Have I been sandboxed?

[emperoryogi]

Question for anybody who's been sandboxed by Google. I've been running a site that was making decent Adsense and Clickbank profits for a few months. And then I updated Wordpress and the entire site went down. I didn't have the backup set correctly so I just did a clean install and re-uploaded all the articles. I was busy at the time so my site was down for about 3 weeks.

Since I reuploaded the content 2 months ago, that site is only appearing in the SERPs for one stupid, random term. It doesn't even appear in the top 1000 when I search for the exact domain phrase (which is keyword1keyword2 + guide so it should be easy to rank for, and I was at number 1 before the site went down).

I've even written unique articles targeting really low volume keywords (less than 1000 hits per month) and they haven't shown up in the SERPs either. Uploading daily fresh content isn't helping either. Basically, nothing I do is bumping up my position in the SERPs.

All the content is unique and top-quality. I have good on-page SEO and my readers stay on the page for a long time. Before the site crash, it was performing amazingly well in the SERPs. Am I being sandboxed? How do I get out of this? Thanks for any help.


Short version:
Good site performance/rankings until it crashed
Site is just under 1 year old
Re-uploaded site a few weeks after it crashed, has disappeared from SERPs
Possible sandbox
What do?

I have some money to spend on SEO services if anybody can recommend some that would get me out of this situation.

 

[emperoryogi]

Another bit of info. I'm using BlueHost and I've been reading up about SEO problems when using them to host multiple domains. The way their servers work, it can sometimes register your site as having duplicate content.

Has anybody else had this issue with Bluehost? Does anybody even use Bluehost?

 

[mimoza3]

Sandbox after one full year of multi #1 page ranking? sound strange.

Did you check if the site is de-indexed at all, since you say it still ranks for (even) one keyword, sounds like you got a penalty on your hands.

How diverse are your anchors? you might have been pushing it too hard (and too fast)
Try checking if you did not just pump your on-page and off-page with the same keywords, and work to dilute them down.

If this just a -60/-300 penalty try and use some good authority links to get you back that authority, there are plenty of great services for just that in this place...

 

[emperoryogi]

Thanks a lot Mimoza. I hadn't really used Google webmaster tools yet, so I took a look around that and fixed some minor errors. I also read up on -30 penalties and my site almost definitely has one.

It's ranking near the top of the 4th page for my main low-comp URL keyword, so 30 rankings below where it is supposed to be. I guess the next step is to rebuild that authority and order a package from BST.

 

[mimoza3]

good luck with that, if its of any comfort to you this kind of crap happens to most sites and SEO's, just get back into it...