and GKD: I'm aware of the recent problem of google dropping well promoted directories from the serps but my directory has been effected by this for quite a while now.

Thanks for responses

We all now know that google is in a process of "change". We are left with no other option but, wait and see.

[Bagi Zoltán]

Originally Posted by mrcrowley

Bagi do you know any way i could find out if other sites are hosted on the same server? I do know both dirs are on the same server. They are both on midland internet.

Jamie, i suggest you to use this myIPneighbors.com Reverse IP Domain Check DNS Tool tool.

[mrcrowley]

Wow bagi that is a highly revealing tool. Thanks for sharing.

[Bagi Zoltán]

Jamie, i checked the number of links at the main page and i found 94 internal and 18 external links. Totally it is 112 which is more than the upper suggested limit (100). I suppose that too many links is a ranking killer, at least i experienced this. I suggest you to try to decrease this number as low as it is possible. And one more suggestion, please validate your links with this great tool in order to avoud the broken links.