Google Update Have You GOING CRAZY Wondering What To Do For YOUR OFFLINE CLIENTS!?

One thing I didn't mention is how I believe you may be in a bad neighborhood. If you are on a reseller account or shared hosting account with multiple adsense websites and the ones you used BMR for got hit, I believe the others will be hit as well.

If you can, will you PM me the links to the sites that were hit? I'd like to examine them and see if I can find more common factors.

Using certain backlinking methods, even if they are considered white hat, I believe can now hurt you.

Keep in mind, the sites that used BMR might not have been penalized, but discredited. It is possible that your links were discredited in the BMR network but still naturally ranked higher.

Also, the google places algorithm is different than the organic search so if you have sites that dropped in places it is a different issue.

It is also possible that you didn't just drop.. but other sites were favored by the new change. Drop some more details so I can try to figure this out.

It seems to me they're trying to perfect the social signal aspect of the algorithm. It could be just a very small factor but I think it is going to continue to grow. Have a branded twitter, facebook, google +, linkedin linking to your website, have share buttons and retweets. All my sites with active social media campaigns are growing in rank. Although, other websites without an active social media campaign haven't been hit.. they're just in the same spot, no change.

So far? You mean you have done all this within a day or two? You don't move back up that fast. You may be talking post panda.

Another good tip though, link velocity is very important. No more ordering thousands of links!

Sounds like an over optimization issue. Can you send me the link.. actually you don't have enough posts to PM, can you email the domain and keyword to me, nathan at too2web.com

Yeah, I think there are a few different things to take into consideration. How was your link building varied throughout the 5 sites?

I have very little experience in SEO but I believe if you buy likes or Google +'s, you are getting in the same boat as SENuke, profile links, and unnatural linking.

Just putting that out for you to consider. If I was google I wouldn't want to see that. Just seems like common sense. I'm sure paying to get views to a you tube video would fall in the same category.

I always laughed when someone said a spun article blasted to 1000 article directories looks natural to google as opposed to one article. Let's see, you have a 3 day old website and suddenly you have a thousand articles on the web. Yeah, that seems natural to me---not!

Wow, I feel for ya!!

Maybe it'd be helpful to the forum if you could post some of the SEO methods you were using so we can learn from them...

A profile link quite simply is where you go onto a forum or similar site create a profile and then optimise the profile just for a keyword.

If you have ever heard of xRumer these guys have made a pretty big business out of it.

Thanks IamNameless,

Great post some of the stuff I never knew like having a language tag.

Would you recommend any guides for social media for SEO?

It has nothing to do with what theme you use. If you were using adsense on sites that got hit, maybe you had too many ads. Is it possible you had a high bounce rate on those sites? Are you using analytics, and webmaster tools? let us know..

Do you have your address on your city based sites?

There are definitely on page and off page factors for this update. It is definitely a bigger update than Google has let on.

Hmm, I'm not sure... I know Daniel Tan has one or at least some kind of software to evaluate and check your social signals but I don't think he really guides you to how to really build it up.

This is one of the trickier things... The reason it's tricky is because there are now two ways you can direct your social media marketing. One way is to use it for SEO and another way is for building your brand and really develop a following. I'd recommend focusing on building up your social media following in a natural way, offer value to your followers, and in time that will help your SEO. You don't want to start off with 10 likes and end up with 100,000 the next day, unless you REALLY went viral. People purchasing likes isn't helping. It isn't helping because they are false accounts and even if you get an extra boost on one metric you don't gain any real value.

Don't buy +1's... Google's own network.. It isn't wise to buy +1's, it will just scream spam and won't help at all.

What google likes to see, is good marketing. Your backlink and social media campaigns should be about one thing and one thing only. TRAFFIC! Focus on that, and you will be fine.

That's what people have been saying for years. If I believed that, I would be missing out on a lot of money every week. My clients would be missing out on a ton of money. My first client wouldn't have went from 2,000/mo to 36k/mo with his ecommerce website if it weren't for SEO.

I stay ahead of changes, it may sounds strange and impossible but I've survived every change and update for the past 2-3 years.

SEO is part of a marketing plan... Just because SEO is difficult and changes doesn't mean to give up. Last time I checked marketing needs to be adjusted from time to time and optimized for results based on what the client needs, right? SEO is the same thing.

Can you share the bounce rate and avg time on site those sites have?

So did site 1, and 3 jump up in position and site 2 hold the same spots?

That would make sense from the user behavior standpoint.

The sites I have noticed that take a hit are above 60% bounce rate. Avg time on site, I haven't been able to put that together.

Whether GA has anything to do with it or not I dunno.. I suspect, if it does, you need to have good avg time on site and lower bounce rate. It looks like what you have is all good. If bounce rate has been given more power then I would assume the sites that have gone up in rank are 1, and 3. Of course, there can be soooooo many more factors it's going to be next to impossible to tell except on my own websites.

Funny thing I I thought the same and was about to post it when I read yours.

Seriously? Is it the way to bring the competition down these days? If my memory serves correctly google promised never penalize for bad linking just for this simple reason- to eliminate competiton elimination by bad backlinking.

Those aren't experts at ALL lol.. The reason the SEO community is in a panic is because of all the myths that are being posted, and taken as fact by the same people you call experts.

