PressureWashing.net Update

Cullen Adams

Cullen Adams

New member
Ive been a bit quiet on here of late, here's why...

On the 16th of March 2014 Google took a manual action against pressurewashing.net, saying that they had detected that some of the pages may be using techniques that were outside their Webmaster Guidelines.

Immediately a reconsideration request was submitted to Google after deleting some suspect pages. 3 days later Google notified me that the reconsideration was unsuccessful, and they were still deeming the website to be in breach of their quality guidelines.

On the 23rd of May 2014 (Saturday) after making some more substantial changes to the website over the past couple of months, Google revoked the manual action that they took. They stated rankings may not improve immediately and may take awhile to reflect in their search engines, however the good news was that we are no longer in the dreaded sand box.

Some pressurewashing.net members were seemingly instantly back on the first page for various searches in Google, whilst other members I hope and am confident will not be too far behind, as I see more and more members over the past 48 hours climb page up the rankings.

I would like to thank all of the members who have remained faithful, granted it has been a difficult period and I would be lying if I said I wasn't losing a bit of faith myself. However I knew I had come too far to lie down, and Saturday was just reward for refusing to give up!

Onwards and upwards :)
 
Guy Blackmon said:
Cullen thanks for the update.....Question, would this action have had an effect on our personal websites? I noticed a dramatic drop in ranking of our official site around this same time.
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I think so Guy. Our site is dropping as well. I think it's that 3rd party working for google that's responsible for it.
They're trying to make it a "Pay to Play" type situation. Organic results will eventually be on the back burn. At least that's what I'm gathering from it.
 
My personal site actually went up this year, while cullen's disappeared.
Cullen's is back up #3 organic for me now though
 
Cullen Adams said:
Ive been a bit quiet on here of late, here's why...

On the 16th of March 2014 Google took a manual action against pressurewashing.net, saying that they had detected that some of the pages may be using techniques that were outside their Webmaster Guidelines.

Immediately a reconsideration request was submitted to Google after deleting some suspect pages. 3 days later Google notified me that the reconsideration was unsuccessful, and they were still deeming the website to be in breach of their quality guidelines.

On the 23rd of May 2014 (Saturday) after making some more substantial changes to the website over the past couple of months, Google revoked the manual action that they took. They stated rankings may not improve immediately and may take awhile to reflect in their search engines, however the good news was that we are no longer in the dreaded sand box.

Some pressurewashing.net members were seemingly instantly back on the first page for various searches in Google, whilst other members I hope and am confident will not be too far behind, as I see more and more members over the past 48 hours climb page up the rankings.

I would like to thank all of the members who have remained faithful, granted it has been a difficult period and I would be lying if I said I wasn't losing a bit of faith myself. However I knew I had come too far to lie down, and Saturday was just reward for refusing to give up!

Onwards and upwards :)
Click to expand...
What sort of thing did you have on your site to incur the wrath of Google? Strikes me that it could be a mistake we could all make and not be fully aware of where we went wrong. Are you at liberty to share some of the things that bought this about for you.
You didn’t have nude washers on you gallery did you ?????? LOL
 
john neilson said:
Why wouldn't they want PPC over organic? Is not PPC more profitable?
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More profitable? That is really hard to answer, as you know organic can be pretty unpredictable unlike PPC. That is PPC's advantage its predictability. If I was looking for Raw Organic Honey (as I was this morning) or a product of any type, it wouldnt matter to me if I choose a website from the organic results or a paid listing. However for a service, I would be much more inclined to opt for an organic listing. Perhaps both have their place, 2 listings are better than 1.
 
WASH-IT H.B. said:
What sort of thing did you have on your site to incur the wrath of Google? Strikes me that it could be a mistake we could all make and not be fully aware of where we went wrong. Are you at liberty to share some of the things that bought this about for you.
You didn’t have nude washers on you gallery did you ?????? LOL
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No nude washers im aware of :)

The problem came down to having too many pages of low quality. I deleted and merged hundreds of pages. I made some dramatic changes over the past couple of months, as I really thought I had to in order to be in with a chance to have the manual action revoked. In hindsight, im not sure if all of those changes were necessary, so I can only speculate on exactly the reasons Google had.

I believe it comes down to your site having a quality score and if your site quality drops below a certain score, Google will take action. I had a lot of pages with thin content, whereby the only value they offered were probably admittingly an SEO value. This is the sort of situation Google will take action on. So to avoid it just ensure your site and all of its pages offer value and deserve to be indexed in the search engines.
 
"Red" said:
Anyone aware that Google updated its 'Panda' 4.0 that caused some sites to lose their rankings? This may have been the culprit. Just sayin'.
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Right we lost a few spots solely due to this... nothing major like a penalty .. Will get those spots back will just take some time/
 
"Red" said:
Anyone aware that Google updated its 'Panda' 4.0 that caused some sites to lose their rankings? This may have been the culprit. Just sayin'.
Click to expand...
Was definitely a manual action which affected pressurewashing.net Red.

Not to say Panda 4.0 has not caused any changes since, but was not the culprit which saw all of our pages relegated down to page 5 and beyond.
 
socalkol said:
Cullen, Can I ask what your best ranking sites for the actual competitive large markets?
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Most of the members are on the first page in Google. Just about all of the members are number 1 in Bing.
Some of the larger/more competitive cities that are on the first page of Google include:
Miami
Jacksonville
Orlando
West Palm Beach
Philadelphia
New York City (NYC)
Atlanta
Portland
San Francisco

There are numerous other smaller cities that are ranking first page or number 1 in Google, but those listed above are the largest cities.

There are a few new members who may need a little bit more time and a few larger cities that have slipped from page 1 in recent times such as:

San Diego
Los Angeles
Nashville
Pittsburgh
Virginia Beach
Connecticut
Long Island
St Louis
Minneapolis
Richmond

SEO is a constant battle. I have achieved all of the rankings using no external link building services or automated software or anything that is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

I want to start building some quality links, especially some of the larger more competitive markets. but to be honest I charge so little for my service, Its been kind of difficult to budget for it over the past 2 years, during the establishment phase. Members would pay up to 10 times what I charge to either run an Adwords Campaign or pay a traditional SEO service.

Constant link building I dont think is either required, particularly for sub domains on www.pressurewashing.net or a good strategy.

However, I do need to focus more on some quality links, particularly for the larger, more competitive markets in order to maintain or re-cement top rankings.
 
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