I fell out of love with google search about a year ago. If I had my way, I would walk away from actively trying to rank in search and return to straight marketing. It’s easier. It’s more controllable and your expectations won’t get dashed by a computer. Unfortunately, I am an SEO and have responsibilities to several clients and can’t.
The whole thing with Panda and Penguin probably has a lot of marketers thinking about quitting or in the very least, re evaluating their take on passive income by way of SEO. The fallout has been immense. The amount of overreaction and guess work is ridiculous. I came upon this post here and started really thinking about all the other articles I have read in response to this latest update.
Stated as plainly as can be stated- there are a lot of knee jerkin’ reactions happening right now.
So, if you are still looking to rank, here’s what I would (or wouldn’t) do….
- Don’t make rash decisions until the smoke is cleared- Google overreached with this update. There were clearly a lot of people who were penalized that didn’t deserve to be. What this means is just because you lost rank doesn’t mean that it won’t return. Wait a month and then see where you sit.
- After the smoke is cleared, do an audit on the websites that are ranking for commonalities- It’s still an algorithm. Which means that it follows a certain set of criteria to rank things. Which also means, that you can find those things that are common among them.
- Don’t over react to generalizations- What exactly does over optimization mean anyway? If you ask 5 different professional SEO’s they are going to give you a myriad of answers. To put it plainly, no one really knows. And Google isn’t telling. Best course of action? Ignore it until you know.
- Network with websites within your market for links- Continue doing what you are doing. But do it differently. Swear off link exchanges, link services, article directories, or anything else that is spammed heavily. Stay within your market and find links naturally. All links are paid for regardless of whether it is your time to fabricate them, or the time spent networking or the exchange of money. It should make sense to you that the best links are links that generate traffic and link juice. Happy hunting.
- Do an on site audit of your own site checking for 404 errors, load times, architectural structure ect. while you are waiting.- These are things within your scope of control. Make them as perfect as you can make them.
That’s what I would do. I definitely wouldn’t over react to this update just yet unless you know that whatever it was you were doing to get ranked was most likely shady.
To be real honest with you, what I would really do, is throw Google in the trash can and work markets, not search engines. But I know that for a lot of you out there, for whatever reason, that’s not an option.
Photo Attribution- http://www.flickr.com/photos/susanrenee/425552672/
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VERY sound advice, Leo, and that image is HI-larious!