@Pratik- Yeah 60% anchor text is about 54% more than I do )
It really is hard to pick a reason for the fall. On 90% of all occasions where I fell, it was usually link loss, which is why I made it into such a huge deal on this forum.
If I were a doctor, your prescription would be:
1) Make 95% of your anchors going forward to be different terms, mostly in the niche (LSI etc.), and some generic
2) I would add 15 "verified" links per day to your linkbuilding. I am taking a rough eyeball of the ahrefs link loss, and you are losing around 20 per day, and gaining about 5 per day. I probably exaggerated a little in both directions, and the real difference is probably 10 (not 15), but I would err on the strong side in this case. So if you have been building 20 links per day, make it 35 per day, etc.
Going forward, try to target 6%-10% for your main anchor term.
I cannot honestly tell if your issue is anchor text. As far as I know, anchor text slaps were only with Penguin, so April 24, 2012 and May 20, 2013. I do not know of anyone saying they lost rankings because of anchor text except for those updates.
If I had to lay my money down, I would say link loss. That is usually my problem outside of the big algo updates. I do find it starnge to have link loss affecting such a new site, but that graph on ahrefs screams that you have a problem with losing links. I am just not 100% sure that is the reason here.
I believe that being on the same server was not an issue for you. I have a ton of accounts on shared hosting, and I have never had that problem.
I don't think these sites will be ever recovered. First one is not seen in 300 results, gone I guess. The second one moved from 7th page to 5th page (#1 position on 5th page) at least for me as researched from whatpageofsearchamion.com .
I'm thinking to scrape off these projects and just make new sites and this time be careful.
What should I do if I want to make new same niche sites but on different completely new domain? Like I know from @ron 's post that I can use exact GSA project data and be in benefit. But what about, say, IP address? Would I need to change now to new hosting as I'm again going to use same niche site but a different domain on same server IP? Would that cause a problem? I have doubt somewhere I guess.
Also, I assume I'd need to change site design and write up right or otherwise Google will definitely notice my motives lol right?
@Pratik, I never let that stop me. I'm not sure if you have a shared hosting account like HostGator, but if you do, you end up with a small IP range. When you create a new hosting account, you will typically get assigned a different number, but not always. If you do get the exact same IP, just delete that new hosting account, and recreate a new one until you end up with a different IP.
Once you flush the cache like I wrote about, the old site is essentially out of the system. So you can keep everything the same on the new account. That has worked for me.
I have never used addon domains, but I think I would take a pass. Although they are allegedly distinct, I don't see why you wouldn't set up a new domain.
@ron I don't use hostgator. I use another hosting company which is a long time player too, but uses WHMCS. So assuming I'll have to stick to it. And yes, I've had quite few domains hosted on it, so I do use addon domains lol. I hope that's fine.
@2Take2 yes, that is exactly what I mean. For example, I may have more than one website in a niche, so I just make sure that they don't have the exact same IP. I do this not just for a relaunch, but for similar sites as well.
Did you flush the cache with new stuff? If you did, then you can do it right away. At least, that's how I do it just to be cautious. Not saying that you just can't bang up a new one with the same material without flushing cache - it's just that I have never done it out of fear of shooting myself in the foot. It takes about 2 weeks to flush the old stuff out.
@ron What cache are we talking about here? Mine own or...how? Because as I told I'm on a shared host, and not hostgator. Maybe you're talking about some functions at hostgator? 2 weeks for like what? I'm not getting you completely here.
Pratik this is what I did when I was caught, ti worked. All you need to do is buy an external IP address and point that at your new domain so they have different IPs.
And if youre on dynamic IP address for your DSL connection, disconnect and get a new IP, clear your browser cookies, then create a new Google account (different phone number, buy a SIM). Add Google Webmaster Tools to it again, don't use the same account.
@spunko2010 May I ask what host do you use so they provide a dedicated IP? And I do not bother linking or use Google tools with my scratch off niche sites as I stay away from risking it. I just use piwik (self installed) for tracking.
Still need help. Most hosts I found, like hostgator, hawkhost, mostly all now requires SSL certificate and proper validation for dedicated IP. So I could really use anyone's advise here.
@Pratik - Having looked at all the new info here i would agree with Ron that the problem is link loss.
Increase the links and rankings will improve within a month or two, i would almost guarantee that.
Shared IP's and all that stuff is in my experience simply not true. All my own sites are on shared hosting, some hosting accounts have 50+ sites on them, it's never caused me a problem.
I've tried in the past changing IP's for sites in case that is the problem and it never made any difference to the rankings at all.
I also don't believe that it's 45 days before a link is taken into account, the proof of this for me was when i started using SER and saw improvements within 2 weeks, also if that was true, on a new site it would be a minimum of 45 days before any rankings were achieved, again my results show otherwise.
