Submitted URL To Google & Was First Page But Now Not Found

[RMcdonald]

Hey guys,

So I recently changed the theme on my entire primary site, and extended a fair few articles.

Once I placed the new version of my site live, I thought it would be best to resubmit the urls to Google for reindexing.

I was first for the keywords at the time and now I am currently not found for them anymore.

I submitted the site yesterday and am a little panicked as to why the site has gone missing?

Any ideas or advice?

Appreciate it

 

[CCarter]

I submitted the site yesterday and am a little panicked as to why the site has gone missing?

Google is re-evaluating the site since it sounds like a drastic change. It can take upto 60 days to gain rankings back or as little as a week. But they’ll gradually come back.

It’s always advised to make major changes during off-season within your industry - cause it can take a lot of time to come back. People panic, 1-2 weeks into it, then they drastically change the theme back - and that then triggers one of Google’s traps to catch people trying to manipulate their website for SEO benefits. That change back will cause even more problems. There are hundred of cases of this happening to SEO and dozens on this forum alone where the person didn’t take the advice to “hold tight” and ended up doing so much damage it took nearly a year to recover.

Hold Tight, you are in for a rollercoaster ride, of SEO rankings and emotional turmoil. The best advice I give is to concentrate on other traffic sources to supplement your traffic and more importantly your time - cause you’ll go mad and anxious looking at your analytics all day waiting for the recovery. Concentrate on creating compelling content your users will love, free tools they can use, and other content like video and such they can consume, and a marketing campaign that’s focused on direct and referring traffic. Pretty soon 60 days will go by and you will have not only recovered your old rankings, but will have additional sources of traffic coming in, not having to rely on Google for your future.

Or you could panic and in 1-3 weeks switch the theme back, and get hit harder than before and spiral into a depression. I’ve clearly given this speech several times... perhaps one too many times.

 

[ryandiscord]

Also, double check that you didn't accidentally put a noindex on any page. do a site:example.com search to see if you dropped from the index or just from ranking.