| A valid question. So I've never done any "SEO" work on the site outside of Google's own recommendations with regard to site content, ease of use, etc. In other words no link building, keyword stuffed pages, etc. I'm still in the dark all these years later, but my best guess is: a. I had a blog and forum that, like most of that time (2012's), has occasional spam posts. b. Those posts would often, but not always, be referenced by the spam links pointing to my site. c. I had very high rank in Google for several years leading up to the penalty. Because of this I don't think it was a necessarily a competitor, but rather spammers trying to leech off of that high ranking. |