Every blogger wants their stuff to be read and that means maximising visits to the site.
My blog has more than 200 articles posted on it and you folks out there do seem to enjoy it. But suddenly the river of hits referred by Google searches has dropped to a gurgle. Why could this be?
I used to get lots of hits from Yahoo too but these suddenly fell away to a trickle and then last week my Google hits as good as stopped. Previously I was getting a total of 200 hits a day but that has now halved.
Previously if I did an appropriate Google search, my Blogspot would appear very high up but now it only does if the search is vey specific.
Can anyone tell my why this might be and if there's anything I can do about it?
Other bloggers have lots of little icons all over their blogs, I guess to maximise traffic but I have no idea what I should do to this end. Again I need help!
I track the referrals on my magic 'sitemeter' and it could be that it is simply failing to record referrals that are actually being received... though I think that's unlikely.
To me it's a mysterious world so can anyone enlighten me, please?
Thanks,
Andrew.
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11 comments:
Andrew I just ran SEO Quake on your blog.(its a plug in for Firefox).
You have pages indexed on both Google and Yahoo.
Chances are people are not searching your keywords. Or if they are they are showing up a long way down the pages.
For example I just searched Thai Girl but your blog doesn't show on the first three pages.
Can I suggest you sign up for three utilities that are free if you do not have them already.
1. Statcounter. Great tool for analysing hits to your site.
2. Google analytics it provides masses of info about visitors.
3. Google webmaster tools- great for analysis and reporting.
Also use Google adword tool to suggest effective keywords for posts.
Good luck with the hits. According to Alexa you are ranked 1,509,404 with PR3 on Google.
Thanks so much for this.
The peculiarity is that overnight it went from perhaps eighty visits a day referred from Google searches to this site to virtually none now. The change was not gradual but occurred instantaneously.
I too searched 'Thai girl' on Google and this blog, which previously would have been on the first or second page, was not on the first ten.
What are my keywords? The words I use in my text?
In this respect nothing much has changed. It's still the usual disreputable diet.
Andrew
Hi Andrew, keywords are the words folk use to search so besides your blog title each article should contain words that you think folk will search. The better your keywords the higher the page (once its indexed) ranks on that particular search term.
I can't explain the sudden overnight change unless there is something wrong with the stats utility you are using as I say Statcounter is tops and free.
With Statcounter it also has a tab to show what search terms (keywords) were used.
Good Luck
Mike
Hi Andrew,
I will give you more info later, on my thoughts, but a sudden drop like that could be Google Dance.
If you have never heard about the Google Dance, and you are an online publisher, you should stop and learn a bit more about this key periodical event that may affect your web site as well.
Basically, the Google Dance is a process lasting several days and taking place on Google multiple distributed data-centers around the world. During this process the Google indexes containing all of the world web sites, their links and contents are updated and refreshed in a complete way. If your web site happens to be part of the re-shuffling of ranking that takes place during this "dance", your site may lose temporarily its PageRank only to regain it a few days later. Losing PageRank may mean falling from page one of the Google search results page to page ten or more. The Google Dance happens typically every three months but there is no official news from Google announcing when this actually takes place.
The thing is, you really have no easy way to tell whether you are victim of the Google Dance, outside of following some not too scientific advice available online and which advises you to go and check periodically several Google data-centers to verify whether their indexing records for your site vary from server to server, possibly indicating, in that case, that your site is participating in the Google Dance.
Outside of that, it would appear as all you can do is to sit down and wait for the typical duration of a Google Dance (supposedly three to five days) and to cross fingers that things go back like they were traffic disaster striked.
Andrew,
Just had two and half days during which I had no access to any blogger or blogspot sites, not my own nor anybody else using these URL's.
Mike give some good avice and also this google dance could be a reason.
Good luck with it. How's the jaw?
I am having slightly different problems at the moment. My site is receiving more hits with an increasing amount of those from Google searches. However my Alexa ranking is falling at an alarming rate, confusing to say the least.
The search engines had changed.. it became localised ip content..if you had not heard about it.. Google had changed to localised searches come first..
Andrew,
Google tweaks its algorithm all the time and I've seen countless complaints in the Google forums that are exactly the same as yours.
I have 3 sites and my oldest just took a hit in traffic, down by about 40%. Also, some countries which used to give me daily traffic have disappeared from my traffic sources.
Best advice I have ever seen was "Look at your stats daily, but do not pay too much attention to fluctuations. If monthly and quarterly trends are upward, you are on the right track."
If things do not pick up, then look at sites that are higher up in the Search Results Pages than yours (for whatever term you search and see your site appearing)- either their content is more relevant to the search term, or they have a higher Page Rank with content of equal relevance.
Thanks for all this info which does not explain why on 7/8 April my incoming Google searches suddenly stopped. More complex than the mystery of life itself.
Yes, I've looked at some of those key word sites so I'll continue with as much innuendo and as many innocent mentions of Thai school girls as possible.
Except that it doesn't work any more!
Andrew
Dear Andrew,
Do the following :- ( 30 Minutes Job)
- Add Google Analytics
- Assign ( Permalink Structure ) Structure.
- Get your weblog listed into various authoritative Blog
- Get listed to DMOZ
As you are blogging for a good cause. i can help you for free.
Many Blessings
Great read! I want to see a follow up to this topic?!
Scot
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