Lost Your Google Rank? Tough Luck!

Garrett · #1 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 11:30 AM

I called Shari Thurow about her take on the new Google Print function, in which Google provides book results in their search results. Before we got started on the new function though, she gave me an earful on her opinions of the recent Google algorithm update.

The essence of her opinion? "I think Google got better."

She said that only one of her clients was affected by the Florida Update, an old client who used mirror sites without telling her.

Her thoughts on affiliate sites who lost their listings? "Boo hoo."

Look at the number of affiliates out there. They're all offering the same things, which loads Google up with duplicate content. Duplicate content diminishes user experience.

"If you're a commercial site," she says, "you should be buying ads."

When she begins design work for one of her clients she begins with a single question: "what does your site offer for free?"

It could be information, downloads, email service, search results, whatever.

Why would a search engine optimizer ask this question first? Because, in her words, "your website is the be all, end all of web marketing. That's what most search engine marketers don't get - they're reverse engineers, not designers. What they're doing is essentially spam."

Regarding commercial sites with good information, "they'll bounce back."

For the record, Shari believes that pay for placement services in the search engines, especially those that display ads with results, diminish the user experience.

New Keyword Strategy. During my conversation with Shari this morning she had some strong opinions about keyword strategy.

Here's the gist of what she said:

Every site should have at least 100 keyword phrases some of these will be better money makers than others. This way you're spread out, so if Google or anyone else changes their algorithm you'll still have some traffic coming in through the engines.

"Besides," says Shari, "optimizing your site for only one keyword is just spam waiting to happen."

Lando · #2 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 02:09 PM

"Here's the gist of what she said:

Every site should have at least 100 keyword phrases some of these will be better money makers than others. This way you're spread out, so if Google or anyone else changes their algorithm you'll still have some traffic coming in through the engines.

"Besides," says Shari, "optimizing your site for only one keyword is just spam waiting to happen." "
(emphasis mine)

OK, now I read what she said about 3 times now... am I so out of touch with SE reality, that the last 6-7 years of research on my part are now completely out the window?? Im serious! Am I reading this wrong?

I would greatly appreciate some one explaining to me what she just said. No, not being a 'smart aleck' here', just a biz man who has seen some negative changes in my rankings after I have had years of good to very good rankings and would love to know what is REALLY going on! Please help!

Lando

schmeetz · #3 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 02:47 PM

Hi Lando,

here is my take on it. Google now expects you to be more desrete when optimizing. If you focus on 1 keyword through the whole site (eg...a site with 20 pages). It would be quite obvious to Google and the reader cause of the copy and mata tags. You should focus on multiple keywords for each page. 3 tops.

Now what i mean by desrete is that you shouldn't put an identical keyphrase i the title, description and copy.

Lets say you were going for "eliminting pet oders" (something you can relate to)
Google expects you to:

NOT - have it in <h> tags unless you are using some of the words. Dont you dare put that whole keyphrase.

NOT - place the identical phrase in title and description. Use the words but not the phrase. You can in the copy but not too many time.

You will be penalized for the <h>tags.

I suffered big time when florida happened. I removed the <h> and the direct keyphrase. My placement is better than ever. #1 for serveral (5) keyphrases, not to mention the other where i'm 2-10.

hope this helped,

good luck

atimmins · #4 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 02:49 PM

Yes I know the saying about assuming things, but here goes anyway. I would think that Sherri meant each site would have to have enough pages to be optimized for 100 phrases. Ideally this would be 100 pages each optimized for one phrase.

The challenge as I see it then is to find 100 good performing phrases for each client, which can be a daunting task. This is especially true for Google, where with 3.5 billion pages indexed, good performing phrases are hard to come by.

Another problem is working with clients that have a limited number of services. Many of my clients are very focused in what they do. If the client is highly specialized, and a small business this compounds the problem. How do we get them to pay for 100 new pages, can they afford it?

These will definitely be trying times for SEO as an industry, as well as the clients we are trying to help!

JayDrake · #5 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 02:56 PM

"Here's the gist of what she said:

Every site should have at least 100 keyword phrases some of these will be better money makers than others. This way you're spread out, so if Google or anyone else changes their algorithm you'll still have some traffic coming in through the engines.

"Besides," says Shari, "optimizing your site for only one keyword is just spam waiting to happen." "

Well, my take is that a keyword or a few keywords are definitely the holy grail to your website, but they aren't the only words/phrases that can and will draw valuable customers to you.

