I’m jumping up and down over here. Finally something good happening with my sites for now. As most of you know, I had some sites slip in rankings after the October Panda algorithim change and mainly the one hurting me was the site that was bringing in about $500 in sales through the Google Affiliate Network – but more on that further down in this post.
The good news is that SE Slingshot has proven to be a great outlet for getting top rankings at a natural and consistent pace all while giving you backlinks with sticking power. I first used SE Slingshot back in the beginning of October 2011. Here I am just 3 months later and seeing the SERP results of my website being taken from #29 to #3 for it’s main keyword. And as you can tell by my Google Analytics screenshot below, the graph doesn’t lie. I went from 0 visitors a day to averaging about 15-20 a day now.
I’ll be honest with you. I have not been so patient after this last Panda change. I went out and purchased a few FIVERR jobs that would send me thousands of backlinks to my sites (excluding this one that Jacob was working on). One offer was for a pyramid like backlinking method so it was suppose to help prevent getting google slapped. WRONG! My site that was doing $500 a month through GA Network went from suffering at #8 to being completely sandboxed. Seriously, I couldn’t even find it on page 20 yesterday. Don’t be cheap guys. Cheap means spammy! You really do get what you pay for. I am going to be using SE Slingshot for my site that is sandboxed to see if it can be helped. I am desperate to get my income back from that site.
Special thanks to Jacob; owner of SE Slingshot, for allowing me to test drive his service. I highly recommend his service and I will update you all once I get my 2nd site going with his service.
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Hi Sara,
Got your “Happy Photo”, cropped it a little and it is updated into the article I wrote.
Now for your less than happy FIVERR experience. Panda was a pre-prep algorithm to kind of flush out the index files of sites. Now big G is re-entering site info with a series of mini-algorithm per say. One used to check site links is “concepts”. After the Panda slap, this will do a sort of re-check along with several other site checks going on now.
My advice for your slapped site; beg mercy from the G gods. Admit that you slipped up and made a mistake during a moment of weakness/ love struck and you will never do it again. I do think they will give you a clean slate if you ask for a re-evaluation. Offer this site as a commitment to your positive interest in marketing while helping other with your experiences, good and bad.
Even with the bad news you have written about in this post, I see or feel a happier Sara. Starting the New Year with a happy outlook will bring the benefits associated with it. Heck, you can probably buy love from Fiverr, but it’s an empty box. Nobody possesses love; it’s an invisible essence between two individuals.
You’ll be OK and have a good spring market. Happy New Year to you and yours.
Alis volat propriis.
Steve
You’re right, Steve! There is a happier me. Even if my income has taken a hit, I still have hopes and plan to make a full recovery and then some. I’m fully prepared to accept it’s not gonna be overnight that I regain my site rankings and I am ok with that. I would rather have slow progression with sticking power than overnight ranking and then gone a day later!
Happy New Year too you!
Hi Sara,
I’m glad to hear that your site is getting back on track. I’ve been staying away more and more from the spammy kind of backlinks and I spend more time on syndication and guest blogging. I have to say it definitely is working for me. That and long articles (like 1000 word articles). I’m even ranking and getting traffic for keywords I didn’t consider because they were too competitive.
Leslie recently posted..Focus Is Key …
Yes, the long articles has been the subject to come up over and over again regarding ranking pages easier. I’ve also been writing longer posts. For some sites it seems to be helping but the sandboxed site needs a bit more love than just long articles right now. i’m beginning to think it’s cursed. It did this same sandboxing a year ago and took 6 months to recover. But of course when it recovered it earned me twice as much. Hey! Wouldn’t that be sweet if it repeated the same success?!
Hi!
I’m sorry to see what happened to your site. Some people just offer junk and they get away with it. I hope your site will get out of the sandbox soon. Keep writing, i like your posts.
John Terry recently posted..BEST 5 MOVIES IN 2011
Sara, Hi. First time reading your blog. Been there done that with my main money site last year. I narrowed things down from around 100 sites to about half a dozen that I would routinely update. Went from maybe 210 unique hits a day down to less than 50 in a matter of a single day. Luckily putting up some good content and getting rid of the potential bad plugins which gave automated content seemed to help. Looking forward and wishing you a fantastic 2012.
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Good that you are back on track! Slingshot seems to do wonders. I’m planning to give it a shot myself. Any tips for that?