One of the great fears in the search engine marketing world remains getting dropped by the big search engines. Many online businesses live and die by their Google page ranks as well as how they rate in organic searches. Sometimes Google drops the bomb and you’re done for, aren’t you? Your page rank drops, your page listings disappear and you sweat. Maybe you should try reinclusion.
Salubrious search engine swami and Google guru Matt Cutts offered an in depth discussion on how to file reinclusion requests. The first thing he addressed was for folks to figure out just what might have caused the problem. He recommended examining one’s site very closely. Depending on your marketing approach and certain other issues like a javascript, hidden text or some other problems, these all could’ve cause the problem.
Then he discussed what to do and how to send it. He said to be sure and type “Reinclusion Request” in the subject and some other details. Then he goes into what Google wants to hear in a request, which comes down to “that any spam on the site is gone or fixed” and “it’s not going to happen again.” He suggested including details on what happened and any other information deemed relevant and even a brief description of the SEO company you might have used and how to explain the possible infraction.
The one drawback is probably the time factor involved in getting the relisting done. In some cases, it could take 6-8 weeks or it could take as little 2-3 weeks depending on the type of error and its severity.
Dan Thies over at SitePoint mentions in his blog, “Unfortunately, he doesn’t address the collateral damage caused by some of their more aggressive filtering practices, or the possibility that following Google’s webmaster guidelines on redirects can do more harm than good.”
Thies did say his students were reporting better results for the reinclusion process as long as they followed Google’s rules. This should bode well for worried businesses. As long as they play by the rules, then they are ok.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
