Simple Strategies For Surviving A Google Dance

Posted on: 2005-11-13 22:34:01
Author: Titus Hoskins

Google is dancing again! A full tilt all out boogie,a long drawn out rumble somewhere near cursor heaven. My own keywords are going up, down and out the door. Take your pick. Just want the bloody thing to stop. My nerves are shot... three years of hard work may just go down the drain and there's no end in sight!

Fellow webmasters will recognize my slight desperation,my total sense of unease when Google dances. It all has to do with pre-conditioning, psych majors will know this,I am well conditioned to react. I have been burnt horribly by Google dances in the past so my panic is almost palatable. Forget Pavlov's dog, when Google dances, webmasters like me salivates.

And Google is really dancing this time, Jagger has nothing on this baby. Nobody dances like Google, even puts Seinfeld's Elaine to shame. And if you're new to the webmaster's favorite folly, a Google dance happens with Google adjusts its ranking algorithm, causing a ripple effect and adjustments in the rankings of keywords. Sites move up or down. Previous major Google dances have been called Florida, Austin, Bourbon...

When Google dances, webmasters sweat bullets. And it's notall in their heads. It's not psychosomatic. Horror stories abound, about honest hard working webmasters (not a black hat to be seen) suddenly waking up to find their site or sites gone from Google.Thousands of daily visitors/customers to their site vanishin an algorithmic fog overnight. Swift. Brutal. Painful.

Gone, top ranking keywords nowhere to be seen. Gone, visitors,visitors, visitors. Gone, sales, sales, sales...

More times than not, the sites come back or regain theirpositions (rankings for popular keywords -- for the totallyuninitiated, keywords or keyword phrases are what people typeinto search engines to find what they're looking for), keywordsare the conerstones of the whole Internet. Without them, theInternet as we know it, would not work.

Mastering Google means mastering your site's keywords or phrases.Get a top ten SERPs ranking for your keywords and changes arevery good you will have a successful site. Webmasters workfor years getting their site's keywords up into thetop keyword ranking spots. Countless fortunes have been made by those who have mastered the game. Countless fortunes havetumbled when Google dances.

Of course, the sensible thing to do is for all webmasters to unite and bring Google down a peg or two. At least in our own minds, if not in the real world. Don't place so much importance on Google. Yes, it's very important, but snap outof it. The more webmasters whine and moan about Google'serratic dances, algorithm and rankings - the more power we are giving Google.

Why is Google still so important to webmasters? MSN and Yahooare gaining ground but Google is still the top dog and here'swhy: As far as the search engine market goes, whether it's wearing a halo or a cursor, Google is still the only game in town. According to Alexa, a company that tracks web traffic, the top three sites on the Web are 1-Yahoo, 2-MSN, and 3-Google. However, when you compare where people go on these sites: search.yahoo.com accounts for only 9% of Yahoo's traffic and search.msn.com only 7% of MSN's total traffic; whereas most of Google's traffic is search traffic. This is a big distinction.

Once burnt, twice shy. Years ago, the Florida Update totally wipedmy site from the Google Radar. Hence my total apprehensionwhen one of these dances comes along. I wanted my site to survive the next Google dance so I put some simple strategies into place that would hopefully help me weather this and future Google dances.Strategies that you might also find helpful to fight your own private battle with Google.

Here's what I did and what you can also do:

Find A Good SEO Expert

Find a good SEO expert and have him or her in your corner.I found Brad Callen. One of a very few people who trulyunderstands Google and knows how it works. I learned muchof what makes Google really tick from Brad. I advise you to find or hire a SEO expert like Brad to help you out with your site or sites. Just the fact of having a SEO expert in your corner makes handling Google a little bit easier.

Link Only To Safe Sites

One of the simplest ways to keep on the good sideof Google is to make sure all links on your sitelink only to sites that have a PR4 or over.Don't link to bad neighborhoods, avoid linkfarms like the avian flu.

One Keyword To A Page

The major mistake most webmasters make - they don'tfocus on one keyword phrase per page. Try to keepyour pages separate, write on one or two closelyrelated keyword phrases for each webpage and you will see a big improvement from Google. Don't keyword spam but sprinkle your keyword phrase and variations of it throughout your copy.

RSS To The Rescue

Creating an RSS feed and Blog for your site's major keywords is as simply as starting a free blog with Blogger.com (owned by Google), it can be done in a few minutes.

I favor using Blogger because it now has the Google Blog searchbar at the top. Blog search will bring in a lot of traffic andyour content is instantly indexed in Google. What more can you ask for. Whatever you do, don't underestimate RSS, it's going to play a major role in the Internet of the near future. Especiallywhen Microsoft comes out with its Longhorn browser which willbe RSS empowered.

Embrace Article Marketing

If you can string two sentences together start writing articleson the major keywords or topics of your site. Place yourlinks in the resource box of your articles and submit themto online article directories like ezinearticles.com orbuzzle.com. Write helpful 'how-to' articles and otherwebmasters will place your articles on their sites andyou will get an ambundance of one-way links back to yoursite. Google loves these kinds of links and since thesites picking up your articles will all be related toyour site's topic, these will be relevant links.

Customer/Visitor Focused Content

Besides high PR links to your sites, Google also lovescontent. Write unique content that's related to yoursite's topic and write a lot of it. It's the main reasonanyone bothers to come to your site in the first place, so make sure you have good original content. Add high quality articles from sources you respect and yourvisitors will have another reason to visit your site.

Keep saying to yourself: content is king, content isking. Make sure you put that belief into practice andGoogle will reward you nicely. Well, maybe. Nine timesout of ten.

Actually, this time my site jumped to PR5 and my Googlebacklinks went up. Also some of my keywords are up but most have stayed the same. Overall, my traffic fromGoogle remains the same which is very worrisome, ifI moved up to PR5 -- my traffic should theoretically risealso. I saw a dramatic rise in traffic when my sitewent to PR4.

Such are the little puzzling mine-fields, whether intentionallyor not (I can't believe anyone could be this sadistic!) Google throws every webmaster's way. Over time, if you let itget to you, it will drive you stark raving bonkers. Especially, if you are seriously building an income, lifestyle and well-being around the Internet and by default Google.

For every webmaster, Google is a never ending endurance race of strategies, positioning and planning. Keeping one step ahead of this search engine while keeping your eyes peeled for the men in white, is a never ending struggle. One every webmaster must fight and win on their own terms. Follow the simple steps above, and you will be better prepared for the next Google dance.