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....

[superscript]

Jon_King,

you wrote:

Thanks Brett, Marcia, NFFC and GoogleGuy for putting this thing into perspective

In the UK we call this 'brown-nosing'

But the meaning, despite cultural differences, should be pretty clear to all!

But certainly Brett & co seem happy with the SERPS, and are delighted to tell us happless fools that it is all our fault.

This is not just the (beginning?) of the end of Google; it is also the end of WebmasterWorld as an independent forum.

[ronhollin]

I'm still waiting for GG to address my post. Talk a little to us about how much more $ you are making because of this update. My opinion is that big time players pay for this "update" to be up top and push us out so that we have to buy AdWords. That's a HUGE win win for G.

[Dolemite]

Google SEO in the longterm has to be built on a foundation of information.

That's some pure vintage internet idealism.

Google (or any other automated system that has to distinguish/rank 4 billion of anything as complex as a web page) has no way to directly, quantitatively measure/gauge the quality of "information."

GoogleGuy, Brett, and whoever else says there's no "magic formula" just isn't looking hard enough.

[chinook]

... you see the truth (whatever that is ) has nothing to with anything , it really boils down to perception of what is true

[crobb305]

I'm still waiting for GG to address my post

Googleguy doesn't owe anyone an explanation.

[edited by: crobb305 at 11:57 pm (utc) on Nov. 24, 2003]

[The_Hitcher]

Well forgetting SEO and what is and what isn't good about Google, in the end, its the user experience. I just spent an hour trying to find a file on Google and got three pages of results all of which lead to a blasted spyware file. I have to admit I gave up in the end and found what I wanted on Mamma. My other half just remarked that if she too gets stuck and can't find what she's looking for, should she simply ask GG? Might save some time:)

Some of the results are right, but some of it is a lot worse. You can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time......

[superscript]

ronhollin

I previously wrote:

But certainly Brett & co seem happy with the SERPS, and are delighted to tell us happless fools that it is all our fault

Regarding a shift to Adwords:

In the short term, Google will make a fortune. In the medium term - nothing. In the long term - failure.

I'm not paying for Adwords - it is a mugs' game. My business is facing closure.

I guess Brett will boot me off soon, so any messages of support would be very welcome.

Kind regards to all,

And many thanks for all your help, including GG.

[ogletree]

People are upset because they lost a lot of businesss. If they lost business then that term had a lot of people looking to buy things. There is no way around it there are tons of reason why a general term is typed in and only the sites at number one can give you a good idea of what that is. Maybe Google could alternate the front page like even results are info and odd ones are buying. They both should be there.

[The_Hitcher]

Spot On!

[NFFC]

>I previously wrote

It's considered very bad form to quote yourself.

>My business is facing closure.

I'm sorry to hear that, best wishes for the future.

Anyhow back to the topic.

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

There are many, you have to be able to roll with the punches though and have the will, the strength and the motivation to get back off the floor, dust yourself off and step right back into the fight.

I think we have an easy run the last year or two, things are going to get a lot harder. The only question is, do you like a good fight?

[superscript]

NFFC - you always come out with a punch ;)

They're rarely well placed! but you always come out with one.

But given that you've missed the target, could you explain your punch? I'm particularly interested in your 'do you want a fight' concept. As a Brit, this always gets our blood up ;)

[edited by: superscript at 12:26 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2003]

[nutsandbolts]

This forum has never allowed people to drop keywords that feature major spam, so I will sit on the juicy ones I have found since Florida roared in and made a right mess of the place ;)

This update may have rewarded content-driven sites and *big* affiliate companies but it has also managed to squash many smaller, "niche" e-commerce businesses. To death.

Nobody, at any time, should rely on the free Google listings to prop up their entire business. But it's perfectly understandable that many are distraught, upset and downright confused as to why their index pages are missing when using the most logical keywords for the site. Well, except when -blahblah is used after the keywords. Great!

So - what to do? Wait around for a few weeks, hoping sites pop back in? Or remove any sort of optimisation immediately? But then, what is considered optimisation? Where do you draw the line.....

