Last month in November, my blog on video game reviews and cheat codes was ranked #1 or 2 on certain topics. I was averaging about 1000 new visitors a day.

New month, and now my nymbers are abismal.... I'm averaging just 150 a day. How does this happen? I do not understand it.... There were 2 days last week where I only posted once to the blog. I normally post 5 - 6 times a day. I was out with the flu and couldn't get around to posting.... am I being punished for that by Google?

Visit my blog at www.aryeltech.com/gamers and give me your opinion. I have no clue what just happened!?!?!?!?

Appreciate any help...
- monchster

I'm not sure if punished is the right word, but it may be that Google now sees your site as less important.  How has your link building been in the last month or so?  Have you dropped from your rankings entirely?

Dropping from the rankings could be any number of things - I wouldn't look to just one thing for the answer.  I'd concentrate on continuing to build quality links and get your post count to a place that you can be very consistent...

what are those at #1 doing that you're not?

Have you fallen foul of various filters?

The SERPs are forever changing, updating almost in real time.

Some call this EVERFLUX

I have to admit, that I did lose sight of that aspect of my SEO last month. It seems as though there are so many things to do, and remember.... organization is key here.

Thanks for reminding me of that....

Well check your logs for me and see what search terms (referrers) were being used to find the site BEFORE the drop?

Hard to say when one isn't actively tracking the terms they rank for..this is the pulse of your site SEO wise

Can you figure that out?

Also, what if any changes have been made to the site?
What link bilding activities have you been doing?

The top 10 Keywords and phrases of last month were:

gears of war cheat codes
gears of war cheats
guitar hero 2 cheat codes
superman returns cheat codes
need for speed carbon cheat codes
neverwinter nights 2 cheat codes
gears of war cog tags
cheat codes for gears of war
nba live 07 cheat codes
splinter cell double agent cheat codes

OK..give me til later..requires some thinking... have some work to do at the moment :0)

Had exactly the opposite happen to two of my sites.
Something definitely changed G sent like 20 refs. for Nov. For Dec. I am well over 500 a day.
I don't get it, the mystery of Google continues.........
Dan

Could be a new filter, or adjusting an existing one. At the beginning of this month, my traffic took a dive too, but then yesterday it picked back up again.

Check your stats tomorrow, then get back to us.

Also, have you actively acquired any links lately? Directory submissions? Paid links?

Give of some history on your usual linking, and your most recent linking. (no... you don't have to list actual websites that you got your link on)

Mr stitch, I think that's exactly what it could have happened.... for some reason my blog is coming up now in the top 5 of those particular keywords. What happened???? I have no idea....

I did make some changes to the main index page of the site. Also, the day before my traffic came back to normal, I used some free search engine submission companies. Those were the main changes. As far as link building, didn't really do anything out of the ordinary.

I started a thread here, and also commented on a blog I like to frequently visit.

For my link building and swapping, I use a company on thte net at www.linkmarket.net.

You're not going to get a lot of high ranked sites wanting to link, but there a few that are promising.

Hey there... sorry...day off yesterday :0)

What changes did you make to the home page?

Search Submission Services= Bad

Link Exchange Services = bad

I wouldn't think that the search engine submission would make a difference, but since you're already found by the SE's I'd have to ask why you submitted again...

Also, changes to the index? You're index changes all the time when you post, does it not?

I'm always changing my index 'cause I'm adding new product..... and my rankings tank and come back all the time. Perhaps Google doesn't like these rotating pages?

Maybe Gypsy could shed some light on the subject.....

I don't know really why I resubmitted the  site.... I figure to maybe get the SE's to crawl my site quicker.
What I did to the index page was basically change the entire design and lay-out. I also included an RSS news feed to a small section.

Recently, I've been visiting high traffic blogs and commenting.... genuinely commenting I should add, lol. I believe this has helped me quite a bit. Also, it seems that if you have others comment on your blog it helps.

In one of the google searches for my keywords, a brief intro to one of my readers comments is also included.

These may be tips... what do you guys feel about this?

Google keeps changing about every 3 months now. I have several sites the same thing happens to.
It makes no sense, it just happens

Keep plugging away on links and SEO.  It will work itself out.

Good luck

monchster wrote:

I don't know really why I resubmitted the  site.... I figure to maybe get the SE's to crawl my site quicker.
What I did to the index page was basically change the entire design and lay-out. I also included an RSS news feed to a small section.

Recently, I've been visiting high traffic blogs and commenting.... genuinely commenting I should add, lol. I believe this has helped me quite a bit. Also, it seems that if you have others comment on your blog it helps.

In one of the google searches for my keywords, a brief intro to one of my readers comments is also included.

These may be tips... what do you guys feel about this?

U still with us Mon? Didn't want to dig too far withot knowing yer around... let me know...

say.... I got a real kick outta that SEO Blog post on Dave Naylors site... man what a crew on that post... even ol MC himself made an appearance...  He was messin with the Black Hatters on that post.. Yeah... you now have your name and site on a Blog post with a bunch of BHers.. lol

Anyways, let me know if U R around

I'm still here.... u have anything useful?

Well, I reached my high for the month about 2 weeks ago at 1500 unique visitors for the day. But now, Google, has again dropped me down on their list. I was at #1 for about 5 days, and now down to number 8. It's amazing how much of a difference in traffic that #1 spot makes.

Now, I'm only averaging over 300 unique visitors a day. I made no changes, just kept plugging away at posting on my blog.

I just don't get it anymore....

Google, will you please make up your damn mind!

Mr stitch, you mentioned that your ranking was up again at Google after a few days... how has it been the last couple of weeks? My traffic continues to drop, and I am still plugging away at my blog and getting good links coming in.

Anyone has any other suggestions or advice to share?

My google ranking has been good lately. This last update has given me a slight boost actually.

I took a look, and just off the top of my head here -

The site doesn't appear to render properly in fire fox. Are you using Z-Index in your CSS? Is it possible that you're taking penalties for hiding content, even tho it's not unintentional? My first guess would be 'no', but anything could be possible.

Also, you stated that this is a blog. If so, does your software automatically 'prune' old posts that are outdated?

Perhaps you lost some linking value to posts that got stripped from the system arbitrarily. Not sure how your whole set-up is structured, but it could be worth taking a look at.

Also, it's possible that some of your most valued links in the past got dumped. Maybe the site owners dumped their sites, or their sites went to spam and google devalued them.

Other than that, I wouldn't be able to say with out doing extensive link profiling, etc.

And who are you linking out to? Make sure you don't have any non-relevent links on your site, or links to junk.