Too Much SEO?

[amplify]

Long time member with DNF, but not a regular poster here—I do my share of browsing around for names though.

I decided to post this here rather than other SEO specific forums because I know I won’t get replies peddling eBooks or PM’s soliciting services.

My question: Too much SEO?

Let me start off by saying that I run a vBulletin forum with CMS. I started it in December (but went live in January with promoting) and have been regularly doing SEO on it since then.

This is what I have done (admins please edit out if it’s against rules to name specific services or move to an appropriate section of the forum/close/delete this thread):

• SEO Nuke ($197/mo) for 3 keywords / $795 (3 month/10 keyword)
• Submit Edge DMOZ listing (not approved/pending)
• Submit Edge Article Prism Service
• Submit Edge Press Release Distribution
• 120+ unique articles socially bookmarked (200+ bookmarks with each having a unique title and description)
• RSS feeds submitted (of both forums and articles)
• Twitter followers (40,000—so that bots can retweet what I tweet)
• Facebook targeted ads with Facebook Connect enabled ($0.25-$1 a click)
• Certified Pro on Alexa ($9.99/mo)

In total, I have invested around $3500 in just SEO/advertising.

I’ve done these services over the course of 4 months and have achieved a Page Rank of 1. The forum was targeted with a specific + forum keyword and ranked high on the first page of Google for several weeks (very competitive niche). In the past two months, continuing the social bookmarking of 1-2 unique articles a day and RSS feed submissions—it’s gone down gradually (to an average of page 4). I have a total of 5800 incoming links (Google Webmaster Tools).

I do not do any blog commenting with my link unless I have some information to add or provide that is useful to the article written and that is probably about 5 comments. I also do not do forum profiles or forum signature links.

I was wondering if Google is penalizing me for getting so many links over a short duration of time, if this is natural and I will regain rankings over time, should do more SEO, continue what I am doing as of now or stop social bookmarking but continue adding articles?

I have heard that the load time of a page affects rankings as well. Should I invest in a vBulletin plugin for caching in order to have faster page load time? I have my own server and it is the only website that drains resources from it, but could this help?

I also know that running a forum, there is a 90:9:1 rule (90 visitors, 9 will register, 1 will be an active participant)—but I am not achieving such success at this point getting new registrations with the lower ranking.

Any tips will be appreciated, but please don’t bombard me with eBooks or affiliate links. I will not reply to any PM’s concerning this matter. Everything should be public to not only help me, but others as well.

Thank you in advance,
Amplify

 

[tetrapak]

Amplify, the methods you were using don't work anymore. SEO Nuke, Article submission, social bookmarking (without real content on social platforms) are all worthless. I would have spent most of that money advertising on related websites. The 5800 incoming links in itself speak nothing. Another website with just 10 links can outrank you, if those are quality natural (or natural looking) links. Google does not penalize you, but it sees nothing else than low quality links, which are easy to buy / gain.
I'm not sure what your niche is, but you should look into advertising on websites related to it. Just in comparison, the $800 for SEO nuke could buy you 3 good links for one year each (you need to make the research and contact website owners). One link I recently bought for $300 brings 10k unique visitors per year. With your numbers it could have been 116k uniques, or 320 uniques per day.

 

[amplify]

@tetrapak - Thank you for the advice. I am going to cancel the $197 subscription (in a month, since it just billed me for May) and try to buy a good link or two with that each month.

Edit: I have to add though that the press releases are do-follow on PR3+ websites (some PR10).

 

[dcristo]

Is SEO Nuke automated software? If so these kinds of links are going to be highly ineffective and could in fact be detrimental to your site. Although most of the time links are devalued some webmasters are actually experiencing penalties when they have sites with spammy backlinks (when your doing automated link building your link profile will look spammy).

When it comes to link building, quality is far superior to quantity. Your case study and many others prove it. If you had close to 6k quality links you'd be dominating the SERPs.

Also, why the heck are you paying to submit to DMOZ? You do realize DMOZ is a volunteer-edited web directory, there is no guarantee you will get accepted. Submit your website and forget about it. Even if you get accepted it's no magic bullet it's just another quality link.

 

[amplify]

SEO Nuke is an automated program, but I subscribe to a service of professionals which use it that creates unique niche related articles, which link to a social bookmark and then to my website.

It appears as if I need to go after quality websites (PR2+) and pay for anchor text do follow links.

As to DMOZ, I understood that from the beginning. However, SubmitEdge submitted it for $50 I believe which made a great sounding description-- one I probably couldn't come up with myself possibly increasing the odds of approval.

