Have the recent updates hurt your rankings?
Since February, it seems almost every few weeks there is another Google update that is changing the search engine rankings. It's been a wholesale change in how sites are ranked and frankly, it has put many people out of business.
The first update attacked what Google considered unnatural links (meaning a ton of links pointing to a site that seemed unusual in Google's eyes.)
The next one attacked sites that were not considered high quality. Then there was the update that attacked what was considered over-optimization.
Here are seven tips to help you recover from this.
1. Don’t rely only on Google. We’ve found that in some cases a number one ranking on Bing and Yahoo to be as good as Google. Traffic from Bing is up and depending on who you are trying to reach, can be a source of more qualified traffic than Google.
2. Quality–Google wants good quality content, so if you are rehashing old spun content, STOP–it will never rank. Look at your analytics and honestly look at your bounce rate–if it’s high and people are leaving your site, figure out why and change it. A high bounce rate will hurt your rankings.
3. Speed–I’ve been saying this for a while, but site speed counts. Take a speed test.
4.Things like Terms of Service and Privacy Policy count. It used to be that it didn’t but they do and that is a simple way to upgrade the quality of your site.
5. Link Density–Make sure that the anchor text to your sites are varied. Use a tool like Link Density or Majestic SEO to see the percentage of anchor text links to your site and what the trust of the links going to your site are.
6. Avoid Over Optimization–Use good tools to make sure your content is great. Make sure you have the correct on-page factors (title, tags, descriptions and no code errors) but avoid using plugins that “blast” your content or have names that are obviously spam..like Google Link Blaster, or some such.
7. Webmaster Tools–use webmaster tools as Google will give you a ton of information on what information that have regarding your site.
Lastly, don't do anything that will put your site as risk. Don't read a $7.00 eBook and think you know all about Search Engine Optimization. Believe me when I tell you I've been doing this for years, and still have to learn more every day. If you're having difficulty, and your business depends on this, it might be time to hire a professional to help you on this…
