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How to Protect Your Website from Panda
“What Every Internet Marketer MUST Know About Post Panda SEO”
From: Koen Berkenbosch
Company: http://www.berkenboschmarketing.com
Dear Reader,
Internet marketing success might be possible without SEO, but it’s a lot more
expensive and carries a much higher probability for failure. PPC marketing and
classified ads have become more expensive in the past few years as bigger
competitors like Amazon, Ebay and the other “Wal-Marts” of the internet
stake their claim of the internet fortune.
However, with SEO it’s possible for a solo entrepreneur to start with little or no
cash and to build a decent income using organic search engine traffic. The
down side of this is almost all the organic search traffic on the internet comes
through Google. So if you’re going to build an internet business using SEO, you
by default choose Google as a business partner.
So when Google makes a change, you either have to change with them or go
out of business. The difficult thing is that while Google values transparency
from website owners, they themselves aren’t in a big hurry to share with the
rest of us how they’re evaluating websites and how they’re deciding which
ones to award premium rankings to.
Google’s updates, such as the recent Panda, are shrouded beneath a veil of
secrecy and the parameters of their search evaluation algorithms are just about
as hidden as the Ark of the Covenant. To add to his, the internet is being
constantly flooded with rehashed, out of date and even misleading SEO advice
from unqualified, self-proclaimed “experts.”
Add all these together and the ambition to invest your time and money in SEO
becomes a sluggish desire to kick back in front of the TV with a bag of Ruffles
and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
Thankfully, there are internet marketing veterans and fanatical testers who
don’t depend on mere theories and who have cultivated “selective ignorance,”
when it comes to listening to advice from others. These veterans depend on
solid data and results gathered by trial and error, not on empty theories and
SEO philosophies.
In this short, but information packed report, you’ll learn two things:
1. The No BS, Tested and Proven Rules of Post Panda SEO
2. How to Become Your OWN Source of SEO Expertise
After reading this report, you’ll never have to subject yourself to rummaging
through the half truths and myths of SEO which litter the internet. You’ll have
the power to use your solid and proven knowledge of SEO to dominate search
engine rankings while your competitors stand by in envy.
Let’s get started…
The Google Panda Update Came from and Why It’s Killing So Many Marketers
Back in February of 2011, Google started on a series of updates which were
based on user opinions instead of on numerical data such as: number of back
links, number of pages with content, keyword density and meta data. As you’ll
soon discover, the above mentioned things still have a strong impact on
SEO…but if you use them wrong you could end up tossed into the Google black
hole.
However, the Panda update isn’t based on any specific numerical data. Instead,
it was created based on a collection of survey data which was gathered from a
group of human users who evaluated real websites. What types of questions
were included in this survey?
While there have been some theories, no one knows for sure except Google
and the people who did the evaluating. The data from these evaluations has
now been translated into a machine language algorithm which is being used
right now to evaluate your website and determine its fate in the search results.
Since we have no idea what questions were asked of the people who did the
evaluating, we only have two options for discovering the “new rules” of Google
search ranking evaluation:
1. Keep doing what used to work hoping it will still work.
2. Read as much as we can about SEO, apply some of it and see what
works
3. Partner with Google and stop chasing after SEO “tricks”
By “partner with Google,” I mean that instead of trying to trick them and slip in
under the radar with all the other spammers, discover what’s important to
Google and how you can start applying that knowledge to get and to keep good
search engine rankings. I’m not talking about “cracking the Google code” here,
you’re better off trying to break into the White House.
Google is interested in creating and interactive experience for their users.
That’s why people log onto the internet, search for information, land on
websites, stay on websites and buy products and services from websites.
They don’t want to be fooled, baited and switched, swept into sales funnels,
redirected, interrupted by pop-up ads, stuck reading a 10 minute sales
presentation or assaulted with dozens of super-duper make money from home
email offers.
People want to find relevant information, quickly and to discover something
which helps them solve a problem or get something they really want. They
want to connect with other webusers, bloggers, companies and websites which
they can trust to deliver them relevant and valuable content on a consistent
basis.
If you deliver this experience, people will love your site, they’ll stay on it, they’ll
return to it. They’ll tell their friends about it and when they’re looking for the
types of products and services you’re selling, your website will be the first place
they think of.
If you don’t do this, you might be able to squeak by and “fool” the search
engines into giving you higher rankings, you might be able to redirect a few
people to some affiliate offers, but a time will come when another Google
update will knock your site down from its high ranking spot and leave you
scrambling for the next SEO “secret.”
