The Rank Magic Blog

Dear Jill,

We recently released our new website in Feb. and prior to release we held the number 1 position on Google for [our main keyword phrase] and the number 3 slot and number 2 spots for [additional keyword phrases].

Within days of our release our rankings fell through the roof as did the number of quality Google leads that were coming through our doors. We seem to still be holding up well on the other sites but still not like we did before. We have an SEO firm working with us and we have been with them for 4 years. At this time I am starting to wonder why we continue to fall and what we/they are not doing right. Is it normal to fall like this after the launch of a new site? They told us it would be a week or 2 and now we are on month 2.

Thanks for your time.

Best regards,
John

++Jill's Response++

Hi John,

This is common with redesigns when you switch content management systems or otherwise change your URLs. You will often have to wait for some period for the search engines to remove your old URLs and index the new ones. Plus, they sometimes give less weight to new URLs that have no history (or previous link popularity).

However, then I took a quick glance at the site and noticed some disturbing things. I thought it would be a good idea to discuss them here so that others could learn what *not* to do on their own sites, especially as it seems to have had such a dramatically negative impact on the business.

The home page looked nice and professional at first glance; however, near the bottom of the page was a scrolling window with a ton of keyword-rich copy contained in it. Scrolling through that window revealed a ton of keyword-rich text links. Neither of these things are necessarily search engine spam in and of themselves, but because of the way they were integrated into the website, they certainly set off alarm bells in my head. Companies don't bury great marketing copy that will help sell their products or services. They do that only when they don't understand how to write for their users and search engines alike.

Even though this copy was technically visible (one could scroll the inner window and read it all) the search engines may very well consider it hidden text.

A quick peek at some of the pages in the "hidden" links revealed more problems for this site. The links were pointing to a slew of old-fashioned doorway pages, the likes of which I hadn't seen since the 1990s! Sure, they were a bit more sophisticated than the old 90s versions, as they were integrated into the site template. They could even be mistaken for real site pages when viewed individually; however, it was pretty much just "madlib spam." In other words, all 20 or so pages said the same thing, only they switched out keyword phrases for other keyword phrases. They were poorly written and oftentimes simply gibberish.

[huge sigh]

It's scary to know that there are still SEO companies out there creating this kind of junk. John declined to tell me who his SEO company is, so I don't know if it's a well-known firm or not. I don't know what he paid for the pleasure of spamming the search engines either, but I hope it wasn't much. He also just told me that due to their lack of a search engine presence in Google for the past few months, they've just had to lay someone off. Now, I don't believe in relying on search engine rankings in order to successfully run your business, but when you think of the horrible impact a bad SEO company can have on a business, it's frightening. I'm quite sure that one day in the not-too-distant future there will be lawsuits based on this kind of bad SEO. That won't be good for any of us in the SEO industry.

John's CEO is now aware of the problem and they're cleaning up the mess. I suggested that he file a Google reinclusion request once they have removed the spam.

If anyone reading this provides this sort of SEO spam to clients, you really should be ashamed of yourself. ... Being responsible for a company's loss of business would not be a good feeling at all.

Jill

Criteria for inclusion in Top 100

Firstly, let's explain how we developed the list. When we say "The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines," we are referring to alternatives to Google. Many readers wrote in to ask what the criteria was for inclusion on the List, such as: is it the percentage of market share, or some other statistical measure? It is not. The criteria is twofold:

1) the Search Engine should exhibit superiority to Google - not as a whole, but in just one particular area. People have been talking about Wikipedia's search engine Wikiasari or even digg as potential "Google killers". That's fine, but we are not arguing that any one of the 100 list members is a "Google killer". Rather, that they should be matched against the appropriate corresponding part of Google. For example, TheFind is a shopping search engine and therefore should be compared to Google's shopping search engine, Froogle. blinkx, a video search engine, should be matched against Google's video search feature, and so forth. (See article #1 for a fuller explanation of these categories.)

2) Secondly, what ultimately gets a particular search engine into the Top 100 (as opposed to the hundreds and hundreds of "also rans") is my evaluation. It is a subjective, personal judgment from an SEO - not an independent, statistical measure. I liken it to a movie critic, who must be ready to defend his/her ratings, but the reader is by no means obligated to agree with them after having seen the movie.

• "The big marketing debate over SEO has never been whether or not to do it. It's self-evident that you'd want your site to appear near the top of free rankings for keywords important to your brand. Instead, the debate has always been whether to outsource or handle SEO in-house."

• "In short, if you hire an expert for SEO, you tend to get significantly better results."

• 28% of large firms were not adequately optimized for keywords central to their business. "The lesson? No matter how famous your brand, you may be able to get better rankings and traffic (not to mention brand perception among prospects) if you test outsourcing SEO to an expert."

• Experienced search marketers are focusing doing the best possible job with the most important keywords for their brands - better to do an extremely good job of "optimization with fewer search terms than doing a slightly more slapdash job with more terms."

• They asked 3,053 marketers to rank the top two marketing tactics in terms of return on investment (ROI). The results are in the chart above.