I redesigned my website, updated my sitemap, removed serveral pages and created new pages with new url's. Now I understand the new pages need a bit of time, it's my home page that isn't showing up anymore. I google it and its there, but doesn't show up on SERP for my specific keywords. The only page that does show up for my keywords is my Contact Us page, but thats like on pages 4, 5, and 6, where as my homepage appeared mostly on the first page in my area.

I first noticed I wasn't showing up in Google SERP's just after I exchanged links on my homepage with another site. I checked out the other site, it seems fine, but I removed the link anyways just in case. I check my site in webmaster tools but it reports that nothing is wrong. I checked my site in various other ways, and nothing found to be wrong, I'm stumped!!!

So let me get this straight, you are offering “search engine optimization” on your website and you don’t know why your site does not rank?

waveshoppe wrote:

So let me get this straight, you are offering “search engine optimization” on your website and you don’t know why your site does not rank?

Either you're a joker, or you just got jokes.

The truth of the matter is, the SEO website belongs to my brother thats stationed in Iraq, I'm just trying to keep it going, trying to maintain his web presence and current clients. I've been doing that since about the time I joined this site.

I believe I told this story when I introduced myself here on SR, and which is why I HAVE "Just trying to make things work" on my signature.

Anyways, since then I've learned alot, and I do manage to get my new clients on the first pages of SERPS and keep them there, however, in this case, I don't know what went wrong. Everything was good, first page for various keywords and then I made those changes and WHAM!!!! 4, 5, or 6th page with just the "Contact Us" page showing up.

So now tell me Joker, what can I do?

could be you needd to wait a little while, when did you make the changes?

Do you have a disclaimer on the site saying the SEO expert is away for an extended time?

matte wrote:

could be you needd to wait a little while, when did you make the changes?

Do you have a disclaimer on the site saying the SEO expert is away for an extended time?

Um, well, the site in question isn't the web design site. Waveshoppe took the problem into left field.

The website in questoin is a flooring sales and installation website. The changes were made about 3 weeks ago, but that still shouldn't effect the home "index" page, the others pages yes I can see why it would take time because I'm introducing new url's, but not so for the home page, because I've done this before a few times and my experience is that the home page will still show up in SERP's when you redesign and keep the same keywords.

Not to repeat the whole story again, but do you have any suggestions for me?

I really do appeciate all of your inputs.

Thanks everyone, all suggestions are welcomed.

giomeza1 wrote:

matte wrote:

could be you needd to wait a little while, when did you make the changes?

Do you have a disclaimer on the site saying the SEO expert is away for an extended time?

Um, well, the site in question isn't the web design site. Waveshoppe took the problem into left field.

The website in questoin is a flooring sales and installation website. The changes were made about 3 weeks ago, but that still shouldn't effect the home "index" page, the others pages yes I can see why it would take time because I'm introducing new url's, but not so for the home page, because I've done this before a few times and my experience is that the home page will still show up in SERP's when you redesign and keep the same keywords.

Not to repeat the whole story again, but do you have any suggestions for me?

I really do appeciate all of your inputs.

Thanks everyone, all suggestions are welcomed.

My comment was not left field at all. The industry is plagued with people that are charging others for optimization services when they shouldn’t be. And that post was a great example.

So if you truly want someone to help, you will need to post the domain in question, your target term, as well as a history of the exact changes you made prior to tanking the clients site, maybe someone will look at it for you.

If you cant do that then you are simply asking people to guess what is wrong or what it needs, which could prove to be even more detrimental.

Ok, I can see where you guys are coming from about the Disclaimer, so let me just set the record straight. My brother owns/runs a small SEO firm about 2 and a half hours away from me, where as you guys are assuming it was just him.

I'm running the place while he's gone, paying the bills and employees. He has a staff of SEO professionals on his team, and the firm mainly deals with International Branding "crossing the barrier into Latin American Countries".

Now, if somebody wants SEO service through my website and I close the deal, I simply assign the task to one of the guys. However, when the potential client cannot afford the firms prices, or simply has a very small budget, instead of passing up the opportunity, I offer my unprofessional services at an extremely low cost, and I explain to them that I have some knowledge, but I'm no expert, and most of the time I close the deal because most of the time the callers just want a simple website without any optimization, and I tend to not bother the guys as much as I can, plus I have businesses of my own to run. And did I mention they're 2 and a half hours away?

Are there any more questions?

