I'm new to all this SEO stuff, and don't understand alot of it.

Recently i got some help, and managed to take my site to the number 1 spot upon searching my name (mark goodyear), which was my first goal.

It has been moving about within the top 4 for the past few days, and top last night, but Ive just looked now, and my website isn't even in the first 10 pages.

How have i gone from number 1 to not even in the first 10 pages within 10 hours?

I don't think i have spammed.

My link is in my signature on only 3 forums, which have a great relevance to what my site is about and then i've only posted my website for critique, which i wouldn't class as spam.

"site:markgoodyear.co.uk" brings up my page, so it's still on Google somewhere, but slipped down the ranks by well over 100.

This is hard to answer because I am not sure what you did to get your post in the top 1.

It sounds like it quickly shot up and then quickly fell back down. If that is the case, it was probably the Google honeymoon period. Sometimes content, especially new content can shoot up to the top of the search results for a little while and then plunge back down.

I have a couple of theories as to why this happens. First, Google seems to give a strong boost to things posted in the past few days. They may do this because pages might be news or current events related and they want the most recent posts to be boosted up. Second, I suspect that Google has a probing type algorithm, where they will occasionally boost a page that scores low up in ranking to see if a lot of people will click it. If a lot of people click it, then it stays high, otherwise, it falls back down.

Also, if you blog pinged your website into the Google index, then it is pretty common for your pages to quickly show up in the index, stay in there for 2-3 days with elevated rankings, disappear totally from the index for a few days to a week, and then reappear in the index at a lower ranking.

If you resorted to measures that Google considers cheating, then they may have thrown you into a box. That would be bad.

However, based on your description, of a quick rise and then quick fall, it sounds like a honeymoon period effect.

Here is some stuff I would recommend based on looking at your site and the Google results that I got by searching your desired key words “Mark Goodyear”.

I see that you have a LinkedIn profile. You have two links to your web site with text of My Website and My Portfolio. Get rid of one of those links, you don’t need two, and change the text of the remaining link to your desired keywords, in this case Mark Goodyear. You can do this by selecting other in the type of link on LinkedIn and then entering the text you want. Do that sort of thing for other profiles that allow it. Create a Google Profile and add a link in it to your website with your keywords as the text.

I would also recommend adding more pages to your website. Google tends to like multipage sites more than single page ones. Have links on your main page that lead directly or indirectly to your other pages. On all of your other pages, have links that point to your site root using your keywords as the anchor text for them. You can get some link juice from your own sites pages and the link text affects keyword rankings.

Trent Guidry

Originally Posted by mark165

I don't think i have spammed.

My link is in my signature on only 3 forums, which have a great relevance to what my site is about and then i've only posted my website for critique, which i wouldn't class as spam.

"site:markgoodyear.co.uk" brings up my page, so it's still on Google somewhere, but slipped down the ranks by well over 100.

There can be lots of reason like number of backlinks means may be you have lost some backlinks.

May be some one report your site too google.

May be your competitor work well than you.

According to me you know better than us about your problem, see carefully all things.

Thanks

Thank you for that Trent F Guidry.

I've done nothin over the last few days, and my site is now appearing at the number 1 spot for me, and on the other computer in the house, number 2.

I don't understand why i went to number 1, disappeared, then came back as number 1?

Is there any explanations for this?

I havent used any methods that are cheating. Unless google regards a hidden H1 tag behind an image cheating, without realising that the image is displaying the exact same words as the H1 tags. My reasons for this was to be able to use photoshop to use a custom font, adjust it how i want it. Then, so search engines can still read it, place the exact sentence, word for word, in a H1 tag behind it.

I may look into extending from a single page to a multipage site in the future if that would help rank higher better.

A few questions.

How new is the site?
What optimization did you do to get to #1
Do you only see your page at #1 when you search from one of your computers and that same page is nowhere to be seen when you search on someone else's computer?

I have a feeling Trent is right about the honeymoon effect, but there really could be a lot of reasons for what you observed. If you don't mind sharing more details, as much as you can.

