Sudden Ranking Drop? Don't Panic!

Have you ever experienced that sinking feeling when you discover that the Google rankings you worked so hard for suddenly plummet? You might be used to seeing your rankings move up and down several places. This is normal. Search engine rankings are dynamic by their very nature, so a certain degree of movement is normal and expected. Up one day, down the next. But one day you wake up to find that you can't find your site anywhere for your targeted keywords.

Panic sets in!

You ask yourself "What have I done? Have I been banned?"

Unless you've done something silly like use deceptive optmisation techniques, stuff that you know is risky, then the most likely cause is you've over-optimised. Luckily this can be easily fixed. If, however, your PageRank has gone to zero (where you had PR before) and a search for site:www.yoursite.com on Google returns no results, then it's likely you've been removed from the index, and you probably already know why. The only way out of that mess is to reverse the dodgy techniques you used before and be prepared for a lot of groveling. Or buy a new domain and start over.

But let's assume you've done nothing unethical and this came as a total shock. The site: command confirms that you are still indexed, just not ranking for keywords you usually rank well for. What's happened is you've experienced an over-optimisation penalty. In other words you've tried too hard, and Google have called you on it. The simple solution is to de-optimise.

First, check the keyword density on your page. Do your keywords appear more often than would appear natural? If so, reduce the number and/or substitute similar or related keywords. In other words if you are targeting "website design software", replace a few instances of your keywords with "HTML editor" or something similar.

Next, check your internal links. Do lots of pages within your site link back to the homepage with your targeted keywords in the link? This is normally an effective optimisation technique, but it can be overdone. Same story for anchor text in external, in-bound links. If those keywords are contained in too many links you'll be penalised on those keywords. Why? To Google, this appears un-natural. When other sites link to you it is normal and expected that they will do so in a variety of ways. Sometimes they'll link to you using just your URL as the anchor text. If all the inbound links look the same this sets the alarm bells ringing and Google figure you are attempting to manipulate results.

So, for the inbound links that you have control over (which won't be all of them), change the anchor text to different, but related keywords. Or, build some new links which don't contain your targeted keywords at all.

When I've experienced this over-optimisation penalty, by just making a few changes and de-optimising, those rankings will return, often as quickly as the next day.

Keywords: website designer search engine optimisation seo steve pronger keyword density search engine rankings google penalty

Local Business Marketing - Is The Web Working for You?

On the ceiling in our lounge room is a rather ugly water stain. It seems something is leaking in the bathroom directly above. I have to admit, it's been there quite a while. When it comes to home maintenance I tend to be the type of person who ignores it and hopes it will go away. It hasn't gone away. So, although it's a great talking point when friends drop around I decided to get a plumber in and see what needs to be done.

Now, instead of pulling out the Yellow Pages I thought this would be a good test to see if the local tradesmen were using the Web to make themselves a) findable, b) employable and c) contactable. Yes, I could have just picked up the phone, but it was usually late at night by the time I got around to doing this and I hate talking to answering machines. Also, the Yellow Pages ad didn't tell me much other than they were there and what services they provided. But how did I know I could trust them or form an opinion on the quality of their work.

I went to Google and searched "plumber blue mountains". The first site was a tradesman's directory. It had one listing for a plumber who wasn't even in the Blue Mountains. The only contact details were a telephone number.

The second result on Google was the Blue Mountains Conservation Society. The third was Valley Heights Locomotive Depot Heritage Museum Blue Mountains.

Down near the bottom of the first page results I did find an actual plumber. But they were Sydney based and don't service the Blue Mountains. The only reason they came up in this search was they mentioned water restrictions which apply across Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Illawarra.

The sponsored listings weren't much better. No actual plumbers. So I went back to the Yellow Pages to see if any of the ads mentioned a website. Very few did. I found three. But at least I was getting somewhere, or so I thought. The first one looked terrible. Very unprofessional. But at least it had a contact form and an email address. I filled out the form, hit submit and ....

got an error message. So I tried the email contact. It bounced.

The next site looked better. I filled out the contact form, hit submit and got a confirmation page. Good. Now I just have to wait. And wait. And wait. That was several weeks ago. I'm still waiting.
Determined to see this through, I tried the third site. This looked much better. Clean, professional design. Good content. I filled out the contact form. The confirmation page said "we will get back to you within 24 hours". Great! Now I'm getting somewhere. But that was over a week ago. I'm still waiting.

The moral of the story?

If you're a local service provider the marketing opportunities the Web currently affords you are significant. Your competitors don't have a clue. You could OWN your market online with very little effort. My site currently ranks page 1 on Google Australia for "website designer". On Google US, it's page 2 but it occasionally gets up to page 1. For "small business website designer" its #6 as I write this. That's competing against every website designer in the world. There are 57.4 million page matches on Google. Those search results take a LOT of content and link creation. Basically a lot of hard work. But for a local business servicing a specific geographic area, the competition is much, MUCH less. The more you "geo-target" your search results the less competition there will be, and the easier it will be to pull ultra-targeted, top-ranking search results.

Basically, it comes down to this:

• Create a website with simple, clean layout and design
• Build trust and credibility with articles, case studies and testimonials
• Geo-target your search results
• Build a few incoming links to your site so the engines can find you
• Provide a contact form that actually works
• Respond to your contacts within 24 hours, even if you don't want the work

It's as simple as that. Google can take a while to start ranking you. Even on low-competition keywords you still have to establish trust with them. But once you get over that hurdle you'll be there for the long haul, or at least until your competitors wake up. On MSN (ninemsn.com.au) you can be showing up in searches within days.

What's more, if you know your way around a keyboard you can even create your own targeted lead system.

Oh, if there are any plumbers out there who service the Blue Mountains Australia, the ugly stain is still there.

Keywords: local business website designer geo-target steve pronger small business blue mountains