New Trends in Google Rankings?

[rockcoastmedia]

Has anyone noticed a shift in the way certain web sites are ranking in Google as of the last month or so. I have been using the same techniques that I found to work well in the past, but my sites are not ranking as highly for the keyterms as they once did. For example I am:

1. Creating Title Tags such as: keyword1 | Keyword 2 | company name
2. Header using an H1 tag which contains the keyword in it (H1 tag changed to <style=h1>
3. Writting content of atleast 4 paragraphs per page, with the use of similar terms to my keywords so not to spam the engines
4. text links to other areas of the site, which use keywords to the other pages, not those on the home page
5. Build inboundl inks through directories
6. Submission of at least 1 article per month to isnare
7. Create a blog on topic with my site, hosted on my server, with an RSS feed and use pingomatic.com each time new content is added.

Am I missing the boat here. Is there somthing that I am not doing, which I should be. I know my sites do not have many votes on Del.icio.us, but is social search even part of the ranking system of Google?

Any suggestions would be welcome.

[ashannon]

Have you had any links setup on other websites to your's?

[rockcoastmedia]

Yes, I have at least 10 other web sites, outside of directories and article directories, that have links to my site. All of those sites are relevant. This is a legal site and all the other sites are legal sites as well.

[MacCallow]

ok, so just because you didn't mention it doesn't mean you haven't written meta descriptions? If your descriptions are the same or too similar, your pages may be seen as duplicate content and hello penalty or supp index...

I've noticed it. In fact my analytics app. can pinpoint the timeframe my google referrals were cut in half. My site is a template driven shopping cart which is hard enough in itself to optimize, but I had managed to get a particular landing page (or store page) ranked as high as #15 on a set of very competitive keywords.

Along comes Sept. 1 and BAM...my page drops from #15 to #135 for one term, and from #23 to #142 on another, yet similar term. The odd thing is our homepage - which is NOT optimized for either of these terms - ranks #55 on both.

I made no changes to the "optimized" landing page at least 7-10 days prior to the drop, and the page had held the #15 spot for a couple of months.

MacCallow - what is "supp index"??

[SEMBasics]

You might want to consider increasing and diversifying your incoming links. 10 links is not so many, unless they are from exceptionally high quality, relevant sites (and even then you would want to work on getting some more high quality links). Also, I don't know whether or not this is a factor, but you may want to work on your page copy. I just saw a couple of intersting videos which argue that the supporting words that you use on your page copy affects the ranking of your main keyword. Here are the two videos:

Here is the first video: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com...ullsearch.html

Here is the second video: http://www.convertlinks.com/videos/2/2.php

The second video is longer and is not just about this topic. The section you want starts at about 11 minutes into the video.

[TheWizardofSeCA]

Originally Posted by jrhalli

MacCallow - what is "supp index"??

The short version:
He is talking about pages that show as "supplemental results" when making a search in Google. These pages are from a supplemental index. If you notice that some of your pages are in the supplemental index, you most likely have content extremely similar to your other pages. Having the exact same description and/or title tags can also cause your pages to be moved to the supplemental index.

[fulton savage]

Originally Posted by MacCallow

If your descriptions are the same or too similar, your pages may be seen as duplicate content and hello penalty or supp index...

A few replies on this thread claim that titles and/or meta descriptions can force a page to be tossed into the supplemental index. Who has had this happen to their sites?

I've got nothing but deep user manual pages and pages that have nothing but giant flash animations in the supplemental index. Lots of my meta descriptions are very similar if not identical across a particular site I can think of, but the content is original and they aren't supplemental.

Eh?

[MacCallow]

This article may be of interest - and no I didn't write it, but I do agree with it, and have experimented with one of my own sites.

http://www.ragepank.com/articles/43/duplicate-content/

[TheWizardofSeCA]

Originally Posted by fulton savage

A few replies on this thread claim that titles and/or meta descriptions can force a page to be tossed into the supplemental index. Who has had this happen to their sites?

I've got nothing but deep user manual pages and pages that have nothing but giant flash animations in the supplemental index. Lots of my meta descriptions are very similar if not identical across a particular site I can think of, but the content is original and they aren't supplemental.

Eh?

