When Google Decides to Kill

[phuckbunny]

Not to start another "google hates me" thread but anyone else seeing wild traffic fluctuatons. I have a blog that was holding steady with around 1200-1500 uniques per day. In the past two days that number dropped to 40!!!

What concerns me most is if this is indeed temporary or if when this happens, you're down for the count for good. (The latter happened to me before and I've seen some sites never truly recover).

[sunfunbill]

If you have any site that gets 1200-1500 uniques per day, about 800 to 1,000 of those should be coming from links. You mean to say you get less than 40 hits a day from links on your sites?

MOST of your traffic, IMO, should come from hardlinks. In the past few days I have finally reached over 1,000 uniques a day on my playground site. That does not sound like much, but for a very narrow niche it's good.

About 800 of those come from links. So if my google traffic stops, I don't care. You have to link more, that's all there is to it.

[sunfunbill]

In fact, now that I think about it, I think that's it right there. This is why you get blogs that go up high in google hits, but then after a time they crash.

Google is not going to keep any site up high in SE with no linking to you. So at first google is kind to you. But as time goes on and you have no links, google sees you as less and less important for those key words.

So then finally one day Google just drops you. If you keep making post AND add links, over time you will go back up. I did the same with some that I had no time to post or link.

I really think that's it, you need to link more or after a while Google will drop you. So it helps you out both ways. You get more traffic and helps your google hits.

[phuckbunny]

You're right but there is an uncertainty factor, IMO. I have blogs getting most of their hits from google - for a 1200-1500 uniques blog, I'd say 80% would come from goog.

On the other hand a blog that was getting 5-7K a day - most of it from SEs - dropped to 300 a day max earlier in the year, and this is with an arsefull of inbound links, so I have no bloody idea.

[balls_deep]

What the phuck? You should know by now that you cant build a site on SE traffic alone, or you're just randomly splogging.

[Boonestoons]

Originally posted by phuckbunny
Not to start another "google hates me" thread but anyone else seeing wild traffic fluctuatons. I have a blog that was holding steady with around 1200-1500 uniques per day. In the past two days that number dropped to 40!!!

What concerns me most is if this is indeed temporary or if when this happens, you're down for the count for good. (The latter happened to me before and I've seen some sites never truly recover).

Right on Bill!

Never, have the majority of your traffic SE dependent. It's like putting all your eggs into one basket. Google gets funny sometimes. They'll penalize you for stuff they let other sites rn rampant with.

Get those inbound links. One of my blogs would get 5k a day. Google dropped the PR like a rock and sales went up. Traffic stabilized at 1.5k a day and things are going up and running more smoothly. I'm starting to think Google traffic is suddenly not what it's so cracked up to be and Bill's advice is very, very, spot on.

Get your traffic from people that want what you have.

[crockett]

As others have said, never depend on just SE traffic.. Build your own traffic and consider the SE as icing on the cake. Google loves to toss sites in and out of ther listings especially blogs.

[phuckbunny]

Hmm..... I think I really have to rethink my strategies regarding traffic in their entirety. I'm not sure where to begin in response. I thought the whole major benefit of blogging is the SE traffic?

Similarly, inbound links, how much traffic can you really get and more importantly how do you get them? I understand with mainstream it would be easier. Your get written up, story gets syndicated, etc. Even in porn, I had a plug on fleshbot again sometime recently and got 11K uniques a day, that will trickle down greatly and essentially disappear in a week or so. But we also like to talk about how it's precisely those inbound links that improve your PR and consequently improve your SE traffic. The traditional "link exchange" will probably do nothing for you and in fact google could shaft you over the other guy on a whim for having too many outbound links. So what are some other options?

[sunfunbill]

So what are some other options?

Well, people always need good babysitters!

Sorry, but your asking for it sweetie. You know what we all have said and yet your like "well, I don't know because,,,,"

Stop over thinking everything. How come everyone else seems to be fine but you? Yes, sometimes things don't go like they should. If you keep having the same problem, do what others have suggested. If you still keep having them, maybe blogging is not for you.

Blogging is a long term thing, but you always keep changing things too fast. What happened to your forum, that was great. But you gave up on it because it did not get traffic fast enough. Just do the basics and give it time.

[Boonestoons]

Originally posted by phuckbunny
Hmm..... I think I really have to rethink my strategies regarding traffic in their entirety. I'm not sure where to begin in response. I thought the whole major benefit of blogging is the SE traffic?

Similarly, inbound links, how much traffic can you really get and more importantly how do you get them? I understand with mainstream it would be easier. Your get written up, story gets syndicated, etc. Even in porn, I had a plug on fleshbot again sometime recently and got 11K uniques a day, that will trickle down greatly and essentially disappear in a week or so. But we also like to talk about how it's precisely those inbound links that improve your PR and consequently improve your SE traffic. The traditional "link exchange" will probably do nothing for you and in fact google could shaft you over the other guy on a whim for having too many outbound links. So what are some other options?

Oh inbound links on a blog are easy to get. Here's the ultimate secret I'll only reveal on Cozy Campus:

Write well.

If you write well people will gravitate to your blog and subscribe/feeds and link back.

I found that out by just writing well.

You can ask for link exchanges but your blog posts should have the keywords in them that you would want to have to have a link in to your site.

Found all that out by accident.

