WhoAmINow007
Newbie
- May 13, 2011
- 44
- 15
What makes even less sense is I have a 4th site that I never update and has the worlds spammiests links going to it and the rank is the same. Still on the first page.. WTF
I would definitely say NO. This is an entirely new situation and from what you can read in this thread so far, no links seems to be safe at the moment. New situation needs new solutions... Still, none solution in my head at the moment.
I think google doesn't realize that they are just making their search engine even worst for SEO'ers, which brings them a lot of money. Just like taxes in the United States, all these small websites bring in 60% of adsense revenue. Hopefully they will change it soon.
Also to note that the rankings are varying WILDLY for some of the terms, for a term that is not that important to me but I still track I have gone from 50 to 13 to nowhere back to 13 all in 3 or 4 days, also my main keywords have dropped from page 1 to 60-70 or so but almost every day it is a different page ranking at that spot. It is almost as if Google has freaked out a bit. Oddly enough other sites have remained stable, others dropped a very small amount and others had improvements...so there seems to be no rhyme or reason.There are a few things happening that I can tell based on how some of my sites have moved.
Brand new sites are getting penalized. The days of ranking a brand new site seem to be over. Now your site will have to 'earn' it's way up. -This is the case for my site 1 month old
If you used any type of SEO services it will look suspicious. Why? Because most services only allow a few keywords to your site. This is not a real backlink profile. Real backlinks will have anchor text like "check it out here" or "visit it here" or "this site" and stuff like that. When your whole backlink profile only has anchor text of your main keywords it triggers flags. My site has varied anchors to various pages, including This Site, clicke here etc..
Where your links are coming from. If you are using SEO services your links are coming from scrapebox crappy blasts, or articles on crappy article sites, etc... How many backlinks does your site have coming from within the content of a PR7 site's article? Probably none if your site is dropping. Dont have many HIGH PR links, but plenty in the PR 3 range or so, very very small SB (PR1) blast, about 50 links, mostly in content, wiki's, web 2.0 and bookmarks. Automated and manual
The results? Google knows that people will begin dumping their sites that have dropped into no man's land. If you were using SEO services to build crappy backlinks and now your site drops so you stop pumping money into building those backlinks Google knows you were gaming the system. It is a cache 22 though cuz they don't like those backlinks anyhow.
My theory is the days of you building and ranking 20 sites in a few months are gone. Now you have to focus on a site or two and really build it up and work on high quality backlinks. The problem for everyone is when you do this, if that site or two doesn't pan out you just wasted 3-6 months of your time, effort, energy, and money.
With these changes I see a lot of people turning to methods that have no reliance on Google. The web changes and you need to change with it.
Actually Google knows exactly what it is doing as far as money goes. The more unpredictable and less stable the organic rankings become the more people will move to the ppc ads. This will result in a lot more money for Google and in my opinion is the main purpose behind all the craziness.
This is one of my theories. Google's revenue is up 24% this year so far. Coincident? Muck up the organic search, increase the size of the paid search boxes (most browsers and common screen resolutions you can't even see organic above the fold anymore), show more Google products (Youtube, News etc), and you have what? Increase in ad revenue + increase increase in share price = happy share holders. Google doesn't give a flying rats ass about anything, but this. The day they went public was the day they jumped the shark.