Surprised that big daddy Google is not happy with you? Has your site rankings fallen with the new PR update? Following are a list of reasons why this generally happens. You might have been doing one or more of these…
Reasons why Google does not love you like it used to
1. Rapid Link building and Google Sandbox
Google says that a new site should not become eligible to high Search Engine Rankings immediately. So what it does, it puts the site inside a sordid container call “Sandbox” (yup its not a myth, it does exists). After few months, owing to your site’s popularity and demand, your site may be our of the container within weeks or may take long months. This mostly happens with new sites or site which jumps Search Engine rankings very rapidly.
2. Link Buying
Link buying seems attractive option to quickly rake up your site’s importance in terms of Search Engine Rankings. You can easily get hundreds or thousand of back links for few dollars.But are they worth it? Ideally yes if the quality of back links are good. Else its rather beneficial if you do not buy any. Remember “No Back Link is better than Bad Back links”.
3. Too much Site wide Back links
Avoid getting too much Site Wide Back Links. Google consider these as Advertisements rather than back links. There has to be a strong reason why a site is relating to your site on each and every page. Its just rationale that Google is trying to achieve.
4. Changes in your Site’s Navigational Structure
A drastic change in the design structure, mostly with the navigation might hurt your Search Engine Rankings. Always remember to keep adding fresh content as the main goal rather than keep redesigning the site and its link structure. Update your sitemap if you decide to do so.
5. Changes in the Permalink Structure
Permalinks can be easily change on a site wide basis when you are working on a package like Wordpress or Joomla. This often invalidates the previous reported pages on your site as 404 errors. Remember to have proper redirection methods in order to avoid your all pages to fall into the 404 Page not Found destination.
6. Duplicate Content
This one is my favorite one. Blogs especially Wordpress displays your site’s content at a number of places. This is done via the Category pages, Tag pages, Search pages, Archives page etc. Most of these constitutes of repeated content. And you are bound to get penalized for that.
7. Your Back links have lost its steam
The quality of Back Link has dropped (expire, lost its value), there by creating the Domino effect on your site’s Search Engine Rankings.
8. Changes in the Title Tag or Domain Name
Title Tag and Domain Name are two most important criteria when it come to Search Engine Rankings. Domain Name are rarely touched, but Title Tag can be easily changed. I would advise against it unless you really have a killer one with a Good Keyword in it.
9. You pages are no more SEO friendly
This one is a total lolly. You might have stopped using SEO techniques like writing Alt text, not targeting Keywords etc. over the span of time. “Remember, Post less with proper Meta Tags is better than Posting more without Meta Tags”.
10. Algorithm change
Last but certainly not the least, Google decided to change its Algorithm. Also better known as Page Rank Update. This often happens every 4-6 months.
Some Myths Busted
1. Bad Neighboring Sites
Search Engine does not penalize you for having a bad neighbor. So if you end up hosting your site on a shared IP address, which also happens to have a spam site on it, you need not worry. Google or other modern Search Engine only recognize your site via your Domain Name only. However you should be concern if your major chunk of back links are coming from such spammy sites.
2. Changes in Content
Your ranking does not dip if you change the content of the page. In the same way your ranking does not improve if you keep updating a page (except the standard pages like homepage of a blog) with changes in content.
However, if their is a massive change in content, like adding loads of words which would throw up in Search Engine Queries, there might be increase in SERPs. The opposite is also true, where you deleted a lot of stuff and the Search Engine no more finds the words or keyword it came looking for in the first place.
Did missed a reason? Let me know via comments. C ya.
For those of use using Wordpress or Drupal for our blogs, I found http://www.errorlytics.com to help with your issue #5 above. It’s a little rough around the edges, but the core functionality is pretty nice. Basically lets you (through a plugin) easily track and also redirect in a search engine friendly way, all your 404 errors. Much easier than screwing around with the .htaccess file and writing regex rules.
Thanks alan for mentioning the nice service. Let me look into it.
Most modern Webhost have build in domain redirect panels, but they are hardly useful. This might be the one which does the trick.
Thanks for mentioning the important guidelines
They say you can use platinum SEO plugin too. It helps redirecting all pages after changing permalink.
I’ve got no doubt that making sitewide changes to your site via SSI or whatever means Google has to re-valuate thus resulting in a temp/permanent change in rankings. What would you consider proper meta tags in number 9 ?