WordPress.com Deleted ALL of My Blogs

Yep, it’s true. A couple days ago WordPress.com deleted all of the blogs I had on their server.  I had quite a few blogs over there, for a few reasons, all of which are irrelevant now. lol.

Let me just say I was super PISSED when I went over there to do some work the other day. I have been very focused on trying to take advantage of the shopping season and putting up new sites and lenses, and getting everything in place before the real shopping begins.

Of course, like in all my efforts online WordPress.com plays a part in this.

Let me just say. I used wordpress.com to put up real blogs, with real content.  I also used those blogs to link to other websites I had created. My blogs were not spammy, they were unique, original content that I wrote myself. Not all of my wordoress,com blogs were used for this purpose though.

In fact, the first blog I ever started was on wordpress.com. It was right around the time I had Hanna. So all my thoughts, experiences of being a new mom were posted on that blog. I still continue to post there, albiet, not as regularly as I should. It’s gone too.

Now when I go to my momtohanna blog all I see is this:

So I clicked the Terms of Service link to see if it will tell me what my offending action of talking about my daughter and being a new mom was. Here’s what it said:

the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);

The italics is mine. I think this is what they have deemed to be wrong with my sites. I guess because I have links to other baby related sites in my sidebar of my personal stories and experiences of motherhood it could be seen as trying to boost search engine rankings to third party sites.

HMMMM or could it be providing my readers with more information on other baby related topics? The sites in the side bar were not affiliate sites, they were not product sites. They were simply more content sites, that were monetized with adsense. The content on those sites was also original and unique written by myself.But there were also sites that had nothing to do with me in the sidebar as well, just great information for new moms.

OK, I had calmed down and now I’m getting pissed again. I can see some of my sites broke that term of service in that they were created to help boost search engine rankings with backlinks. But not all of my sites were like that, and for real. They were all decent content, so I’m not sure what WordPress.com’s problem is.

So instead of getting pissed I’m going to give you a couple ideas to avoid this kind of trauma yourselves.

1. Realize that within the wordpress.com TOS there is a statement about using their site to boost search engine rankings of another site. (this includes creating blogs for backlinks ~ in fact, that’s probably exactly what they are talking about)

2. If you choose to do it anyway, make sure you use a different email address for each of your sites, and start a separate acct for each site.  That way when they get deleted you don’t lose all of your blogs, only the ones for one site. Also make sure copy your content and keep it on file on your hard drive for later use if necessary.

3. My last suggestion ~ Forget WordPress.com. They are really more trouble to deal with than they are worth.  Yeah it’s great to have backlinks for every tag page you can create. It’s a lot of time to put in to just have it deleted later.

4. Find other places to build backlinks that are more “money making” friendly. There are tons of places to build free blogs and build backlinks.  This list includes sites like wordpressdirect.com. I currently have 219 pages indexed in Google for one of my wordpressdirect sites ~ that’s decent backlinks for me. Check out this lens on building backlinks if you need more ideas.

5. Get your own hosting and build your own blogs. The real estate is yours. Over time its value will grow. It will be yours to use for whatever you need it for. You can monetize it, and it can’t be taken away. (unless you don’t pay the bill ~ but come on it’s 5 bucks a month)

OK. My rant is over, and it’s a lot nicer than it would have been when I opened the “write” window a few days ago when this happened.

Backlinks are important, we all know that. Google loves them and if you want your site to rank on Google, it’s the best way. Minus finding keywords that have no other competition ~ good luck with that. But remember to read the Terms of Service of free accounts you are using. Whatever you put on their site is THEIR property and quite frankly they can do anything they wish with it. If you host your content on free sites it might be wise to create a backup so if you are deleted you at least still have the content.

OK. Back to Christmas creation.