Well, you probably did nothing wrong but the new algo might have regarded some link building methods as of high quality and some of poor quality. The speed of building links could have been another factor for drop in rankings.

As per our experiments for the last 2 months, these things would work -

1- Relax:

You need to relax first of all. No need to panic if the rankings are dropped all of a sudden and even if it was your only source of income.

Look at the recent methods you applied and try to remove all weak links if you can.

2- Forget mass social bookmarking

Now when you’re already hurt, you can not take risk anymore. Forget social bookmarking to 1000 sites would do any good. It’d rather harm and spam. Target top 20 – 25 bookmarking sites that have got real value. Digg, Reddit, Folkd, Propeller, Mixx, Sphinn, etc. are doing well. Don’t get excited with every new social bookmarking site added to your list. Relyonly upon old and reputed site for now.

3- Come out linkwheel myth

Those are truly spam links until and unless you have maintained these web 2.0 property pages for long. Just create these pages once and update them every week like a blog. Try to make some decent backlinks for them so that they bring some value to your site as well. It’s better to update and maintain your existing pages than creating new page with a spun content on every new site. Vox, livejournal, blogsline, ning, blogspot etc. are great to go.

4- Forum link building

Now, I’m not talking about spam postings and fake sig links. Create your own account at popular forums that allow do-follow sigs and contribute there. This would help you with slow link building and it WILL help you to recover your dropped rankings. Creating your own account may help if you have 1-2 sites but if you have more, you can purchase sig links from active and reputed members of these forums. Please note that these sig links will be helpful only if they are indexed.

5-  Unique Article Marketing – Target Only top 10

If your site is slapped and dropped, it’d be good if you go article marketing with only 2-3 articles per month. Try to get these articles written as good as possible. Submit them only to top 10 directories like ezinearticles, goarticles, Buzzle, ideamarketers etc. Try to rewrite the titles if possible. I will not recommend mass submission or multiple articles for now.

6- Beg, Borrow or Steal Method works always

But here you need to target only super quality stuff to beg, borrow or steal :p A friend in need is a friend indeed Try to get links from friendly sites, niche sites and high PR blogs. You can request them or pay if it is a nominal fee. 4-5 blogrolls a month would help you big time.

7- Clinging To Top portals like Hubpages, Suite101, PromotionWorld, InfoBarrel

If you get even one of your articles published every month on each of these big and happening portals every month, these would kickboost your dropped rankings. Google loves them and Google will spare those who get love from these portals. However, these sites demand and approve only superb quality content. So you’d need to hire a smartass writer.

Other than these steps, try to get some guest posts if possible on reputed blogs around (in your niche). And stay active on forums and search engine discussions. You’ll get lot of tips not to just to recover dropped rankings but to get #1.

See you again soon.

Cheers!

Are cheap search engine optimization companies actually offering value for their money? Are the rankings sustainable or are they just a flash in the pan?

Unfortunately, many people tend to opt for the quick and cheap option. By the time they get burned, their websites are already de-indexed and they often have to start all over again. It becomes increasingly worse if the domains have been around for a long time and a lot of time has been spent building the website.

Most search engine optimization companies offering a quick and cheap way to higher search engine rankings often do it the wrong or unethical way. If you doubt it, when next you find a company that offers that service, contact them and ask them what methods they would be using. You can be sure that they will be evasive and not forthcoming with the necessary information.

On the other hand, genuine and reputable search engine optimization companies will not hesitate to show you what they will be doing to help your website get higher search engine rankings. These white hat companies spend time doing it the right way. And while the results may not be as fast as the cheap, shady options, you can be sure that the website will rise through the ranks naturally. The search engine algorithms have been designed in such a way that websites that quickly rise through the ranks are viewed as suspicious and probably spammy.

The natural and safe methods often work well for webmasters that are willing to wait just a little longer. While this method might be a little pricey –hence the reason many individuals opt for the cheaper and faster method- the benefits in the long term far outweigh the little fee paid. White hat methods play by the rules of the search engines; thus they are safe and produce long lasting results as long they are maintained and updated once in a while.

Higher search engine rankings are possible using the right means and methods. The cheap ways may give you temporary results and this is ok if your target is temporary. But then, why spend time and money on the temporary when you can make the results permanent! Thus giving you the ability to consistently earn more money and build your lists from the website for a long time.

Therefore, it is advisable that you opt for the natural and safe methods of search engine optimization. The benefits will last for a long time and you will make way more than you invested.