Question

Hi Sel, I have problems just recently with the traffic of my blog. Three months ago, my blog enjoyed a thousand of daily traffic. But just when the new year came, my blog’s traffic drops to a hundred only. What’s the problem with it? Is it because I am penalized by the search engine?

Answer

Every websites may experience a tremendous drop of traffic. But it doesn’t mean that a website that experiences it is already penalized by the search engine although there is a possibility that it is already penalized.

Anyway, you can examine your website whether it is penalized by search engine particularly by google or not by following the tips I mentioned on my last March 2009 post, how to know if my blog have been penalized.

But what are the other possible reasons why your blog’s traffic drops if just in case your blog is not penalized by the search engine?

1. Your blog is not anymore listed on the first page of the SERP. It might be that your blog three months ago was listed on the first page of the search engine result page on a particular and popular keyword. But on the new year, you lost that precious ranking so people could’t find your blog anymore.

If you want to get the top ranking on the SERP on that particular keywords again, then you need to SEO your blog more. Just do it in a natural way so that Google will not penalize your blog.

2. The keyword is not anymore popular. For the past three months, your blog might be enjoying the traffic brought by the search engines on particular keywords wherein your blog had been ranked high up on the SERP. However, that particular keywords on these days are not anymore popular and there are only few of the internet users who search that on the search engine.

3. Your blog has only few precious keywords. Your blog might be targeting only few keywords. So, while your blog is ranked top on the SERP, it enjoys the traffic from the search engines. But soon as the popularity of the keywords your blog is targeting drops, your blog’s traffic drops too. On the other hand, if your blog targets different and several but related popular keywords, you might lost the top ranking on the SERP in one or two keywords, your blog can still get lots of traffic from other keywords.

4. Search Engine changes its algorithm. Search Engine often times changes its algorithm. It might be true that your blog’s ranking on particular search has been affected by the change of the search engine’s algorithm. So, you need to adjust your SEO campaign. You might be using a blackhat SEO technique that search engine has detected already and found a remedy to make that certain technique useless.

You want to gain more visitors into your blog, right? And you already knew that the best source of continuous visitors are the search engines. That’s the reason why you SEO your blog because you want your blog be listed on the top spots of the search engine result pages.

There are many factors why a webpage is listed by Google on top of the SERP like On Site SEO, Backlinks, and a lot of others. But did you know that broken links from your blog itself might led Google to unlist your blog from the search engine result pages?

In the Google Webmasters Guidelines, it is said that you must check your site for broken links. If Google wants us to check broken links as part of the quality guidelines in maintaining a website, then there’s a possibility that Google might consider our blog or website underconstruction if   Google finds a lot of broken links from it. Those under-construction websites identified by Google have no place on Google’s search engine result pages.

So, how would you check broken links from your blog?

1. WordPress Blog. If your blog is using the WordPress blogging platform, just install and activate the Broken Link Checker plugin.

2. Blogger and Other Platform. If you’re blog is hosted by blogger.com or other free blogging services, just check your posts one by one.

Broken Link Checker WordPress Plugin

The plugin scans your blog for broken links. It checks the links from posts, pages, blogroll and comments of your blog. You can see its report at the homepage of its settings page that looks like this:

You have the control over those broken links found at the Dashboard >> Tools >> Broken Links.

There, you have the option to EDIT the URL or to UNLINK or to check it as NOT BROKEN. Just look at the status. If the status says, Server Not Found or 404 Not Found, then just choose to UNLINK those URL or just EDIT the URL if you knew the correct and working URL.

On the early days of this month, I shouted on my Facebook account telling everyone that I was kicked out of the DreamHost. DreamHost management told me that I violated the TOS particularly regarding Black Hat SEO which resulted to the disabling my hosting account. I immediately transferred all my sites which were hosted by DreamHost to a new dedicated server in other better webhosting company just to make all those affected sites live again.

After the successful transfer, I then started to reflect on the reason why I was kicked from DreamHost. I checked my sites especially this blog for possible violation to their TOS.

Black Hat SEO?

You’re already familiar with the term “Keyword Hijacking” and its meaning, right? If not, then I think you need to read my old post about it. Just check my post, How To Make Money by Keyword Hijacking.

To let you, Keyword Hijacking really helped my blog in gaining not just hundreds of visitors but tens of thousands of visitors, especially from the keywords Pinay Scandal and other keywords and keyphrases related to it. And I was happy about it even if I was not really earning money from these keywords but at least people discovered my blog and learned something from my posts. Another thing is that, I was glad that I successfully snatched huge part of the traffic that should be going to the real p*rn sites and directed them into this blog that doesn’t contain any scandalous and ad*lts materials. In other words, my goal on competing those questionable websites was hit.

