Something missing or something wrong?

[jeanm]

My recipes website was doing quite nicely and earning me a decent amount from Adsense. Things changed years ago with the Panda update and my site visitors plummeted and have never recovered. I don't think I ever did anything that could have been termed black hat SEO. I have discovered a couple of my recipes have been copied onto other folks sites but I don't think there are enough of them copied to cause a problem. The site still has a PR of 3 so it can't be too bad surely(?) Has anyone got any ideas of how to rectify things please? The site is http://www.cheap-and-easy-recipes.com/ .

A lot of other recipe sites have a star rating/comments section for each recipe. I'm wondering if I should set up something on my site to do this. I've no idea how but I'm prepared to try. Is that the missing element on my site?

As you can tell from the site I'm quite challenged with website work so any advice given to me would need to be in simple terms so I can understand what to do.

Thank you, Jean

 

[chrishirst]

The site still has a PR of 3 so it can't be too bad surely(?)

SGB PR is completely useless and means nothing at all.

Things changed years ago with the Panda update and my site visitors plummeted and have never recovered.

And where did the visitors come from??

I don't think I ever did anything that could have been termed black hat SEO

Maybe not but it would appear that your ONLY promotion work is based around YOU dropping links to YOUR 'site' at all the 'usual dumping grounds' for 'link builders'.

 

[jeanm]

In my ignorance I have no idea where my visitors came from.

Are you able to explain "YOU dropping links to YOUR 'site' at all the 'usual dumping grounds' for 'link builders'." What have I done please.

 

[chrishirst]

You need to look at whatever you use for traffic analysis and take note of what the referrers were and what they are now.

The usual dumping grounds" are places like article banks, stumbleupon, etc. etc. but very little promotion aimed at getting visitors, you seem to be following the usual poor advise of trying to get 'rankings'.

 

[LCWS]

Google Analytics is an excellent method to check visitor stats.

 

[jeanm]

Right, I'll set time aside tomorrow to go through links. If I have some bad links coming in, how do I get rid of them please? I remember a couple of years ago I found a heap of links that I thought weren't sensible. I politely asked heaps of webmasters to remove the links. Some did but many didn't, so no doubt they are still there now. I will investigate.

Can you all come up with any/some other things I may not have done wisely please.

Thanks in advance,

Jean

 

[chrishirst]

If I have some bad links coming in,

That all depends on whether you placed the links or not, what Google and what you consider 'bad links' are two entirely different things, and having your definition of 'bad links' taken down can actually damage your traffic and Search referrals.

 

[jeanm]

This is what stands out when I checked my back links (2440 in total):

Quite a lot of links from two forums I used to contribute to a while back: smallbusinessbrief.com (469) and taste.com.au (493)

Links from blogspot.com (265)

256 of these goodbyeitchyexzema.com links. When I go to have a look at them I can’t get through to their websites and it says Bandwidth Limit Exceeded. This is an example:
http://huntersville.goodbyeitchyeczema.com/tag/counter-treatment-for/

172 of topalternate.com links, e.g. http://topalternate.com/tags/Easy+Company+tour/

Quite a few like this that go nowhere: http://viewsiteslike.com/sites-like/tips.net/4

Masses of weird ones like this: http://mrwhatis.net/better-cake-boss-or-ace-of-cake.html that lead to http://ebookbrowsee.net/be/better-cake-boss-or-ace-of-cake#.U698lPmSwkM

A heap of links like this one: http://homedeliveryfood.net/turkey/turkey-meatloaf-recipe.html that go to a page of links.

Masses just like this one: http://homeschoolingmamalusi.blogspot.com/2009/01/some-time-with-beautiful-browns.html

There is this one: http://sunergywindows.com.au/fhwvdr/jwyv.php?nbqp=lemon-baked-fish-recipe which I thought looked like it was a site that had maybe been hacked???

7 links coming from Stumbleupon

16 links coming from two articles I wrote many years ago.

So the links from the two forums would have, in the main, been created by me. The 16 article links would trace back to me too. As far as I'm aware all the other links mentioned above were not created by me.

Does this information help work out my problem please? I want to move forward with this and try to rectify my problem. All suggestions will be taken on board.

 

[chrishirst]

Don't worry about the "scraper / aggregator" links (although you might want to 'break' the links in your post so those URLs do not can any extra 'credit'

These kind of sites usually get the "thin content" treatment from Google so neither 'harm' nor 'help' the sites they link to. Google engineers are well aware that you have little or no control over what gets 'scraped' from your site.

"Article banks" that you have "submitted" articles to can 'harm', especially if you have submitted the same content as you have on your website.

You can "disavow" links that you are/were responsible for placing, https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487 and you can of course 'disavow' scraper links/sites but you are better off leaving Google to their own devices there.

This one: sunergywindows.com.au is is either somebody's "great idea" for site "filler content" using a scraper/agregator or as you surmise the server has been successfully attacked

Masses just like this one homeschoolingmamalusi.blogspot .....

Internet space wasting junk like that are "auto blogs" which is another term for aggregators

And most importantly you need to ensure that any content that is original to your site is flagged as original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LsB19wTt0Q

 

[jeanm]

Thank you. Could you please explain this for me:

"Don't worry about the "scraper / aggregator" links (although you might want to 'break' the links in your post so those URLs do not can any extra 'credit' "

Should I be doing anything about the links back to me from the two forums I mentioned at the start of my last reply? Are the links on the forums the scraper/aggregator links you are talking about? I don't understand what the term means.