This is exactly what happened to dozens of marketers in the wake of the Panda
update…and it WILL happen again, and again and again until Google finally
buries all the spammers. Only the high value sites which create a great user
experience will be left in the Google search results.
There’s nothing you can do to change this, Google is a multi-billion dollar
company and they’re on a mission to exterminate how value sites. If you want
to build a secure and solid future as an internet marketer, you need to partner
with Google asap…and now is a great time to do it.
Before writing this report, I spent months of trial and error figuring out what
works post panda and what doesn’t. I’m also going to give you a step by step
plan you can start using to become your own SEO expert. First, let’s look some
absolutes about the Panda update.
Seven Certainties About Google Panda
1. Updates Happen About Every 30 Days.
At the time of this writing, the Panda machine language algorithm is so
complex that it only evaluates websites in cycles of about 30 days. In other
words, if you make a change today and Google just evaluated your site
yesterday, it’ll be about 30 days before you see the full impact of that change.
This is a really, really big deal when you’re experimenting with different link
building or content strategies.
Here’s why…
Let’s assume your site was evaluated yesterday and that it sank from the fifth
page of the search engine rankings to the seventh page…so you start building
profile links. A week goes by, and you see no change, so you scrap the profile
link building, add a few articles to your site and wait for another week….still no
change.
Next, you start doing a bunch of nofollow blog commenting, you give that a
week and you see no change.
Finally, you go to Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of other social bookmarking
sites and start blasting your site with bookmarking links.
At the end of that week, you see your site jump from page seven to page three.
Woohoo!!!
Social bookmarking is the magic “Panda Proof” banklinking solution!
You go to your newsletter and your blog and to the forums that you hang out
on and start telling people that you’ve “discovered the little known, superduper, closely guarded secret to dominating the search engine rankings in spite
of the Google panda update!”
But did you really discover the secret?
Remember, Google had evaluated your site once before you did all your profile
link building, your content strategy, your blog commenting and your social
bookmarking. For all you know, any one of those things could have been
responsible for your site jumping to page three.
In fact, one of the methods might have even HURT your rankings, but the other
methods made up for it….how do you know which method had what impact?
The least effective could have been your social bookmarking, yet here you are
believing it’s the “Power Packed, Panda Proof Magic Solution!” So the first
thing to remember about the Google Panda update is that your site is being
completely evaluated every 30 days or so. If you do the same thing for 30 days
straight and it works, you’ve found a good method.
If not, it’s back to the drawing board….test, test test.
Wait 30 days, see the impact, rinse and repeat.
The problem is that so many SEOs are trying to do things the way they used to
before Panda….they try something for a week, check the results and see if it’s
“working.” But since they’re not testing in accordance to Google’s timeline,
they’re going to end up with inaccurate data.
Inaccurate data can cost you big time when it comes to SEO, so your first move
is to make sure you’re drawing the right conclusions by evaluating the
effectiveness of your SEO according to Google’s timeline.
2. Domains Are Being Evaluated Instead of Just Pages
I’m surprised this change wasn’t made a long time ago. Google is now using
Panda to evaluate entire domains based on the collective value of the pages
which belong to that domain. This is one of the things which caused ALL the
traffic on sites like Ezine articles to drop dramatically, not just the traffic to
specific pages.
The old adage “pages get ranked, not websites” doesn’t apply to post Panda
SEO. Now, if you have a site with 20 pages and only three of those pages are
providing value, while the other 17 are junk, the low quality of those 17 pages
will drag down the rankings for your entire site.
This ought to raise two concerns. First, adding hundreds of pages of low quality
content created by non-native English speakers while have a decent article on
your home page can be counterproductive. As you’ll soon discover when we
talk about your content strategy, your new goal needs to be to provide a
smaller number of high quality web pages instead of dozens of pages of fluff.
This also means that consistently creating backlinks only for your home page
might not be as effective as creating links for several pages on your site. We’ll
get into this more when we cover your post Panda content and backlinking
strategy.
3. Interactivity is Even More Important than Ever
The sites which have benefitted from the Google Panda update are all sites
which have low bounce rates and good user behavior statistics. In other words,
sites where the visitors are landing, clicking links, downloading files, filling out
email opt in boxes and viewing videos and other media are being rewarded
with high search engine rankings.
This isn’t a surprise, and I expect that this will get more important as Google
advances in their ability to track user behaviors. This goes back to the principle
of creating an interactive experience for the user. If your website is engaging
and if visitors are using the features on your site and spending time on your
site, you can almost bet that site is on its way up in the search engines.
