Google SEO News and Discussion Forum

"Do nothing", at least in the short term, is often the best advice.

Making immediate changes based on what you see during an update borders on suicidal in my opinion.

Even after an update has settled, I think it's wise to let things lay where they are for at least a couple weeks, and preferably until another update has passed.

That doesn't mean not making any changes or additions to your site. It just means don't make any update related changes, unless you are fixing something you know to be your own fault, and even then you need to wait to be sure of the effects you are seeing during an update.

You have to keep in mind that you aren't the only webmaster out there with sites in your category. some of those other webmasters may well go nuts messing with their sites based on any given update.

You might as well let them do their thing and wait to see how their efforts affect the serps. My observations are that this often works in your favor.

Also, let's not forget that Google isn't the only player on the field. Probably as important, if not mores important, are webmasters themselves.

I can't remember making a major change related to an update that didn't have it's roots in something I had done to my site before the update.

It's all to easy too blame Google, when in fact it might very well be something we did that caused the problem.

Then there are the other webmasters vying for those top 10 spots. The more competitive the sector, the fiercer the competition.

The fiercer the competition, the more carefully you need to plan your immediate actions, and careful planning takes time. While you're at it, be sure to give some thought to a backup plan.

And when it comes to new sites or pages, it's reasonable to expect, that if you pop up on the first page, the other sites on that page are going to notice, and very likely take action.

Add their actions to yours and Googles and the game is on! It also gets pretty confusing.

I hope this is true. That's where I'm staking my bet.

I'd hedge on this one.

A major one being KWD, lifting KWD to match an established page that is beating you can get you dumped within days for example, hence older pages with 20%+ kwd riding high in the serps.

SEO is, I believe, behind nearly all the tales of woe you hear after an update.
All my sites and those who compete with me are never hit.
But then most know nothing of canonical issues etc etc!

Your hypothesis may be right, but don't forget about all those content-rich white-hat sites that have been dumped by Google. Google may not care (plenty more content where that came from), but "do nothing" may not be the best strategy for the webmaster who got dumped.

But that is exactly my point! If these are "white hat" sites, (I hate that expression) ... there may be nothing at all "wrong" with the site, so why change it? Wait a few months, you may be surprised. Cream always rises to the top.

I have had several pages that tanked for "no apparent reason" after this update or that. They always seem to bounce back "eventually". If you keep changing things, you will never find out if this is true or not and you are more than likely going to experience penalties if you change the wrong things.

In addition, what happens if your changes adversely affect your rankings on other engines?

By creating more quality content, you spread the wealth (as it relates to your site) around and provide yourself with more opportunities to be found. All the time and effort people put into "tweaking" would (in my humble opinion), be better spent developing content for engines like MSN or Yahoo and let Google do whatever Google is going to do!

I think that Google uses the same tactit used against "mouses".

Liane - are you the Wizard of Oz with a lisp? ;)

How do you write that noise that Scoobie Doo makes when somebody asks him a question?

So February, I spent some time clearing out code bloat, making whole site more css dependent, getting rid of deprecated tags and making whole site standards compliant too with a doc type declaration. Got rid of non-www problem too and put absolute links across the site too.

Basically bringing into 2004/2005....as opposed to 2002 where it was stuck to be honest.

And then Bourbon hit and it sank even further.

So I decided to just leave it. I know it's a good site and it will eventually come back. I have to get other traffic sources. I can't bow and scrape to every Google whim. I am in this for the long term - Google will sort themselves out. I have to get on with other sites and other projects.

I will not do anything more to that site for, as far as I'm concerned, it's fine now. 500 individual sites linking to me as a great education resource can't be wrong even if some of them rank higher than me just for the fact my site name is on their page.

:-¦

Liane,

I agree that if there is nothing technically wrong with one's website, the best thing to do at this point is to leave it alone.

I qualify my agreement with you on the point that content is king...bourbon has a strong hint of Hilltop, google's ultimate weapon against SEO. Study the serps of top ranking sites in the aftermath of bourbon. With almost any broad catagory kw, DMOZ, Yahoo, and Google directory links reign supreme. As you may know, Hilltop relies on the basis of "expert sites"...so dmoz, yahoo and google directory listings are king.

With the announcement of the google evaluation lab, I suspect they are coming up with another list of "expert sites" to add to the hilltop algo.

I may be way off here, but it seems that the sites which were hit hardest with bourbon are those which would be targeted by a hilltop algo...crosslinking schemes, canonical issues, etc.

Yes, seo is dead and content is king only if it earns you an inbound from an expert site.

I really like that rubber ball example. As i've always said: There are always more than one way to do it.

I have given up on DMCA requests, given up on email requests and have decided to re-write the content.

Classic SEO is dead..Dynamic SEO is King.. long live the king ;-)

msg #: 306
[webmasterworld.com...]

Yup, they basically have, and no doubt lost a lot of people who didnt like seeing the weird results and went to MSN or Yahoo instead, which is the case with my site even though it is in the top listings. From Lianes post it's almost as if the person really doesnt care that some people basically relied in part on google's so called good results to get some more hits in and therefore more cash.

Now those folks who are in here seeing there hits down are TOLD to wait as there business goes down? Yeah, well maybe Google will eventually lose out to MSN once Bill Gates pulls his finger out and relaunches it and Liane will lose his/her job. Not unless Google wants to wait as there profits go down and there shareholders start screaming LMAO!

the sites that have been doing alot of linkage over the past 6-12 months and have came through this update, and are simply dominating.

to give credit to some competitors, i have seen a few of them doing a good on-theme reciprocal link strategy over the past 6-12 months & i knew it would just be a matter of time before they start to rank in the results.

whether or not Google likes off page optimization via on-theme reciprocal links is there choice.

i would personally prefer if they decrease the value they put on overall links (mainly recip links) & same anchor text used over and over.

It takes a combination of technical, marketing, management, creative, business, and financial skills, to make it in the long run.

However there is a place for the individual who understands where their strengths are and is willing to partner with a group of individuals that make the whole or join an company that needs their assets.

Yes, i have seen a site ranking in top 10 for very competitive term(s) and using black hat technique - invisible links using background color.