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This is a copy of a post that I made on a forum recently. The question was, why my ranking with the search engines is dropping. This person has been recently getting inbound links to his website. Below is my response. I thought that I would share this with everyone here in case you are experiencing the same problem.

Response to Search Engine Ranks

My website is a year and a half old. I have ranked on Google for keywords that went from #1 to dropping off the index.

What I have noticed with Google is it doesn’t like drastic changes, especially on page changes. My website is a blog and I try to post regularly to keep my regular visitors coming back. Last summer I was going on vacation and didn’t want to have to post while on vacation. I stupidly posted 14 days worth of posts all on the same day. I should have time stamped them to go live one day at a time. When I got home from vacation 80% of my indexed pages were de-indexed from Google. In my opinion that drastic change, (posting 14 articles in the same day) was the main contributor of the 80% of my posts falling out of Google’s index.

In my opinion you should never screw around with on page optimization (especially the title) if your page once listed well. If it was listed well at one point there is no reason to believe that there is something wrong with your on page optimization. From my own experiences re-optimizing your web pages generally does more harm than good.

The biggest thing that I have found in the 18 months with this particular website is that the search engines do not like drastic changes. With all of the black hat seo tactics that many webmasters use, search engines are very leery when something has drastically changed.

I’m willing to bet that you were doing little if any linking until now. While your linking activity is relatively slow it is probably more activity than what your website has shown in the past.

Bottom line in my opinion is that consistency is what the search engines want. Sudden change raises a red flag to the search engines that something may be up. I could be totally wrong here but with my past experiences and there have been more than mentioned here, I don’t think that I am. I have found that doing nothing is the best thing to do when a keyword suddenly drops because the reason for it is probably because of what you have already done and not what you neglected to do before the drop.

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On site SEO and link building is an important part of getting your website found by the search engines. I’m not going to talk about the on site part of seo. I will be talking about a link building strategy that really isn’t all that true.

There is a lot of talk online that the sites that link to you must be related to your own website. I’ve said the same thing myself on this blog. I have recently realized that this in fact is not the case.

You may be thinking if this is not true then why are so many saying it. I think the answer to that is that most do believe that this is true. Someone probably said this somewhere on a forum or wherever and because it makes sense, I think that most just took it as law.

I’m not saying that somewhere in the future that this won’t be an important part of determining how relevant a website is. I’m saying, at the moment, it is not.

How do I know this? I’ve been experimenting with this website and can tell you that the main keyword for this website which I have been trying to rank for since its inception went from being listed on Google at 356 to 31st as of today. That’s a huge leap in position on Google’s index.

Instead of trying to selectively link to sites that are related to mine, I decided to just link to as many sites as I possibly could. In the past 3 months I’ve added just an extra 300 inlinks to this site of which most are unrelated to this one. That’s the only optimization change I have made to this website in the past three months. I intend to continue to increase the number of inlinks to this website to see if I can get my keyword to place on page one of the search engines.

Let’s face it. If you are in a niche with limited sites that you can link to, what you have may not be enough to get you ranked where you want to be ranked on the search engines. Whoever said that, it’s quality not quantity is the biggest factor when it comes to link building is either a liar or doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. When it comes to on site seo and link building, the quantity of inlinks that you have is most certainly a huge factor on where you’ll list on the search engines.

I’ve been asked on numerous occasions, how I get the right keywords to use for my website. I’ll give you a quick breakdown on how to get the right keywords for your website and hopefully it will get some traffic flowing to your website.

How to get the right keywords that will help your website be found with the search engines is no secret and is pretty easy to do. While it’s a little bit of work it is well worth doing with the rewards it will bring.

Here’s how to get the right keywords for your website. There are only a few things that you really have to do to get the right keywords for your website. That doesn’t mean that you should rush through it. Take your time and explore all possibilities before making any final decisions.

• Start by writing a list of keyword possibilities that pertain to the subject matter of your website.

For example: If your website is about toy trains, toy trains and trains would be something that you’d list.