Note that she didn't say 100 phrases for each page, it's for a site. Use a toy store for example. You probably want a lot of key phrases that include toy or toys, of course, but you also want keywords that showcase all your individual products. It's not hard to get a large number of key phrases in this case very quickly for your site. (toys, toy, dolls, strawberry cheesecake, tickle me bubba, bob the demolisher, G.I. Moe, etc. etc. etc.)

It's nice to have #1 in 1 key phrase that brings in 100 impressions a day. It's nicer to have 100 #1 spots in key phrases that bring in 1 a day because you still get 100 impressions and if one of your key phrases loses rank you still get 99. If your #1 for 100 fails you lose it all. (You still want that 100, of course, but you've got yourself well covered to still pick up a good amount of traffic.)

I really don't think this means you shouldn't go after that best keyphrase, just be sure to get every good keyphrase that applies in your site as you are able.

apisdesign · #6 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 03:26 PM

I think what's being encouraged here is spam.

To say that you want to be #1 for a phrase with 100 impressions a day as well as be #1 for 100 phrases with 1 impression a day is silly. Why not go for being #3 for 1000 phrases with 1 impression a day? Etc, etc, etc.

All that's really being said here is optimize your site for as many keywords as possible. Which is kinda what got people into the position they are in today.

My take on it is this: Google is attempting to create search results that most closely imitate what an intelligent human being who knew every web page on the planet would recommend to a user when they asked for information on a particular topic.

As such, I believe that writing your pages as naturally as possible (in terms of language) while doing some simple optimization (e.g. site map, page names, directory names, meta tags, etc.) should be ideal.

Why try to fight Google? Why not try to conform to what they're attempting to do? If you really want to appear favourably on Google, then do what they say. Don't try to trick them.

Here are my tips:

Have relevant, well-written, organized content on your site
Include a site map, and various other things that Google recommends
Link to meaningful, related sites with good content (don't be a link wh0re)
Update your site regularly

Hopefully this should help to take some stress out of your life while still achieving good rankings.

Anyway, that's my take on this big Florida fiasco.

Lando · #7 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 03:42 PM

Thanks everyone. I agree with the discussion going on here, and I usually follow the proper protocol as some have mentioned, but kind of hard when I have one product! LOL in re: 100 !

If anything, I would think that using just about any 'keyword' (that's the impression I'm getting) you can come up with would be looked upon negatively. Sure I could use 'stinky', but not only is it a waste of time, the popularity of that term (ergo the chance of a searcher using it) is about zero to none.

Thanks again. Confession: I wasn't completely lost, but... wow!... sounded like it was against everything I learned in the past. I know things change, SE's all the time it seems(!) but it sounded soooo much a complete reversal.

I'll just keep my eyes and ears open on what's goin' on. I think I did misunderstand what was said to a degree, because I do agree and practice what has been said here. Anyway, it's great to be able to discuss things like this with like-minded people!

JayDrake · #8 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apisdesign

I think what's being encouraged here is spam.

To say that you want to be #1 for a phrase with 100 impressions a day as well as be #1 for 100 phrases with 1 impression a day is silly. Why not go for being #3 for 1000 phrases with 1 impression a day? Etc, etc, etc.

No... Not spam. Highlight of the content you have rather than trying to spam your full site with a small set of key phrases. If you have a section of your site devoted to dolls and that section includes this doll and that doll and the other doll, each page should be optimized for it's own content rather than trying to optimize all your pages for 'toys'. (Using my prior example of an online toy store.)

If you just optimize for those heavy hitting key phrases across your site then you aren't showing the content you have, you're just trying to get a high result in a specific phrase which, at best, walks the line between optimization and spam.

PlanHouse started this year barely within the top 200 results for house plan(s)/home plan(s) as our target key phrases and with plenty of work and trial and error and a great deal of help from what I've read here and elsewhere I managed to move up into the top 30. Florida knocked us back down closer to 60 or 70 and since then we've pulled back up into the 40's/50's and continue to work on that. This is great, but we realized fairly quickly that there were a huge number of opportunities we were missing and we've started to work on teritiary phrases such as 'acadian house plans' or 'acadian home plans'. (Yay! #3 and #2 respectively!)

We also realized that we weren't really letting the search engines in much farther than our front door, and our current efforts are to open the site, clean up the code to be sure it doesn't send broken HTML and make every page sing it's own praises, not just create a cacophany of house plan(s)/home plan(s). If a plan is a single story acadian home plan it should say so and those are the key phrases it should target.

