Aren't these latest changes at Google such a blast! It's obviously going to take us some time to figure out what hit us. Until it becomes apparent we have to work with whatever limited understanding we have available to us. When that happens it is usually insufficient and we sometimes have a tendency to just give up. Others become more determined than ever to whack back at the beast.
Thankfully I wasn't affected by Panda, and so far neither were my client sites. But, my own domain definitely has room for improvement in rankings for my targeted 3 keyword term, on Google at least. A 3 word term has me ranking around position #120 or so, give or take. Add one more word before it, which is still a valid search term though not often used, and I move to page #1 in position #2. That tells me they don't hate me. The algorithm just knows very well what I'm trying to rank for and wants to maintain control over me for whatever its reason may be. I'm definitely not black hat, I provide my visitors with in depth information of what to expect if they decide to work with me, some might say I provide too much info -- whatever, it's just who I am.
My main problem is that I am continually being suppressed by -50 penalties. More so in the last 6 months. But every time they kick me in the teeth I get back up, after laying on the canvas for 90 days. It's obvious that they really want to be in control of the situation here. They want to be in control of my ascent in SERPs. Then last night, something finally dawned on me. There are 3 other secondary less important terms that I want to rank for as well. They are still offered as stand-alone services but are not my bread and butter. I do rank well for them. This leads me to thinking that maybe Google cannot crawl and think at the same time and that the algorithm is not capable of recognizing a dual headed pinpoint focus otherwise why wouldn't they penalize me equally as well for my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th terms. They too have keyword related backlinked anchor text but they don't suffer. There is a window of opportunity here.
I'm going to try a new strategy with a new client site that is ready to be pushed out soon. These sites that I work on are locally focused and almost always sit in position #11 for their targeted terms until some significant backlinks begin showing up, usually somewhere between 4-6 months. Yet for those sites as well, they typically rank in position #4 for their secondary terms. Duh says me!
I'm going to give Googlebot a Trojan Horse just to satisfy its desire to want to be in control, of something, anything. Throughout this new site I've placed a false focus on a term that I do not want to rank for. It's a valid term within the industry itself but it is inside lingo that the public does not use to find this service. It's also valid in the context of it's presentation so there is nothing underhanded going on. Within the industry itself it is very popular so it appears on most competing sites naturally throughout linked text. I'm going to make that term the eucalyptus leaf and the actual targeted term my secondary focus. Oh happy day. Sometimes we look to hard for what can potentially be a simple solution. I'll report my observations over time after the site goes live. In the mean time has anyone else considered this approach and if yes what was your experience? And even just general thoughts about this because it is very new in my consciousness and not yet well thought out so I may be over-looking something here.