[dazzlindonna]

it would be nice to hear one of the authorities on the subject explain why adding
-getyeroldresultsback after the dropped phrase shows our sites back where they used to be.

[MikeNoLastName]

As far as "authoratative" and "relevency" mentioned a few posts ago. I would like to report a couple observations.

1. Our site, which I would consider "authoratative" on a rather broad topic (think travel location...) by virtue of over 5,000 pages of unique content from original news, to reviews and general info, has previously been in the top 10-20 under a certain 8,000,000+ result search term for years. Most of our competitors are local newspapers with a combo of original articles and encapsulated API content. The current Google update has not budged our home page (PR6) position for the primary term one iota. However, we previously (through the last year or so), had optimized many of our sub-pages (mostly PR5) for specific terms (think "location amenity") and ridden them each consistenly into the top 10-20 spots for 5,000,000+ result compound terms. In the last week (specifically somewhere between 11/19, when we did our last survey, and today) we lost about 20% of our backlinks on all our pages (including home page) and most of our subpages are gone from the rankings like many here have reported. (Most of our reported PRs did not change except a couple went up). However in place of their old positions (or pretty darn close) now appears our home page instead which links them all (or worse yet, in some cases, our PR6 site map!). To me this shows a significant drop in relevence (since the user must now make an extra click or two to get the specific info they want), but perhaps, at least in Google's eyes, an increase in authoritative-ity.
2. Because of our past ranking success, we have had MANY other (not so bright) websites, copy full pages (and put their own sales banners on top), copy titles (and usually meta tags) exactly (even our TM site name!), copy articles, etc. In most cases it gets THEM nowhere, but it does definitely seem to have an impact on our PRs and SERPs for the pages they've copied as those pages often turn PR0 or at least significantly lower than comparable pages on our site. There simply is not enough time in the day to chase them all down (and then many are out of Asia anyway and say "screw USA copyrights - try 'n sue me if you want - I dare you to try").
Apparently there simply is not an allowance on Google for seniority (who published an article or website first) and EVERYONE who copies content gets penalized!
So what to do, abandon every page someone else copies because it was doing well? "Here, take my content, please!"

[Brenda_J]

Hey everybody!

First of all, I agree with Brett that if you create diverse content you will have more stable rankings.

What is Brett really saying? Well, if lottery tickets are free then why not buy 100,000 tickets instead of just 1:) It's a 1998 strategy, but it's just not quite as focused on "particular" KW's as was common in 1998.

Brett is also suggesting a more "natural" approach to creating 100,000 SEO pages of diverse content, which is of course easy for somebody to say when other people write their own blog style content for them 24/7;) Just having a little fun guys!;)

But seriously speaking, it is harder to agree with brett's point of view when somebody actually has to spend a lot of their own time to create 1000's of pages of their own content on a non-blog site or BBS site. Try creating 1,000,000 pages on a non blog site in reality, not just in theory, it is definitely easier said than done.

BBS sites can create diverse content much more quickly than non-blog sites, so it's easy for those sites to sometimes claim a monopoly of SEO knowledge (when in reality there are just too many pages on BBS sites to optimize in a detailed manner and so they are not seo'd as a consequence).

Therefore BBS sites "naturally" have a non seo appearance because of this factor, and this "natural" and "non seo" appearance is not necessarily present just because the BBS site is somehow more "rule abiding" in their SEO strategies.

Anyhoo, google recently rolled the dice and BBS sites won on this one, but they did not win because of superior SEO knowledge (or more honesty) but because of the nature of their BBS sites (which are diverse as a side effect of blog type sites, not because of an overt non SEO strategy).

It's just a different "landscape" now with Google, where "natural features" are more heavily favored.

Of course, these "natural features" are more inherent in certain types of sites than in other sites, just by the nature of the site itself. Therefore, now the "other sites" must attempt to fake these "natural features" (but just like 'sincerity' everything can be faked;)

Confucious says: If thou can fake sincerity then by all means DO IT for financial advantage! :)

good posts deanril and kackle, keep it up, I enjoy them.