We all know that having your site rank on the first page of google is good as it brings you traffic for free. For some these are their source of income. Especially when your site is rank 1 as it gets about 40-42% of the traffic from the search engines. It can be really frustrating when you are ranking well on google and the next day you wake up and find your sites no where to be found. Here is my experience and my thoughts about it.
On March 19, 2012 google release a google algo update that killed a lot of Homepage backlinks networks and a lot of blog networks. So what is a homepage backlinks networks? These are the types of sites that you rent on a monthly basis that has aged and have high PR your links are embedded in the post in the homepage. They actually work really well if you add other backlink sources as well.
A blog networks are blogs that provide you contextual link in the actual posts. Contextual links are best links you can get as they are surrounded with content. They are usually either paid or some of them allow you to submit a blog that have PR. You get to submit spun articles and it will be distributed to different blogs that have PR making it also effective in ranking as most of those get posted in the homepage and will later roll off as inner posts. Some SEO marketers actually get their site ranked using only blog networks. It’s that powerful. I’ve actually tried doing it myself for one keyword although the competition was weak. Not until the google update came along.
On the first google update although my sites maintained ranking even when I was using blog networks but I didn’t solely rely on them as I build other links as well. As for the homepage I’ve never actually tried them but my friend keep bragging on how they work well for his sites. I was never convinced to try them as it was pretty expensive. Some of them priced of up to $97 a month or more.
When the update happen, I wasn’t hit at all so I’m thinking to myself that I’m doing things right with SEO. You could say I became more confident with my link building approach.
On April 24, 2012. Google Panda Spam Update. Every SEO internet marketers nightmare. Everyone was panicking like the sky was falling. New threads keeping coming up about how they lost rankings in different SEO forums. Some of my friends got hit hard as well from $3000-$4000 a month to $0 a day. He was already ready to give up and thinking of doing PPC instead. My sites where hit as well but they are still on the top 50 so I still believe in hope that it will come back.
I was frustrated of what happened to my sites as they were earning really well. I read a recent post and a good SEO case study of panda update. It inspired me to keep going and it reminded of the video I watch everyday about success. In that video comparing failure to pain. He says Pain is temporary, it will last for a minute, a week, a month or even a year but it eventually it will subside and something else will take its place but if you quit however it will last forever. I will consider this as failure. As one of my favorite quotes of all time:
The Only Way to Eliminate Failure is to Learn From it.
Instead of giving up I’m going to continue with this SEO journey. That SEO case study gave some good advices and I will be following them. My plan right now is to create more content 1,000 words and do more link diversity and try to get as much as possible of social links. Hopefully my sites will be back. Wish me luck and if you something to add or just leave it at the comment section below. Thanks for reading.
