Maybe Google has lost touch with what searchers want?
- SEO |
I ended up building a site based on a business model posted here on creating holiday sites. I felt the outline was well laid out and could work well for obtaining organic traffic on specific holiday items with high demand.
After doing some extensive research I went ahead and targeted a physical product that had lots of demand and searches for the holiday season.
- Picked a keyword rich domain.
- Bookmarked it on all the top web 2.0 sites.
- Submitted RSS Feed for bookmarking.
- Got quite a good amount of back links pointing to the site from some blogs/sites that have a PR 3 or PR 4.
- Followed all of Google's Webmaster guidelines posted BY Google.
- Did all the on-page SEO.
- Site was specific to one product and only about 3 pages.
The site has been up for almost 2 months and has been indexed by google and all the other major SE's. The site was made to conform with google's on-site and off site SEO "requirements" and it has NOT ranked anywhere close to the top, despite targeting highly searched buying long-tail keywords.
On the other hand, Yahoo has the site ranked on the first page for two long-tail keywords and two more on the second page. I've been seeing consistent organic traffic on a daily bases from yahoo with 2/3 rd's of the traffic click through rates to the vendor's page.
What's really funny is google indexed the site in a matter of days and yahoo took a couple of weeks (as usual) and yet it feels the site is worthy of being on their top spot to give it's searchers what THEY are looking for.
I've done some extensive research, because I like to understand what is going on, and have noticed google's top spots where from the product maker them selves, that did not sell the product directly, and many "informational" type websites that had many pages of content. Yahoo, on the other hand, lists a mix of informational and product listing type sites that specifically address many of the nich market's problem such as "where can I BUY this item" or "where is this item in stock". These are buying keywords and yet google feels it is relevant to display all the media type buzz news about this product v.s. giving it's searchers more merchant type sites showing them exactly where they could buy this HOT Christmas item.
I also found competitor sites that followed the exact same site layout I created got no google "love" following google's webmaster guidlines.
So, after observing all of this, I'm starting to think that google maybe in the process of building a big wall around it self and the only way to get passed this it is to have a site with a TON of content on it with most searches providing nothing but "info" to it's searchers. But is and unable to address a simple question such as "where can I find this HOT item in stock so that I can buy it and give it as a present just give me the buying link". Yahoo is more than able to do so without an issue.
I don't do IM as a full time gig and with the limited time I have to devote to it, I won't be building sites to please google anymore. If google feels like it wants to display my sites at the top great, but I'm not going to type my fingers off and build an authority site just to sell some physical items. I want to be able to provide the visitor with the most efficient way for the visitor to get what they want. Nothing more nothing less. Why do I need to build a five star resturant when all the visitor is looking for is a hot dog stand to buy a quick hot dog?
It's unfortunate yahoo does not get the same amount of traffic as google, because for physical items they truly provide their visitors with more choices of relevant sites based on searches.
Maybe google, with all it's ways of trying to outsmart spammers and the entire world, is forgetting the true reason they exist is to provide simple relevant search results to its visitors, without the need to display top results with every site that has information overload on it. Needless to say, I will be exploring many different traffic avenues that don't require google to be the main traffic provider. Google seems to be providing less to me as the content provider and it's visitors.
BTW, this isn't a rant or a plead for help. It's just MY observation based on my own experiences.
After doing some extensive research I went ahead and targeted a physical product that had lots of demand and searches for the holiday season.
- Picked a keyword rich domain.
- Bookmarked it on all the top web 2.0 sites.
- Submitted RSS Feed for bookmarking.
- Got quite a good amount of back links pointing to the site from some blogs/sites that have a PR 3 or PR 4.
- Followed all of Google's Webmaster guidelines posted BY Google.
- Did all the on-page SEO.
- Site was specific to one product and only about 3 pages.
The site has been up for almost 2 months and has been indexed by google and all the other major SE's. The site was made to conform with google's on-site and off site SEO "requirements" and it has NOT ranked anywhere close to the top, despite targeting highly searched buying long-tail keywords.
On the other hand, Yahoo has the site ranked on the first page for two long-tail keywords and two more on the second page. I've been seeing consistent organic traffic on a daily bases from yahoo with 2/3 rd's of the traffic click through rates to the vendor's page.
What's really funny is google indexed the site in a matter of days and yahoo took a couple of weeks (as usual) and yet it feels the site is worthy of being on their top spot to give it's searchers what THEY are looking for.
I've done some extensive research, because I like to understand what is going on, and have noticed google's top spots where from the product maker them selves, that did not sell the product directly, and many "informational" type websites that had many pages of content. Yahoo, on the other hand, lists a mix of informational and product listing type sites that specifically address many of the nich market's problem such as "where can I BUY this item" or "where is this item in stock". These are buying keywords and yet google feels it is relevant to display all the media type buzz news about this product v.s. giving it's searchers more merchant type sites showing them exactly where they could buy this HOT Christmas item.
I also found competitor sites that followed the exact same site layout I created got no google "love" following google's webmaster guidlines.
So, after observing all of this, I'm starting to think that google maybe in the process of building a big wall around it self and the only way to get passed this it is to have a site with a TON of content on it with most searches providing nothing but "info" to it's searchers. But is and unable to address a simple question such as "where can I find this HOT item in stock so that I can buy it and give it as a present just give me the buying link". Yahoo is more than able to do so without an issue.
I don't do IM as a full time gig and with the limited time I have to devote to it, I won't be building sites to please google anymore. If google feels like it wants to display my sites at the top great, but I'm not going to type my fingers off and build an authority site just to sell some physical items. I want to be able to provide the visitor with the most efficient way for the visitor to get what they want. Nothing more nothing less. Why do I need to build a five star resturant when all the visitor is looking for is a hot dog stand to buy a quick hot dog?
It's unfortunate yahoo does not get the same amount of traffic as google, because for physical items they truly provide their visitors with more choices of relevant sites based on searches.
Maybe google, with all it's ways of trying to outsmart spammers and the entire world, is forgetting the true reason they exist is to provide simple relevant search results to its visitors, without the need to display top results with every site that has information overload on it. Needless to say, I will be exploring many different traffic avenues that don't require google to be the main traffic provider. Google seems to be providing less to me as the content provider and it's visitors.
BTW, this isn't a rant or a plead for help. It's just MY observation based on my own experiences.
Just when you think you've got it all figured out, someone changes the rules.