Oh, I'm a professional writer too so it helps. If you're not a professional writer then hire one.

The demand for blog post writers is high as well as article writers. With the collapse of literacy in the U.S. we well heeled in the linguistic arts are in demand.

[Cozy Monica]

One way that I find link trades is to go to Google and use the search term I want to score most for. Say I want my blog to come up when people search for "monica blog". I type that into google, and then I have a look at the other websites that come up on the first page.

I visit those pages, and if they look like decent sites that have traffic, I write to them, tell them about my site, and ask if they are willing to link to me in exhange for a link back on my site.

Then I find other sites that are about the same kind of topic as my site, then I hit up all the webmasters I know and ask if they have somewhere they could link from, and so on.

Then there are link directories and link lists, those are links back.

There are so many ways to get links back, and that's just one way of finding traffic.

Search engine traffic is always desireable because the surfers are typically looking for your content and therefore more likely to becoming money spenders. It's better than traffic from places like TGP because those surfers are just looking for free porn. Make sense?

However, as you've seen, search engines are fickle, and the traffic is really come and go. You have to do a LOT of footwork to ensure that you are fine without their traffic too.

[raymor]

Have you been doing anything to try to
increase your search engine (Google) traffic?
Most things that people do to help end up
hurting. So if you're been doing some SEO,
stop it. Put the pages back the way they were
when Goog liked them, remembering that
Goog may not have indexed recently, so it
may have liked the way your pages were several
months ago. Just keep posting good solid text
and Goog will probably pick up on it.

[Boonestoons]

This may sound weird but whenever my traffic is low, sales increase. I can't find out why. It's been this way for over 10 years. Only this year with some Hun links has big traffic converted.

[Josea]

Google (and most other SEs) is just a mindless robot. It can be fooled into sending traffic to where there is no real content. That is why they change the algorithm every now and then.

Instead of using the most cutting edge SEO techniques you have to provide real content. For a blog that means an article that surfers are actually looking for instead of a sales pitch disguised as an article. If you are good at gaming google then a sales pitch disguised as an article is the way to go. But for long term traffic and ranking you need real content. I know, that is easier said than done. Sorry about that.

[Boonestoons]

Originally posted by Josea
Google (and most other SEs) is just a mindless robot. It can be fooled into sending traffic to where there is no real content. That is why they change the algorithm every now and then.

Instead of using the most cutting edge SEO techniques you have to provide real content. For a blog that means an article that surfers are actually looking for instead of a sales pitch disguised as an article. If you are good at gaming google then a sales pitch disguised as an article is the way to go. But for long term traffic and ranking you need real content. I know, that is easier said than done. Sorry about that.

You're right.

One of my blogs blew up in traffic recently. Thousands of hits showed up and I did some backtracking and found out it was due to an article I had written on my blog that a huge blog/news service. I contacted the company and now they let me publish articles and I get links in with my chosen keywords. Easy as shit. Just one post a week is more traffic than I got all year. Extra cool is that the site I post to is so huge umpteen numbers of other blogs/news services link to so I get default runoff traffic. It was like finding an oasis in the desert. All mainstream but, I did find a loophole for adult. Good thing I'm a cartoonist or it wouldn't work.

So in this case it was a situation where I wrote a good article, someone felt it worthy of linking to and I was able to negotiate a better deal. All targeted niche traffic. Google couldn't do better.

It may be the end the way SE's do business. The public's interlinking might provide a better more efficient database than the SE's can muster because the public screens the links first.

[porn punk]

you might want to also take into consideration how people are searching the internet lately. instead of typing in one or two key phrases, they're typing in much longer ones.

You might want to install "ShortStat" if you haven't and it might give you some idea so you can adjust your posts regularly. Though I use more than just this one thing to check my stats I find it helpful as an additional guide.

One problem I have personally with link requests is, lets face it, most of us no matter how we're trying to dress it up are doing splogs. With all due respect we are trying to sell first and inform second and you're not going to fool anyone (expect maybe google with a couple techniques).

You might be better off trading with your own blogs and creating your own networks

If you were to create an important article with extremely informative information, people in your area would be linking to your article just for reference without even requiring or expecting a link back. That would give your post some serious clout.

On the other hand, I'm not certain how much this applies to affiliate marketing. Maybe if you had your own program

[Boonestoons]

Oh I hit the jackpot on affiliate marketing. I've got the same mainstream affiliate marketing company I've had for the past 10 years. Sometimes I'd use them and sometimes not. I had to send lots of traffic to them in order to make a sale but they pay a healthy check per sale.

Now that I've got more mainstream traffic and their programs have expanded I add their link in every mainstream post article I know that will get linked to by a major traffic source.

Add to that Adsense and that's a double whammy.

[phuckbunny]

Hey guys, thanks for all the responses; this is an important thread that I'm going to revisit when I get back into town (out of state visiting friends now).

[anotherF]

Has the traffic returned? Do you know what keywords you have stopped ranking for?

[Josea]

Originally posted by Boonestoons
This may sound weird but whenever my traffic is low, sales increase. I can't find out why. It's been this way for over 10 years. Only this year with some Hun links has big traffic converted.

Perhaps is because most traffic is up to the whims of search engines and the kind of surfer who find you through links trades and only some of the traffic is surfers who are actively looking for something. When traffic is low, those are probably the surfers who are actively looking for what you have to offer.