At first I thought that the decline in visitor numbers to my
Website was related to the Global Financial Crisis. GFC or not, I had to
make my Website attract more potential customers.
I
tried to find my Website using "Visual Basic Programmer" or "Access
Database Programmer" in the Google listings without success. This after
having been on the first page of the search engine listings for years.
I
read every bit of advice I could find on the
Internet. I could not
relate the Google Panda updates to my Website. I had never used any of
the "Black-Hat" or spam techniques that were a no-no. My Website may
have the odd Backlink from a dubious directory, but surely not in
sufficient numbers to warrant such a drop in the SERP Rankings.
Search Engine Optimisation
I
then re-examined every aspect of Search Engine Optimisation that I
could tweak. The first issue that I discovered was that Google was
ignoring the "Sydney, Australia" that I displayed in the Sidebar of the
Website. The only away around this was to include the town and country
in the Title of every Web page. And consequently, I had to reduce the
other descriptions in each Title.
Next I made sure that the
Keyword density on each page was not excessive. This was rather
difficult. For example, an article on the usage of LINQ (Language
Integrated Query) would mention LINQ many times, but not in my view,
excessively. Reducing the incidence of the word LINQ makes reading the
copy unnatural.
After the Optimisation
The
consequence of the Title change was an increased visitor number each
day, although not to the previous levels. But the visitors were much
more targeted, with now fewer from overseas. I never have had a query
for my services from anywhere but Australia, so this was not a bad
outcome.
I am now back on the first page of the results page listings, but only if the visitor adds "Australia" to the search.
Why the massive hit?
But
it still begged the question - why had the Panda update affected my
Website so severely? A bit more research answered this question. The
Article submission directory had taken a massive hit from the Panda
update. As I have relied almost entirely on the "link juice" from my
articles submitted to this directory, my Website was also massively
affected.
Incidentally I had always found the editorial standards of the Article directory to be high.
All the advice that I could find had the meaningless phrase of "too
many eggs in one basket". Google is the only game in town, the only
avenue open to me. The effort to promote my Website on Twitter or
Facebook or some other social media will be time wasting and not
helpful. To submit articles to the rather low-level Squidoo or Hubpages
(which were unaffected by the update - talk of low quality content, go
figure) will be equally meaningless.
Google and low quality content
I
applaud Google on their efforts to stamp out low quality content. But
research shows that many small businesses have also had their visitor
numbers decimated. It would seem to me that Google will need a lot more
changes to their algorithms, before what they are doing harms the bad
guys more than the good guys.
So much for the Google mantra "Do no evil".
I
can only hope that my Article submission directory will soon be
returned to its former glory, and every winter turn to spring. So runs
my dream. (my apologies to Tennyson)
Neville Silverman, based in Sydney Australia, has been a Visual
Basic programmer and Microsoft Access programmer and Database design
specialist for many years.
He has created numerous Microsoft
Access databases, SQL Server Databases and Microsoft Visual Basic
systems for clients. He develops and supports software systems for the
small to medium sized business. Administrative systems are custom built
to fit company requirements - software solutions that are cost
effective, efficient and user-friendly.