• After you have made a list of all of your possible keywords use this tool to evaluate your keyword list. Plug in your keyword phrases into the search box to see how many people are searching for the term on a daily basis. If there are no search results for the search term scratch it from your list. Dig through the sub links that are relevant to your website. Add the sub links to your list along with the number of daily searches for the main keywords and the sub keywords that you find.

  Don’t exclude keywords that get a low number of searches. I will explain why shortly.

• Go to Google and run an allintitle search. Here’s how to run an allintitle search. Type in the Google search box, allintitle:Your Keyword Phrase. Replace Your Keyword Phrase with the main keywords that you originally listed and the sub keyword phrases that you found from doing your keyword research.

  Using the toy train example your allintitle would look like this for toy train allintitle:toy train Put the number of results on the keyword list beside the keyword for every allintitle search that you run. You will find the results on the right side above the result list in Google.

• From Google, run a link search of the top four sites listed in Google for each keyword on your list. Here’s how you would run a link search.

  Plug into the Google search box a keyword phrase from your list. Click on the top 4 sites from the search results that are listed, one by one. Copy the url from the address bar and paste it beside the corresponding keyword phrase for that search to your keyword list. Do the same for all of the keyword phrases on your list.

  Once you have all of the urls for the top sites, go to yahoo and run a link search. Using the toy train example, the link search would look like this link:toytrain.com

  You will get a list of results. The only thing that you need is the inlink number that will display at the top of the link search results. It will look like this. Inlinks (93). Again, put that number beside the corresponding keyword phrase on your list. Go through the same process for the other three links for that keyword phrase. You should end up with 4 Inlink numbers for each keyword phrase. Go through the rest of your keyword list repeating the process above for the remainder of your keyword list.

Now comes the evaluation. This will require common sense on your part. What you will be looking for are keywords that are not highly competitive.

Check your allintitle results. How many websites have the keyword in the title? The lower the number is, the less competitive it is. If you have an allintitle number that has 1,000 results or less, you have very low competition for that keyword. The same goes for the Inlinks. The less links that the top websites are getting the better.

You need to factor these two things in. That’s where the common sense comes in. If you have a keyword with an allintitle of say 800 results and the inlink results show 100 results, you have a good keyword. Where it gets a little confusing is when you have a low allintitle result and a high inlink result. That’s where you have to make a decision and use some common sense. Remember, you don’t have to be #1 on the search engines, you do want to be on the first page though. Chances are even if the inlink total is too high on the first 4 results doesn’t mean that every listing on the first page of Google will have a high total of inbound links.

The whole idea of going through the above process is to find keywords that will get your website found on the search engines. Finding a good keyword doesn’t mean getting the highest search result. Those keywords are almost always impossible to rank well on the search engines. You want to use keywords that are low in competition.

Low searches can result in additional traffic to your website as long a it isn’t too competitive. 5 searches a day for a keyword will result in over 100 searches a month. If you had 60 pages on your website using a different keyword for each page you could get found by 6,000 searchers a month at 5 searches a day for each keyword. It all adds up.

Anyway, that’s how to get the right keywords for your website.

A few months ago almost all of my posts on this blog ended up in the Google supplemental index. The strange part of it was that several of my posts were listed on page one on the main index of Google one day, to only be found in Google’s supplemental index a few days later. I even had posts that were on the first page of Google for several months disappear.

At first I was absolutely baffled as to where these top listed posts were going. Once they were gone from page one on Google they couldn’t be found anywhere on Google at all.

The only way that I could find the posts was to run an Allintitle search on them which by the way is a good way to see if you are in the supplemental index or not because at the bottom of your listing it will say supplemental results. If you see that on your listing, you are in the supplemental index. Google’s supplemental index is not where you want to be because you will rarely be found.

By doing some research I stumbled upon a website that gave an explanation of why websites end up in Google’s supplemental index which I know about but had never considered it because it hadn’t been an issue since I had started blogging.

