OK.... I was accepting of the theory all before that maybe I was sandboxed for building links too fast or maybe Google big daddy update just needs to settle. Well the hell with that I think they are just f@#$ng with me! I have a site that I started in late February that made PR6 on this last weird update. I've done all the SEO I can with an even spread of good backlinks from relevant and non relevant sites and good keyword density on the site with the keyword in the title tag. It was even featured on CoolSiteOfTheDay so it's not a spammy site it's a good solid resource. Well it's been hovering around page 5 and 6 for the past few weeks. It was at page 5 for a week or 2 then dropped to page 6 for no apparent reason. Then yesterday it moved up to page 4. Eureka, it's finally starting it's slow ascent to the top right? WRONG! Today it dropped to half way down page 7 The site is the Riddles site in sig. I really need an SEO guru out there to help me figure out what's going on. I do NO blackhat stuff whatsoever so I have no idea what type of penalty I could be under. Not a single site on the first few pages for the my keyword search is above PR5. Anyone want to take on this mystery?
George be a bit patient - I have keep a record of the SERPS for each of my client and I have seen these fluctuations from 2-3 weeks. Each datacenter shows you on a differnt SERP. So dont worry leep your calm for a few days more till all datacenters reflect (somewhat) the same SERP for your keywords. The fact that you moved to page 4 itself shows that your link-building has been correct. My advise would be to stay calm and wait for the google to stabilize.
What I have seen in this update is google has removed many pages from its index, they have started checking on the time-span in which a website has built up its links - too many links in too short time (which I got for my clients) got me thrown from #13 to #21 during this update. This is only an observation as I had 50 links showing up in google before big-daddy and now only 43.
Dude chill... I get shifts of 1-2-3-4-5 pages even, per day. Just try to relax, wait, and keep promoting your site. A fal of one page, is by no means a penalization. You would've FELT it, if it was a penalization.
Hi George, Calm down man Google is NOT fupping with you, but you are fupping yourself (send me the pictures I can probably build a site around them and make money) <joke> Serious stuff now!- I clicked through to your site, and knew instantly what the problem is. (but your not going to like it) Rotating random text on your front page!!! Plain and simple. It is almost impossible to SEO a site that uses random content on the front page. You are going to have to sort that out. You have two options here really. 1. set your rotating image in an Iframe that google can not get at to give your site stability of content. 2. Edit all the titles that rotate to include your keywords 3. (did I say 2 LOL) cloak the front page 4. Live with the bouncing site scenario (did I say 3 LOL) Personally I would go with making the rotating section non spiderable, as this is the easiest way forward and will allow you to optimise properly, while at the same time not altering the clientside forward facing interface. Existing regulars will not see any difference. HTH Old Welsh Guy
Interesting thanks. Anyone else got input on this theory? I though Google liked updated content whenever it comes back to spider your site... ?
The only way that updated content benefits you is that it encourages the spider to come back more often. Think for a moment about the phrase Search Engine OPtimisation. How can a site be at its optimum if it is changing all the time? Honestly I am not making some wild guess here. Get that rotating stuff handled differently (put it in an I frame or use javascript), then focus your attention on what is left, and you will be #1 in no time. I am assuming that your phrases are 'brain teasers' and 'riddles'? You should have no problem getting top 5 for those phrases with the right index page.
Do you have a lot of static targeted links to your site? It could be possible some bought links were recently discounted or just standard google flux
I won't say that it will fix your issues, but I agree with the OWG. Rotating content worked well a few years back, but the spiders are better these days. To a smart spider, new content and page updates look different than a section that is simply rotating between different items.
lol, Good point. I thought sandboxed at first meant Google make it hard for your site to be found as it might of been penalised or something as I think a site of mine has so was just wondering if that was the term to use. They never reply to my requests to find out tho when I email them.
Do you realy mean that a site with some dynamic content is difficult to get ranked in a stable position in G. "Old Welsh Guy" could you look at my site (sig) where every day the main portion of my site in changing because the goal of the site is presenting every day new freeware titles. I'm ranking in 4th page in G for my most important keyword (freeware) and indeed the site goes up an down every day ... Some month's ago I was on page 3 ... and now I see some stable (less relevant) sites climbing over mine. Can you give some advise ...
As long as the content is archived then surely that's ok then as the link will still be on the site but not on the main page? And yours is archived.
By all means archive your content, but that will be a page that is new, and will have very little link benefit pointing to it. The index page of your site is the most important page, and as such all things being equal should receive the greatest link benefit. Every page internally pointing to it and many of the inbound links.etc The only things search engines have to work out what your site is all aboutis what YOU say about it (on page copy), and what OTHERS say about it (anchor text in backlinks). If others are linking to you saying your site is about 'brain teasers and riddles' (anchor text in backlinks), then your main page should be saying the same. Currently it is not! (well it is but not enough). While you ARE delivering what the anchor text says (riddles and brainteasers), you are NOT saying you do. Dynamic content isn't a problem, the problem is changing content. Here are two pages with regard the original site. http://www.onlyriddles.com/ current page http://66.249.93.104/search?sourcei...0,GGLJ:en&q=cache:http://www.onlyriddles.com/ google cached page. The BULK of the content on this page has changed, so how can you expect it to rank the same? It is either going to rank better, or worse.
But don't most people change content on a main page when they update? And by saying you deliver so and so you mean have a headline that says something like 'Welcome to url.com the place to find 'keyword' 'keyword' ?
I think Old Welsh Guy is talking about the issue of changing too much content, which confuses the heck out of the SEs. Which begs the question, how much content on the homepage should you change to keep it fresh whilst keeping on topic?
I agree with Old Welsh Guy. To add to it I would also think about targeting "hard riddles" for a keyword. This would be much much easier and can land you a few hundred visitors a day.
This is a very interesting discussion, thanks guys, but how does changing content, for example on a blog, affect SEO. Should blog owners include a sticky post on the page so that Google sees something familiar every time it spiders, or are blogs a special case because of archiving?