In fact, at the time of this writing, I know someone who has a site that they set
up in 24 hours, NEVER touched again and never built a single back link to. Yet
it’s ranking on page one for a keyword which has hundreds of thousands of
competing sites. It was ranking high before Panda, and it’s ranking even higher
now after Panda.
Why is this?
For one, the site has nearly 90 pages of very high quality, relevant content
written by an expert with 15 years of experience in the niche which the site
focuses on. Second, the site has a bounce rate that’s less than 40%, most of its
traffic comes from the exact keyword which it’s optimized for and the average
time on site is nearly 10 minutes.
The people who land on this site also visit an average of 8 pages per visit.
Obviously, the numbers speak for themselves. People enjoy this site, they
invest their time into it and this demonstrates to the search engines that this
site fulfills the expectations of the user. We’ll talk more about how to get this
done later.
Last, but certainly not least…
4. Content is Still King
Content is king on the internet.
You probably knew that already, but the question is…what are you doing about
it? Most marketers are spinning articles, paying $2 per 500 words to have
pages and pages of content cranked out by outsourcers in India or Pakistan or
repurposing low quality PR articles. They’re assuming that if content is king,
you need a whooollle loooottt of content to succeed in SEO.
This is probably the most dangerous myth when it comes to Panda proofing
your site. Some studies have been done by the top internet marketers and SEO
firms to find out what the common denominators were in the top three ranking
sites of the Google search results when it came to content. One thing that
almost every site had in common was in depth, high quality content on the
page which was ranking high.
In fact, the average article length of 500 words, which seems to be what
everyone is shooting for these days, isn’t the most common length when it
comes to high rankings. Instead, the word count is closer to 3,000 and the
content is expert quality and jam packed with information and interesting
insights.
So in case you’re thinking about hiring someone from Pakistan to create you 10
articles at 3,000 words each for a total of just $300 USD, think again.
While the longer articles do seem to be getting higher rankings than the
shorter articles, quality is still the most important variable. Remember the user
behaviors. You want your site to be interesting, informative and engaging, not
cluttered with clunky content that reads like this:
“Congratulations! You have dropped onto right place for the good reading!
Welcome to the website of going in to overcome the fear of rejection! For you,
expect to benefit famously from what you read and welcome to best website on
the self-confidence!”
Imagine landing on that site…what would you do? You’d be out of there as fast
as the back button could get you out. So remember that while content is king,
you have to make sure the content you’re offering is worthy of people’s time
and attention.
5. Repeat Visits Are Being Monitored
This is another one that’s been going on for a while, but it’s gotten more
important since the Google panda update. The Google patent has had
information in it about the importance of repeat visits to a site, and when you
consider their goal to create a great user experience, it’s no surprise. If people
are coming back to your site, obviously they like the content.
Lots of webmasters emphasize unique hits and consider their site a success if
it’s getting a “high number of uniques.” Of course, this is important, but if your
site isn’t getting any repeat visits, it’s time to change something. There are
many ways to do this, but the most important thing is to provide content which
people enjoy reading, listening to or watching.
Multi-media sites and sites which bring fresh and relevant content, especially
content which is related to something that’s going on in the world, get a lot of
loyal “followers.” When someone becomes a follower of your content, they’re
more likely to post links to your content on their Facebook pages so they can
share your content with their friends.
Good content has always earned backlinks and it always will. This is another
good reason to stop creating poor quality content and to start focusing on
quality instead of high volume, cheap content. Also, if your site doesn’t have an
RSS feed or a place where people can bookmark your site, take care of that
right away.
Having a following for your Facebook page and having followers on Twitter will
also help you to build a bigger “fan club” and get more repeat visits to your
site.
6. Click Through Rates Matter
By click through rates I mean the amount of people who select your site when
it’s displayed on the SERPs page along with other sites. We know high click
through rates cause Google to award PPC advertisers with higher placements,
but it’s also important for organic listings. This shouldn’t come as a surprise;
the problem is that, at least at this time, you can’t monitor your click through
rate in relation to the number of impressions in the search results.
What you CAN do is make sure that your meta description and your page title
enticing enough to get the visitor to choose your site. The key to making this
happen is relevancy and perceived value. In other words, your page description
and title need to be as specific to your main keywords as possible while telling
the user exactly what they have to gain from visiting your site.
This means the generic descriptions like: “This site contains information about
the cause of bacterial vagninosis and how to get rid of it….”