However, there was a downside of it. The negative effects is not really obvious but I feel it. And one of these effects is the recent kicking out of me by DreamHost from their good and affordable hosting. And yes, Keyword Hijacking can be considered a Black Hat SEO, in the sense that I am targeting keywords which are not related to the topic of this blog, Make Money Online.

I think, it would be fine if only the traffic coming from the hijacked keywords was balanced with the traffic from the keywords related to Make Money Online. But what happened was that almost 70 to 80 percent of the traffic coming into this blog were users searching for scandalous and ad*lt materials. The traffic to the hijacked keywords simply was too huge compared to the traffic on the Make Money Online and related keywords that this blog received.

The Blog’s Reputation

That’s where I felt regret. The reputation of this blog was ruined.

I tried to post articles related to Technology and Making Money Online but then I failed to gain the good reputation of a blog that teaches those people who wants to learn how to make money online. They might learn good things from the articles posted on this blog, but the only problem is that,  ad*lt related keywords had been associated already into this blog.

You see, search engines ranked this blog high up on the SERP when searching for ad*lt materials using different keywords. It only means that search engines consider this blog an authority in those searched keywords or maybe search engines were blinded and mistakenly consider this blog an authority. In other words, search engines considered this blog an ad*lt website, which I actually didn’t want to happen.

It’s true that this blog competed with the ad*lt websites on ad*lt related searches. But I don’t want the internet users to consider this blog as an ad*lt website. What I want is that people will recognize my blog as a tool or guide on how they can make money online.

And that’s where I failed.

There’s still a chance to correct the wrongs

I felt sad and down. But I know, I still have the chance.

As long as I am still alive and I still have the resources to support my blogging activities, I can still check the mistakes and correct the wrongs.

The kicking of me out of the DreamHost has made me realize that I need to do something for the good of my blog. I am thankful for it. And with God’s help, I know I will succeed.

The Lesson

There’s just one thing that I should not forget, I need to realign my blog. I can still use the SEO technique called Keyword Hijacking but this time I need to be careful in choosing what keywords should I target to make sure that my blog will not just gain thousands more traffic but will also gain positive reputation that I can be proud of.

Author: Fred Gonzales

You already know how important is the search engine optimization for your website. Search Engine Optimization is the process you can use to enhance the visibility of your website and its webpages in the result pages of the search engines when users use it. If you want to get more traffic for your websites then your website should be listed on the first page of the search engine result not just in one kind of searches but in many searches.

But the real problem is, what could you do so that your website will be listed on the first page of the search result pages?

I will give some idea on how you could do it. But the process is not that easy and fast. It takes time. You couldn’t expect an immediate result on this. What you need to do is to put it in your mind so that everytime you log in to your website, you know already what to do.

1. Keywords. You need to use the targeted keywords in your content. You can mention the targeted keywords repeatedly but not in an annoying way. Just do it in a natural way and that will be fine. Just make sure that the targeted keywords are found not just in the content but also in the title and the meta-description.

2. Internal Linking. Internal linking is important. If possible every pages of your website is properly linked internally. And make sure that the proper keywords are used to address every webpage of your website.

3. External Links. External links are often times called backlinks. Actually, Google wants a natural backlinks. Google hates paid links or harvested links. However, getting backlinks naturally is not that easy and because of that, we are forced to create personally backlinks from our other websites. However, for us not to be penalized by search engines, we need to make it natural.

Actually, these three ways or techniques are enough. If you did them properly, your website will be listed easily on the first page of the search engine result pages.

Question

What is Splash Page.

Answer

The Spash Page is sometimes called an introductory page that links to the actual websites. Other webmasters called this as homepage but it doesn’t contain any useful content at all except the links to the important webpages, or websites.

Splash page is widely used by advertisers. It is the where the users who click the ads from an advertisement will land. They call this page as the landing page.  It is usually designed to capture the users attention so that the users will be enticed to buy the advertised products. Some of this page automatically redirect the users the the real webpage of the advertised products. However, there are many landing pages that contains only a flash movie, or an interesting images with a click here button.

However, you should take note that even if the splash page is considered a landing page but not all landing pages are splash page.

In SEO (Search Engine Optimization), webmasters and bloggers are advised not to use splash page as the homepage for their websites or blogs because splash page will just ruin the website or blog’s ranking at the the search engine result page.