Like you said, the content is original. In this case it might very well be that your pages are original enough to be indexed properly and not suffer from any penalties. Since we are dealing with an algorythm, and Google isn't going to give it away, it is hard to tell where the line is drawn.
I've seen a website with 11 pages recently, from which all pages but the index page moved to the supplemental results. The only similarity of these pages beside the obvious code for layout/menu's - was the description tag. Once the website was updated with original description tags for each page, the pages went back in the "normal" index.

[jackson992]

Not so. I have loads of pages in the supp index and they have different descriptions.

[MacCallow]

check if your copy is being ripped off - www.copyscape.com is a good way to check if your content is being used elsewhere.

different meta descriptions should differ anyway, but mostly to avoid duplicate content ban. Oh, and check out if youhave a canonical issue going on, and if you do do a 301 redirect.

otherwise, for some reason google is seeing the pages that are in the supps as 'secondary' in importance to another/other pages in your site, so if the descriptions are using different keywords and are different, and the titles are different, and the copy is different, then just hang in there. My whole site (well almost) went supplemental around 2 months ago, and its all back in the main index now...

[jackson992]

Most everything for me is going to be dup content as I run affliate sites. However there are plenty of affiliates that aren't in supp and I do have pages not in there as well. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which pages they place there.

[PhilC]

The days when the Supplemental index was a really bad place for your pages to be are gone. These days, that index is so different from the old Supplemental index that it should have a different name.

Vast numbers of sites have pages in the Supplemental index (Google has at least 6 figures of pages in there), and they are put there because of Big Daddy. Google now evaluates a sites external linkages (in and out), and allows the site to have a certain number of pages in the normal index according to the outcome of the evaluation. The rest of the site's pages are put in Supplemental. If the site's evaluation score improves, some pages will come out of Supplemental, and vice versa.

They use PageRank to decide which of the site's pages to have in the normal index.

That doesn't mean that useless pages are no longer put in there, btw.

[fishfinger]

"check if your copy is being ripped off - www.copyscape.com is a good way to check if your content is being used elsewhere."

Copyscape can be blocked - and as it is now well known this is more likely to happen if someone has set out to steal your content knowingly.

So to be 100% sure, take a few phrases of less than 20 words from the middle of your article/page and search for them in "" in Google.

[Sadu]

Originally Posted by MacCallow

This article may be of interest - and no I didn't write it, but I do agree with it, and have experimented with one of my own sites.

http://www.ragepank.com/articles/43/duplicate-content/

I did write that article (thanks for the plug by the way) and the point it makes is that your Google Snippet needs to be unique to avoid the dup content penalty.

The best way to make your google snippet unique is to write your own meta description, and make sure it includes your targeted phrase.

So, on a product database site this is easy - just script your meta desc eg...

"[product name], available from our online collection of [category name]. Shop online for [product name] at [site name] where we offer a money back guarantee."

On other sites, take the time to hand-craft a good meta desc. Remember, your snippet is your sales pitch, so being number 2 with a good snippet will often bring more traffic than being number 1 (if number 1 has a bad snippet).

[jehochman]

Rockcoast, do you have any outbound links on your site? Google has added tracking code to their SERPs. They know who clicks on which links, and whether they bounce back to the SERP right away and choose a different link.

Hint: You want to reduce the number of people who come to your site and then hit the 'back' button. If Google refers people to your site and sees lots of them making a quick return to the SERP, maybe Google will start recommending a different site instead.

Outbound links add value for the visitors. If they don't find exactly what they want on your site, you can speed them along to another useful site. While linking to crap sites can hurt your rankings, linking to good sites can improve the value of your site. Higher value often translates into higher rankings.

[PhilC]

Google has had the tracking in the serps for as long time, and what you just described is only people's imagination.

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by rockcoastmedia

Has anyone noticed a shift in the way certain web sites are ranking in Google as of the last month or so.

Yes, they're devaluing mediocre links.

Originally Posted by rockcoastmedia

Build inbound links through directories

Most of these probably aren't doing you any good. IMO, there are only a handful of good general directories. You may find some good niche directories, though, depending on your market area. I'd never depend on directories as the backbone of my linking strategy.

Originally Posted by rockcoastmedia

Submission of at least 1 article per month to isnare

Syndicated articles are probably regarded as dupe content and most likely are used by sites that don't care enough to generate their own, unique material. Chances are these aren't very high quality sites. So, links from these probably aren't doing you any good either.