As a home business, one of the ways you probably drive traffic to your website is through search engine traffic. You probably also rely on Google ranking your website in the top of its search engine listings. If you haven't checked your Google listing recently, you might want to pay careful attention and do so. Even if you've been ranked well with your Google keywords, your website ranking might have dropped by hundreds of positions. You might find yourself desperately looking for ways to bring your site back up to the top positions. Here are major reasons why these changes are occurring: Google is using a variety of filters and algorithms to rank web pages in its search results. Google constantly updates these filters and algorithms so listings are "relevant" to the keywords people are searching for. As well, Google wants to keep other webmasters sure to be guessing what is happening next. Unfortunately, if search engines don't make these changes regularly, "search engine spammers" can actually trick search engines into making unrelated sites appear in the top listings. Just imagine searching for "cheap gift ideas" but instead you find the top listings to be a redirect to gambling and adult websites! But many online business owners are now finding their Google listings to have dropped out of sight. High website rankings have dropped all as a result of common techniques a webmaster would use to improve their search engine rankings. If your website listing has dropped out of the listings of Google, you have probably found yourself scrambling to figure out how you can fix this problem fast, so that you don't loose money. So what should you do? According to many of the forums I've visited recently, there is only ONE conclusion.... Wait for Google to fix this problem. Google is trying to fine-tune the latest algorithm while webmasters are praying this issue will hopefully be resolved. Don't let Google frustrate you more during this waiting period. Here are a few changes you can make in order to ensure that potential customers are finding your website: 1. Make Sure Your Website Offers High-Quality Relevant Content. Adding well written content to your website is still a very effective way to improve your website ranking. Google's main goal is to offer valuable resources and information through measuring the "relevance" of your site's content to keywords ratio. 2. Do Not Over-Optimize Your Website. Google can now detect these over-optimized site tricks by penalizing websites that use them by dropping their ranking dramatically. Make sure you are not an offender of common "loophole" tricks such as: A. Doorway pages designed primarily for search engines, not for users. B. Link farms - multiple web sites whose sole purpose is to link to each other. C. Hidden invisible links and white keyword text. D. Mirror sites optimized for a single search engine. 3. Use Paid Advertising Methods to Keep Traffic Coming to Your Website. As a quick way of compensating for your losses until you're able to get your ranking back up, you just might want to look into paid advertising. Pay per clicks (PPC's) can be an effective way to get traffic coming to your website in just a few hours, but make sure you watch your budget! 4. Employ Multiple Methods of Generating Traffic. The best way to ensure that your site gets a steady stream of traffic is to combine a variety of traffic-generating techniques and to not rely on just ONE technique to keep your business running. Consider using other successful strategies such as email marketing, pay per click advertising, affiliate programs and link exchanges to drive customers to your website. 5. Explore Other Valuable Search Engine Resources. While it is true that most searcher go to Google, Google certainly is not the ONLY search engine around. You still can drive fresh traffic to your website by improving your website ranking results in some of the other search engines. Some of the bigger search engines are Yahoo, MSN, Inktomi, Dogpile, Hotbot and AllTheWeb. By employing all of the above mentioned strategies, you should be able to keep your website from dropping out of sight. Make sure you don't rush into making sudden changes and explore multiple options. And most importantly, keep your website up to date with fresh relevant content to ensure your customers keep coming back for more! To your success, Jennifer Schilling Copyright 2005 Jennifer Schilling |