The smallbusinessbrief links would pretty much all be in my signature so if I can change the signature (to remove the links) then that would automatically stop all those back links,wouldn't it?

I no longer have the two articles on my site and haven't done so for a few years.

Everything on my site is original so I'll take a look at the YouTube video and figure that one out.

Thank you so much for spending so much time helping me. I am really appreciating your help.

 

[chrishirst]

Scrapers and aggregators are sites/systems that use 'bots' to gather material from other sites and republish it. Scrapers commonly make HTTP: requests (like a browser or search crawler) to a URL on another site and stores the data for the owner to modify if necessary, scraping is most 'successful' on templated sites. The problem with scrapers is that the often republish your content entirely which creates two issues, One being duplicated content for search engines to sort out, the other is that it takes away the need for people to actually visit YOUR website URLs. Both points are also true when people "submit" complete articles to "article banks"

Aggregators take RSS feeds from other sites and republish them in related groups linking back to the original site, useful for getting your site known, provided that they only publish a snippet of the content.

Personally I wouldn't be too concerned about forum signatures, I had 40,000+ posts at webmaster-talk.com before it was bought out by freelancer and never had any kind of problem.

 

[jeanm]

So, in a nutshell I need to try to get those 17 articles removed from the six article sites and then do a huge search to see which recipes have been copied and then sort out a DMCA take-down notice. Agree?

I still don't understand "Don't worry about the "scraper / aggregator" links (although you might want to 'break' the links in your post so those URLs do not can any extra 'credit' ". Which links are these and how do I break the links please?

There are 7 StumbleUpon links so do I worry about those?

I don't want to misunderstand and then make things worse for myself which I may have done in the past.

 

[chrishirst]

Which links are these and how do I break the links please?

The ones in post #8 of this thread.

Though you may be past "edit time"

Search engine indexers can determine the difference between "signature" links and "editorial" links in forum post/thread URLs. So, while sig links may be discounted or devalued, active ('live') links in the post body may not be and thereby pass 'value' to the target URL.

To post URLs that will not be made active by forum software leave off these markers;

The protocol string (http...), and/or the www subdomain prefix

Or ... remove the dots from the URL (webmaster-talk eu )

Or ... uncheck the "[ ] Automatically parse links in text in "Miscellaneous Options" below the advanced post editor.

For StumbleUpon there will be more links than you think there are, but I wouldn't worry too much because you may well be getting traffic from there. Less than usefull traffic, probably, but real people nonetheless, and there is the off-chance that one of those real people may just go on and post a genuinely natural link elsewhere.

 

[jeanm]

Thank you.

Today I've contacted all six of the article websites and requested they remove the articles. Had to pay $25 to Articlecity. I suppose I was lucky I had only one article there.

Just tried to log into the Taste.com forum but they are doing maintenance work so everything is down. As soon as I am able to log in I'll see if I can edit the links as you suggest.

I'll leave the smallbusinessbrief.com signature as is.

I'll now go searching for websites where my work has been copied.

Do you think that those articles would be the reason my site got so affected? That seems to have been the main thing I did wrong. If there is anything else I've done wrong please do tell me.

 

[chrishirst]

Do you think that those articles would be the reason my site got so affected?

It is possible, but on the other hand it could simply be that something you do not know about that was "helping", has been "devalued" by Google so is no longer giving your URLs a 'boost' in getting shown to searchers.

If you don't have one already, setup a Google webmaster tools account for your site so you can get more information on how your site URLs are doing.

 

[jeanm]

I've got a webmaster tools account. If removing the links from the article sites works in my favour when would I expect to see an improvement please? Do I give it two months maybe?

I'm thinking that if that doesn't work perhaps I have to take down the website and put it up all over again with a different name and start totally from scratch with link building.

 

[chrishirst]

Okay, if you haven't received any warnings about "unnatural links" then you shouldn't need to go along the disavow links and filing a reconsideration request path. So if it is simply a matter of some "negative scoring" where the poor 'quality' stuff balance or out-weighs the decent 'quality, time and some decent promotional work should help.
If you are going to be "link building" there are some things to have uppermost in your mind;
One is you are NOT linking for search engines the second is that all links do not "lead to home", third is get the term "relative" out of your "link building vocabulary" and replace it with related. Related offers FAR more scope in what people you talk to with your link anchor text, and not always linking to one URL (the 'home' page) reduces the 'link builder' footprint dramatically.

Related means that conversations on vegetable gardening are in scope because if someone grows them, they probably cook them as well.

Related rather than 'relative' means looking beyond your article topic and it's 'key' words and into the realms of human behaviour, because marketing and promotion is psychology not physics, so link to individual URLs with anchor text that fits in, rather than trying to cram 'key' words into a sentence.

 

[jeanm]

Thank you so much. I've learned such a lot from you. So, I have a lot of promoting to do. Let the journey begin.

I'm quite keen to get one of those ratings/reviews set up on my site so visitors can give my recipes a star rating and make their comments. Can you point me in the right direction to set this up. I was searching for info on the topic a few days ago and got very bogged down. Is there anything you can recommend that is preferably simple to implement and maintain please?