Spot the problem, if you can

jeanm

Member
Back before the 14th October I had a lot of site visitors and was making quite a nice little income from Adsense on my website. Since then visitor numbers have plummeted and continue on plummeting, getting worse each month.

I went through the website removing anything I thought could be causing the lack of ranking. I removed all my articles and those belonging to others (so no duplicate content). I had quite a few pages of links to other like-minded websites so I got rid of the lot (at least I’m not linking to somewhere that might now be questionable). Many of those websites would still be linking to me though. I reduced the quantity of Google ads and took out a few that I considered were too close to the top of the page (this of course has reduced my Adsense income further, to less than a dribble). I don’t think the website is over-optimized.

In May 2012 I received only 6% of the visitors I had back in May 2011. What more can I do to re-gain the visitors I once had please? My website is www.cheap-and-easy-recipes.com.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
hastily removing your content probably exacerbated the situation...

if you removed pages that were previously cached in google results and now result in 404 pages this would only harm you more.

this sort of reactive work on your site is counterproductive. you need to stop undoing all your previous seo work or it will just get worse.
 

jeanm

Member
Thanks Phreaddee.

I've just had a look back and I could rescue the Articles and the Links pages and re-upload them I guess. What's your opinion about using the articles from article websites? Should I be worried about duplicate content? I thought that might have been one of my problems so I'm nervous about re-instating those article pages.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
quality content.
thats all you need to put on your site.
if its not relevant, interesting or useful
dont put it on the site.

traffic flow grows much better when you are careful about what "articles" you put on your site. duplicate content on your site is obviously not something to do though.
 

jeanm

Member
How do I use other people's articles on my site without it being deemed "duplicate content" when the conditions (of using the article) state that you can't change wording etc. I've always wondered about that. :confused:
 

Edge

Member
I think Google is just getting better at it's job so any site which isn't producing good quality, original content is starting to feel the pinch. There may well be no quick fix unless you can figure out how to get a bunch of original content on your site that people think is good enough to link to.
 

jeanm

Member
Thanks everyone.

I've got masses and masses of good quality links coming in so I don't think lack of suitable links is my problem.

Does anyone know the answer to my question about the usage of articles off sites like Ezine? How can a person possibly include them on their site if they are on other folks' sites too. Wouldn't it always be a duplicate content issue if you use them? Similarly with articles I've written myself. If someone else uses them (which they have) then aren't they duplicating my content. I can't get my head around the issue.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
How do I use other people's articles on my site without it being deemed "duplicate content"

Well, you can't, because it is.


If you want to actually "earn" payments from your "work" then be prepared to actually DO some work for it, and write your own content.
Google have finally "seen the light" and have put in place measures that are now stopping people republishing and/or "spinning" content thus "leeching" Adwords advertiser's money away from genuine, original content publishers, which is what, and whom it was originally intended to benefit in the first place.
 

Nathan Joshua

New Member
It sounds like you were hit by penguin, and having any duplicate content on your website is punishment for stealing it in the first place.

IMO, you shouldn't go into a niche if you do not know how to produce fresh quality content for readers. Especially if it is just an Adsense site.
 

jeanm

Member
The articles were all removed quite a while back so it would have been after Panda but before Penguin. However, I’m discovering that I have lots of unwanted links coming in to my site and maybe the penguin update honed in on those too.

What is the best way to get rid of incoming links from sites that I never wanted a link from in the first place? I presume there is no easy fix. I checked on inbound links on Webmaster Tools but I guess I should try other places too. What do others suggest for me?
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
"unwanted" links are exactly the things that you DO WANT pointing to your URLs, it's the kind of link that you can easily get that you don't want!
 

jeanm

Member
I don't really understand your response. Could you please give me a bit more detail? The links I'm calling "unwanted" are, for example, the 1067 inbound links from updowner.com. Should I be asking Updowner to remove them?
 
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