….try something which drills directly into an end result benefit, like this:
“100% natural solution helped this woman cure bacterial vaginosis in less than
a week….”
Most of us hire experienced copywriters to create PPC and classified ads to
market our products, which is of course important. But what about your meta
description?
If your click through rate is determining not only how much traffic comes to
your site but also how well your site ranks, it might be a good idea to invest
some time or money into a relevant and value driven page title and meta
description for your site.
7. Exact Match Domains Aren’t as Important
It used to be that if you had an exact match domain (EMD) you were almost
guaranteed a high ranking for that keyword. For example, if you were
optimizing for the keyword “Media buying services,” and had the name
www.mediabuyingservices.com, you were in really good shape. In fact, it used
to be that even if you have a handful of links, a fairly new site and two pages of
content, you could hit Google page one pretty quick with an EMD.
However, Panda has all but leveled the playing field when it comes to domain
names and keyword rankings. This is actually good news if you’re just starting
out in a niche because it means you don’t have to own the exact match domain
in order to have a good chance at beating those who do own exact domains.
While the domain does still seem to have some value, it’s likely that future
updates will make the domain name less and less importance. After all, Google
is concerned about the value which is being delivered once a visitor lands on
the site. They’re not interested in awarding high rankings to someone simply
because they own a domain name.
Okay, So What Now?
Now that you have a better idea of what Google has been up to when
evaluating your site, let’s talk about the six things you MUST do to Panda proof
your online marketing.
Six Things You Need to Start Doing Immediately
1. A New Content Strategy
You need a new content strategy if you want to protect your site from Panda. I
advise starting out by having 3 to 5 articles of 2,500 to 3,000 words. Have them
written by a good copywriter who will spend as much time researching and
preparing to write the article as they they’ll spend writing the article.
It will be better for you to have 10,000 well written words on your site between
three high quality articles than to have 100,000 words worth of 350 to 500
word fluff articles. You have to stop thinking volume of content and start
thinking about quality. Paying $500 for 5,000 words will be a much better move
than paying $500 to have 50,000 words written.
Also, if you’re going to be submitting articles to directories like Ezine articles,
go for quality over quantity. Personally, I think it’s a better idea to post these
articles on your site so you can build your rankings instead of helping someone
else build theirs. Bottom line, quality has always been more important than
quantity when it comes to content…but post Panda, quality is king, not just
content.
Not to mention that everywhere you look, people are ordering 500 word
articles. It seems to just be the commonly accepted practice, but common
practice isn’t going to help you stand out in the crowd. Choose a content
strategy based on new rules. Longer articles, higher quality, hold off on the
volume until your content is working for you in earning rankings. If you do this
right, the time will come very soon when it will.
Also, create an ongoing content strategy where you’ll be publishing articles on
a weekly basis. One article is fine, but if you can do two and still create a lot of
relevant and valuable content, then go for two articles/blogs a week. This will
help you create content which is consistent with the topics people are reading
about now AND it will give your readers a reason to come back.
2. Split Testing and on Page Optimization
We already talked about how bounce rates and time spent on site are very
important for ranking now. So if you want to get the high rankings, you need to
start split testing right away. This isn’t as much work as it sounds like at first.
You can start out by changing the headline on your home page and split testing
that with the headline you have now. If the bounce rate is lower for one of
these headlines, you know that your readers like that headline more.
Next, optimize the first paragraph of your content to match that new headline
and split test it against the old first paragraph. Do this with your header
graphics and work down the page from there. Set up these kinds of tests for
your home page and your secondary pages.
Yes, this is a veerrrryyyy sllloooowww process at first, but the more you do it
the better understanding you’ll have of what your customers really want. You
can build up a lot of momentum very fast from split testing. As your bounce
rate gets lower and lower and your customers spend more time on your site,
your site will get higher and higher rankings, you’ll have more traffic, you’ll be
able to split test faster and faster.
I suggest using the Google website optimizer and Google analytics to do your
split testing. They’re both free tools, and since they’re owned by Google you
can be sure that the new data about your improving bounce rate will get picked
up by Google quickly.
3. Keep an “SEO Log”
You can’t manage or improve something if you don’t know what you’re doing
right and what you’re doing wrong. This is why you need to start tracking your
SEO progress and how you’re making it. For example, keep an excel file or a
spreadsheet and keep monthly track of everything that you change on your
site. Check your rankings every week and check the bounce rate for your main
pages.
