[bstar]

Out of my 8 original sites I only have 1 left that is ranking. Yesterday I was on page 1 for about 25 search terms. Today I have 2. Guess I'm out of business.

Apparently the H2 Urls at the bottom of my pages that backlinked the index page has killed me. I stayed up last night and removed most of them and finished today. Guess I wasn't fast enough.

I have over 25 people who depend on these sites for real estate business. now what?

any ideas?

[seoguru]

i dont think it was the h2 urls that tanked your site

[bstar]

i dont think it was the h2 urls that tanked your site

what else could it be?

is it because of the subjects of my blogs are all about real estate?

after all, they are real estate sites.

Edited by bstar, 26 April 2012 - 10:59.

[seoguru]

99% guarantee... its the backlinks

[bstar]

99% guarantee... its the backlinks

no messages from google

[_Richard]

no messages from google

That does not mean anything, this last update has hammered a lot of people. I would not go so far as to say 99% your links as there could well be on site issues as well. There are quite a few threads on the subject that you might want to take a look at to give you an idea of what others are seeing as issues.

[_Richard]

99% guarantee... its the backlinks

Well that is not very specific....

You must be physic, able to tell what is wrong with his sites without looking at them or even any info other than the niche. Wish I could do that as it would save me a huge amount of research and testing time.......

[bstar]

That does not mean anything, this last update has hammered a lot of people. I would not go so far as to say 99% your links as there could well be on site issues as well. There are quite a few threads on the subject that you might want to take a look at to give you an idea of what others are seeing as issues.

there could be the H2 anchor links on each page & blog, repeated keywords in blog & page titles since we are kinda limited to what we can write about. I mean, how much can write about a particular area without getting redundant?

These sites all have at least 65-100 pages of content and 100+ blogs. These sites are about 3 years old.

[bstar]

I'm wondering if I can bring these back or should I build new sites.

How can I decide this?

went from #4 yesterday to #76 today on one of my main keywords. The sites dominating the rankings are the national sites like:

realtor.com, trulia, homes.com etc...

Edited by bstar, 26 April 2012 - 11:45.

[thelad]

Same thing happened to me. I have two major real estate sites I manage for two people in the same exact niche. Same market too. One site with some suspect links that was killing it, is now dead to Google. Even the brand name is dead and shows competitors which is the total middle finger. The other? With about 20% of the links with only about 5% questionable type links but slightly more content, age, and tons of 301's? Killing it.

[Mike608]

@bstar: I'd start by doing Nothing for a few days and see where things go. SERPs are still bouncing around quite a bit.

Knee-jerk reactions can make things worse, not better. Waiting a few days is not going to hurt anything at this point.

I had a site with over 150 pages of original content that got killed and now it seems to be coming back slowly.

Who knows what we'll know tomorrow...

Edited by Mike608, 26 April 2012 - 11:53.

[Geegeez]

Do you have more sites than just your original 8?

A (very) small portion of my portfolio took a hit but I saw massive gains across the board. There are sites that I would prefer be at the top but no longer are, but I have other sites that are now making me more money than prior to the update.

If it were me I would build up my backup domain but also try building some high quality links to the ones that dropped. It may not work in the end but you've basically got nothing else to lose at this point.

[_Richard]

there could be the H2 anchor links on each page & blog, repeated keywords in blog & page titles since we are kinda limited to what we can write about. I mean, how much can write about a particular area without getting redundant?

These sites all have at least 65-100 pages of content and 100+ blogs. These sites are about 3 years old.

I'm wondering if I can bring these back or should I build new sites.

How can I decide this?

went from #4 yesterday to #76 today on one of my main keywords. The sites dominating the rankings are the national sites like:

realtor.com, trulia, homes.com etc...

Well you could have been hit by the onsite "over optimization" part of the update. Google has seem to have lowered the line on what they consider "keyword stuffing"

Honestly it is way too soon to come to any conclusions about what you need to do. The rankings are not even close to be settled so making a decision now would just be fool hardy.

[miked]

I'm not changing anything right now, the Penguin news just broke and it seems to be going viral, looks like the collateral damage was huge:

http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623

http://twitter.com/#!/search/%40mattcutts

[Ansari]

I'm not changing anything right now, the Penguin news just broke and it seems to be going viral, looks like the collateral damage was huge:

http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623

http://twitter.com/#!/search/%40mattcutts

Just clicked on the matt cutts twitter link and found this http://twitter.com/#!/rnattcutts some funny tweets on there

[seoguru]

Well that is not very specific....

You must be physic, able to tell what is wrong with his sites without looking at them or even any info other than the niche. Wish I could do that as it would save me a huge amount of research and testing time.......

I have over 100 projects and clients that I manage... if its his money site... trust me, its the backlinks... i dont need to look at the site

you guys are trying to dig into it too much... google is not going to take a site down because you used an H2 tag incorrectly. Google has never mentioned once about how spammy H2 tags are and what an epidemic they have become. Seriously, why is this even a debate?

[seoguru]

Just clicked on the matt cutts twitter link and found this http://twitter.com/#!/rnattcutts some funny tweets on there

ROFLLMFAO...

[Linda]

Quite frankly, I think it's way too soon to draw any conclusions or make any changes. There is just too much difference in the sites that were hit and what is ranking. I'm seeing a lot of ridiculous trash on the first page right now and lots of good authority sites that are nowhere to be seen. I can't believe this mess is what Google intended. I've heard rumblings that back in the Googleplex they are panicking about the mess. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see some of this roll back in the next few days. But if everyone starts making tons of changes to their sites, it could really be counter productive.

[Agent000]

I've heard rumblings that back in the Googleplex they are panicking about the mess.

I don't believe you. You are making that up.

[miked]

ROFLLMFAO...

LOL yea he's quite the "chatty kathy"