I"ve warned small business owners before about relying too heavily on any one source of traffic to keep their business afloat citing the fact that all it takes is one bad algorithm shift to destroy a Google-dependant site. While Google shuffles still happen every now and then, you generally don"t hear about them because they"re resolved fairly quickly. Nonetheless, Eric Ward addresses the issue over at Search Engine Land this week.
Eric writes:
Seeing your site"s ranking suddenly change is a reality we all face. Sometimes the changes are legitimate, reflecting a shift in the algorithm, or in the inbound link profile of your site or your competitor"s sites. But sometimes the changes are a temporary blip, caused by any number of factors, and after a few days or weeks your ranking returns to wherever it was before the shuffle, and you breathe again. Like a game of musical chairs and your site keeps winning.
I would imagine that one of the hardest things about being a small business owner that"s new to the world of search is fighting the obsession to check rankings on a regular basis. I"ve written in the past about the need to move away from rankings as a symbol of search success and to instead focus on sales and conversion rates.
This instance is a prime example. In fact, I"ve seen sites suffer temporary drops in rankings with no corresponding drop in sales. On the other hand, I"ve seen sites experience a drop in sales without any change to their search rankings.
Why? Because the rankings and sales, while related, are not directly tied to each other.
In fact, even if they do shift, chances are good that it"s still nothing to lose any sleep over. Eric goes on to explain...
...at any given moment there are millions of calculations and computations taking place at various data centers. Rankings don"t just change during major updates. They are always changing. And rankings can be different depending on where you are when you search. I"ve been on the phone with clients in other countries and we each perform the exact same search at the exact same time, yet we get different results.
If this scenario happens to your site, rest easier. For a few days Google may give another site credit for links that Google will soon recognize as not credible. Then the site that was ranking above yours will vanish.
You should be more concerned when the site that starts outranking yours is a true competitor with a link profile that was not achieved via link spam techniques. When that happens you need to look for the links that enabled them to pass you by.
It"s good advice.
What to take away? How about these three points:
1.) Diversify your traffic sources
2.) Focus more on sales and conversions than rankings
3.) Don"t freak out (or celebrate) the moment that your rank changes
Hat tip to Manoj at Web Analytics World.
>>Source Link
>>Blog: Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing
>>Publish Date: 5/15/2007 8:01:41 AM
>>Keywords: site your
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