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I have been lucky enough to rebound successfully since then simply by rewriting my site. In fact, the site is doing better than ever ... thanks mostly to stemming!
Keep in mind that I am not really a webmaster nor am I an SEO. I am just a mom & pop broker selling vacations in the Caribbean. My knowledge of everything technical is agonizingly limited. I can't code using java script or CSS, I have no clue how to cloak and my knowledge of html is limited to what I "need to know" in order to make new pages and change copy on existing pages.
It is my belief that this fundamental lack of knowledge has actually worked to my benefit since November. My site nose dived just like many of yours. I was on the brink of bankruptcy with nowhere to turn when I decided I would just simply rewrite my site from top to bottom in a last ditch effort to save my business.
I scrutinized every single page and did the following:
1) Removed any "extra" words in all anchor text. (Quite a few were cleaned up. I had gone to town on a few pages!)
2) Removed any "extra" words in all ALT tags. (There weren't many at all)
3) Re-examined all title tags and adjusted based on "gut instinct" as to what the acceptable number of keywords might be and which were appropriate for each page. (Not too many were changed and the changes made were pretty minor in most cases.)
4) Re-examined all "keyword", meta tags and again adjusted based on gut instinct. (Very few changes were made as I never used long strings of keywords)
5) Re-examined all "description, meta tags and adjusted based on gut instinct and making sure not to repeat keywords unless necessary and in order for a sentence to read properly.
6) Drastically reduced keyword density throughout.
7) Checked all outgoing links to be sure I wasn't linking to any penalized sites. Sadly, there were several. I removed a few. Some I won't remove because they are still excellent sources of information for my clients.
8) The most important change I made (I think) was to write as naturally as possible making sure that when I inserted a keyword, it actually belonged there and wasn't just gratuitous fodder for the search engines.
I truly feel it is due to my lack of webmasterly abilities that my site is doing well again.
I have kept track of several hundred keyword combinations on a regular basis to find out which changes worked for me and which worked against me.
I also checked what difference those changes made in other search engines. If some worked in Yahoo or MSN but not in Google, I left them alone but continue to monitor to see what happens.
I think that's about it. This may seem overly simplistic to many of you who know so much more about optimization than I ... but it has worked for me!
Many of you have helped me a great deal over the years, perhaps this is my chance to help someone else for a change! :)
I've found that additionally:
New sites - seem to be stuck out in the cold regardless of PR, links, keyword density.
Stemming - causes problems with British English vs. American English searches - going to test out this theory today - putting in American spellings in my British pages - YUK!
A huge problems on the very competitive key phrases (3 million plus pages returned) - being in the top 10 for these can make the difference between 1000 uniques and 10 per day. I can't afford to ignore them.
Keyword pumped domain names still seem to have a distinct advantage, I hate the "1stkeywordkeyword.com" sites. This is due to the weighting of anchor text, and directory listings.
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Lots of problems with the new google algo - but overall - anything that encourages the use of natural text, that is better for people has to be good;
Goodbye "welcome to keyword keyword! We have keyword keyword, at our keyword keyword keyword shop, where you can buy keyword keyword keyword ..." :)
<sarcasm>So nothing changed in November then!</sarcasm>
OK. I can't argue that. But in many categories, sites that followed Brett's plan are doing just fine. For the broad majority of sites, it is still very effective - as written that many years ago.
With respect to the changes, the site I rely on for my income disappeared from Google for a few months after Florida. Yes, I know that it is not quite the same anymore.
Today, the list of results for my keywords are generally more appropriate than they were "before". Most of the sites deserve to be there, based on content. I can't yet figure out why some were chosen, and others not, but I'm working on it.
The differences in the reports we get here are interesting. Is there really a different process for different categories? One of my sites is in Travel and I get the feeling that there may be special rules for that industry. Similarly, I wonder about location keyword searches. They seem to get different treatment.
One of my sites is in Travel and I get the feeling that there may be special rules for that industry. Similarly, I wonder about location keyword searches. They seem to get different treatment.
I would tend to agree with that statement, especially the LOCATION KEYWORD or simply LOCATION searches. As someone mentioned earlier, maybe because it's hard to write about a LOCATION without using a fairly high keyword density for the word LOCATION. Or perhaps it's because LOCATION words don't have many options for semantically similar words. Or more likely, it's something else still unknown. In any case, Travel has been extremely perplexing indeed.
One thing I see in these travel serps which seems to be the exact opposite of what most people get is that the only non-directory sites that have survived are keyword stuffing like crazy. Well, it works for the directories...