The hidden h1 could be a problem. Search engines may see hidden elements as an attempt to manipulate rankings, however I that's not an absolute as to your problem. Lots of people have text behind an image of their logo for example. It likely isn't helping you at all though, so you may want to remove it and see if that improves things. Just place the text in the alt attribute on the image instead of hiding it behind the image.

I've had my domain for a good few months, but how my site looks now was finished about 2 weeks ago.

As for optimisation, i just made sure every image had the correct keyword inside, made a 301 redirect from markgoodyear.co.uk to www.markgoodyear.co.uk as i was told some search engines class them as two separate sites. Also my index file is php, to stop google indexing that, if you directly go to markgoodyear.co.uk/index.php it returns a 404 header, yet it is still displayed fine when you go to the "proper" url, making search engines index my actual url, rather than my url and /index.php.

I added a few h# tags on important things, and my site is in my signature on just two dofollow enabled forums that relate to my site . Thats all i've done really.

I see my page at number one, the other PC in the house see's it at number two. When i originaly saw mysite at number one, the other PC was the same, it varied between 1 - 4 usually, then when i noticed it disapeard from my computer, i checked the other computer, and it wasn't there either, so it wasn't a case of only me seeing it. If anyone else wants to try and post their results, that could help see if i'm actually up there too.

If it was the honeymoon effect, how come i've been promoted back to where i was before just a few days after?

If it's not listed on the first 10pages, then you might find it far more than rank 120...
It could have been caused by the normal fluctuation on search engines...

Hmm well its showing as the 2nd result on google now !

Woc

I know yeah, i don't understand why or how it came back, but it has, and fingers crossed it doesn't disappear again. It's first on my searches in firefox and safari, 2nd in chrome beta for mac, and 5th when i search in omniweb, camino, opera, flock and stainless (quite a browser collection heh!) Top 5 of google is good enough for now, i see myself first on yahoo too, and bing, well that's just slow to index.

i think i'm going to extend to a multi-page site for better rankings.

Try to check your robot.txt.. Robot.txt helps your site get crawled by google and other search engines..

i notice that you said you have not do much seo for your page just within your links on forum. which is not enough for you to keep your position on #1. so if you want to get your rank back on #1 you should get morebacklinks with anchor text in your links.

Originally Posted by mark165

I'm new to all this SEO stuff, and don't understand alot of it.

Recently i got some help, and managed to take my site to the number 1 spot upon searching my name (mark goodyear), which was my first goal.

It has been moving about within the top 4 for the past few days, and top last night, but Ive just looked now, and my website isn't even in the first 10 pages.

How have i gone from number 1 to not even in the first 10 pages within 10 hours?

I donto thing this will cause by any spam or penalization.. Like this happens to all sites in SERP.. But sure will return within few weeks....May be this problem by multiple data centers.. Google taking time to finsh updation in all data centers..

Your site is relatively new. So this sudden drop might happen and it will come back very soon if you did not do any thing wrong.

Originally Posted by larryatwt

Your site is relatively new. So this sudden drop might happen and it will come back very soon if you did not do any thing wrong.

Hi,

There are not guarantee to come back again in previous positions because you dont know why google drop your position.

Check your competitors positions are still same or not, if yes then you should worry about your site and start quality link building again. Dont use any black hat method other wise you could penalize again by google.

Thanks

I am glad I could help.

I am guessing that the reason you appeared and then disappeared was because your site got listed on the Minty Fresh Index.

That index seems to update very fast, but it only keeps things indexed for a few days. These results are merged with the Google search results.

After you got listed on that index, your time limit on it expired before you got listed on the main index through the usual crawl.

It is just a guess, but that is the best explanation that I can think of as to why that happened.

Trent F Guidry

well maybe because google is updating I think that's just my guess.

Add some content on your website and build one way backlinks.

You don't get stable rankings on SERP.. If you want to stay on top then you have to continue building links.. Getting quality of back links will help you get to your desired rankings and have high chances of getting high PR value..

Try to get alot of backlinks and submit ur site into free social bookmarking sites.