Two Reasons Why Google May Kick You Down

One reason why Google lowers the page rank or PR of a blog could be that the blog loads too slowly or slower than it should. My blog was loading slowly yesterday due to a banner that was holding it up. The banner changed servers and things were not done correctly. It was fixed within 24 hours but the damage has been done as the bots were just visiting at that time.

Another reason for Google to lower the PR could be that the frequency of posting new content is not high enough in Google’s eyes. This, however, is likely a much smaller reason for being kicked down. I say this because I’ve seen blogs with no new posts and very little activity for over 6 months that have retained their rank.

Today my blog’s PR was lowered from PR4 to PR3 and also 4 of my blog’s pages have been lowered from rank 2 to rank 1. This has happened after about a year of rank stability and for no other reason, except the above stated 2, that I can surmise.

It needs to be said that whatever reasons Google has for doing this, they could be entirely different from what anyone may think or suppose. It is not at all clear what Google really wants and values in spite the hints they give so grudgingly.

I’ve seen blogs, pages and videos with a lot of reader and viewer interaction and high perceived value that have much lower rank than blogs, pages and videos that hardly anybody reads, watches and comments on.

What Makes Sense and What Doesn’t About Google

Observing things like that, including the way Google is changing YouTube (read my previous post about new YouTube), it seems that the way Google acts sometimes, it makes no sense at all. Still, it makes sense to be on the good side of Google. Being on the good side of Google means doing things honestly without trying to fool it even if it doesn’t pay off.

When Google implies that a slow loading site may be punished, it pays off to make it load fast. When Google implies, and they never seem to make things 100% clear, that a site with a lot of incoming links will be rewarded by sitting high in Google search engine results and will receive a higher PR rank it doesn’t necessarily pay off not to try to build links faster than would be natural. But in the long run nobody can outsmart Google which is why it’s much better not to build links artificially.

That being said, it still surprises me how honest links tend to disappear over time. From 32 links that were on my blog in the summer of last year, as per Google, there were later only 11, then 3 and soon perhaps there will be none left. The number of indexed pages, on the other hand, has risen disproportionately.

Since Google has the biggest slice of the pie, people tend to focus most of their attention on Google. But how about the other search engines, namely Yahoo and Bing, are they behaving more rationally? Yes and no.

From what I could observe over the years, their search results seem to be more stable. When it comes to links and indexed pages and their stability they have recently, in the last 6 months or so, changed dramatically for the worse.

What’s your take on this, do you care about your blog’s PR (I mean page rank not public relations) links and what Google does?

Please comment, then tweet it, bookmark it, facebook and google+ it. Yes, facebook it and google+ it are now verbs, calls to action.

After having done that watch this cute sleeping cat familly with a kitten on guard.

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Authored by Vance Sova

SEO Strategy to Increase

Blog Traffic

SEO Strategy is necessary when blogging for money since it helps increase blog traffic. (You can also read my post Get Traffic To Your Website which touches on the subject of traffic).

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is doing things that the search engines like. They include keyword research, keyword placement and links.

Anybody who is building a website or a blog should learn about seo and implement seo strategy. Yes, even the bloggers who don’t blog for money.

Not everyone who blogs likes the idea of blogging seo but I can’t imagine a blogger who wouldn’t want to increase blog traffic.

All blog owners want readers. And the more traffic there is the more readers there will be.

Why am I stating the obvious?

Because there are people who seem to be oblivious to it. They’ve never heard of it, never understood it or refuse to pay attention to it.

I know such people that I’ve met online.

Online Friendship

Here is an example of two people I’d never met in the flesh but became acquainted with them online and now we’re friends.

Both are blogging and both had been happily posting without regard to search engine optimization.

When I gently pointed out to them the fact, Jose from Notes On Blogging happily embraced it and went all out to learn everything about SEO and implemented as much as he could right away.

Ed (not his real name) on the other hand stubbornly refused to do anything differently and said he didn’t want to bother with keywords and just wanted to be himself.

I’ll let you guess who gets more traffic, comments and online friends.

Helping Fellow Bloggers

Many people are helping their fellow blogging enthusiasts.

I too want to help as much as I can and whenever the opportunity arises.

It’s always exciting to find new friends online through the existing ones.

When I saw the post on Petra Weiss blog encouraging bloggers to help her online blogger friend I didn’t pass the opportunity and took action as many others have.

I was intrigued by the text link Oes tsetnoc leading to Petra’s friend’s site.

The link above which you can check for yourself has to do with webmaster seo contest. You can read the post about it by clicking on the link. I found it interesting.

I have fulfilled the request placed there here and so can you if you are moved by it.

Learning and implementing seo strategy to increase blog traffic will help you as a blogger whether you’re blogging for money, for fun, online friendship or any other reason.

Why do you blog?

Do you do SEO?

Leave a comment.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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