Enough rambling from me. Don't even get me started on our new Gallery Listings and our coming Local Resources efforts. (But if you're curious, see where our site shows up for 'kitchen and bath jackson ms'/'interior decorators jackson ms'/'interior designers jackson ms'/'subcontractors jackson ms' --> The list goes on.) :)

DrTandem1 · #9 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 04:20 PM

Lando,

I had the same reaction as you expressed in your first post on this. It kind of explains why her clients weren't affected by this latest Google Dance. If she actually aims for 100 keyword phrases, one is bound to show up high in the results.

The fact of the matter is, obscure keyword phrases are not "money makers". You need to focus, not dilute. Also, keyword phrases are a small part of the equation. There are sites that appear in the top results that have absolutely nothing on their pages that would be attributed to the terms used in the search.

A good example of this is the recent prank in which some 32 sites linked to President Bush's bio page on the White House web site using the phrase "miserable failure". Using such tactics, I think I could easily manipulate a search result for a website in which I have no association. Of course, the keyword phrase would be just as obscure, and no one would probably use it to search. However, I could make it number one!

That is my point. A highly placed search result does not necessarily equate to traffic nor sales. It needs to be a result from a qualified search term. By that, I mean that a reasonable person would use it to obtain the desired result(s).

Commercial sites should have to pay to place ads? I don't agree. Why not just watch TV? You'll end up with the same basic ads: beer, cars, tennis shoes, etc. Those with the biggest bucks would create mega sites covering just about every popular search term to point you in the wrong direction. The person searching on the internet most likely already knows the big guys. They don't need to the search for them. It's the small-niche companies that people like to find.

JayDrake · #10 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrTandem1

The fact of the matter is, obscure keyword phrases are not "money makers". You need to focus, not dilute. Also, keyword phrases are a small part of the equation.

<snipped>

Commercial sites should have to pay to place ads? I don't agree.

First, many phrases does not equal many obscure phrases. Getting #1 for monkey butt house plans, for instance, is not likely to be particularly beneficial to me. There is a line, however, between focus and spam and a grey area in there that we usually tread with SEO. When we do that and Google makes a change, sometimes we get stuck on the wrong side of the line.

I agree with the disagreement with commercial sites paying for advertising and, in theory, so does Google. That completely destroys the ideal of organic listings and doesn't enhance the experience of the searcher who then goes elsewhere because the listings aren't what he wants, they're what whoever has the most money wants him to see.

DrTandem1 · #11 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 06:54 PM

Jay Drake,

Fair enough. However, let me ask you, can you really conceive of 100 different keyword phrases for the average small e-commerce site that are not obscure and not spamming? I doubt it.

The fact that number (100) was even used smacks of spamming. Assuming that these "keyword phrases" are to be used in the content, you would have to be especially creative to make in also readable in context for the human visitor.

Now, let's say it's a very large e-commerce site with many different product categories, okay, yes I could see 100 different keyword phrases. I would still recommend focus. It is better to master a few main categories rather than simply show up on the radar for most of them.

touristips · #12 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 07:11 PM

The drift of the matter I notice is people's home page being kicked into some dark google abyss.

When I started my e commerce sites what I learned was to make each page on site an entry page to site.

Think the goal should be to first drive traffic to site and then hopefully people will find an eye appealing page with easy navigation and a reason to search furhter in site.

For example reading a newsletter from my local visitors burea found out that 79% of all visitors to area went shopping.

Eureka I added a shopping section with list of mall and stores in area.
I don't make a red cent from info in shopping section .
This section is most requested section of site and as a result I have been able
to convert visitors who used menu bars to see what else was on site into clients.

For those like me who are not web designers and can't afford one:
1. Do what Dell,IBM,Earthlink and man major players do-
outsource get a desginer in a third world partner and make him your partner.

Here is agreement with first designer $200 quarterly maintainence + 10%(average) of net profits.
He went from zero income to now over $1,800 + a quarter and growing.

What I get is 24/7 site maintainence,updates or anything I want on sites.
What designer gets is alot more than his per capita monthy income of $50 US.
Result is 2 happy campers.
Happy holidays

His quarterly

mediahound · #13 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 07:47 PM

I think just about all visitors in Orlando shop. Is that 79% accurate?

I know Disney fairs quite well with the media hounds in Orlando.

