Have you experienced the Google smackdown and lost your organic placement? Have you dropped from the first page of results to the second or worse yet to so far back you cannot even find your own site?
If this is your case, what can you do – anything?
Here is my short list of things to look at and review to see if you can fix your problem.
1. If your website is mainly duplicated content like user generated content (reviews, event postings), or products and descriptions that many other sites share with you – you will most likely not be able to re mediate your problem. Sorry, hard cold fact via Matt Cutts the lead Google Web Spam engineer. If your content is like others Google no longer considers showing your site organically a value proposition for them UNLESS you create some other type of value for users than just spewing out what others already have on their sites or have already said.
2. If your site does not have duplicate content, there is hope to re mediate a drop through careful content review and update, on-domain blogging, code optimization, and a strategic plan to build value and information with the reader in mind first and foremost.
The changes that Google has made to their search engine in the last year have had very strong and sweeping impacts in regards to how a business sets up and manages their online presence. Getting organic placement is now that much harder to earn and keep, but it all remains about the value you offer to readers and in the greater scheme of things the value you provide to others trying to understand your industry.
So often I hear “my site has dropped, I want to be on page one, others are there why not me?” There are so many factors at play now in regards to organic placement that doing one thing, two things, or even three things just don’t work. Don’t ever lose sight of this fact – this is Google’s FREE search engine with results displayed their way and to their criteria, but most of all, Google is in the business to sell advertising not supply FREE search results for website owners.