I just want to share you the video of Matt Cutts, the Google Guy, taken during his presentation at the SMX West Search Conference.

From this video, you’ll find out whether Google SEO’ed its own webpages for them to top its own SERPs. If Google SEO’ed its own webpages, how does Google does do SEO for google.com?

As the Google Guy discussed how Google SEO’ed its own webpages, you also need to take note some points on how to optimize your sites or blogs.

]]> http://www.selaplana.com/2010/04/29/is-google-seoing-its-own-webpages/feed/ 0 http://www.selaplana.com/2009/12/13/can-spam-comments-harm-my-blog/ http://www.selaplana.com/2009/12/13/can-spam-comments-harm-my-blog/#comments Sun, 13 Dec 2009 13:31:34 +0000 Sustines Laplana http://www.selaplana.com/?p=7426

Question:

I read from the “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog” regarding spam comments which goes:

Comments can be a really good source of information and an efficient way of engaging a site’s users in discussions. This valuable content should not be replaced by gibberish nonsense keywords and links. For this reason there are many ways of securing your application and disincentivizing spammers.

* Disallow anonymous posting.
* Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
* Turn on comment moderation.
* Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field.
* Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
* Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.

Does it mean that spam comments posted by spammers into our blog bring h harm to our blog?

Answer:

Google simply wants to warn us that spam comments posted by spammers into our blog, especially those containing irrelevant lists of keywords can really harm our blog in the ranking at the search engine result pages or SERP.

That’s the reason why Google taught us how to secure our blog from these spammers.

At the same time, Google wants to tell us that spamming blogs just to earn link juices from other blogs will only bring no good to your blog. Here’s part of the post of the mentioned blog:

If you used this approach in the past and you want to solve this issue, you should have a look at your incoming links in Webmaster Tools. To do so, go to the Your site on the web section and click on Links to your site. If you see suspicious links coming from blogs or other platforms allowing comments, you should check these URLs. If you see a spammy link you created, try to delete it, else contact the webmaster to ask to remove the link. Once you’ve cleared the spammy inbound links you made, you can file a reconsideration request.

By the way, you can ask us any questions and we will try to answer them all. Send us your questions. Use this form.

Followers and fans of Brother Macuha who is considered by Filipino bloggers as an expert on SEO got mad after learning that another Filipino blogger who introduced himself as newbie blogger attacked the advice of the expert, particularly in localized SEO.

Rian, the blogger behind “RianTalk” accused Marghil of “Macuha – Make Money Online Philippines” of fooling new bloggers. He wrote this:

If you will simply target localized keywords based on his suggestions, then he has the freedom to choose other international target keywords because statistically, he will have lesser competition thanks to your foolishness.

For him, Brother Macuha is just fooling new bloggers by teaching them SEO technique that will only give advantage to his own blog not to blogs of those who followed his advices.

He also wrote this:

I know hidden and deep inside these bloggers’ hearts, competition is the number one thing. And that reason is enough for you not to listen to expert bloggers, at least to some of them.

It seems that he’s telling his readers that Brother Macuha is just guiding new bloggers to a different route so that Brother Macuha can simply avoid such competitions on particular keywords.

My Thought

I agree that lots of experts are trying to make money online from the new bloggers who want to learn the techniques in getting huge traffic from different sources especially search engines, and on making money online from the traffic their blogs have. Some of these experts offer modules but only those who paid them are the ones who can access the materials. Other bloggers wrote ebook, printed books, and released presentations and sold these materials to those who are interested to learn.

However, I disagree on the thoughts written by Rian on his blog that Brother Macuha was just trying to fool his readers for him to avoid the competition on the international traffic from the SERP on particular searches. In fact, I am one of the bloggers who enjoyed the benefits in applying his tips into this blog.

Of course, I do have my own self-learned techniques in optimizing my blogs for particular keywords, but I did not hesitate to use the technique he shared through his blog.

For example… I was already targeting keywords like “sex scandal“, “sex video“, and other popular and related keywords before Brother Macuha suggested the “pinay scandal” keyword. Since he was calling for Pinoy Bloggers to participate his “pinay scandal” SEO experiment, I immediately participated and successfully gained traffic from it.

If not because of his tips and suggestions, I don’t think I could drive huge traffic into this blog from “pinay scandal” searches.

Link Baiting

However, if you’ll investigate a little about the accusation, it was simply made to get backlink from Brother Macuha’s blog. SEO experts called this technique “Link Baiting” and it’s also one of the techniques in getting natural links from other blogs.

