Google search listing drop. Any ideas??

[pank]

For the life of me I really don't get this...

I'd say about a year ago I was listed on the front page (#1 in some cases) for the most common Google search terms for my site. Now I've dropped to the second page for "vbulletin skins" and phpBB skins and IPB skins are totally off the map for the main .com site.

What kills me is that MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc. still list me very very highly.

Yahoo:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=vbulletin+skins
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=ipb+skins
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=phpbb+skins

MSN:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=vbulletin+skins
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=ipb+skins
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=phpbb+skins

And the list goes on. I've had to set up adwords just to show up on the side...
Really, I don't get it. I don't see anything that violates their webmaster guidelines. And I have more traffic than the top sites listed, plus I have thousands of linkbacks from the skins people are using (they all contain a text link (eXtremepixels.com) going back to the main page of my site.. I'm at a loss.

I've signed up for Google webmaster tools, added a sitemap and robots.txt.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I don't understand how I dropped from number one or nearly number one to nearly the bottom of the second page or non-existent.

[Dean C]

Considering your site, post ravio/corey wojen was the first to really tap into the vBskins market, and you are well-established that should serve you well in google's rankings. However, the only thing that would really influence that is if those people who rank above you have more organic links to their content than you do. Google is not stupid, and all the footer links you have back to your site within your skins are seen as an advertisement, rather than a genuine link back to the content. That may be what's happening.

[birdie]

plus I have thousands of linkbacks from the skins people are using (they all contain a text link (eXtremepixels.com) going back to the main page of my site..

Google have probably devalued the the benefit you were getting from those links. They appeared to do the same with all the wordpress templates. Its not a penalty, it just the links do not pass the juice they used to in the past and this is reflected in your rankings.

[pank]

Considering your site, post ravio/corey wojen was the first to really tap into the vBskins market, and you are well-established that should serve you well in google's rankings. However, the only thing that would really influence that is if those people who rank above you have more organic links to their content than you do. Google is not stupid, and all the footer links you have back to your site within your skins are seen as an advertisement, rather than a genuine link back to the content. That may be what's happening.

Thanks soooo much you guys. I appreciate the time you took to help out and give advice.

Regarding the footer links... I added those well after the drop in an attempt to help. However just in case I have removed them again.

Forgive me but can you elaborate on "organic links"? I'm sorry but you lost me there.

Thanks Dean!

Google have probably devalued the the benefit you were getting from those links. They appeared to do the same with all the wordpress templates. Its not a penalty, it just the links do not pass the juice they used to in the past and this is reflected in your rankings.

I'd agree but the other sites that jumped ahead of me use the same type of links in their skins??
Thanks birdie

[birdie]

I'd agree but the other sites that jumped ahead of me use the same type of links in their skins??
Thanks birdie

They may have more "natural" links?

[Dean C]

Organic links are ones that occur naturally. An example would be where I just linked "organic links" back to the wikipedia entry on search engine optimization, which makes sense. The anchor text tends to always have some relevence to where it's linking to. A common accessibility mistake which also applies to SEO too, is where someone says "Click here to go to our help page". They only add an anchor on the here text, so a search engine comes along and matches the keyword "help" against your help page. Not very useful is it? So by hyperlinking the whole sentence you improve the organicness of the link

[harrysmith]

IMO, you should use all your keywords as anchor text for all your backlinks.
You should try to use "vbulletin skins", "phpBB skins" and "IPB skins" as your anchor text for all of your backlinks. make sure you have quality backlinks from all relevant sources.

[pank]

Thanks for the tips

I'm afraid I may just be in Google dance hell...
Yesterday I was listed 8th and today I'm back to 17th. I bounce back up to the front page and then drop the next day.

The other sites seem to use the same back link technique that I do but I'll give that whirl next time I update the skins.

Thanks again.

[pank]

Alright, once again I don't get this... I've modified my keywords, added H1 tags, etc...

Right now I'm 8th on the front page (this happens nearly every day). Then what happens anywhere from 3 hours to the next day I get buried to the 2nd or 3rd page.

It seems my main search http://www.google.com/search?q=vbulletin+skins climbs and keeps climbing then drops within 24 hours (then goes back up again).

Am I being punished? Or just still stuck in the Google dance hell??

[pank]

Jeez, in the time I took to write the above post I dropped from the first page to the third page. Nutz!!

[Dean C]

If you have a google account, te links you visit regularly (such as your own site) get a higher weighting in the results, which could be confusing you. There's far more to SEO than changing those h1 tags etc. It can take weeks to see a major shift in rankings as a result of page tweaking, but as I said months ago it may be those above you have more "valuable" links to them.