 

[dcristo]

I think you mean to say the system creates niche related articles (with your links) which are social bookmarked.

How are these articles created? Is it with spun content? If so the system sounds similar to blog networks such as BMR which have experienced mass deindexing essentially making the links worthless.

Regarding DMOZ, good description or not, it's not going to improve your chances of an editor reviewing your submission.

 

[amplify]

@dcristo - They say they are constantly adapting to Google to get around it-- but I believe one day it may catch up with a sandbox/total de-index. You and tetrapak impacted my decision to cancel that service. As far as DMOZ goes, it's said and done already-- I was "sold" into the fact that they may get a higher approval rate but understand now that it is solely up to the people on the other end (DMOZ) to accept or reject it-- $50 down the drain or possibly a solid link.

 

[dcristo]

@dcristo - They say they are constantly adapting to Google to get around it

This is bullshit marketing hype to get you to sign up to the service.

I am sure BMR which would have had hundreds of clients would have been adapting to google's changes too, but than it got hit for six with massive deindexing and a big FU.

 

[amplify]

Follow up question: Since I don't have a DMOZ listing at the moment, is the $299 worth it for Yahoo! Directory listing (as it can also be rejected with no refund) in order to rank higher?

This is bull**** marketing hype to get you to sign up to the service.

Unfortunately, I believe it now. It was $1600 down the drain. I should be #1 by now for that keyword in 4 months... I'm merely #40 though competing against just ~5 other popular forums in the same niche.

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 PM ----------

I am just going to post articles for a month and tweet them only (no social bookmarks) to see if rankings, visitors and registrations increase.

Any other advice or additions in the meantime will be much appreciated, thanks!

 

[dcristo]

I wouldn't waste money on the Yahoo directory link.

You need some quality links in order to dilute the spammy links. I'd focus on writing exceptional content on your site that would make users want to share it with others in the form of FB likes, G +1s, tweets, e-mails, links, etc.

 

[amplify]

I wouldn't waste money on the Yahoo directory link.

You need some quality links in order to dilute the spammy links. I'd focus on writing exceptional content on your site that would make users want to share it with others in the form of FB likes, G +1s, tweets, e-mails, links, etc.

I have the content, it's just no visitors rarely bookmark them. I have small (16 pixel in height) social bookmark icons. Do you think I should increase the size for visibility?

What about AdiInviter? It is a vBulletin plugin that allows a guest/user to import contacts across almost every social platform and address book of email to send them a message to read an article or sign up. Do you think this may work?

 

[silentg]

1. Don't over optimize your site >
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2012/04/03/googles-seo-over-optimization-penalty/

2. Social sharing buttons: Try using: AddThis.com or ShareThis.com
- Share your content on Pinterest.com, Reddit.com & StumbleUpon.com - You'll have high bounce rate but if users do like your content then they'll keep coming back.

 

[barrysanders]

If you install Google Webmaster on your site, within Webmaster panel it will tell you if you get a penalty for having suspicious incoming links (one of my sites got this for a site I tried quickly bumping up in the SERPS with Fiverr jobs). So Google can definitely detect quick and not well planned link building.

 

[amplify]

1. Don't over optimize your site >
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2012/04/03/googles-seo-over-optimization-penalty/

2. Social sharing buttons: Try using: AddThis.com or ShareThis.com
- Share your content on Pinterest.com, Reddit.com & StumbleUpon.com - You'll have high bounce rate but if users do like your content then they'll keep coming back.

Good article, hopefully I haven't gotten hit already.

I just finished implementing AddThis.com to the site, hopefully that will add to increased visitors.

Thanks for your input!

---------- Post added at 11:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:13 PM ----------

If you install Google Webmaster on your site, within Webmaster panel it will tell you if you get a penalty for having suspicious incoming links (one of my sites got this for a site I tried quickly bumping up in the SERPS with Fiverr jobs). So Google can definitely detect quick and not well planned link building.

Where does it mention this? I ask because every social bookmark was done through Fiverr.

 

[dcristo]

I have the content, it's just no visitors rarely bookmark them. I have small (16 pixel in height) social bookmark icons. Do you think I should increase the size for visibility?

What about AdiInviter? It is a vBulletin plugin that allows a guest/user to import contacts across almost every social platform and address book of email to send them a message to read an article or sign up. Do you think this may work?

Having social bookmarking icons makes it easier to share your content, but it doesn't change the fact you need great content.

 

[tetrapak]

Couldn't agree more. If you have great content it will be shared by one way or another still. Look into your analytics stats and see how much time people spend on your content pages, also how many pages they view per visit. These are good indicators to see how your visitors appreciate your content.