real issue with 10 year old site and relaunch

[roseau]

Hello All

I have spent two straight weeks studying and reading trying to sort this problem out and possibly find some answers. I have failed in concluding anything intelligent. I am hoping others here may shed some light on this.

I own a wedding site which is 10 years old. I have owned it from the beginning and have always had excellent search engine traffic. My specific keyword is quite known (popularly searched term) and my domain is the keyword.

I had hundreds of websites add my link to their site over the years and I had about 1000 indexed pages. My site has been number one in many search engine listings for a number of years. The site flucuated btw PR 5-7

I then had serious problems with the company that was managing my server. The site was down for about a week and then due to an illness, I was unable to resolve the server issue immediately. I was forced to park the domain so I could at least earn a bit of revenue until I could get back to the server and the website. The domain ended up being parked for about 9 months.

I relaunched it about 3 weeks ago. The first google crawl took about 3-4 days then after that google literally comes about every other day. The problem is:

Nothing is happening - no pages are being reindexed. Even the home page has the description from the parked page. It has not yet updated even that.

I had at the same time a joke site which was only about 1 year old and it was parked like my wedding site. This site however within 2 days of relaunching had all its pages reindexed - hundreds of them. Everything seems back to normal except my original PR - presently it still sits at 0 and I can't seem to get my positions for my keywords.

So I am utterly behooved by what is going on - how did the joke site get most everything back - although the NEW content is NOT being indexed.

What is happening with my wedding site - is this site doomed after all these years of work??? When will I notice some action??

What do I need to understand here and what do I need to do?

I am kind of upset by the wedding site bc I was offered a substantial amt of money to sell the domain but chose not to bc I always earned more with the affiliate programs. Now I am wondering if I made the right choice based on the fact that my site is sitting in limbo and earning very little.

Any comments or observations would be highly useful to me -

Thanks for taking the time to read this very long post ~!

[s2kinteg916]

you have to sit and wait... it takes time to get ur rankings back... witth the relaunch is it all new content ?

[Chris]

Well, it was a very poor decision to park the domain like that. It sounds like you would have been better off hiring someone, anyone, to make the necessary changes to get things moving. A pr 7 wedding site had to have been earning some good money.

Parked domains can look like spam, they can also look like sold domains. Google has an issue both and can even zero out all of a site's established incoming links if it appears to be sold, and it can penalize or ban such a site if it looks like spam.

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/google-ban/

Have you read that article?

I recommend joining Google Sitemaps and after setting it up on your site submit a reinclusion request to Google, explain about what happened and your illness, and see what they say.

[s2kinteg916]

i actually picked up an expiring domain come to think of it ... and had the same problem. Yahoo wil probally still give you your old traffic so not everything is lost. With google barely got any visitors for almost 1 year.... Even after doing the reinclusion request... i just couldnt ranked even though i had really good backlinks

[Cutter]

Wow thats bad, sounds like a site easily worth six figures from whats described.

[roseau]

Thx very much for the comments.

I am working through all the points in your article aspen and hopefully after completing all the recommendations, something might happen.

In answer to the new content question, I am really at this point trying to get the original content indexed again.

I did check the google toolbar today for PR and it was at 3 so I don't know if that means I am getting anywhere or not. I have seen other people's parked domains with higher PR.

But I will plug along. I have some encouragement from your suggestions aspen so I will work thorugh this.

thx again

[s2kinteg916]

I have a theory that google still lets u have your existing pr but treats your website as if it was new on the block.... so your existing targetting links weight alot of weight dont pass on and you get a fresh start.

[AmbulanceBlues]

So I am utterly behooved by what is going on - how did the joke site get most everything back - although the NEW content is NOT being indexed.


be‧hoove  /bɪˈhuv/
–verb (used with object)
1. to be necessary or proper for, as for moral or ethical considerations; be incumbent on: It behooves the court to weigh evidence impartially.
2. to be worthwhile to, as for personal profit or advantage: It would behoove you to be nicer to those who could help you.
–verb (used without object)
3. Archaic. to be needful, proper, or due: Perseverance is a quality that behooves in a scholar.
[Origin: bef. 900; ME behoven, OE behōfian to need (behōf behoof + -ian inf. suffix)]

Not trying to be a jerk. When I read the original post, I stopped for a minute to wonder what exactly he was behooved to do (i.e. the solution to his problem). :)

This is one of those lessons I'm glad I learned before I get too invested in website publishing. I can't imagine how much time, money and effort perusing these forums will save me in the future.