The reason that a website ends up in Google’s supplemental index is because of duplicate content. Google penalizes websites that have repeated content on their site.

A blog is structured to put your content in many places even though you’ve only written that content once. Everything that you write about ends up on the first page of your blog until it drops off after so many posts are written. Your post can also be found on the category index page, in the form of a single post, in the blog archive, etc. Even though you have written the content just once it can be found all over your blog and Google sees this as content that has been duplicated and that’s the main reason that websites end up in the supplemental index.

Google claims that the supplemental index is not for penalizing websites, nor will being in there hinder web searchers from finding your website. I can tell you from personal experience that it greatly reduces the chance of web searchers from finding you if you are in Google’s supplemental index.

There is a solution. There is a plugin that will get rid of all of the duplicate content that your blog creates. The plugin is called seo_wordpress. I setup this plugin a couple of months ago and all of my posts here are now back on Google’s main index. This plugin works really well folks. It does take a while to kick in but it definitely works. If your blog is running on wordpress software this is a plugin that you can’t do without. Here’s where you can download seo_wordpress. You can also get more information on this plugin by clicking on the corresponding link on the download page.

If you are having the same problem that I was having you really should get this plugin right away and get out of Google’s supplemental index once and for all.

Some webmasters use black hat strategies to give their website a boost on the search engines index. Using black hat methods is a bad idea because it can get you banned by the search engines. If you know about black hat strategies you can bet that the search engines do too.

In case you don’t know what black hat is, here is a very short and basic description. Black hat is methods that are used to optimize a website in a way that violates the search engines guidelines.

Here are the most commonly used Black Hat SEO practices.

1.) Keyword stuffing is probably the most used black hat method. Keyword stuffing is overusing keywords throughout the web page. What black hat SEO’s do is repetitively use their target keyword phrase throughout the web page. For example, instead of using a keyword phrase once in the title, a black hat method may use that keyword phrase 4 or 5 times. Basically, keyword stuffing is the use of keywords more often than needed and because of this overuse the content on the web page often doesn’t make a lot of sense.

2.) Another black hat method is inserting hidden text on the web page. This is accomplished by making the text color the same as the background color of the web page allowing the black hat SEO to place the keywords on the web page hundreds of times but the visitor will never see them. The insertion of the hidden text is for the benefit of search engines only.

3.) Redirecting visitors from one web page to another. This is done with a META REFRESH tag or with a javascript. The idea behind this method is to optimize one page for the search engines and the other is a readable version for human visitors.

4.) Web page cloaking is another commonly used black hat method. Cloaking is used to trick the search engine spiders by pointing one page to the search engines and the other is another version of the web page and is pointed to the website visitors. The search engine version is optimized for the search engine spiders and the visitor version is human readable.

The four above strategies are not all of the black hat methods that are used but they are the most widely used.

Using black hat methods may get your website an initial boost on the major search engines but somewhere down the line they will detect these methods and will surely ban any website that is optimized using black hat methods.

Stick with the methods that are allowed by the search engines otherwise you will find yourself with a website that you can’t do anything with because it has been banned by the search engines.

Let me start by saying that I am not an affiliate of StomperNet nor do I want to be. I’ve been getting spammed quite a bit with emails about StomperNet from various Gurus trying to separate me from my money.

StomperNet is a member website program that teaches you about search engine optimization, e-commerce, among other things in case you don’t know what StomperNet is. StomperNet is run by 2 Gurus Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallen and both are very knowledgeable where SEO is concerned.

StomperNet was first launched last year and was sold out almost immediately and if I remember correctly the cost was just under $10,000 to join. It was hyped big time by the biggest Internet Marketing Gurus with huge lists, which is probably why it sold out so quickly. I wonder how many people actually succeeded with it? They have testimonials of the people who did well with it but the big question is how many people didn’t do so well with it?

Anyway, they are reopening StomperNet tomorrow 5/10/07 at 12:00 PM Eastern standard time. You can try out the program for a month for a buck. So if you were wondering whether or not if StomperNet lives up to all of the hype you can find out for a buck.

