Google India Rankings Drop Suddenly

[virtualhandshake]

Keyword: indian wedding planner

page:www.hukamievent.com/indian-wedding-planner.php

It didn't drop, it just disappeared. No, I didn't do anything to be penalized at all and I am still in there index. I know this question has been asked many times here, while I apply all the suggestions given to other people with similar problem, here's a quick question I need to ask, I made following changes recently, could either of these be the reason for ranking decline?

• In google webmasters' tools, I had changed geographic target from - india, to- nothing, few weeks ago. could this be the reason.
• Around 2 weeks ago I paid someone to submit articles to 500 article directories, same article spun many times, he did the job in around 6 days and got back to me with a list of around 150 submissions with as many backlinks, all with same anchor text, "indian wedding planner", one of my targeted keywords. Before the submissions I was on page 9, yes that was nine, and just after the submission I was at page 2 position 1, within a matter few days.
• I saw my the targeted page improve in ranking and jump on to page one position 10, for a short while, before it disappeared. is this something they call "google dance"?
• My website is fluctuating on google SERP for many other keywords too, in most cases, my ranking fell.

P.S.:With the same keyword,"indian wedding planner" my rankings in google US improved, I am on position 6 page 1.

please enlighten fellow mozzers!

[FrontlineMobility]

Greetings Champion!

Fear not, you showed up to me on Page 8, for Google India.

Possibly you could have taken a Panda update hit. Practice patience and see what happens over the next few weeks and see if your ranking decreases or increases. Either that or the changes you made affected your rankings and Google moved you down.

With both assumptions you need to wait and see what exactly happens. If you continue to dance Google is trying to find a place for you, if you sit at that spot, then you need to figure out what brought you down and change it.

Good luck on your quest for page one!

Justin Smith

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Amit,

Out of curiosity, if your page is targeting Indian wedding planning, why did you change the geographic target from India to nothing?

I'm going to sidestep the article submission and spun content for the moment and let someone else chime in on that.

I noticed that this IP is in Google with apparently the same page http://64.37.52.67/indian-wedding-planner.php. Is that you, or someone copying your site?

[KeriMorgret]

You've got a bunch of low-quality links, even before these additional 150 links from two weeks ago. The Facebook likes and shares seem a bit off. SEOmoz has a Facebook page for our fans with almost 27,000 fans, yet your page has over 40,000 likes and a couple of thousand shares.

The top inlinks (by page authority) that I'm seeing are from sites that are totally not related to weddings, and many of them are full of comment spam and have links that are no followed. You really don't have a strong link profile that shows to Google that people who are authorities about weddings, wedding planning, venues, event planning, etc. find value in your site.

I'd stop the spun article submission and the comment dropping, and spend your time on money in making sure that you have content that is valuable, then share that content with people in a related industry.

[virtualhandshake]

Thanks Justin,

I will try and keep more patience. I almost asked how long does google dance but I happened to look at your comment above and realized you already answered that..

"See what happens over the next few weeks and see if your ranking decreases or increases."

I don't think the changes I made, "set target" and "article submission", would bring me down 7 pages down, I guess it's Panda.

So,as you advised, I am waiting and watching.

[virtualhandshake]

Hi Keri,

I changed the geographic target because this website provides free content to help Indian people plan their wedding along with providing information about Indian wedding customs.There are many Indians in countries like US, Canada etc. who would love this content. There are many Non-resident Indians who like to organize there wedding in India.

As for, The IP in question, I had a chat with the hosting company technical support and they said,this IP is that of a dedicated server for some other site that my client owns.And the URL is a temporary URL. I didn't understand it completely but at least I am sure no one is copying me.

By the way, what exactly do you see? can you take a screen capture? when I open that URL it gives me a 404.

And hey, thanks a ton for pointing out.

[virtualhandshake]

I know Keri, but by the time this gentleman came to me for SEO, he already had those links. Besides, he hired a few people, some data entry guys with not even a basic understanding of SEO, who would drop blog comments left, right and center.

AND they would open random profiles on facebook and post on their wall. Each guy would post on 1000 walls dail, yes, they have a daily target; recently facebook restricted them in many ways.

I have been telling him against doing it but he wouldn't budge an inch. His argument is, people are "liking" his site, they at least come to his website once which is giving a boost to his Alexa ranking..and these people who apparently "like" the website are friends of people whose wall he is posting(read spamming) on.

Yes, I told him these people are not targeted visitors, besides, in the long run search engines too will raise their eyebrows.

I have been trying hard to convince him to direct those efforts in the right way. Now, I will show him this post, hope it will help.

Keri, I also belong to "moz school of thought" when it comes to all things SEO, and I am working hard on some really great quality content, would you (or anyone reading this) be so kind to suggest me some people/websites who would love to link to/ share this content. Or any ideas on how I can find such authoritative sources in "wedding planning" niche? Any blog where I can guest post?

Thanks for your time.