But surely, if your site target shoppers in Orlando you will get lots of traffic to your site. Offer travel packages, affiliate with plane ticket companies, Disney merchandise, that sort of thing. You could actually profit well from those that your not making a red cent off of now. Just place the right banners and links. Try adwords, too.

See you at the bank... or Disney at that..

- Jarred

touristips · #14 (**permalink**) 12-18-2003, 08:02 PM

Yes ,
79% is accurate according to the official visitors bureau.
Vacation packages are offered and we do make money on plane tickets and many other area of sites.

The shopping pages will produce minor ad revenue down the road(it's in the plans).

Tell me what you think about my site:
http://orlandotouristinformationbureau.com/
it's not the official site but visitors do add excellent service and they're happy is what counts.

Thank you for your input.
Happy holidays

JayDrake · #15 (**permalink**) 12-19-2003, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrTandem1

Fair enough. However, let me ask you, can you really conceive of 100 different keyword phrases for the average small e-commerce site that are not obscure and not spamming? I doubt it.

The fact that number (100) was even used smacks of spamming.

Well, first I'd have to guess (a bit of assumption here) that the number 100 wasn't a particularly thought out one-size-fits-all sort of number. That said, I have to disagree with your sentiment of lots of key phrases being a spamming attempt. If you use a key phrase that describes yout content then I would say you are not spamming. If you have one or two key phrases that you stuff into your page for the purpose of gaining a higher search engine ranking rather than to give your visitor a rich and valuable experience you are spamming.

Now to back this up a little, marketing isn't just getting people who are looking for what you have to offer to buy. It's also about getting people who aren't looking for what you have to offer to see it and want it. Walk through any retail checkout stand and see what they're trying (with great success, I might add) to sell simply by putting it in view. Does this mean you should just try to get keywords that don't relate at all? No! It's not particularly cost effective for a pet store to have a freezer at their counter with frozen pizzas in hopes that their customers will go buy some fish and then see the pizza and want to buy it, and they'll certainly not wander into your store in hopes of buying pizza in the first place. (Unless they're really strange...)

There are opportunities, however, for most small e-commerce sites to expand their search engine presence to draw people in using SEO techniques and good, quality, related content. PlanHouse does this on a fairly large scale. At our heart we are a house plan design studio, but we recognize that our product (house plans) is not the only thing that people search for when they are getting ready to build, so we try to get our name in front of them when they look for builders, specialized items, concrete finishers and anything else we can in the new construction industry. And in all that, we work hard to be a good resource so that our visitors will look on us favorably and hopefully come back to buy their dream home plans from us.

I think Lando's site could benefit from some of the same basic ideas of getting out in front of people who aren't necessarily looking specifically for a product to eliminate odor. First group I can think of right off the top of my head, and straight from his web site, really, are fishermen and their family. Start with good quality content such as articles or press releases geared toward the fisherman and the people who put up with the odors associated, generate key phrases from your content, get links from the media and sites related to fishing and profit from the new subsection of people who need you. I figure this will net you at least 3-5 (or more) new key phrases. Repeat process as able. (I'd definitely go for the pet odor next, if not first!)

A cup of marketing and a dash of diversification. Your site is not a one trick pony even if you only sell one product. :)

geoffreygag · #16 (**permalink**) 12-19-2003, 10:34 AM

This will make your site well balanced.

touristips said something very important

"When I started my e commerce sites what I learned was to make each page on site an entry page to site".

I have a Mexico information site. It averages 460 visitors per day. The main page represents 8% of the entries. www.mexico.us

DrTandem1 · #17 (**permalink**) 12-19-2003, 11:29 AM

Jay Drake,

You started on topic regarding my comment that I find it difficult to comprehend 100 keyword phrases and ended up somehow comparing it to selling pizzas in a pet store and impulse-buying displays at the POP. Maybe you think I was implying that the 100 phrases would somehow be unrelated to the content of the hypothetical e-commerce site that would use them.

Let's get back on track and clarify this discussion. If it's a site that sells flower pots, I cannot think of 100 different keyword phrases that someone would reasonably consider in searching for such a site. Even if I could, I think the majority of searchers would use...are you ready?..."flower pots". I would therefore focus on "flower pots" as a keyword term.

I would find it a waste of time dreaming up terms such as "bloom kettle" and "holder of vegetation" because no one would search that way and I suspect if someone did, they would not have the intelligence to make a purchase. This does not mean that the flower pot site wouldn't have enough savy to also sell hangers for the pots, plant food, seeds, etc. The main business of this example is to sell flower pots.
Focus.