Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.

[poke1]

I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google.

Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values.

Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?

[MattRoney]

Hi poke1! If Gaston's replies helped, mind marking one or more as a "Good Answer?" It'll get him some bonus MozPoints, and it's helpful for us.

Otherwise, how can we be of more help?

[poke1]

Got it, thank you!

[GastonRiera]

The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.

In my opinion it's too early to impact that much in rankings.

The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.

That's why i've stated that some people believe that it might get you a penalty. It depends. In this case, being branded will cause not harm. You should've said that were branded.

There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.

Yeap, let's wait a little longer. And no, in the case that are branded there is harm.

Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?

I dont think that this "shuffling" is only related to the backlinks. It may be a reason. There is no garatee that you will remain in the old position, or if you will stay in a different. I'd advise you a little patience. And dont make any major changes so to be able to analyze after.

Best Luck.
GR.

[poke1]

The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.

The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.

There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.

Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?

Thank you for your response.

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

tl;dr; Wait 2 or 3 weeks to make sure that the problem is not caused by the backlinks. I'd worry a lot about those site-wide links.

It's really hard to analyze how much some backlinks have impacted in your SERPs. Even more difficult is to see changes in such short notice. Three things to say here:

• Site-wide links. There are lots of people saying that those asure you to be penalized. My opinion, it depends. You should take special care of your backlink profile It doesn't harm to have some siwte-wide, but it shoudn't be the majority of your links coming from those sources.
• The PA's backlinks. That metric is not thar reliable to ascertain a good/bad impacto in your rankings. There are lots of other analysis to be done. Keep that in mind.
• How did you find out those new backlinks? Dpending on the backlink checker tool, you should check how long have them been there. Also, are them DoFollow?

Remember that rankings may vary for other reasons that yours. It is likely that some of your ranking competitors are gaining strenght or google made some update on the algorithm that is crushing you.

Best of luck.
GR.