MAJOR SERP drop with website redesign

[cobraart]

I searched the old forums about this topic and half of my question was answered.

my website redesign included: removing 3 url's, adding around 7 url's with an upgraded sitemap at the bottom, I left the intro content on the index page, added more cotent, the index interface design is the same except for the added navigation items on the menu bar and i added a sub menu under the call to action.

I uploaded my index page, with css, after i started the design process which left the styles to my 4 other pages in ruins. No broken links though...i uploaded the rest of my pages and styles after 4 days...

I thought that all of the new content would have increased my rankings, but my SERPS went from 14 to....(i stopped looking after page 56)..

After this i removed my flash object off the index page and uploaded a contact form..
The answer i have found to this problem, in this forum and the rest of the internet, is that it has happened to a few people with website redesigns and they didn't get their SERPS position back for a 5 or 6 months...

I checked bad link neighborhood and found over 2000 links. the links that i could see didn't report any bad neighborhoods...I had a few "possible spam" icons and one link had a lot of weight on it...I checked some relevant sites and they had "possible spam" icons too...but they still had a good SERP

My domain is http://cobraart.net
the keyword i am going for is "cape coral web design"
i dont have very many backlinks....maybe 12 at the time of the redesign and i have 17 now...
my maket competition is 400,000
i did a check in site explorer and i have a fairly decent rating even though my pr is 0
i went back through my site and changed any duplicate content....
the only other thing that i can think of that would have caused this would be my sitemap..
i didn't update my sitemap until i noticed the drop in rankings but i didn't have any backlinks pointing to inner pages....everything pointed to my index page which was never removed...

i couldn't see any drop in my analytics because i have only been getting 5 hits a day....and that was when my site was on page 2 for a week. I would have left the site the way it was but ROI was horrible...

how long will it take for my serps to come back....can i optimze for a different keyword just incase i got sandboxed....im not even sure i was sand boxed.

If i focus all of my time to back links, can i bring my SERP up. for the last three days i have been linking squidoo, twitter, delicious, facebook, and youtube together...i have submitted a video tutorial to youtube and i have all of my social sites pointing to squidoo which point to my home page...i am working on my squidoo articles, and my blog articles to increase traffic. i had 25 visits yesterday instead of 5 which is better, but it's not showing in SERPS..

can you guys please tell me what i am doing wrong...

one more thing i cant figure out....the day after i put up the contact form, i get a detailed inquiry about a job...how did this guy find my site when it doesn't even show up in google for my key word.

any information you can give on what i should do about my SERP would be GREATLY appreciated....

 

[timmbti]

I have a similar problem too, my website Easy Tips get into sand box, after Google update. Before it was on the first page using keyword "Easy Tips" but now not even on the 10th page.

 

[mrandrei]

You just need to keep on doing what you're doing now. Build as much quality backlinks as possible. It looks like you're targeting a keyword that is not very competitive, so you'll be able to rank eventually. There's no shortcut to having a good, stable ranking. Linkbuilding is supposed to be a continuous process.

 

[cobraart]

Update

i found my website on yahoo at number 12 which is better than before. but still no spot on google. i did a search in google for site:cobraart.net and found 5 pages
my index pages was cobraart.net........almost all of my inner pages started with www...........originally, i overlooked the conocal error because i didn't see a conocal error causing that much of a drop.
i checked my yahoo analytics found only non-www internal links
google showed both and google showed some of my old pages...

I decided to add a 301 redirect for the old pages and all www pages...i also removed my old www account in google. i think the connocal error played a big role in my rankings because i added so many pages to my site without a 301 rewrite code

i hope that was the problem...but ill still work on my back links and social marketing....


what do you guys think

 

[BMA]

People are starting to say page rank doesn't matter. I'm not buying that just yet. The top results for Cape Coral Web Designs are PRs 4's, 3's, and 2's, compared to your PR 0. I think that probably makes a difference.

Here's something you need to do right now. Update your text. The best I can tell, the only place "Cape Coral Web Design" appears is in your meta tags. Put the phrase in your text somewhere. The number one result for Cape Coral Web Designs has the phrase at the bottom. The more you are willing to commit to that text, the more likely Google will be to give you the results. Bigger, bolder, and color all count for how important Google thinks the phrase is to your page. While your at it, throw the phrase into your alt tags for a couple of your hyperlinked images.

Here's a theory that's probably irrelevant. Years ago, Google advertised that they would penalize sites that had text color that was too close to the background color (a popular spamming technique in the past). Your text color is strangely close to your background color, and I'm wondering if the new design set off that alarm bell with Google. Regardless, you might want to consider more contrast between your text and background for us 40-year-olds with glasses.