Slight Drop after Minor Link Building

[GardenGamer]

Hi,

Last week I build around 10-15 high quality related links to my trampoline pads website which was ranking number 2 for "trampoline pads" and number 1 for "trampoline pad". After building the links this week it has dropped in the serps to around number 5-6 for both. Is this an effect of the link building and will it bounce back in? the url is http://www.trampolinepad.co.uk/.

Kind Regards,
Simon

[RyanKent]

I see your site as #7 for "trampoline pads" and #4 for "trampoline pad" in Google.co.uk SERPs.

Google can recognize your new links very quickly. The exact time is dependent upon the popularity of the site and pages from which you acquired the links. We wont be able to see the links in OSE for 1-2 months. Is there anything questionable in any way about these new links which could have drawn a penalty? Are any of these reciprocal links?

Your hope page seems to be executing many of the basics of on-page SEO quite well. Looking at your older links it appears all the followed links use the identical anchor text. I would recommend varying the text a bit otherwise it appears quite unnatural.

Is this an effect of the link building and will it bounce back in?

Rankings do not drop after link building unless you did something to incur a penalty. I would not expect your site to bounce back unless you resolve an issue for which you were penalized.

At a quick glance, you are #4 for "trampoline pad" and the three results ahead of you are ebay's two listings and another site with a trampoline page. All the sites have a higher DA then your site, and the PA of the #1 site is significantly higher then yours. The rankings don't seem unreasonable at all.

[GardenGamer]

I see, the links were actually quite good they were all from trampoline clubs and ymnastics clubs and with varrying anchor text from using the word "trampoline pads" to "trampoline padding" or just with the url. I understand that the other sites may be resonable to rank above me however I am simply wondering why I may of dropped.

[RyanKent]

There is no apparent reason for the drop. Based on the information you shared the only reasonable explanation is Google made a change to their algorithm which benefited the other sites, or acted to your disadvantage. Another less likely possibility is two or more sites made SEO improvements to their sites.

I can only suggest you continue building links and perform normal SEO improvements for your site.

[GardenGamer]

Hi Ryan thanks for the help, one of the other websites "gardengames" is actually owned by us as well as hasnt been touched in quite a while. I recently added some internal links to the homepage, would this of effected it anyway if it was not the links? If not do you know of any alhorithm changes in the past week?

[GardenGamer]

Hi Ryan thanks for the help, one of the other websites "gardengames" is actually owned by us as well as hasnt been touched in quite a while. I recently added some internal links to the homepage, would this of effected it anyway if it was not the links? If not do you know of any alhorithm changes in the past week?

[PaulRogers]

What are the URL's of the links? Are they all keyword-rich anchor text links? Do they all go to the same page? Are there any signs that the links could have been paid/sponsored?

I would say that 10-15 links is a lot to get in one week, especially if they're all really high quality and you weren't really building many links prior to this.

It may look like you have gone and built a large number of links (that are all similar) in a short period of time in order to boost rankings quickly.

Paul

[GardenGamer]

Hi Paul, I cant find the urls as I haven't saved them however they were all the homepage and using the websitse url or varying anchor text. I don't think they look paid/sponsored as it would be on there links page or on the websites footer. It could defiantly look suspicious as I have not built links to the website for a while. Simon

[RyanKent]

The only thing internal site links can realistically do is adjust how PR flows within your own site. If you wanted to stretch for a corner case, you could have an island page or deep page that was not indexed or seen previously, but since you created a link to that page then it is seen. If that page had issues with it's content or links, then a penalty could be involved.

Based on your replies and the small amount of ranking drop, I really don't think a penalty is involved. The maximum it would be is a discounting of links.

If not do you know of any alhorithm changes in the past week?

With around 500 algorithm changes each year, there seem to be changes every week. I am not aware of any major changes but minor ones happen all the time.