Being
dumped by Google? Learn how to avoid becoming a victim next time
around!
Being dumped by Google? Learn how to avoid becoming a victim
next time around!
After Google latest update nicknamed "Florida", many
webmasters discovered that their traffic plummeted.
What happened?
More importantly what can you do about it?
And what will Google do next?
What happened was that Google made an algorithm change on how they
rate web pages.
Every time you make a search, Google tries to show the most relevant
web pages that match your search term. By being able to give the
most relevant results for queries, they have become the most used
search engine in the world.
In order to keep out competitors they have to constantly adjust
and improve how they judge web pages.
Because this judgment is done automatically using software, many
webmaster have been modifying their sites in order to improve their
position in the search results. To do this they have exploited different
shortcuts and loopholes made possible by shortcomings in the software
algorithm.
Periodically Google make changes in order to stop some webmasters
to get unfair advantages by plugging one or two of the loopholes.
This is what happened during the Florida update.
With this update Google introduced new algorithms which intended
to stop overuse of some search engine optimization techniques.
More specifically they seem to have targeted search terms found
in text links also called anchor text. Web pages with good positions
in the search result, which had had a disproportional number of
in-bound links to them from other web pages with the exact same
search term in the anchor text that the page was optimized for suddenly,
disappeared from the listings.
The pages did not disappear altogether. Just for the search term
that the page were optimized for.
For Google, the high proportions of anchor texts with the same
text indicate that the texts were put there for one purpose only,
to boost ranking.
One suggestion for you is to spread out the anchor text with a
mix of different texts to keep your page in the search results.
We don't know if your pages will come back after some time if you
do this, but it is likely.
Apparently the search result generated after the latest update
have been of a lower quality than before.
What seems to have happen is that a large percentage of web sites
have traded links with one another. This link trade has been done
with the same search term in the anchor text that they have optimized
their pages for.
The victims more often than not have been commercial web sites
that relied to heavily on search engine optimization technique.
The search results have been taken over by web sites composed of
low quality directory and link farms.
Now, what will Google do next?
I don't know, but TRY TO THINK like Google! This is what I would
do if I was responsible at Google for this.
First I think that they will modify and adjust the new algorithm
they have introduced during the latest update. Changing the threshold
or don't let the "over optimized pages" drop out of the
search result so easy, but rather penalize them and put them under
the threshold point.
I think, Google have a problem! You see, many "over optimized"
sites are of higher quality that those that are not. To simply drop
them out and say that there are enough pages for the same search
term is not always true.
There is a thin line between optimization and spamming and where
this boundary should be.
After this, what will Google do next? It is clear to me that the
many low quality directory sites found in Google search results
is a nuance to Google and to the average web user.
It is in this area that, I think, they will make the next modifications.
Google rate web pages according to relevance. The level of relevance
is judge based on the web page content and/or how popular the web
page is in the view of Google.
To get a page popular you need to have links from other pages.
This can come from pages on your own site or from other sites.
Ideally these links should be many, come from pages dealing with
similar or identical subject or come from pages that themselves
are popular. The best is to have many links from pages dealing with
the same subject that themselves are popular.
This had led to an intense link exchange active among webmasters.
And the primary reason has been to achieve better ratings. The primary
purpose has not been to increase the visitors experience value.
This goes against Google's principles.
To quote Google webmaster guidelines: Make pages for users, not
for search engines. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine
rankings. Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase
your site's ranking or Page Rank.
To counter this I think Google will target several popularity increasing
schemes like:
- Low value directory sites which have been created automatically
by robots. These sites contain extracts taken from search engines
and directories.
Google can easily spot these sites.
- The building of link directories attached to web sites. They
are built with link partner extracting software and services. With
them you can upload directory structures directly into your site.
This way you can build up a massive number of link partners and
also identify link partners with high Page Rank values.
Of course, one can say that by doing this you can add to your visitors
experience as the directories make it easy for them to find similar
web sites.
However this is an argument that Google most likely would disagree
with.
Web sites using tactics like this are easy identifiable by Google.
The directory pages are composed of outgoing links which either
have the Title, Meta descriptor or other content directly taken
from the web pages they are linked to.
Google just have to look at the texts from the directories and
the text on the web pages for matching.
Using product or services for this purpose is risking you get banned
or at least being penalized by Google.
Will this happen? I think so!
When?
I don't know! Anytime soon, next month,..next year! Nobody knows,
only Google can tell!
I think Google also will look into reciprocal linking as a whole.
Maybe they will start to identify pages with outgoing links on
them that link to other web sites and identify which links are coming
back from those domains.
What they like to see is spontaneous linking to your site from
web owners that regard you as a valuable resource to link to, without
you linking back. I believe that they will limit the impact of reciprocal
linking, somewhat!
What can you do to improve your web traffic from Google without
violating its guidelines?
Build web sites that give value to your visitors. Make it into
a popular site, so that others want to link to your site. Build
niche information rich sites. Either as mini sites or as larger
information sites. Larger sites within a niche are given higher
popularity rating than smaller sites by Google.
If you do this your web site will not be affected next time Google
make a change. Unless of course your competitor drops out of Google,
then your traffic will get a boost.
About the Author Per Strandberg is a
web marketer and software developer!Currently he operates a web
site for backup products and data security information!At (http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com)
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