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Written by Marsha Kopan January 13, 2006
I spent a considerable amount of time last summer SEOing my websites. I was quite pleased that both of them made it to the top 10 in Google in a very short period of time. Recently, one of my sites has totally disappeared from Google and I haven't made any changes to its content. I am baffled. Your wisdom and input would be appreciated.
Marsha Kopan
execsecsrv.com
associationmanagementresources.com
Written by Mike Banks Valentine January 16, 2006
Marsha,
You didn't say what the search terms you are targeting. Both of your sites are still indexed by Google. They may not be ranking for specific search phrases you are targeting, but both show pages of each site indexed.
Using your home page title tags as a guide and doing a search for Virtual Assistant Services" shows one site ranking at #7 on page one of results at Google for that phrase. Again, the second domain, using the phrase in your title tag of the home page, "Association Management Resources", has you ranked at #1 at Google for that phrase.
Either you did a search and made a typo in the search box - or you checked during a hiccup at Google which briefly dropped your site from the results (hiccups happen). When that happens, best to double check your results by either having a friend in another city or state check your phrase for you, thus getting results from another of Goolge's data centers or by waiting a week before checking again. Unless you are doing some serious search engine spamming, it is extremely rare that anyone has "totally disappeared from Google".
Simple query to see if your site is indexed, regardless of your rank for any particular search phrase. Go to Google and type "site:www.execsecsrv.com" (without quote marks) and you'll see that it lists 18 pages indexed. Do the same with the second domain name "site:www.associationmanagementresources.com" and you'll see 5 pages indexed.
Good luck with those targeted phrases!
Mike Banks Valentine
seoptimism.com
Written by Will Bontrager January 16, 2006 Marsha, I'm no SEO expert, but I can let you know something that's been happening with a "page 1" web site of ours. The site has consistently been on page 1 for over some years, until recently. 4-6 months ago, it disappeared to page neversee for both terms. A week later, it was back for one term. Some days after that, for both terms. A few weeks later it happened again. Then several more times.
The page sometimes comes back low on the page. Sometimes high. Currently, it's at #3 for one term and #1 for another. But I don't expect things to remain static. Your sites may come back to their top 10 place. I've learned to be patient with the Goog. Sometimes its dancing takes it all the way to the other side of the floor. But it has always returned for us.
Off topic: Adam, I must say LED has suddenly improved. I've been getting caught up on my programming and hadn't read LED for about a month. Just starting to tackle the unread issues.
Congratulations to you and your posters. Very well done!
Will Bontrager
stocktickerbox.com
Written by Jenny L. Halasz
January 17, 2006
Hi Marsha,
Without having some sample keywords to test, I can't say for sure why you dropped in rankings on Google. However, there are a couple of duplicate content issues with the site that you may want to correct. The first is canonical, www vs. non URLs, and the second is consistent internal linking. I wrote another post on this that you may find helpful. It's geared towards MSN, but applies to all search engines. Pay particular attention to #1 and #3.
Best of luck!
Jenny L. Halasz
marketsmartinteractive.com
Written by Michael Linehan
January 17, 2006 > Unless you are doing some serious search
> engine spamming, it is extremely rare that
> anyone has "totally disappeared from Google".
I don't know if it is literally extremely rare - but I found out it's easier to get banned than I would have thought.
My clients' sites are VERY clean -- I'm way on the 'white hat' side of SEO. I don't spam the search engines. I never did use link farms. And so on. But a few months ago on one client's site, I wrote on the HTML sitemap (who knows why!?), "This sitemap is intended for search engines only. Readers please use the navigation to the left."
Google's computers kindly told us the site was banned and that this phrase was the specific and only reason for banning. Fixed it. Submitted the XML sitemap. No go. A few cordial emails back and forth over the next two months, and the situation was eventually corrected. My client is back, with decent rank.
So - a very nasty surprise. Perhaps it's useful for folks to know that one phrase wrong can be all it takes.
Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy
Written by Kathryn Martyn January 17, 2006 Marsha, I spent countless hours trying to satisfy the Google Gods and finally gave up. Your site may be at the top on day and disappear the next and you have no control, so give up trying to figure out an unanswerable question.
I achieved top 100 in Google for the phrase "weight loss" shortly after I launched my weight loss business, One More Bite; not an easy feat considering there are 83,700,000 pages with that phrase. Then after bragging up a storm about how smart I was, it suddenly disappeared.
Instead of trying to figure out what happened, I just focused my attention elsewhere such as on writing articles about weight loss, posting in forums, donating my weight loss coaching program to community auctions, and the like. Today I'm listed 83 for "weight loss" so I'm back to bragging, but I also realized it's better to optimize for either less popular terms or more specific search phrases so I focused on "eft weight loss" and "nlp weight loss" where there's much less competiton.
I would suggest that you attempt to optimize for one or two main search terms on a page, and I wasn't able to determine which those were from your home page. I know the only term I'd think to search would be "virtual secretary." I didn't know there was such a thing as "virtual office management."
Maybe an article about that subject to help enlighten me and others like me? I know I could sure use an assistant, and hadn't thought of going the virtual route.
Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP
onemorebite-weightloss.com
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