It may be worth doing even if you can’t afford to pay the full price after the month is up because you may learn a lot in the month that you are there. It may be a great opportunity to learn from two of the best. According to the spam mail that I got, you get full access to everything for a month for just a dollar.

Let me be crystal clear, I am in no way affiliated with StomperNet and whether you join or not has no affect on me one way or the other. I just thought I’d tell everyone here that there is an affordable way for those who wanted to try it or couldn’t get in last year. I have no idea if StomperNet is any good or not.

Here’s the hyped sales page for anyone who is interested. http://www.internetpromoservices.com/stomper

This is something that I do on a regular basis. You really want to do this when you start a new website or when you get on the top of the index.

If you have started a new website and have done all of the things that you need to do when starting a website you really should find out where you are listed on the major search engines so that you will know if your new website is going in the right direction or not.

In the beginning it will take time to find where you are positioned however it is well worth taking the time to do this.

There are a few ways to check where you are and how you are doing. You should do all of them when doing your evaluation. What you will want to do is to search your main keywords and keyword phrases as follows. Type these in the search field on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Run these three searches to see where you are listed. The allintitle you should be able to find somewhere right away providing that you used a keyword or keyword phrase that is not very competitive. If you are using a competitive keyword or keyword phrase you probably don’t have a very good keyword and you won’t be able to compete in the first place.

Click on every page of the results until you find your site using the above criteria. Use a spread sheet and type your position on each search engine no matter what position it may be.

It will probably take you some time the first time that you do this but after that you should be able to find your site pretty quickly for each of the search engines providing you document the results for each.

Check your position every day to see if your position has improved or has gotten worse. If you find that your website is improving, you will know that you are doing the right things to get your website ranked toward the top of the search engines. If it is getting worse then you will know that you need to make some changes to get it going in the right direction.

The thing that you need to understand is that your site will fluctuate up and down on the index. This is quite normal. What you want to look out for is that it is not heading in the wrong direction on a continuous basis.

Once you have found your website on the index of each search engine it won’t take you long to find it after that providing that do this on a daily basis. This is well worth doing and it will save you time and get you on the first page of the major search engines much quicker.

If you are already on the top of the search engines you definitely want to do this to make sure that you stay there. Things can change really quickly on a search engine index and if something happens to your position you want to know about it when it happens so that you can make whatever corrections necessary to get back on top.

I am sure that you have seen the search engine submission services that offer to submit your website to thousands of search engines. If you are thinking about using a search engine submission service, don’t waste your time.

Since the main three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN handle over 90% of all searches on the Internet paying someone to submit to any other search engine is a waste of time and money.

You don’t need to submit your site to any of the search engines in the first place because if you setup and optimize your website properly you will be found by the search engines. As a matter of fact, it is the preferred way of being indexed. The only submission that you have to make is to MSN and the only thing that you have to submit is the link to the main page of your website and MSN will do the rest. With Google and Yahoo you don’t need to submit at all.

These submission services also tell you that they will resubmit your website to the search engines monthly. Once your website is indexed the search engines will update your website automatically. There is no reason to do this again. You could be banned from the search engine for spamming or at the very least penalized with a worse position in the index.

What you should be submitting to is directories, article sites, and press release sites, along with updating the content on your website on a regular basis. That’s what will get you indexed and get you a better ranking on the search engine index. Good relevant back links and good updated content are the key ingredients to a good search engine position.

Every time that you add new content to your website or acquire relevant back links to your website will have the search engines crawling your website to check what changes have been made. The more you update the more prominent you will be on the search engines.

One other thing to stay away from is those services that guarantee a first page listing on the search engines. Sounds good on the surface but in reality it’s nothing but a scam. What these services do is select a set of non competitive keyword phrases that can get a first page listing easily. The problem with this is they use phrases that no one is searching for and often use phrases that aren’t relevant to your website. They count on your ignorance in search engine optimization. Anyone can list on the first page of Google for keyword phrases that no one uses.

