3 SEO Blunders that you didn’t know about
Google launched a a presentation last week on how search works. The most fascinating part was how Google fights spam, not because of the techniques but because they give you samples of pages they are rejecting in almost real time. Watch the video for the details. We regularly speak to customers whose sites have dropped in Google and they assume they have been penalised in some way. Usually it’s far less sinister than that. Usually it’s because someone stuffed up.
Google repellant
1. Deleting instead of archiving
Someone in the organistation decides they wanted to freshen up your content so they created new pages and deleted the old ones, the old ones that were ranking. This meant the link structure throughout the site changed as did the keyword density and prominence. The result; Google demotes the site as the site is no longer relevant for the old phrases or it had a bunch of backlinks which are now no longer count. Always add content, NEVER delete it if it is ranking. Place a link to the newer content on the old page. You need to gradually get the new content more relevant and authoritative. It takes time.
2. Dual Databases
The marketing team decide to go niche on a product category and go ahead and build a new site. Sounds good so far right? Only problem is that they use the same database as your main site. Same images, product descriptions etc. All of a sudden your main site is duplicated and sitting on the same server as your new one. In this instance be prepared for your older site’s rankings to begin to drop.
3. Server stuff up
Recently we had an unusual problem with a customer where their hosting company accidentally swapped their A record with another website. This meant that when Google or a human visited their web address they saw someone else’s site entirely. Basically their site had changed to something completely different overnight. Google crawled the “new” content and subsequently demoted their site for the phrases they were targeting. They didn’t penalise them, they were just no longer relevant. Other server stuff ups include looping records in your zone file, getting moved to shared hosting or bad redirects.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