Out of everyone on the SEO side of the forum, maybe 3 or 4 actually know what they're doing, because they actually TEST. They don't follow popular opinion on what works and what doesn't.

Hell.. even the SEO gurus can't agree on whether nofollow links are beneficial or not.

Most of these SEO experts don't know anything about 301 redirects, either. LOL!

I just wish people would actually test their own theories, and see what really works, what is hype, what is a myth and what is downright ignorant.

SEO isn't going bye bye... only the people who are not students of their industry are going bye bye.

Just like all algorithm updates, SEO will always be around. It isn't dead, it is changing. You either adapt or you go out of business. That is the name of the game, the rules of the road, either you play along or you don't play at all.

In a couple months everything is going to be fine again.

Why would they go out of business? A business that exists only because of SEO had to start somewhere, when they weren't ranking, know what I mean?

I guess it is a good example of why you shouldn't have all your eggs in one basket. Not to downplay the situation or anything... But SEO will live on and people will need to adjust or quit.

I understand how frustrating it can be to have pissed off clients.. but you can't guarantee rank, you can't guarantee anything and you never should. If someone built their business around google, that really sucks. For the ones that are safe, I'd definitely suggest start planning on using other avenues.

I love SEO because it is like chess, except possibly more complicated and challenging at times, especially when the rules change!

Not to beat a dead horse here. But, I think iamnameless has pretty much diagnosed the problem with your clients sites due to your method of buying Fiver High PR links... so if they were a large part as to why your clients sites had gained rankings and Google has now given these links ZERO juice, you can be sure that's what has caused your sites to crash.

Just gotta pick up and keep going.

For the most part, it doesn't seem like websites that gained their rankings honestly have really been harmed. It could really just be a step in a more legitimate direction.

After iamnameless`s ever so subtle ways of telling people they`re idiots and don`t know anything about anything, in this case SEO.

I decided to goto SEOMoz and learn SEO from the very roots...

SEO: The Free Beginner?s Guide From SEOmoz

I`ve definitely learned some stuff, which isn`t saying much, but it can`t hurt to take a look...

For what it's worth....

Out of curiosity, I went down to the SEO section to see what was being said.....which is pretty ugly and makes little sense.....like a #1position with a blank page.

Anyhows, Jonathan Leger posted that a guy in his forum, who once worked for Google, contacted some old office mates to see what the hell was going on.
He was told that Google is also pissed and working to gets some things straightened out.

So, before making wholesale changes, you might want to wait a bit for an update to see if things get sorted out.

I would completely ignore amr, and senuke, xrumer and scrapebox for now.. I think you would be leaving too big of a footprint with that strategy.

Consistent backlink building is a great thing. I guarantee if you spend 15 minutes a day looking for related websites, and only building one link a day you would be in better shape than using that strategy.

Blog entries, web 2.0 properties, blog comments that are not link farms, networking within your niche, are ways to go. VIDEO is a great way to go..

The MAIN issue you will have with your strategy, is all the pages you are wanting to link. You have to diversify the type of backlinks, the anchor text, the page it goes to and the source of the backlink. Having a web 2.0 property with unique content and two links with different anchors to diferent areas of the website would be fine... IF you didn't blast it with links.

You can pretty easily get any website you want, a PR3 or more just with a couple quality links. You can spam out 50,000 xrumer links and not even get a PR1.

What it comes down to google wanting to see, is this... They want you to market your website. They want you to have content and links on sites relevant to your ideal visitor. Profile links, spun content with links, mass submitted links aren't ideal because it isn't what your visitors want.

That is the way to stay ahead of the game... Avoid all slaps and penalties, by properly marketing your website. Every backlink you build should be built purely for referral traffic.

If you would like to use xrumer and senuke, scrapebox and all the pieces of software you have.. you can.. use it on video. It appears this hasn't effected youtube yet, and it might not ever effect it!

When changes like this happen.. it's important to think about your strategy and make sure it isn't trying to game the search engines. You can cut corners later on once you figure out what can be done for sure and what can't.

Are they ranking organically or in google places?

Google places and videos are not effected by this update... I don't know if they will be or not, only time will tell.

What are you using to look at the links?

SEO for videos is very basic and primitive. If you truly look at it and compare to others you can tell WHY it ranks above. For those keywords it ranks because it's better optimized. Keyword in the title, description, in the title twice actually... Views or plays in my opinion, DO play a role in the ranking, but old school text book SEO is applicable for videos. Title.. descriptions, tags, and annotations play the biggest role. Next I would say is links, embeds, shares, adding to channels, and plays.

I think it's pulling that video because it is the most relevant when you compare the tags.

The google webmaster and google analytics effect scares me.
All my sites have this.

The one thing that is scaring me is my company website Swimming Pool Service and Construction Amesbury Massachusetts has a high bounce rate lately. I think it has to do with the crappy Godaddy server being slow. The high bounce rates come on my blog articles which are ver informative for pool owners and answers the questions posed in the search queries accuratley and usually in detail.

I have not lost any serps rankings and my traffic is holding steady, but still worried about that high bounce rate.

I think I may finally have to move this site over to hostgator dedicated, I just hate doing that especially in the middle of the pool season if anything goes wrong. :confused:

On another note, I did lose half of my amazon review sites. About 2 weeks ago I saw the drop in traffic being sent to amazon, check serps on a few sites and they were nowhere to be found. - there goes that project!