This sucks big time.  A 2 year old Halloween site of mine got penalized by the big G last August 29. From page 1, it is now on page nowhere to be found. All of my keywords dropped like dead flies.

I thought at first it is the Google dance but it has been more than 2 weeks now and my keywords have yet to come out of the purgatory they are in now. It is really quite depressing especially since Halloween is just around the corner and this site has really been converting well. It has shaken my belief in the viability of an internet marketing business relying on search engine traffic alone.

So what could have triggered the penalty? Well, at the time, I was doing some backlinking using Senuke X. But I was not nuking the site. I was creating links slowly (around 10 a day). As to my content, most of them are unique. There are probably just 3 articles (out of 30) that are not unique. I have since rewritten those 3 articles and added more unique pages but still nothing happened.

I really worked hard on that site so I tried researching on how to get it out of the sandbox (if that is really what happened). I created new unique content. I stopped doing backlinks for several days (as suggested by some). I then started doing backlinks again (as suggested by others). I bought a WSO on how to remove your site from the sandbox and followed Mark Dulisse’s tips like changing meta-title, description, etc. I removed analytics from it. The only thing I haven’t done is to move that site to a new server (which I am still trying to figure out how).

I am tired and dejected of trying to figure out how to resurrect that site. Maybe this is really just Google dance since my site is still being indexed and cached by Google. On the other hand, I’ve never experienced Google dance on all pages at the same time for one site. I’ve been to so many forums and experiences vary, some got back after 2 months, others are still in the sandbox after 2 years.

I am seriously rethinking my business model. Should I continue doing affiliate marketing which I love or should I explore other venues of earning money online? I am loathe to get out of my comfort zone but with the way Google is cracking down on many sites, I think it is time to explore other opportunities.

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