The more you do this, the clearer picture you’ll get of the relationship between
your actions and your results. This sounds so simple, but it’s really easy to just
glaze over and to keep making random changes, hoping that one of them will
magically increase your rankings. I suggest keeping this very simple and staying
consistent with the things which you’re doing to test your SEO.
In other words, spend a month working on a specific content strategy and keep
your off page SEO and everything else consistent while you work on your
content strategy. At the end of the month, any changes which take place will
be most likely as a result of your content strategy. Don’t make the mistake that
soooo many marketers make by changing your strategy every three or four
days until they have no idea what’s having a long term impact and what’s doing
nothing.
Keep track of what you’re doing and keep track of what results you’re getting.
Do this in conjunction with your split testing and, although it’s slow at first,
you’ll build up a lot of awareness and momentum very fast.
4. Build a Following
If you’re not building a following of loyal readers already, get started like
yesterday. Imagine what might happen if Google were to suddenly
disappear…what would you have left to sustain your traffic and to help you
continue making money?
If you had no Twitter followers, no Facebook fans, no email subscribers, no RSS
subscribers and no one returning to your website, you’d be screwed and
barbequed dude.
We already talked about how important repeat visits were to Google, but they
ought to be even more important to you. I suggest getting a Facebook fan page
and getting your readers to like your page and your posts. I suggest building a
subscriber list and, instead of just sending emails, send an invitation to read the
new posts on your site.
Start creating articles which have three parts, publish them one at a time and
let your visitors know when the next article in the series will be published. Put
an RSS feed on your blog, encourage people to leave comments and to
subscribe to the post so they’ll be notified when new comments are posted.
Most important, start creating high quality content with interesting graphics
and videos (use vids from you tube if you can’t create your own) and add audio
to your site so that people can listen to your content too. Start linking out to
other articles on your site to increase readership. You can do this by having a
note at the bottom of each article which says:
“If you liked this article, you might also like…”
…and list a few related articles. This will not only improve your click through
rate and time spent on your site, it will give your readers a lasting impression
and make it easier for them to remember you when they’re looking to buy a
product or service like yours.
5. Keep Building Links
A few off-the-chain SEO enthusiasts are trying to say that back linking is no
longer any good for SEO. This is 100% false. I suspect that what’s happening is
they’re building low quality links using spamming techniques. Back link spam
hardly worked at all before Panda, and it’s even less effective these days.
But if you have a solid back linking strategy which uses a variety of link building
techniques, you can still make a lot of progress with back linking. For example,
the new version of LinkAloha uses a 100% automated process to build six types
of links:
 Links from Forums
 Links from our aged blog network
 Social bookmarking links
 Article Submission links
 Social Media Links
 Web2.0 Links
Profile linking alone isn’t as powerful as it used to be, but when used in
conjunction with these other strategies, you can build a powerful back linking
strategy. Unlike social bookmarking and Web 2.0 links, and most blog links,
forum profile links can be easily built using keyword rich anchor text. This is
what helps you target a specific keyword and build a lot of relevant back links
VERY fast.
Next, you have blog links which are powerful because of the popularity and
relevance of blogs. Most blogs are being consistently updated with fresh
content, and many bloggers are passionate and knowledge about their subject.
So it’s likely that blogs will become more and more valuable and popular as
Google’s site evaluation technology becomes more advanced.
Social bookmarking links and other Web 2.0 links, if done right, can have both
the keyword rich value of a profile link and the popularity factor of blog links.
While many social media and bookmarking sites are “nofollow,” it’s important
for you to be using nofollow links as a part of your link building strategy. I say
this because to Google, any deliberate back link building is looked down on as
“unnatural.” As far as they’re concerned, you “shouldn’t” be building any links
yourself. You should be letting it happen as a natural result of people linking to
your content.
Of course, we call know Google can’t possibly monitor how links are being built,
but there are “red flags” which tell them that you’re deliberately building your
own back links. If your site has hundreds or thousands of links and almost all of
them are nofollow, it’s obvious that your bank link building is being done
“artificially.”
So don’t be afraid to mix in some no follow links, it helps your back linking to
appear more natural. This “looking natural” rule is going to apply to every
aspect of your back linking. In other words, don’t blast thousands of back links
up over a few days and wait to see your rankings soar. Be steady and
consistent, building 10 to 20 links a day for each of your keywords.
Also, be careful about “adding too much value” with your back linking. By this I
mean that if ALL your links are high PR back links or ALL no follows or if they’re
using your keywords in the anchor text 100% of the time, that’s a clear sign
that your linking strategy is artificial. This is how you can end up spending a ton
of time and money building links and still see little or no improvement in your
rankings.
