If you’ve been online for a while, then you may well have had the experience of building up the traffic levels to your site, having a modicum of success and then feeling as if you’ve been ‘slapped by Google’.
But is it Google’s fault for changing its algorithm or is it your fault for having a business which doesn’t add significant value to the internet?
Although you may well feel aggrieved by your sudden loss of website visitors, try to see things impartially. Are the websites which now rank higher for your desired search terms offering people something more meaningful in relation to their query?
Google updates their listings to try to give their users a better experience - not because they want to give your competitors a share of the traffic. Google is more than happy to give you the maximum possible traffic for your chosen keyword term, as long as if you offer the most relevant and useful resource to their referred visitors.
One business model that Google is unlikely to like is websites that just make money by recommending other products and services. This is often called a ‘thin business model’.
When a website just makes money by recommending other products and services, visitors don’t typically spend that long on the site - and that’s one of the things that tell Google that their referred visitors aren’t finding precisely what they’re looking for.
Think about it. Why would Google want to recommend a site that people often just visited for 5 seconds, and then clicked on their back button to return to the search results? Eventually the searcher will get fed up with Google not delivering them the information they’re looking for and turn to Bing or Yahoo.
Nobody apart from Google knows precisely what their ever-evolving algorithm involves. However surely common sense dictates, if you manage to get Google referred visitors to stay on your website for longer, and view more pages on your site compared with competitor sites, then Google will use that as a reason to keep your site high in its listings for relevant search terms.
Solution: Stop blaming Google for your diminishing rankings and get known for doing something great. When you’re providing a better response to what people are searching for, you will give your business a great chance of maintaining or increasing rankings.