Google is a tricky beast

wilhorse

New Member
Could I get your thoughts on how/why my page ranking slipped within a few days? As soon as my new wordpress site got indexed, it ranked very well in keyword searches. I have a highly rated SEO plugin installed that I tweaked until it got the green light. Within no time my site showed up very well.

Now, all the sudden, these same key word searches are bringing up a subdomain of a site that is under construction. It has no SEO plugins with the special SEO titles, descriptions, etc. All it has is good content and good header titles in the pages...same as original site. My blog is showing up more than anything.

Wondering if the SEO description (I forget what they call it, but it's about 170 characters, and shows up in search results) is hurting my results. Why do you think, would a sub-domain with the SAME EXACT contact show up before the main site?
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
5 different versions of the same page.
duplicate content
continual rebuilding
worrying about google AT THE WRONG TIME!

get the site complete. stop messing with it, then concentrate on optimising.

google doesn't like indecisiveness.

and SEO plugins dont do anything, focus on what matters! (ie site structure and architecture - NOT SEO)

you dont want pages to show? robots.txt

plus it takes weeks in some cases to update the cache. like I've said forget about google at the moment...
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
It has no SEO plugins with the special SEO titles, descriptions, etc.
this is "proof" that google doesnt care about SEO plugins and its all just a big scam.
All it has is good content and good header titles in the pages
this is what google likes. not plugins
My blog is showing up more than anything.
generally speaking wordpress = blogs so that is no surprise.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Stop checking "rankings" they don't exist any more as a useful "metric".

You only see what you see and others see what they see, and the chances of the two being the same are slim to none.
 

bermuda

New Member
Try maintaining a stable blog because too many changes in website structure can cause fluctuations and ups and downs in ranks and the number of indexed pages. I guess you are in a hurry because usually SEO can take weeks or months to generate solid stable results and so try to be patient and not to expect anything magical to happen in a few days. In addition to Google, there are many other free and paid ways to use for sending visitors to your site, PPC can be one of them.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
PPC can be one of them.
so can local marketing and promotion.
you know your product, not only that its a niche market, and those within the thoroughbred industry are well keen to look after their livestock.

target the target market (as simple as that sounds) via alternative means to searching online. such as local marketing and promotions. you will get a much better return on that than ppc. particularly for your niche.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Try maintaining a stable blog because too many changes in website structure can cause fluctuations and ups and downs in ranks and the number of indexed pages. I guess you are in a hurry because usually SEO can take weeks or months to generate solid stable results and so try to be patient and not to expect anything magical to happen in a few days.

More useless drivel!
Nobody NEEDS a "blog".


because too many changes in website structure
So you are saying that updating your site is not a good idea then, but updating your "blog" which is still a website is okay????


And of course you are making the mistake in thinking that Google ranks websites in the search results.
 

bermuda

New Member
So you are saying that updating your site is not a good idea then, but updating your "blog" which is still a website is okay????

No of course not! Updating websites with fresh, relevant and original content can be always a highly suggested move. What I really meant was to change the whole structure of websites from time to time. For example, assume all of your pages are in HTML and you have a good rank on Google already.

Then suddenly you decide to do a major shift to PHP and then edit all the content pages and re-upload them in PHP. There is a chance that such major shifts in websites structures will temporarily cause ranking drops.

This is something many people do and then they experience some ranking problems. For example, they may radically change title tags of hundreds of web pages of their sites.
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
But you are talking about something that is NOT relevant, checking ranking and expecting rankings is a pointless exercise. This is NOT 1995 where a few hundred maybe a thousand URLs were competing for visitors.

You are also talking about "sites", websites do not exist in search, individual URLs exist for search.


Updating websites with fresh, relevant and original content can be always a highly suggested move
Why?????
 

squadron

New Member
... I have a highly rated SEO plugin installed that I tweaked until it got the green light. Within no time my site showed up very well.

Is it the plugin called SEO Pressor? If so, I suggest you get rid of it. While you are there get rid of any SEO scorecard type plugins. Most of them leave footprints in the page code and/or on your directory structure.

Based on what I've seen, Google flags such sites as being over-optimised.
 
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