Hi there giomeza1!

I'd like to believe that you're genuine and just got off on the wrong foot. So let's draw a red line under the extraneous stuff and get on with it. There are two things that I think you need to do to establish yourself as genuine:

1)  Remove all the links from your signature and website box that are not your own. Add your own link and make it clear in the post that your sig link is the site in question.

2)  Answer the questions posed by waveshoppe:

So if you truly want someone to help, you will need to post the domain in question, your target term, as well as a history of the exact changes you made prior to tanking the clients site, maybe someone will look at it for you.

If you cant do that then you are simply asking people to guess what is wrong or what it needs, which could prove to be even more detrimental.

Fit in with those two suggestions and I think things will start to go much better.

Best wishes, Mate!

WOW, the personal attacks just keep on coming!!!!

Again, let me start by saying, "Waveshoppe" took my request way WAY into left field, first by ASSuming that I was passing myself off as the SEO expert, then secondly by ASSuming that I tanked "a clients" website.

The website in question is my own, DIDN"T ANYBODY READ THE TITLE!!!! it says and I quote "I redesigned MY SITE, and now I'm not showing up in SERP's"

HELLO PEOPLE, please read and QUIT assuming!!!!!

Moving on to those who genuinely want to help, the website in question, and yes its' mine, it's a site that I created for my family's business, we have many business ventures.

Anyways, I added ALT text to the links and images and removed the background color, removed the background picture, and a lot of wood border graphics to reduce the download time, plus I switched the javascripted links to text links.
The site in question is www.camarillointeriors .com

PLEASE - Only respond if you have some helpful insight to help me figure the out problem

PLEASE - Only respond if you have some helpful insight to help me figure the out problem

Well! I was as helpful as I could be.

I see you've finally given the URL, on my advice, but still got up me. Quite unacceptable behavior!

I see you're sticking tenaciously to the spam links that gave rise to the original suspicion and have gone way over the maximum allowable number of links. Did you read the forum guidelines yet?

I gave you your best chance at some assistance. An apology, perhaps?

laurie_m wrote:

PLEASE - Only respond if you have some helpful insight to help me figure the out problem

Well! I was as helpful as I could be.

I see you've finally given the URL, on my advice, but still got up me. Quite unacceptable behavior!

I see you're sticking tenaciously to the spam links that gave rise to the original suspicion and have gone way over the maximum allowable number of links. Did you read the forum guidelines yet?

I gave you your best chance at some assistance. An apology, perhaps?

Well, the so called spam links that you're referring to are not SPAM LINKS, they are infact my own, as I've said, my family and I are into various business ventures, which it seems is impossible for you to understand, so thank you laurie_m, for the personal attack! I appreciate it.

Now, on another note, I will thank you "laurie_m" for bringing me to light on the signature situation. The truth is that no, I did not fully read the guidelines for the signature section. I'm off logging off now, but I will read and make the proper adjustments on my return to SF. But again, I'll remind everybody that the links in the signature are my own.

Thank you once again for your reply.

i think your link profile is certainly a major issue:

1) Google shows 2 links:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=link … bd9b4af62e

2) Yahoo shows many more, but they are mostly from Yahoo Local listings:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/se … =seo-rd-se


How long has you site been around for? it is possible that Google gave you a bit of a push when you first rolled out, and then as time passed and no new links where shown to come in, buried your page

any thoughts on that out there?

Thank you Nic for your reply.

The doamin is about 4 years old, but it was off line for over a year. I created new pages about a year ago and went live, got a few backlinks every now and then, and ended up on Google's First Page SERP's for a few different keywords in the first 3 weeks, and I remained there for about 8 months and yes I did slack off in getting more backlinks, but it was still showing up on the first page every once in a while, but mostly on the second page after the 8 months.

Then I redesigned it, took away images and javascript, added ALT TEXT to the images and text, deleted certain pages and recreated new pages with new URL's, but the content remained the same, AND NOW it doesn't show up at all! The only page that shows up is the Contact Us page and that shows up on like pages 5, 6, 7 or higher.

I checked it Google banned my domain on a couple of websites with Google Ban Checkers, but the website results all said no. So now after about a month I'm still not showing up. Even Google Webmaster Tools doesn't report anything wrong. There isn't a sign or any hint at all. I'M STUMPED!!!!

giomeza1 people still need to know what term you were targeting. Judging what I saw in my minor level link analysis… it’s most likely that you were only getting traffic from long tail local queries and from what I see you were not doing any link development or targeting any terms.

