Stop playing games and get serious - Great SEO!

Hi Everyone, 

Yes, it has been awhile since I put out a post. To be honest, my phones have been ringing around the clock since Google's last algo updates, or should I say "last muscle flexing" I thought about the millions of people who have been affected by what I would call mindless updates. Well, one thing for certain, they are keeping me in business! I told a long time customer some hard truth yesterday. I told him to stop playing games! I keep telling people that "what you got away with in the past won't fly anyjmore".

PLEASE DON'T READ THIS POST AND COMMENT JUST TO GET YOUR 10 POINTS. TAKE 10 MINUTES A DAY TO ENSURE THAT YOU SURVIVE THE NEXT GOOGLE UPDATE.

The fact is, the info I am putting out in this post would take the average person 10 minutes a day (consistently) to avoid being penalized or more likely TANKED by Google. This post will show you how to find out if you get to pass go and collect a paycheck, or if you go to jail while your competitors go on buying and selling.

My tips are completely FREE! All I ask is that when my tips work for you that you refer people you know who might benefit from using my services, or those who don't have a desire to become their own SEO expert to me. My tips work only if you invest the time to do them. Please subscribe to my blog for regular SEO Tips. 

I guess the deal is I get tired of watching friends crash and burn because they refuse to take their websites visibility serously. In the popular board game "Monopoly" you are playing for paper money, and at the end of the day, regardless of how much money you won or lost, you laugh and go home. In the REAL game of "Business" we depend on the traffic from our websites to keep our businesses alive. 

I have some good news, and some bad news for everyone. I will give you the bad news first so I can finish up with the good news and end on an encouraging note.

The bad news is that in the past few months, Google has released some very NASTY algorythms which have sent many people reeling, and many many websites tanked. Panda hit huge numbers of websites that were doing great into the depths of nowheresville (like page 20 or worse), Penguin followed up with what many felt was a death blow. What they DON'T know is that there is more coming. 

This post will give you practical steps to take to tankproof your website. You can spend the time now to tidy things up, or you better be prepared to look to mailings and other forms of marketing while your websites are "recovering". 

The best way to survive these algorythms is to understand what they do.

Here are some hints right from the horse's mouth. Here is what Matt Cutts of Google had to say about the Panda update.

"This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on." 

Given the above statement, you can make the following assessment of the direction you need to go with your site in order to avoid being penalized. Just look at the things they targeted and avoid them!

They are:

1. Copy Content (duplicate content)... I know, I sound like a broken record!
2. Spammy keyword usage...
3. Sloppy linking practices
4. Mis-use of "anchor text" in links. (OVERUSE of the same anchor text)

There are more factors, but the above 4 are being the hardest hit on the internet right now. Save yourself
alot of time and money by checking to see if you violate these rules.

Here are the steps you can take GUARANTEED to find out if you are targeted.. Yes, I said GUARANTEED!

Go to Semrush.Com and enter your site name in the search box in the form of www.yourdomain.com 
Look at the keywords semrush says your site is ranked for, and note the position they say you are in. Now go to google and search for those keywords. Where is your site? If it is not in the position semrush said it was in, you have been hit. Now it may not be that bad, but once you get hit, you can count on more scrutiny from them. A further check of your google analytics or your web stats will show you the same thing.  Look for an UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN pattern in your traffic. Sometimes it can be as bad as daily. Don't just check once and assume you are fine. Check these regularly, especially if you see declining rankings. 

I promised to end on a good note.. Here it is. If you detected a drop in your rankings, you can generally recover by simply fixing the issues. The number 1 problem I am finding in people's SEO is Duplicate content followed by bad link practices. 

The GREAT news is that you can survive the google updates if you work smart and take the time to be proactive. Look at your SEO the same as you would returning a call from a lead.

My #1 rule for Great SEO is that you be PROACTIVE, not REACTIVE!

Have a great day, and here's to seeing you ALL at the TOP!