However, Mr. Rian is not that good link-fisher by using his blogpost as bait because when he learned that lots of Pinoy Bloggers reacted against his post and defending Brother Macuha’s side, he immediately admitted that he was just link-fishing.

He already got the backlinks from Brother Macuha’s blog. If he tried to stand and defend his accusation against Brother Macuha, then I think, he will still be getting more backlinks from other bloggers, just like what I did on this post.

But psychologically, he’s not yet ready on this. The heat on the discussion melted his ego, and immediately surrendered by admitting that he’s just link-fishing.

Well, I admired him for what he did. He really knew how to apply the advices of other SEO experts on how to get backlinks by link-fishing or link-baiting.

Readers Question

Hello Sel,

I am confused if PageRank is really important. In your previous post, you said that Page Rank is not that really important because there are pages with low Page Rank yet ranked at the top of the SERP of Google and then there are pages with high Page Rank yet ranked lower at the SERP of Google.

However, I sense in your recent post that you’re quite happy to learn that your blog got the PR2 again.

Can you please explain why is it that you found it important to have higher Page Rank?

Newbie Blogger

Selboy’s Answer

In my article, “Why Does My Blog’s Page Rank Drop to Zero?” I did mention that the owner of the blog that has been slapped by Google with the PR of zero should not be worried. It’s because there are blogs with low page rank that are ranked high at the SERP of Google, and then there are also blogs with high page rank that are ranked low at the SERP of Google.

However, I couldn’t deny the fact that the Page Rank value showed by the Google toolbar is actually based on the actual Page Rank points of every webpage as calculated by Google.

That’s why I wrote this:

A Page Rank of zero (0) may mean that your link-building campaign is a failure, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll lose all the higher positions at SERP in a specific search.

So, if your blog got the PR of zero, then it is true that your link building campaign is a failure.

Please review my article, “Why does my blog’s page rank drop to zero?“. I mentioned few reasons why it happens.

High Page Rank, Ranked High at Google SERP

Now, since the Page Rank value showed by the Google toolbar is based on the actual Page Rank points of every webpage as calculated by Google, then it is also true that webpages with higher Page Rank are most likely be ranked high at the Google SERP, just like what the Google support posted:

Webpages with a higher PageRank are more likely to appear at the top of Google search results. (source)

What has been mentioned is that “higher pagerank are more likely to blah blah blah…” Which means, the webpage with high page rank has the possibility to be ranked high up at the Google SERP than those webpages with low page rank. But not at all the times those webpages with high page rank are actually ranked high up the Google SERP.

To understand what I am trying to tell you, please consider the example below:

Webpage A

• PageRank: 0
• Optimized with keywords: NDS Games, NDS Emulator, NDS Emulator Download

Webpage B

• PageRank: 5
• Optimized with keywords: Make Money Online, Make Money at Home

Webpage C

• PageRank: 2
• Optimized with keyword: Home Based Job, Make Money at Home

Question #1: From that given example, which of the webpages will be ranked at the top of the Google SERP when searching for “Make Money Online”?

My Answer #1: “Webpage B” got the Page Rank of 5. So with this fact, we can say that there is a big possibility that it will be ranked high up the Google SERP compared to the “Webpage A” and “Webpage C”. “Webpage B” and “Webpage C” are related to each other but “Webpage B” is optimized for the keyword “Make Money Online” compared to the “Webpage C”. Now since we are searching Google with the keywords “Make Money Online”, then Website B will be listed at the top of the SERP, next is the “Webpage C” and the last is “Webpage A”.

Question #2: What about if we will google “NDS Games”, how the webpages are being ranked?

My Answer #2: “Webpage B” and “Webpage C” have higher page rank than the “Webpage A“. However, only the “Webpage A” is optimized with the keyword “NDS Games“. Therefore, Webpage A is most likely at the top of the SERP.

Question #3: Which of the 3 webpages is most likely ranked number 1 if we will google “Make Money at Home”?

My Answer #3: “Webpage B” and “Webpage C” are both optimized with the keywords “Make Money at Home”. However, Webpage B has the PR of 5 compared to “Webpage C” which is only PR2. Thus, “Webpage B” is most likely ranked number 1 at the Google SERP.

Conclussion

To make this post short…

1. A webpage with higher Page Rank has the advantage over a webpage with low Page Rank especially when in a competition over a particular keywords or when they are both optimized on the same keywords.
2. Your blog’s ranking at the Google SERP is affected by the Page Rank and how your blog is being optimized.

