The goal of the internet is to provide information as accurately and recent as possible correct? I have been doing SEO for 7 years now and am afraid to edit the content on my sites. Why? Because in April I simply updated a site and it went from 100 visitors to 5 per day. This has happened many times to not only myself but others as well as documented in this forum. I was punished for giving our customers valid recent information and have yet to see the visitors return to normal. And, Yes, I followed all the Google rules. The problem I have now is that I have to edit a major site by keeping the product information on the index page current and yet sticking to the same theme. Eg: Changing the products from 2004 version to 2007. We currently get 1000 unique visitors per day and if I edit this site poorly, Google will drop our rankings to almost non existant. What do I do? If I go ahead and update the content and make one mistake, I may jeopardize the entire company, the staff and their families etc. Yes, I know there are some people that are going to say "Google doesn't owe you anything" and you will be correct, but how do I handle this? I want to give our customers current information but I am afraid of Google dropping our ranking to a level that would create a disaster at our company. Google is hurting people. I should not be afraid to edit a site.
But from another point of view, how many 2004 products do you sell today from that website ? Would you not sell more with 2007 products even with fewer visitors ?
You said: "My theory, if your site is running not touch it" LOL, this is exactly my point people, Google is saying "Do not touch your site or we will hurt your rankings" is this what the internet is about? I used that as an example comparison, I wont be doing exactly that. The point is, I need to update the content and if I do something wrong, I may hurt our entire company. Very scary this it has come down to this.
If you cannot change the home page there is not much you can do beside making links from the home page to the new product pages. You can redirect users with java script, but Google will not like that I suppose.
That is horrific. Google should be promoting new and original content, but instead stifles it. One example is google's higher ranking of older sites. Since when does a 7 year old site have better information than a 1 year old or 6 month old site. Utterly ridiculous.
I thought if you just add the content but dont ruin the main optimization points that should be fine. I always update my site too but didn't drop or increase much though.
I've experimented a bit with this and found that a newer site with copied content from an older site will rank higher than a new site with fresh content. It just doesn't make any sense. Almost as if google is punishing you for having fresh/updated stuff on your site.
The way I see it, google isn’t wrong in doing this. I mean your site isn’t the one ranking in google, your content is. Now if you change the content, then it means google has to decide whether or not the new content you have is good enough to rank well or not. After all you cant say Spiderman 3 is fantastic cause you have seen Spiderman 1, you have to see this movie as well and decided if its good or not and this is what google does.
You really believe that simply because you updated your site, Google is punishing you? There must be more to the story. Maybe you changed keywords, maybe you over optimized, maybe you totally changed themes, maybe a lot of things. But I am certain that there are far more people who update their sites and either hold their position or increase it, than there are those who lose position. I would take a very close look and try your hardest to determine what happened. It's never a good idea to allow fear to rule. /*tom*/
i believe your problem is not editing the web site. there must another problem . i can not make comment because i dont know your site but editing content or adding content is not punishment reason
And the amazing part is, it could coincide with the fact that Google would have chopped you down anyway, and it just looked like it was what you did. I was able to bring my site up from 300 to like 2 in a week just by adding "s" to a few singulars. If that works (between dances) for someone like me, couldn't you just put a saved copy of your old version back in place? I appreaciate what you said about content. This week, more than most, I've been commenting elsewhere, that Google's job should harvesting content. And although I find some relevancy in the search results, I think that there is a barrier that they need to find a way through, to take search to a better level. In the general chat area, I posted a topic along that line of thought - I think that Google needs a way to tap into links that the typical homeowner and business person is emailing and passing back and forth. Referrals by other than actual websites.
Like, I said, I have been doing SEO in the days long before times of Page Rank and things like the Google Sandbox. I remember the days when we could take a site to first page for anything within a month. So...that being said. I understand comments such as don't vary the theme, don't keyword stuff, don't alter content dramatically. I understand this 100% and have done that with other sites and still have fallen like a rock for doing nothing but trying to help our visitors. I feel more confident leaving old content on the site than changing it slightly. This is very very wrong for Google to make us feel this way. Shame on Google for handcuffing us.
I have found that having fresh on my site has brought positive results from Google. Maybe its the update frequency that also has an effect on this.
No, can't be. I watched plenty of sites that don't update, yet display well. You know what I think the problem is? Googles job is to find relevance. And the goal of many, if not most sites undergoing SEO work, is to strive to get a higher rank than they deserve. If 100 websites, in the same trade, are all done by the best webmaster, who on Earth gets the top spots. I rehearse that question to stick to reality. But when I read these forums, hardly anybody post questions like "what is the best grammar for a paragraph?". Or "how much should I spend to hire an English major to write my client's advice page?". Or "how long does it take to produce a beneficial advice website?" Everybody in existence (figure of speech) wants the highest PR backlinks. They all think they should be and can be in the top 3 search results. They all exchange as many links as they can to be the most popular. Part figurative, but basically dead on balls accurate. So Google seeks relevance, while half the sites in existence all do any damn thing they can to bypass relevance merely with a goal of being number one and getting "show me the money". So the SEO realm is probably really their own worst nightmare, because if all they spent time on was perfecting their content, the internet would go fairly static and not dance around as much.
You should not be afraid to edit your site. If you're doing SEO for 7 years you must be confident enough to put your site again in the SERP after updating the site content.
hi, I also think that you can update your site. Be confident that you can maintain your website traffic. With your previous site, I think there might be some another case. I also updates site periodically and they still draw enough traffic. - Nick Mutt
if you have been in this industry for long, so you should know that google like you to do experiment on keywords. I mean always try other keywords and you migth rank even better with a twist of words.
I edited one of the pages on one of my sites recently, it had slowly crept up the rankings and was on the 1st page of Google. Literally minutes after editing it it vanished from the index! I cant explain that or how it happened so damned fast but it did. I dont like editing anything now