This is what Linkaloha customers love, because most of them would rather “set
and forget” their back linking, knowing that it was being done at a steady pace
and using a variety of methods to build relevant back links. Our tool is
specifically created to make the pace of your link building appear as natural as
possible AND to keep any of the red flags from being raised at the Google
headquarters.
Naturally, my advice would be to just become a member of Linkaloha,
especially since your signing up for this report entitles you to be one of the 50
members who will receive a deep discount on their membership. Of course,
you could always burn up your time and money trying to find another service
or trying to reinvent the wheel yourself…but the tools are there to make this
very easy on you.
6. Watch Your Ad Count
I don’t have exact numbers on this but having a lot of ads on your site can be
very bad for your rankings. This is another place where you have to honestly
ask yourself how you respond when you land on a site. Do a lot of ads lower
your perceived value of the site? How likely are you to trust the content on a
site which is littered with ads? How likely are you to hit the back button?
Google is interested in providing good content to their users, and ads clutter up
a site and make it look like the back of a cheap magazine. It’s no mystery that
Google isn’t a fan of affiliate marketers and that’s not likely to change. Too
many people trying to make a quick buck promoting affiliate offers.
What you can do about this is be tasteful about the way you use affiliate links
and adsense on your site. Go to your site and ask yourself if it’s too cluttered
with ads. If you suspect that it is, you’re probably right. Not to mention that
most of the time you’ve only got a few ads which are making most of your
money. Keep those and get rid of the rest.
Move your affiliate offers to subpages and create them as links in your articles
and blogs instead of as blatant ads. Create meaty reviews on the products
instead of reviews which just read “I really liked this product and highly
recommend it!” People are getting smart about affiliate marketing, even those
who have no idea what affiliate marketing even is. They can tell when a review
isn’t authentic or when a site is “just out to sell something.”
I know you have to monetize your site and that it can SEEM like Google is “not
interested in helping anyone make money.” But the reality is that if your site
has good content and creates a trustworthy impression for Google and for your
visitors, you’ll sell a lot more products and build your following a lot faster.
How to Use These Six Strategies
As you begin doing your split testing, your SEO logging, building your following,
applying your new content strategy and building backlinks with Linkaloha, you
can start becoming your own expert SEO source. All it takes is monitoring your
results with the correct knowledge of what’s working and what’s not.
As you’re about to discover, there’s more to this than just making sure your
sites are “ranking high in the search engines.”
How to Know When You’re “On Google’s Good Side”
We all know Google isn’t completely transparent about what they want from
us. Can’t say I blame them. If they were to tell us exactly what we needed to do
to rank high, millions or webmasters would go right to work trying to come up
with a quick and dirty way to fool Google. Thankfully, there are a few
“symptoms” which will tell you whether you’re in good graces with Google.
1. Sudden Traffic Spikes Followed by Sudden Drops
If you see a sudden spike in your traffic or your rankings, but it’s followed by an
equally dramatic drop, it’s likely that the increased traffic magnified the
weaknesses in your site. For example, if you’re on page five and getting just a
few hits a day with a high bounce rate, the data isn’t trickling in fast enough to
give an accurate account of how engaging your site really is.
If you’ve ever split tested, you know what I’m talking about. With more traffic,
you can gather data faster and find the holes in your sales funnel. So while
getting to page one is the ultimate goal, you better make sure your site is ready
to stay there once it gets there. Page one rankings will bring you a lot more
traffic, which can be a bad thing if your bounce rate is high.
The last thing you want is to hit page one, only to be told that you have to go
back to page 4 or 5 and “start over.” This is why it’s so important to be
consistently monitoring your bounce rate, time on site and user behaviors and
making sure your site visitors are sticking around.
2. Drop in Traffic But Not in Rankings for Main Keywords
Don’t assume that just because your site is ranking high all is well with the
world. If you have high rankings for your main keyword, you might have
noticed also that you’re getting a lot of traffic for secondary keywords and even
long tail keywords.
For example, if your site is optimized for the keyword: “online life coaching,”
and ranking on page one, you could also end up with hundreds of hits per
month for keywords like: how to become a life coach, how to market your
coaching business, how to deal with difficult people, listening skills for
coaching.
Those long tail keywords can add up to a lot of traffic, and if your site stops
getting that traffic, it’s probably because the bounce rate or “time on site” for
those keywords isn’t that good. So it’s important to look for drops in your
traffic and determine whether your blogs and articles are bringing down the
value of your entire site because they’re not delivering as much value.
