I have a well respected site. DMOZ listed. PR 5. Backlinks numbers constantly going up (not by thousands just a few hundred every few months) Site was on the first page in google for it's main keyword term. At it's peak the site was at #8 and rising for it's main keyword. Then one day it just vanished from the front page and went back to number 50. Today it sits at number 68 but it goes up and down. I made NO changes to it once it hit it's front page status as I figured I'd made it and the natural backlinks it was still gaining would slowly move it to the top. Well to my surprise the opposite happened. Here's the URL www.onlyriddles.com So my question (besides WTF!!) is how can SEOs/SEMs give valid advice to their clients on SEO when the engines change what works whenever the hell they feel like it?
I believe Google penalizes pages thatnever change. I have sites that I change frequently and some that I do not. The ones I don't change a lot go up or down 10 or 20 spots every few days. The ones I chage are consistenly ranked wherethey are ranked. Not evidence - just my experience.
Because the professional gives advice on how to achieve and keep rankings that aren't effected by updates and won't disappear. There are quick ways to get rankings such as recip linking but in the end you will lose them fast. Using steady, sure, methods will get your rankings there and keep them. I have not lost a major ranking in the past year. Also once a ranking is achieved don't leave it or you will lose it. If you have questions send me a PM or check the links in my sig.
By setting clients expectations from the beginning that the search engines are 3rd party companies which I have no control of. Basically an SEO is a lawyer who pleads your case to Search Engine Judge Some days you go free......some days you do not... in search engine terms ---some days you rank...some days you do not Have to ride the tide and continually strive to make the site better
I think the reason is that the updated ones are likely to get linked to and the ones that aren't updated often won't. That is my experiance (sorry for double post)
On-site SEO, (which could be improved) for the site's top terms are: the ctxt for riddle com onlyriddles and var valueclick media riddles date code cookie left answer arrow bottom old dog top cat 4784a3 indexof math mouse Currently Google indicates 641 backlinks to the site with about 1,320 pages indexed. I notice that the site is positioned on Google at #59 for the term riddles, which is a fairly competitive term. The monthly Overture count is 67,266 for the keyword term, riddles. Of the 641 backlinks Google indicates, only 158 pages had links to the site with a total of 250 links actually found. Of those 250, the inbound anchor text links (off-site SEO) are: riddles - 47% georgeb - 32% homepage - 32% visit - 32% brain - 29% teasers - 29% com - 22% onlyriddles - 22% for - 4% myspace - 4% www - 3% http: - 2% to - 1% riddle - 1% 1000 - 1% browse - 1% complete - 1% cool - 1% database - 1% only - 1% Total 250 inbounds (off-site SEO) Problems the site may have: There are 57 inbound linking pages from within same Class C address block. This could mean less links are counting toward the total needed for desired ranking. Also, there's the pop-up which may not agree with Google -- compared to your competition which are for the most part, pop-up free sites. Additionally, the sites from which your inbounds originate are not optimized for your target terms, or your site's industry. Only 2% of the sites linking to you have the term "riddles" anywhere in their code. Suggestions: (1) Refine the site's search engine optimization for your target term(s). (2) Solicit and acquire inbound text links containing your target terms in the link from industry related websites AND from sites which are also optimized for your targeted terms. (3) Lose the pop-up. Comments: This evaluation, in my opinion, indicates that your site is right about where it should be according to the competitiveness of your target term and the combination of on-site/off-site SEO you currently incorporate. You might keep in mind that there are no guarantees with SEO. Together with search engine algorithms being frequently changed, the vast number of new websites being created everyday and webmasters learning to employ SEO techniques, at best, search engine optimization is a learned skill that offers a calculated potential for success.
Google sometimes updates results for few keywords daily . it will take a day or two to come back just donot loose hope. it might be just one or two datacenter.
Hi George You should also try to solidy your links to your site as there seems to be an issue with PR bleed. Results 1 - 2 of about 3 for http://www.onlyriddles.com Results 1 - 10 of about 256 for www.onlyriddles.com. Your search - http://onlyriddles.com - did not match any documents. Results 1 - 10 of about 12,700 for onlyriddles.com. You can correct this in .htaccess with an Apache URL Code to direct all inbound links to the absolute URL and solidify that PR which should get you back to the top after a bit.
That is exactly why SEOs/SEMs do exist. The rules are constantly changing. It is nearly impossible to be ahead of the change. But when changes happen, the SEO community figures it out and quickly adjusts. So the only good SEOs are the ones that stay current. Six month old advice is probably worthless. BTW, what you experience is rather common. When my site emerged from the sandbox a couple of months ago, it appeared at #9. It held that spot for nearly two days. It then fell to #17 and now bounces between #19 and #14. I interpret that as a G filter that got around to adjusting my doc score a couple of days after emerging from the box. Which filter? Who knows? Maybe it was link related, content related, or trust related. However, I do believe that if I continue improving content and links, I will eventually regain that #9 spot. /tom/
By the way, I failed to mention the element of time. Since your site could be defined as relatively "young" by many standards (registered Jan 2006), it might also take another 6 months to a year to hit the 1st page of Google's results should you decide to follow the other suggestions I made. -- then again, maybe not.
BS in my niche there are websites in the first 10 listings for some keyword phrases that have not been updated since 2002. In fact the no1 listing in yahoo msn and google has not been updated since 2004 and list at no1 for 90% of the search terms. The funny thing is it is just a homepage with a few backlinks. BUT It has very old backlinks and has been up since '97 And those are phrases which still yield about 1 milj results or more.
Google has a goal to be the most relevant. If sombody knows the rules and plants themselves in the top 10 spots then Google looses confidense of searchers. So it is in their best interest to always change the rules to get more "relevancy" every day. What ever that is. It doesn't seem fair, but geues what would happen if 1 person Knew "exactly" what it took.
But the backlinks may be improving. THOSE sites may be getting stronger. Off page factors are infinite while on-page factors are limited.
The site is too shallow. Add links to webpages optimized for these words hard riddles riddles jewelry riddles brain teasers jokes riddles 21 question riddles funny riddles riddles for kids jokes and riddles brain teasers riddles Then some words move up while others move down. Plus the association with thses other words will lift the whole site higher and give it more boyancy. ( so to speak)