What do you do when your Web site falls in Google’s page rankings for reasons due to a shift in their algorithm known as the “Google Shuffle”?
Surviving The “Google Shuffle”
Over at Search Engine Land, Eric Ward offered some sensible tips on how to handle such a scenario. He writes,” Two weeks ago, for the fourth time since last October, a site showed up in position one at Google for the search term ‘link building strategies.’
“Now, this is a keyword phrase that I have ranked first or second forever, and it annoys me if I don’t rank well for it. Given my history and focus, if I can’t rank high page one for that phrase, then send me and my Link Moses Linking Commandments packing.”
While annoyed by the drop in page ranking, Mr.Ward did not panic and did some research on the issue instead. “The site that was showing at position one above me was a link spamming service from another country that was so bad it was funny. I did a little research and found thousands of junk links. A week later, my site was back at position one, page one. The other site was gone.”
Mr. Ward advises that if this happens to your site not to worry. Google may give the site a high ranking for a few days but will eventually recognize it as not being credible. He adds that you should be more concerned if a site that is outranking you is a true competitor.
Jennifer Laycock, from Search Engine Guide weighed in on the issue with some solid points as well. “I’ve seen sites suffer temporary drops in rankings with no corresponding drop in sales. On the other hand, I’ve seen sites experience a drop in sales without any change to their search rankings. Why? Because the rankings and sales, while related, are not directly tied to each other”
She offers three tips concerning page ranking.
1.) Diversify your traffic sources
2.) Focus more on sales and conversions than rankings
3.) Don’t freak out (or celebrate) the moment that your rank changes