For best results, deliver the same amount of value on your auxiliary pages as
you are on your primary pages….deliver MORE value if you can. Building links
from one article to other articles on your site, as we mentioned before, will
help with this and so will creating valuable and relevant content.
3. Ranking Volatility
Volatility is a stock market term which is used to describe stocks that make
frequent jumps which go from very low to very high. If your site is making
drastic leaps in the search engine results, this means Google is trying to
determine the value and placement of your site. This is especially common
when a few update has just come out or when you’ve just created a new site or
made some significant changes.
The bouncing isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to be mindful of,
especially if you have SEO clients. They’ll want to know why their site took a big
drop and they’ll also need to know that if it takes a sudden jump, there’s still
no reason to get excited. The nature of these changes will also be determined
by how competitive the niche is that you are in.
If you’re in a very competitive niche with lots of people trying to rank high or
your keywords, you’ll be more likely to see these types of fluctuations. You
might also notice that the drops happen right before your site makes a jump
back to a higher position. Again, this is Google trying to determine the
authority of your site so don’t panic when you see a drop but don’t get too
excited about a sudden rankings boost. Remember, the key is to stay
consistent.
When things settle down, you know that Google has finally determined the
placement of your site and you can start building a solid plan for moving up.
4. Drops in Ranking Which Affect Your Entire Site
It might be fairly common for a page or two on your site to drop in rankings,
but if the drop seems to be widespread and affecting your entire site, that’s a
problem. This means the authority of your site has dropped and most likely it’s
not just because of one thing. If you’re doing everything the right way in regard
to link building, content and if you have a good bounce rate and time on site,
you might have been “scraped” by some lazy marketer.
In other words, your site’s content was duplicated and republished on
someone else’s site for the sake of building up their rankings. Copyscape can
help you to find out who these people are, and you can fill out a copyright
infringement form against the site owner. Of course, like any other legal
process, this isn’t fast and it can be a real hassle, so you have to decide if it’s
worth it to go after the person copying your content. If you happen to find one
site which has a lot of your content, then it might be worth it.
Another cause for a drop in rankings could be a loss of backlinks. For example,
if you’re not building permanent links and you suddenly lose what you’re
building, you might see a drop in ranking. That’s another reason why Linkaloha
can be a powerful tool to have in your corner. After all, if you’re consistently
building links on autopilot it won’t make as much of an impact if you lose some
of them.
5. Spikes in Organic Traffic
Most experienced webmasters have seen this a few times: a site gets a sudden
and unexplained spike in traffic. While I’m not 100% sure as to why this
happens, I have a pretty good theory based on some things I’ve seen. I’ve
noticed that if these traffic spikes happen on sites where the bounce rate or
time on site stats aren’t good, the traffic will dry right up again. However, if the
spike in traffic happens and the bounce rate and time on site is good in
response, the traffic normally keeps coming and rankings increase.
This can only mean that Google did something to increase the traffic and to
“test” the visitors’ responses to your site. This would be a hell of a time to get
“caught with your pants down,” since you’re being given an opportunity to
earn more traffic. Again, split testing and working towards improving your
bounce rate, your time on site and the number of pages accessed by your
visitors.
By the way, this is something you want to consider if you’re doing a campaign
for sending a lot of traffic to your site. If you buy one of those offers to have
6,000 visitors sent to your site for just $17, be prepared to have a very high
bounce rate, which could hurt things for you when it comes to your organic
rankings as well.
Lots of traffic isn’t always a good thing, you have to optimize your site for
conversions before you start blasting a lot of “hits” and hoping that a few will
turn into sales.
6. Go With Your Gut
Most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, know when we’re doing something
well and when we’re not. Be honest with yourself, go to your website and ask
yourself if you’re creating a great experience for your visitors. If you suspect
that you’re not, you’re probably right. Many times you can avoid getting
slapped by Google if you have the courage to slap yourself out of denial and
face the fact that you’re being cheap or lazy with your SEO.
To help you out with this honest evaluation, here are the site evaluation
questions which Google has on their webmaster guidelines:
1. Would you trust the information presented in this article?
2. Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well,
or is it more shallow in nature?
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the
same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
4. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this
site?
5. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
6. Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does
the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in
search engines?
7. Does the article provide original content or information, original
reporting, original research, or original analysis?
8. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages
in search results?
9. How much quality control is done on content?
10.Does the article describe both sides of a story?