Also what do your analytics tell you? Was there steady traffic up to a certain date where as it just fell off, or do they indicate a steady decline etc. Study of your analytics is the first place to start your diagnosis.

But there is a there is a ton of things that can be wrong, for all you know they could have tweaked some filters and you got nailed for all of the KW stuffing in the sites footer, etc. Your best bet is to wait a few more weeks to see if it pops back or get a professional diagnosis/audit.

WOW, this may be off topic but, the whole thread was really interesting!! Is anyone going to help giomeza ultimately

Thanks Waveshoppe for your reply.

As I've said, nothing anywhere indicates that anything is wrong, but as for analytics I have no recent account info because I still haven't entered the analytics code on my pages since the redesign. - Yeah I know, I should have done it.

As for the KW stuffing in the bottom, I know it's a bit tacky, but it's what a competitor does (DiamondCertified) and they get great results, so I decided to try it for a while myself.

My targeted audience is Santa Clara County, and my keywords are:
Hardwood Floor, sales, installation, repair
Laminate Flooring, sales, installation, repair
Carpet Floors, sales, installation, repair
and a mixture combanition of the keywords above
     For example: hardwood floor installation
                  hardwood floor sales
                  etc...

The other thing I've done was took another thing that another competitor was doing which was creating "City Landing Pages" for each of the cities that they serviced. Like for example "hardwood floor sales in San Jose" and then the San Jose Hardwood Floor page would show up in SERP when ever people searched those keywords, and I linked each of those pages from the Home Page where I stuffed the keywords. I had done that about 3 months ago. I did that because I wanted to reduce the amount of calls that I was getting from long distance callers way out of our service area.

I had deleted that portion of KW stuffing in the bottom, but I put it back for all of SF viewers to see.

Any ideas????

Jom321 wrote:

WOW, this may be off topic but, the whole thread was really interesting!! Is anyone going to help giomeza ultimately

Yeah, tell me about it. Funny huh? but a real problem for me. I only got about a year doing this, and i'm just trying to see what works. I've been getting great results for the limited knowledge that I have, and then all of a sudden, all progress is gone! And nothing anywhere hints or indicates that there's something wrong.

Jom321 wrote:

WOW, this may be off topic but, the whole thread was really interesting!! Is anyone going to help giomeza ultimately

People are trying to help the person, but its difficult to do so with just crumbs of information. And at best people will only be able to offer some suggestions. I doubt your going to be reading “this is what’s definitively wrong” in this post. IMO there are way many variables and unknowns for that to happen.

waveshoppe wrote:

Jom321 wrote:

WOW, this may be off topic but, the whole thread was really interesting!! Is anyone going to help giomeza ultimately

People are trying to help the person, but its difficult to do so with just crumbs of information. And at best people will only be able to offer some suggestions. I doubt your going to be reading “this is what’s definitively wrong” in this post. IMO there are way many variables and unknowns for that to happen.

Waveshoppe, what else can I tell you? Am I missing something that I still haven't brought to light? I cannot think of anything.

I've placed a few links on trusted directories months ago and keep reposting them every 30 days as required, I redesigned my site recently to speed up loading time by removing various graphics and javascripts, I added ALT TEXT using keywords to my images and links, and deleted a few pages and created new pages with completely new URL's but using the same content. And I think thats it.

I've been skeptical about the KW stuffing in the bottom, and linking them to City Landing Pages, and I did remove them recently, but I added them back shortly after I started this thread to show everybody what the site looked like when the problem occured.

Well without analytics data its really going to be hard to get on the path to determining when and possibly why this happened. It’s possible that this drop in rankings was a change in one of the many algorithms and not related at all to any of your doings.

Most of the terms you listed (hardwood floor installation, Laminate flooring etc) are in some mildly competitive spaces, but like most spaces, they all require constant effort put forth.

But you mentioned something interesting, that being that you are only interested in local customers. Setting up the city landing pages isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you want to include those phrases you mentioned above in your link building for your home page. (Though I would go for all the traffic I could get, as well as work out a deal with someone to pay you for referrals that are out of your service area)

So here is my guess as to what to do next. I would read up on the basics of link building http://www.reliable-seo.com/knowledge-b … -2008.html and then start working on developing a decent link profile. Note that 2 or 3 directory links here and there are not going to cut it.