Back in February, search-engine giant Google made a change in its algorithms aimed at cutting the number of junk-content sites -- sometimes known as "content mills" that appear at the top of search results. The idea was to assign lower ranking to sites that use a lot of recycled or duplicate content, or that had many stories overstuffed with repetitive key words in an obvious attempt to rank higher.
It's been a few months now, and businesses have had a chance to see the impact of this change. While some businesses may be benefiting from fewer junk links at the top, other legitimate ecommerce businesses have seen their traffic cut right along with such sites such as eHow, The Wall Street Journal recently reported.
How can businesses regain the traffic they lost to the Google change? Here are six ideas:
1. Create unique content. Merchants who have been taking manufacturer packaging language and slapping it on their websites can write unique product information instead. That should help you avoid the black mark from Google for duplicate content that sends your site's ratings down.
2. Do more email marketing. Many ecommerce companies have relied solely on search terms and Google to bring them traffic. It may now be time to diversify -- sending out more email and other direct marketing to prospects to bring them to your site.
3. Pick up the phone. One company the Journal profiled has decided to make 75 calls weekly to previous customers with offers to lure them back to the site. No algorithm can interfere with a direct marketing campaign.
4. Start a business blog. Your company can create unique content while reaching out to customers and building relationships. Talk about current projects, upcoming products, events you're attending or new clients you've signed. Posts don't have to be long, and even one a week would help your site seem busier to search engines. Each blog post also gives you something to share in social media.
5. Change one thing on your site weekly. If no one at the company has the time or skill for blogging, take another approach. Just try to find one thing to update on your site each week. Add a press release, a sale notice, a team bio or a new product notice. Constantly changing sites get better rankings.
6. Build your links. Consider guest posting or just leaving interesting comments on the blogs of prominent sites in your industry. You should be able to link back to your site. These “inbound” links should help improve your rankings.
Has your business been affected by Google's algorithm change? Leave a comment and tell us if it's helped or hurt your business.
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Comments:
My site is just under 6 months old and has been sandboxed twice already...I write my own content, backlink slowly and do keyword research. I guess I'll never understand Google!
No I didn't think so. Google still best source where most of my visitors came. Anyway After reading your article and the ideas presented this piqued my interest. I have never been so intrigued with this subject before, but your writing style has renewed my interests. Thanks for posted.
My website has not been affected by the changes over at google. In fact over 50% of my traffic is still direct traffic. I have found that updating your site and showing that it is constantly evolving as increased its rank. These were all relevant tips for your google standing. Dylan www.juicedsystems.com
The pagerank on two of my sites went down from a 4 to a 3 but my traffic is up, so I don't know how to explain it. The most important point in this post is #1: Create Unique Content. That's what I aim to do! Thanks, Suzanne
Thank you for the tips. Do you have any ideas for a small community website whose domain has been hijacked? We registered a new domain, and 60 days later we still haven't made any improvements in our rankings. We post original content, update our home page more than once a week, and consistently keep our information current. The site is www.cityofnewrockford.com.
Great tips. It's good that you got to post something that is very relevant to today's marketing strategies. Increasing traffic, and search engine optimization are very in demand nowadays. Estiphanie FallerFreelance Writer For www.businessowners.co
Interesting...so what's your strategy going to be to drive signups now?
yes it has really cut me out of the new member scene! what a bummer i was generating around 10 mto 15 new members into my PeopleString account pretty steadly for over a year and now im down to almost nothing! so yeah it truly has affected my new signups!
Thanks for the tool recommendation!
I think that was the hope at Google, that more real businesses would rise to the top of the rankings. But if you've been copying manufacturers' descriptions or lifting blog posts from other places, it's time to make some changes as Google is really penalizing that now.
Although i am not sure how successful a direct marketing scheme would be building links is a excellent way to improve your page rank
I guess, we've been quite lazy these days and Google's new move simply means we have to do more talking, engaging with folks on the Social Web more than ever. I love the idea about updating your website weekly. Thanks for these awesome tips!
Great information! The changes google recently made is making small business owners crazy trying to improve their site ranking. For those that need help with all of this • chatmeter runs a great service that tracks content about your business across multiple sites as well as monthly tack where you rank on google and other search engines showing you how you improve.
i have seen an uptake of visitor on my site, I change things abit every week already, move things around and change specials etc. I am happy for this change with google for my business has seen an increase because of it.
it's all about real-time stories to rank with a site without age and links. No way around it.
Hey, that's what freelance writers are for! :-)
Good pointers. We have been getting a good volume of Google traffic because of our unique content, but could always use more. I think better and more content would probably help but there's only so much time in the day...