Archive for July, 2008

This assumes you aren’t doing anything that violates their guidelines. I had a project website that had grown to generate several thousand visitors per month with most of the traffic coming from Google. The site had several top 10 listings across Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and even made a few hundred dollars per month through AdSense and Affiliate Links. Now keep in mind, when I say “project site”, that means it is a site that I built for the purpose of testing SEO strategies, not so much for making money (although the money is nice).

One day, I noticed my stats had tanked. After further research, I realized that the site had fallen out of the Google index. Please know this, when I test I do not use any black hat (or grey hat) techniques. So what happened? In most cases, you can’t really know for sure, but if you are truly following the rules, one possibility is a “bad neighborhood”. This is where you are somehow linked to the stuff Google doesn’t like – intentionally or not. This particular site’s web traffic was built exclusively through link building, and none of them were quality paid links such as Yahoo, Business.com, Best of the Web, etc. so there is a likelihood that it was connected to something that it should not have been.

Another cause of falling out of Google’s grace is being victim of a Google Dance, where google changes an algorithm and the rankings go awry.

So what to do in either case? Confirm that you are not violating any of Google’s Webmaster guideline and then go out and find more good, quality links. In this case, I wrote two articles and submitted them to two of the leading article submission sites. I also made comments on a few well-ranked blogs. Low and behold this was enough to do the trick, because when I checked the stats, I noticed that the Google traffic was back, and I confirmed that the site once again has several top ten listings. I guess I am glad I didn’t sell it when the Google traffic was gone (I did get an unsolicited offer for the site based on the traffic and database). Database? Why would I have a database for a project site? First, because in my book it’s an imperative, but secondly, it allows us to test nearly “EVERYTHING SEM” including viral marketing and email marketing. At 2,000 members and growing, as well as one unsolicited 4-figure offer, I’d say it’s a success in more ways than one.

And for those of you who don’t know who Matt Cutts is, he is an engineer with the Google Search team, who people frequently blame or run to whenever they have problems ranking on Google.

I hope that helps you get back on Google’s good side and enjoying rankings and traffic once again.

To all of my Canadian friends and readers, I would like to wish you a wonderful Canada Day. In fact, I’d like to join you in celebrating by taking the day off myself. If I didn’t just get back from a long weekend in Las Vegas, perhaps I could pull it off, but given that I will be off again Friday, I guess I need to get some work done.