penalized by google? what to do?

[omidiu]

one of my sites was moved down from first page of google searches to page 30 or worse on 6-7 keywords (all). recently i submitted my site to a lot of web directories using the same anchor text. i believe this could be the problem. what should i do know? just wait? is the penalty permanent or will disappear after a while?

[canadafred]

Oh no! Don't tell me you fell for one of those "I'll list you in 65,000 directories of PR1s to PR567s web sites, all over the Internet, in only the most respected Google loving places. All this and more for the low low LOW LOW price of .012 cents each."

I'm sure it's not bad.

Let the recent shake up level itself out. Keep introducing high quality, well-optimized content to your web presentation, and keep doing that, regularly.

... oh ya, and stop seeking links.

You know, you make any off-site influence your own on-site ranking factors. You gotta' be innovative a bit. You know, build yourself a really good internal linking structure

... ah maybe use ... a corporate blog or something like that, giving your visitors more perspectives into your business, your expertise, your ideas. That's always a good predictable off-site enforcement, but you must be able to justify its existence. These things must be doing something unique and be important and indisputably authentic; make this stuff interesting helps too.

[Njegos]

Google does not penalize if you submit your web site to various shady directories. If that was a case then your competitor would do this instead for you. What you need is good quality links and improvement of the existing web site content.

[canadafred]

Google does not penalize if you submit your web site to various shady directories. If that was a case then your competitor would do this instead for you. What you need is good quality links and improvement of the existing web site content.

The search engine know the sources when a web page is being artificially bombarded with pointless, useless links. The theory is that if your linking schemes are shady then your web page is probably not of much value. Google particularly warns about the negative impact this can have on your web page's performance.

About the competitor linking stuff for you, I hear lots of complaints like this but they are unfounded. I'm pretty much certain that the search engine can determine this type of credibility sabotaging activity fairly easily. However, if you are checking your backlinks and you think a competitor is doing something underhanded, the perpertrator is pretty easy to track down; send them a nasty email.

[omidiu]

Oh no! Don't tell me you fell for one of those "I'll list you in 65,000 directories of PR1s to PR567s web sites, all over the Internet, in only the most respected Google loving places. All this and more for the low low LOW LOW price of .012 cents each."

i submitted manually, and not to so many. probably several hundreds

[omidiu]

Google does not penalize if you submit your web site to various shady directories. If that was a case then your competitor would do this instead for you. What you need is good quality links and improvement of the existing web site content.

yes, but when a competitor want to do this, it can't put backlinks to those directories, like a did :)
i will cut all backlinks

[Njegos]

Again. Poor backlinks can't hurt your rankings. It can only make you waste your precious time that you can use on improving the surfing experience of your visitors.

[canadafred]

Again. Poor backlinks can't hurt your rankings. It can only make you waste your precious time that you can use on improving the surfing experience of your visitors.

Google: "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links." Google's Quality Content Guidelines

[bobchrist]

There could be multiple reason it disappearing from search results, try out to find the issue through the diagnostic area from google webmaster tools and try out to fix.

[omidiu]

There could be multiple reason it disappearing from search results, try out to find the issue through the diagnostic area from google webmaster tools and try out to fix.

no problems found on google webmaster tools

[diybear]

You might also want to check your crawl rate on the webmaster tools if its dropping start adding some new content, Stagnant sites = bad optimization.

Also check out the google webmaster guideline

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

their not written in stone but does give you a good indication as to what google expects from you

[MktgRob]

If the original poster of this thread did not use one of those crappy sites that Fred referenced in his first reply, could this be a new variation on the Google Dance? Just thinking out loud.

[chandi786]

Did you try to put up some poor links on your website? I guess, that can decrease your ranking or google could penalized you for that otherwise directory submission can't hurt you ranking at all. Share your website, may be anyone of us could help you.

[Allison2009]

If you don't find any problem in the Google Webmasters, the problem is not due to the link posted by you. Explore other areas. One other thing is that Directory listing may not be as useful as you think.

[omidiu]

Did you try to put up some poor links on your website? I guess, that can decrease your ranking or google could penalized you for that otherwise directory submission can't hurt you ranking at all. Share your website, may be anyone of us could help you.

http://www.forajeputuri-apa.ro

[Flower]

Directory submission is not the reason for penalizing the website by Google. Possibility of bad linking, duplicate content, keyword spamming etc.