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24 February 2010
Posted in
S.E.O
Have you ever been ‘slapped’ by Google? A common complaint from webmasters, this refers to: when you go on Google and suddenly your page has dropped from page 1, to somewhere between page 11-17. There is a massive amount of Website owners making new threads on the Google webmaster forum, pleading with moderators for a reason why this has happened to them.
Most of them soon realise that the moderators don’t play a part in the Google ‘slap’ the site received, and that the moderators can neither help nor explain the situation. If the moderators have no control over the listings, how can they do anything? Usually the only thing webmasters can do to regain their reputation is to just wait it out and start building links all over again.
If you received 80% of your business and custom from Google, how would you be taking the fact that due to an update, Google has effectively removed you from the search pages that people can actually be bothered to view? Let’s face it, if anyone has to carry on looking until page 2-3, that person will do a different search. Most people don’t even look further than the most pages. Don’t sit there and tell me it won't happen to you because you follow the best webmaster tips, your SEO strategies are the latest and you follow all the rules. It doesn’t even matter if you're a good person, it still happens to millions of honest, hardworking sites that rely on Google as much as we rely on oxygen.
Google updates it's algorithms around 200 times a year, and any of these future updates could send your page rank back by a good eighty places. Over the next few days, you could wake up, start your PC, go to Google, and find the majority of all your backlinks are defined by Google as too ‘spammy’. This is what delivers the Google ‘slap’ of your site dropping by a hundred or so rankings, followed by the huge loss of profit, site visitors, customers, and people that interact with your company online. Sound nice enough yet?
So, if you don’t want this to happen to you, there are some free ways to help safeguard your business from a Google slap. To be honest, nobody deserves to be ‘slapped’ from Google, and it is unfair, but it's simply one of the disadvantages of a search engine that is constantly up to date. An up to date search engine is a necessity on the web, so we have to pay that price. However, if you implement the methods from this article, you may find yourself in less of a pickle when Google makes an update that affects your page rank.
You need to use the untapped traffic sources scattered across the web, as they generate an unfathomable amount of traffic; you just need to channel it to your site with relevant, clear, interesting information and media. That way, you can get one step ahead of your competition and drive targeted traffic from different areas of the web to your Website.
There are tons of high traffic sites on the web that will let you publish content, and I don’t mean article submission sites/directories. Mainly social media sites, these can get several thousands, even millions of hits a day, and the best thing is they will let you publish content, media, a link back to your site, and most even have the room to allow you a small but inconspicuous sales pitch. Get yourself onto as many of these sites as you can find, as most of them are well established, large sites with many users. Social media sites are Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Blogger.
This means Google will not instantly regard them as spammy, they are sites that contain public content, and they are unlikely to disappear. Even some web news sites that have an established following will publish an article or content from you. If you have a hand at writing articles, or want to give it a go, get one together with some good, relevant pictures and/or video(s) and submit it to www.mashable.com. It's a well known web news site, and anyone can submit an article.
If you think that writing an article is not worth it, take a look at the sites of some of the top authors. They get a large number of visitors, daily, because of the amount of people that read Mashable’s articles. Same goes for the social media sites, they all drive a huge amount of traffic, and social media sites have a very large number of dedicated users.
These dedicated users will share your content if they like it and spread more of your backlinks. The people who view their profile/status and like it will share it again, until your content is passed through many social circles. This all generates backlinks (as long as you included a link to your site in the content) and generates traffic that is interested in what you do or say. Targeted traffic, this is always the best kind.
Now, across the web, you will see some sites have subscriber lists, but most people do not manage these lists effectively. Many people have seen that when they start building the lists in an effective way, their income can as much as triple within the first few months of doing this. It provides you with a list of people that you know are interested in your company, and a means to build trust and a relationship with said people. Its a simple form that takes their email info so that you can send them updates, newsletters, special offer details and much more!
It also means if you lose your web traffic then you still have somewhere to go for leads. If you do not know how to implement a subscribers list then simply ask your web hosting provider or Website technician; or send us an email. Usually your host will provide you with a chunk of HTML code that you can just copy and paste into the correct page.
There are some companies that do nothing to drive traffic to their site. They use no backlinks, no social media, yet they still get visitors to their sites and they still sell hundreds of their products. How? Affiliates. They have built an army of affiliates that produces an amazing result. They do all your work as such for you, and if said companies had done something to drive traffic as well, they would have been a giant by now.
Affiliates will do their best to get the products/services well known and recognised as good quality, useful products/services, and as they try to build their brand reputation, they are always building your brand more, as you provide the products/services. Affiliates are an invaluable tool for all business owners, as they do the majority of the work for you. Because they want to maximise their profits on your products/service, they not only have to advertise themselves as being trustworthy, fair and looking out for the customer’s interests, but they also have to do it for you as they are selling your product. People will associate the good things that they have done with your brand.
If you like the sound of an affiliate program, but not the sound of running it, then there are a number of trusted and reliable affiliate brokers that will manage every little detail for you. But you will still need to find the best one for you, so take a look at their customers and reviews and work out which one will suit you best. They mostly charge a one off set up fee and a small percentage of the earnings.
The best advice I can give you is don’t rely on Google alone for your traffic, it's like taking a contract out where you will only be able to provide for one company. What happens when they cancel or don’t renew. Social media and affiliate programs are a great platform to rely on for traffic and profit, as it is reliable, and guaranteed to always continue if you put the time and effort in. Google on the other hand can discard you like a torn piece of paper at a moments notice, and has no guarantees. If you would like to find out more on how you can use social media, take a glance at our Social media marketing blog section and our recent article, Social Networking for SME’s (Small and Medium Enterprises). If you have a problem or a question, leave us a comment below, email us or use one of our other contact methods.
