My apologies if this is posted in the incorrect thread. This site was ranking pretty well up until 2 days ago and it seems to have fallen off the map. They still have a good index count however. A few words they used to have first page rankings for were "sphere candles" and "unique candle favors".

http://www.candlesdirectory.net

They have been online for almost 6 months now. The developers are saying they have not made any content updates other than inventory stock counts for over 2 months.

Does anyone know of anything that may have caused this? Did Google execute an update? :confused:

Not making any updates for 6 months could be your problem. Search engines like content that is constantly updated.

Its happened to my site too and a few others have also complained about it. As of today its climbing back slowly to its original position. I think its just a matter of time.

I belive you should reduce your internal linking since what I've heard that Google has made som changes about this. There is a looong thread at webmasterworld about this subject. http:// www .webmasterworld.com/google/3215939.htm

Remove/reduce your internal linking at the bottom and if posible get some high quality back links and stay away from low quality links for a while.

totus, the little section on top is a very worthy cause, but it's the prime real estate on the homepage that tells what the site is about - humans and crawlers. If you feel you need to keep that on the page, move it out of the way and write some relevant text to replace the top of the main front page section.

The side navigation is quite enough (maybe too much until there's more PR and IBL strength for the site), so to be very blunt, ditch the bottom navigation*, it isn't necessary, won't help, and could hurt.

The BBB and authorize.net sure don't belong there, and neither does that off-topic little banner. Move those to the bottom and put the above the fold part of that homepage to good use for SEO and visitors.

* spammy looking anchor text keyword dump

totus, the little section on top is a very worthy cause, but it's the prime real estate on the homepage that tells what the site is about - humans and crawlers. If you feel you need to keep that on the page, move it out of the way and write some relevant text to replace the top of the main front page section.

The side navigation is quite enough (maybe too much until there's more PR and IBL strength for the site), so to be very blunt, ditch the bottom navigation*, it isn't necessary, won't help, and could hurt.

The BBB and authorize.net sure don't belong there, and neither does that off-topic little banner. Move those to the bottom and put the above the fold part of that homepage to good use for SEO and visitors.

About the "little section on top is a very worthy cause". Whats wrong with it? Are you talking about the area the block that contains the company logo etc...

* spammy looking anchor text keyword dump


Okay, I definately see what you guys are talking about with the spammy looking footer. I will remove that asap. About the BBB, Auth, HackerSafe and off-topic banner. I will try moving those to the footer. However, HackerSafe is actually telling people to put as close to the top left corner as possible stating that its your best chance in improving sales. A bunch of bull if you ask me. The Hackersafe object is javascript, is this an issue with SEs?

Thank for all your advice Marcia, Xcon, beu and others... its greatly appreciated.

-totus