I know you have a peak at some point when you have your links on forums homepages and other websites homepages.
At one point when content is added to those kind of website, your links go on the second page and you lose Google juice.
There is a place where you can see it. If you subscribe to majestic seo, they show you links that have been lost and they call it "deleted links".
You have described, a ranking unstability and it is really typical of a website with few links. When you have enough inbound links, you can be one day at 200 visitrs and the day after at 100. When you will get more links you will see traffic trend will be much more stable.
@Pratik I'd agree with @gooner and say I really don't think the hosting / IP address is the issue. I have sites on the same IP address / hosting account that have #1 rankings and also sites that have been penalised. Google and the rest really can't penalise sites unlucky enough to have "bad neighbours"
So I was unable to recover the site, both. So I'll be starting new ones shortly.
Apart from that, I also wanted to mention that I used "nullrefer.com" to hide the referrers to affiliate links. And I saw Google malware report on nullrefer.com:
Now, Google flags all sites that nullrefer has been linked too, so if some other site was linking to it, it'd flag it too. However, last report was of August 24, and my niche site went down somewhere around September 11.
So asking all experts out here @ron@2Take2@Tim89 and all others, is it possible it was flagged like this? If it seems like a possibility, I won't do same mistake again.
@pratik if they are flagging nullreferrer, then remove it from one of your sites, nofollow external affiliate links, and leave the site as it is to see if it comes back.
@splendour Thanks, I appreciate the advice. However, at this stage, I'm not sure if the penalty is coming through nullrefer.com but it someone indicates a strong hint that this maybe very reason because how come my BOTH niche sites got penalized at SAME time? I guess it won't hurt to try what you're mentioning. Let me see.
But if so is the case, I'd then advise no one to use those standard ref hider sites as most would be one or the other time penalized or flagged for malware due to obvious reasons by Google I guess.
I'd be still interested to hear what sir @ron would think about this.
Comments
@Pratik- Yeah 60% anchor text is about 54% more than I do
)
It really is hard to pick a reason for the fall. On 90% of all occasions where I fell, it was usually link loss, which is why I made it into such a huge deal on this forum.
If I were a doctor, your prescription would be:
1) Make 95% of your anchors going forward to be different terms, mostly in the niche (LSI etc.), and some generic
2) I would add 15 "verified" links per day to your linkbuilding. I am taking a rough eyeball of the ahrefs link loss, and you are losing around 20 per day, and gaining about 5 per day. I probably exaggerated a little in both directions, and the real difference is probably 10 (not 15), but I would err on the strong side in this case. So if you have been building 20 links per day, make it 35 per day, etc.
Going forward, try to target 6%-10% for your main anchor term.
I cannot honestly tell if your issue is anchor text. As far as I know, anchor text slaps were only with Penguin, so April 24, 2012 and May 20, 2013. I do not know of anyone saying they lost rankings because of anchor text except for those updates.
If I had to lay my money down, I would say link loss. That is usually my problem outside of the big algo updates. I do find it starnge to have link loss affecting such a new site, but that graph on ahrefs screams that you have a problem with losing links. I am just not 100% sure that is the reason here.
I believe that being on the same server was not an issue for you. I have a ton of accounts on shared hosting, and I have never had that problem.
I would also suggest you change IP addresses, never have the same sites on the same IP. My host sells IP addresses at $2 per month.
@Pratik, I never let that stop me. I'm not sure if you have a shared hosting account like HostGator, but if you do, you end up with a small IP range. When you create a new hosting account, you will typically get assigned a different number, but not always. If you do get the exact same IP, just delete that new hosting account, and recreate a new one until you end up with a different IP.
Once you flush the cache like I wrote about, the old site is essentially out of the system. So you can keep everything the same on the new account. That has worked for me.
Do you mean, create new a domain on your hosting account and deleting it (and recreating it) until you land a different IP, if necessary?
And if youre on dynamic IP address for your DSL connection, disconnect and get a new IP, clear your browser cookies, then create a new Google account (different phone number, buy a SIM). Add Google Webmaster Tools to it again, don't use the same account.
Increase the links and rankings will improve within a month or two, i would almost guarantee that.
Shared IP's and all that stuff is in my experience simply not true. All my own sites are on shared hosting, some hosting accounts have 50+ sites on them, it's never caused me a problem.
I've tried in the past changing IP's for sites in case that is the problem and it never made any difference to the rankings at all.
I also don't believe that it's 45 days before a link is taken into account, the proof of this for me was when i started using SER and saw improvements within 2 weeks, also if that was true, on a new site it would be a minimum of 45 days before any rankings were achieved, again my results show otherwise.
Just my opinion for what it's worth.