The Need to Market Your Blog

When the new bloggers heard me saying during my lecture to them that they really need to learn how to market their blog, they immediately asked, “Is marketing part of blogging?” They thought that soon as their blog is already live, the only job they need to do is write articles and publish them into the blog and nothing else… and then they will just wait for the money to be sent to them by Google through the Google Adsense program.

Well, I couldn’t blame them for having that thought because there are other bloggers who said that blogging is the easiest way of making money online, without making it clear that only those bloggers who have blogs that are successfully marketed, are the ones who feel the ease in making money online by blogging.

If you just started blogging then you should strive hard first in optimizing your blogs, creating content, and then marketing them. Once you successfully done these things, then money will just flow in to your pocket.

In other words, your blogging job doesn’t end up in writing and publishing quality content into your blog. Remember what I already told you before, that a blog even if it contains the best articles in the internet if no one is reading your blog, it is considered dead. (You can read my old post, “5 reasons why traffic is money“)

Thus, you really need to market your blog to gain traffic for it.

Make Your Blog High Quality

Marketing can be defined as “the process of promoting, selling and distributing products. (source: princeton.edu)”

So, if we say “Marketing Your Blog“, it also means “promoting your blog and its content to the internet users.”

But your effort in promoting your blog will just be wasted if you failed to make those who are convinced to visit your blog to stay longer and make them revisit your blog again.

In other words, before you market your blog, you need to enhance your blog first and make it better. But how?

Here’s how:

Write Quality Content.

Everything starts in good and with high quality content. If you failed to write quality content then don’t expect that your marketing effort will be successful.

This is just similar when marketing a cola drink with a bad taste. Let’s say your marketing is good and you successfully made your target customers to buy your bad cola drink. But after they tasted it, did they buy again?

Now, imagine if your blog contains useless content. You might be successful in getting traffic for your blog, but for sure, those visitors would not visit your blog again.

That’s why you need to publish high quality content.

Make Your Blog’s Design Conducive for Learning.

It’s like you’re in a classroom. If the classroom is arranged disorderly pupils would feel sleepy during classes instead of learning the things that the teachers had imparted.

The same it true to a blog with a clutter design. Visitors would feel disinterested and would just exit from your blog without checking your content.

Make your Blog a Search Engines Friendly.

It might be true that your target visitors are human. But it is also true that your visitors are not just human. Search Engine’s spiders visit your blog too.

So, while you’re making your blog attractive and useful to your human visitors, don’t forget to consider your bots visitors.

What I mean is, make your blog a search engine friendly so that search engine’s spiders will visit your blog often, stay longer and in return, search engines will rank your blog at the top position in the SERP.

And you already know what happens next if your blog’s articles are always in the top position of the SERP at any particular but targeted searches.

Ways of Marketing a Blog

I already talked about the ways on how to promote your blog on my previous (old) posts like:

1. How to immediately get traffic for a fresh blog?
2. How to increase visitors of your blog?
3. How to decrease your blog’s bounce rate?
4. Write great content and gain more visitors, earn more money?
5. Drive Traffic to your Blog through Networking Websites?

And all the ways mentioned on those articles are the ones that I want to talk about here.

Now, just in case you feel lazy reading those old articles, here’s the means you need to try in marketing your blog.

1. Adword and other PPC advertising. Advertise your blog through any PPC advertising. You can use the Google Adwords, Adbrite, Kontera, Infolinks, etc..
2. Marketing at Social Networking websites. Make use of the social networking websites like Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook.
3. Bookmark your blog at Bookmarking Websites. I listed many bookmarking websites at my article, “Make Google Visit your Blog Often.” Make use of them.
4. Join and be Active on Forums. Share your knowledge by answering questions in forums or by joining the discussions in forums. With that, members of those forums will recognize you. And with the help of your “Profile” page and links in your signatures, other members of those forums can visit your blog.
5. Search Engine Optimization or SEO. This is the only technique that can bring thousands daily traffic into your blog. Read my articles about it:
   • What is SEO?
   • Off-site Search Engine Optimization
   • On-Site Search Engine Optimization
6. Commenting to other Blogs. Post useful and relevant comment at other blogs. It is like telling the owner of the blog and its visitors that you are blogger and you have blogs too.

And one more thing: You can post an announcement about the new posts you had in your blog at our Pinoy Blogger Update blog and add your blog at our Pinoy Bloggers Directory.

Conclusion

Once you learn how to market your blog that contains quality content, you’ll realize that “Marketing is the Queen” and “Content is the King“.