Google SEO longterm?

[layer8]

I had a site, SEO was done, was in top rankings for about 2 months then overnight for no reason site was positioned way down the rankings. All practices were ethical and it seemed no point or logic to this what happend to me.

If you speak to all the best Internet Marketing Pros they tell you SEO is a waste of time longterm, everyone in the industry has lost their position at somepoint from what I gather - or am I wrong?

I want to hear from anyone who has had long term success with SEO say for 6 months or longer....

[panic]

You can't really run a firm long term with no products and marketing only.

Amen to that!

-p

[Kirby]

What i was trying to state was that having a loyal user base means that SEO and SE traffic is the "cream on top" - not the whole pie.

This isnt applicable for many services, products and information services that people may only need every few years.

[slade7]

I run an informational site, and have always done well in Google (top ten results for the main relevant terms... # 1 for all kinds of obscure stuff) They are typically my biggest outside referrer. Over the past two years, I've gone to php pages almost exclusively,? in the url - all the stuff that's supposed to throw off the spider.

Right now practically every page on my site is dynamically generated, and best I can tell Google has at least 29,800 of my pages cached.

I don't use any redirects, meta keywords, or other tricks. I do have a lot of content and few graphics, but loads of text. I don't do anything specifically to optimize for Google, but I do use text links instead of rollover buttons for menus. I often ask sites that want to trade links with me to use text links rather than or in addition to my logo.

I was dropped from the index for a month - I suspect server problems, but picked back up and have done fine since.

[buckworks]

You are either; a) gloating or b)

Reactions like this are why we seldom hear much from people whose rankings are stable or improved.

It's too bad, because there might be valuable lessons to be learned if people felt more freedom to say "My sites are doing okay and this might be why."

[wanna_learn]

A particular SEO technique would not live long, BUT SEO techniques would do.
AS
"There are systems to beat systems".

Long Live SEO - Long Live this Forum

[edited by: wanna_learn at 4:13 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]

[frup]

I'm doing great for single keyword searches and getting killed for keyword1 keyword2

[mfishy]

hehe, buckwors that's pretty silly. read my post. It is useless to say my sites are doing great because I have great content. Many sites aren't doing great that do have great content. His post was not helpful, that was my point.

We are having record Google referal days on mnay sites. I would imagine what most people are tryiong to figure out is why some pages have inexplicably dropped -when they have great, relevant content.

"My site has remained unaffected. I have great content and followed Brett's steps"

Posts like the above are insulting, and quite patronizing to those who have built great sites that are suffering. Get it?

The only type of post that is more useless is the one where someone says, "I have not noticed any changes". If that is the case you are obviously only looking at a very select number of pages/queries and any input is simply irrelevant.

I have had many members sticky me what are obviously class sites that have suffered - many have never even sought out 1 single link but have organically achieved all of them through wonderful content.

[slade7]

Sorry to have offended, what I am trying to say is my idea of SEO for google is this:

Fill a niche
Use Text Links where you can
Have lots of relevant pages
Make your pages load fast

Have that and you will be googly. It was frustrating to me to be dropped, I assure you, and I can't explain why Google doesn't see all my incoming links, or why some less relevant pages have been ranked ahead of me for a long time, but if you follow the above general rules and hang in there for a long time, you will see results. My site has been out there since Feb 1999. If your site deals with something that there are a lot of other sites dealing with, you may have hang longer to outlive some of the other ones... that is the way it is in any business. There's no miracle fix.

I've started several sites from the ground up, and all of them have found their way into google eventually. The question this thread asks is "is Google SEO a waste of time LONGTERM?"

My answer is there is no such thing as short term in this situation. You have to stay at it, be patient, and keep adjusting things a little at a time.

[ciml]

mfishy, a lot of sites with great content that followed Brett's steps are doing very well in this update. I understand that people who've been hit will often cite examples of good, affected sites, but to you and me the Google is better/worse argument is not particularly relevant.

Why do some sites which look like they fit the 'clean' model get hit, and why do some that we'd expect Google to dislike survive unaffected? This question takes us nearer.

The same goes for areas where there seem to be no changes. I think there's a lot to be found by comparing the sets of affected and unaffected sites.

IMO it's important to keep in mind that this is not new, even though it widened considerably last weekend.

[mfishy]

CIML, I concur with everything you have stated. My point being, that it is useful to have real analysis, comparing and contrasting what has worked and what has not.

Simply stating that "making great content and good site structure will work wonders", is over simplifying the issue, and is offending those very people who have done just this and are now basically gone from search engines.

I know many of us are studying patterns over thousands of unrelated pages (not ones we own) to look for answers.

[slade7]

To give you a short example of "what has worked" in SEO, I work on a corporate site too & one of the products they sell is commonly called one thing by customers who buy it and another thing by the manufacturer who makes it.

Say for example, say customers call it a "Zert" and the manufacturers call it an "Alemite"

I get ready to build the area of their site that features that product, I get on google and do some queries... 'alemite' turns up hundreds of manufacturers making the same product. 'zert' results are rather obscure. So naturally, I try to fill that void by making sure I use the term 'zert' - happily the customers are familiar with it, and it drives them to the companies web site because no one else is calling a zert a zert apparently.

It's not always this simple, but I have pulled this off with a couple of product lines for this company and brought in thousands of dollars in sales from the web. Often, these new customers buy other products as well. It did take about 8 months for the first implementation of the "zert" strategy to start yielding results, but it's like planting a seed and waiting for it to grow. And that really has nothing to do with building a great site, or being a supercool webmaster... it's just business sense, and trying to fill a void in google is far easier than fighting your way to the top of the results for a very common keyword.

[Yidaki]

>Is Google SEO a waste of time longterm?

As long as i'm able to influence rankings of the pages i build, Google SEO isn't dead for me. And Google SEO also isn't a waste of time as long as there's something valuable to be said about it and as long as there's nobody here or at google who puts the chairs on the tables and cleans the house.

>I want to hear from anyone who has had long term success with SEO say for 6 months or longer

3 years - forgive me but even Florida didn't hit ME.

Btw, if this forum would get closed one day you can be sure, Google SEO is a waste of time.

[claus]

I'm sorry if i have offended anyone - it was not my intention to say that people who don't do well in Google right this moment have built bad sites or anything.

I still say: Focus on your customers or target group and try to become as independent of SE's as you can long term, that way your income will be less sensitive to SE changes. I know this advice does not help in the current situation, but the current situation is short term, not long term - find out what went wrong (if anything) and take it from there.

/claus

---

edited some

[edited by: claus at 7:47 pm (utc) on Nov. 22, 2003]

[AjiNIMC]

Now I start feeling that

SEO means
-------------
make a normal site which suits best for your customer, then links .....links..........links.

You will be #1.

This can be the story and the song of the day.

AJi

[shasan]

make a normal site which suits best for your customer, then links .....links..........links.

You will be #1.

While I have learned that this is largely true, I think you have to be keyword savvy too (my rhymes are fly rhymes).

After all, what do you want to be #1 for? Targeting specific keywords, which is just like targeting specific types of customers, is important as well.