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When SEO disaster strikes

Posted by admin on January 31, 2007 in SEO Theory

Hardly a year goes by where I don’t lose some rankings in a significant way. Matt Cutts pointed out at a recent SEO conference that, if you’re managing 50 Web sites, the quality of the content is bound to be less than if you were just managing one Web site. Well, technically I only control a few domains for my personal network but I still actively pursue well over a hundred rankings. I just don’t check them all every day.

So once in a while I look to see how some obscure page is doin in the search results and it’s not uncommon for the more obscure pages to have sagged a few dozen positions as more aggressive marketers positioned their content above mine. Sometimes I flex my SEO muscles and dig in for a little workout. Recovering lost rankings is a good way to practice for the next time you have to launch a new site.

Of course, new sites don’t have thousands of inbound links pointing to them (normally). If a page on Xenite.Org loses position, I can often just point a link from the home page to get it back in the running. But most of the links on my root URL are temporary or seasonal. I still have to engage in more long-term optimization — either through on-page redesign or maybe some new link positioning. I have a lot of links going to deep content, but every month a few of them vanish into the Web That Was.

Generally speaking, when you suffer a catastrophic drop in rankings, it’s because of one of three things:

1. You done did something wrong
2. Someone else (a whole lot of someone elses) done better than you
3. The search engine done changed the way it does things

Inexplicably, most people assume they have been banned or penalized when they look for (or give out unqualified) help in SEO forums.

In my experience (including all the lost rankings I’ve examined for several thousand other Web sites), the most common reason for lost rankings is the search engine made changes. Even so, most people assume they have tripped a filter and gotten banned or penalized.

It’s easy enough to know whether you should be banned or penalized if you have complete control over your Web site. Did you do anything you should not have done? Lots of people experiment. Lots of people get caught experimenting. There is no way to guarantee you won’t be caught if you experiment.

If you’re not doing anything risky with your pages, did you give someone else access? Giving other people access to your content can be a formula for disaster. There are plenty of cheap, one-trick SEOs who will hide links and keywords on client pages, get the paycheck, and run like they just lit a fuse (because, technically, they did).

If you haven’t done anything risky and you haven’t given anyone else access, has your site been hacked? Most sites don’t get hacked.

And upon close inspection I find that most sites that suddenly lose rankings haven’t done anything wrong, so they are not banned or penalized. But what these majority sites usually do to lose their rankings is get links any cheap, spammy way they can. Most link spammers don’t realize they are link spammers.

After all, they only get “quality links” by submitting to free directories (or “SEO-friendly” directories — I love that expression), exchanging links with “relevant sites” (hint: relevance does not equal quality), buying links, distributing press releases and free articles, taking out classified ads, relying on links in signatures of forums and forum profile pages, etc.

You should see by now that with quality links like that, your search engine future is guaranteed. But some people make the system work. Unfortunately for all the sites that lose their rankings every time Google updates its filters, none of the great SEO advice givers include the disclaimer that should be pasted into every F.A.Q., blog, tutorial, eBook, and forum post: “Exceptional placement used for illustrative purposes only. Results may vary. No guarantees or warrantees are implied. Use at your own risk. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the dispenser of this schlock, oft-repeated SEO advice.”

I don’t explicitly include that disclaimer all the time, either, but you should consider it to be implied in everything I write.

If your linkage is really sound, though, your rankings can still tank. After all, you may spend six months building your search engine visibility, hit the top, and then move on to other tasks. One day, your search referrals are gone.

You check the hot sheets (forums and blogs) and see absolutely no mention of an update. Are you the first person to experience the inevitable gloom and doom, or did you just get lucky?

The odds are pretty good that if you’re making money off a query, someone else will sooner or later try to make money off that query, too. Eventually, you’ll find yourself inhabiting a little Web shanty town where anyone with a couple of HTML bricks to knock together has come in, set up shop, and started siphoning away your traffic and undermining your rankings.

It happens to me occasionally. If I care enough about a query, I’ll work to get back to the top. But if a lot of people have staked a claim in a Query Rush, I may not be able to get back to number 1. All the other greedy idiots may be linking to the number 1 guy (making him number 1) in their zeal to exchange links with relevant sites.

Here’s a clue for the link exchangers: If you’re going to do it, make sure you limit your exchanges to sites that will actually send you useful traffic. Helping your competitors with your links is not very smart. While there was a time when I advised people to exchange links with other sites, I encouraged them to look for alternatives to competitive sites.

If everyone competing for the same query exchanges links with all the same sites, you basically create a link farm. And link farms only work when the sites are unrelated (if they work at all). When all the sites in a competitive query exchange links with each other, the value of the various links tends to even out. i.e., you get no advantage by exchanging links with your competitors — especially the ones ranking above you.

Of course, some people think they are working on competitive queries, especially if they have the gall to call themselves SEOs. We’re professionals. We only work on competitive queries when we get into forum pissing contests. I can one-up your competitive SEO query any day of the week, but you can always tell me nothing I do is competitive. Plenty of people have insisted I don’t pursue competitive queries (their proof is the fact that I have dared to disagree with them in a forum — obviously I cannot be pursuing competitive queries).

Well, with such awe-inspiring logic driving the SEO community’s analyses, I have to admit that it’s hard for me to claim I’m working on competitive queries without rolling my eyes. I’ve never actually seen a competitive query that couldn’t be reranked by someone with enough determination, so how competitive is any query?

My point is that you can vastly over-rate the quality of the optimization you have put into your campaign. Most people still claim they have optimized their pages after inserting a spam-length set of keywords into their title elements and meta tags. The SEO community’s general inability to optimize Web pages (which in itself is an extremely sad irony) actually gives the real algorithm chasers a massive competitive advantage.

So when your rankings tank, you should have a clear check list you run down to see what may have happened. My order of preference tends to be:

1. I got lazy and this is what I deserve
2. Someone found my little golden query
3. The search engine done changed something
4. Hm, maybe I miscoded something
5. This must be a glitch and all I have to do is wait

Now, some people may feel I’m a hypocrite for not waiting first, as I usually advise people to do in forums.

But the difference between me and people who look for help with lost rankings in forums is that I don’t look for help with lost rankings in forums. I look for insight into what is happening with search engines in forum discussions. There are also technical issues that other people help me with all the time, although I do tend to run my questions through search engines first. After all, if I run into a technical problem, odds are pretty good that other people have, too. I can usually find my answers without asking. So I am hardly an island unto myself.

But I’m to the point now where I have no excuses. If I lose rankings, I know why and I have the ability to do something. The real SEO disaster, in my opinion, is the one that leaves you looking for help. In a disaster, isn’t it always good to know that the SEO Emergency Management Agency is out there working for your safety?

Well, if that thought doesn’t comfort you, then you’d better start working on your checklist. Because SEO blogs and forums don’t usually post disclaimers or give you money-back guarantees.

Disclaimer: Free advice and opinions are provided without any warranties or guarantees. I cannot do anything about the facts.