11.Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
12.Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of
creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual
pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
13.Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
14.For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
15.Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned
by name?
16.Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the
topic?
17.Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that
is beyond obvious?
18.Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or
recommend?
19.Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or
interfere with the main content?
20.Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia
or book?
21.Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful
specifics?
22.Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less
attention to detail?
23.Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
Go to your site and ask yourself every one of those questions, be honest with
yourself…as if your income depended on it. When you think about it, it does.
You might be able to sneak by Google for a little while longer using shortcut
techniques like content scraping, spamming for back links and hiring out
writers who work for a couple dollars an article or who will spin one decent
article into dozens of crappy ones.
However, Google is on a mission, and they have a LOT of money and a whole
lot of power to make it happen. Here are two questions you need to ask
yourself to make sure you don’t end up caught in their web…
 If Google had the technology TODAY to completely evaluate every
website on the internet according to the above guidelines, where would
your site(s) end up?
 If someone (a human being) from Google were to visit your site RIGHT
NOW with the intention of deciding if it was worthy of a decent ranking,
what would their decision be?
Again, most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, know when we’re doing
something well and when we’re not. Ask yourself the above questions and if
you have any doubts about the outcome, it’s time to get to work. Your income
and your future depends on it. An honest answer to these questions will help
you to apply the final, and most important, part of this report…
How to Become Your Own Expert Source
I saw a quote on an internet marketing forum the other day that said this:
“Test everything, trust no one.”
Well put.
While there are SEO and internet marketing experts who you can trust, a lot of
them are lost in the mess of BS out there. Thankfully, you found this report and
read it. However, the second you go back to the web and search for more
information, you’re going to be bombarded with bizarre and contradicting
advice.
You have ONE line of defense against this…become your own expert.
Test everything you do, keep track of your results, refine your methods and
trust no one. The great marketer Dan Kennedy said that “marketing isn’t
something you learn, it’s something you do.”
Pretty solid advice there.
So let’s recap the points in this book and talk about what you can do to start
building up a solid knowledge of what really works in SEO…
1. Start Your New Content Strategy
Either hire someone to write weekly or bi-weekly blogs for your site or make a
100% commitment to do it for yourself. Treat is with the same importance that
you treat taking a shower everyday or putting food in your stomach. I suggest
you carve out the time to do the writing if you decide to do it yourself or create
an ongoing project with a good freelance writing team.
2. Start Split Testing and Optimizing Your Pages
You can start with your home page headline and move down the page from
there until you get to the bottom. Test graphics and colors, test offers and calls
to action. Test your font styles and see what works. No more theories or poring
over blogs by SEO experts.
Test, test, test.
3. Start Keeping an “SEO Log”
The biggest mistake you can make with split testing is to NOT keep track of
what you’ve tested and what the results have been. I’ve known a few
marketers who had a sales page that was working, but when they kept testing
and tweaking it, the results got worse instead of better. Only problem is they
hadn’t tracked what they were testing and kept the old version of the page or
the headline.
So they ended up with a big goose egg…zero sales, and nothing to do about
getting the original page back up. Keeping an SEO log fixes this. An SEO log wil
also help you to get a “big picture” look at what’s worked and what hasn’t. It
also might turn out to be something you can repurpose into an information
product. Imagine that ;-)
4. Start Building a Following
Facebook likes, email opt ins, Twitter followers, RSS subscribers, forum
members…start gathering them right away. A solid following will make you less
dependent on Google to feed you traffic. Again, imagine what you might do to
prepare if Google were to suddenly announce that they’d be stopping all new
traffic to your site. Build your own following and you can become an authority
without having to depend on Google rankings.
Do this and the high rankings will just be like an added bonus.
5. Sign Up for Linklaloha
Shameless self-promotion here I know, but think about this…
We’ve invested thousands and thousands into building this system…and that’s
not to consider the years of research and experience. How much time and
money can you waste trying to reinvent the wheel for yourself? Maybe it would
take thousands and thousands of dollars and years of your life when you could
be busy making money.
With Linkaloha, you can put your backlink building on 100% autopilot, knowing
that you’re doing it 100% Panda compliant…this way you’ll actually have the
time and energy to focus on your content strategy, your SEO log, your split
testing, your product creation and your life.
You’ve got a discount coming to you that you can redeem as soon as the
software comes out, but there will only be 250 slots sold because that’s
everything our system can handle currently.
See you soon,
Koen Berkenbosch.
http://www.berkenboschmarketing.com