Getting a good position for a quality keyword or keyword phrase on the search engines takes a lot of work and time. The key is that the more relevant Inlinks and content that you have, the more prominent your website will be on the search engines.

So many marketers don’t use the allintitle when running keyword research either because they don’t know about it or just don’t want to bother doing it.

What the allintitle does is it checks how many web pages have an exact keyword phrase in the title. There is no way that you can determine how competitive a chosen keyword or keyword phrase is unless you know how many people are using that keyword or keyword phrase. Using the allintitle will help you determine how competitive and profitable your keyword will be.

Keep in mind the less competitive a keyword is, the easier it is to get a high ranking on the search engines and the more profitable you will be. If you are using a keyword that 10,000,000 others are using you will have very little chance if any at all of being found and the chances of making money with what you are selling will be a lot harder because there will be too many others selling the same product as you.

Here’s how to determine whether or not your keywords will be too competitive or not. Of course you will have to get a list of your keywords before you can do anything at all. You can run keyword searches using the yahoo keyword tool or the new free wordtracker tool. I’d use the yahoo tool if it’s working because the yahoo tool gives you results by the month where wordtracker gives you them by the day. You can still determine approximately how many clicks a month by multiplying the daily number by thirty days.

Copy and paste the keywords that you find into an excel spreadsheet or any comparable spreadsheet. If you don’t have a spreadsheet notepad will do. Using a spreadsheet will make it easier to organize your keyword list but it is not essential that you use it. It just will be a lot easier using a spreadsheet.

What you want to do is go to Google and type in your keyword phrase using allintitle. Say that you are checking the keyword phrase ‘dog collar’, you would type it in the search like this allintitle:dog collar. To see this example in action Click here. If you look in the top right side of the results you will see that 158,000 web pages are using this keyword phrase in the title. The keyword phrase ‘dog collar’ without looking at how many people have searched that phrase is probably too competitive to use. If you were to make a slight change to that keyword phrase ‘dog collar’ and make it ‘dog shock collar’ you will get a very different result. Click here to see the results for dog shock collar. As you can see the results show that 671 web pages use this keyword phrase and you probably will be able to compete with this keyword.

To determine whether a keyword phrase is too competitive or not, you need to compare how many searches were done for the keyword phrase, against how many results there are for the allintitle search. If the searches are higher than the web page results from your allintitle search, then you have a very good keyword phrase. If it’s the other way around, you are better off not using the phrase as it will be very difficult to get a high ranking for the keyword phrase.

Because the search engines place so much weight on the web page title when ranking a site it is really important to do this if you want to have any chance of getting a high ranking for your keyword phrases. The less competitive the keyword phrase is the better your chances are of getting a good ranking on the search engines. You also will learn a lot about the product that you are promoting by going through this process.

Here are 5 very costly mistakes that webmasters make when optimizing their web pages for the search engines. The search engine bots are getting smarter all of the time and bad SEO practices no longer go unnoticed. A poorly or incorrectly optimized website will kill your online business with the search engines.

1. Not selecting the right keyword.

It is very important that you use keywords that are targeted to the content on your web pages. Using keywords that are similar is totally useless and will send the wrong traffic to your website. Your keywords must be exactly the same as your website content.

2. Keywords Spamming (Using the same keywords over and over).

Never use keyword spamming or stacking. The search engines will downgrade and penalize your website for doing this. Instead, use keyword rich content on your web pages.

3. Using a free domain name or web hosting service.

Never use a free domain to host your business website. You want a domain that you can name whatever you want. You can’t do that with a free domain. You will have to use the free hosts domain name. Search engines generally will index free domains as a whole but not individual websites, which will do you no good. Spend a few bucks and get a real hosted domain that you can call your own.

4. Using hidden text to make your web pages more relevant.

Hiding the text within your web pages to make it appear that you have a laser targeted website doesn’t work with the search engines anymore. You will be severely penalized by the search engines for doing this. Even if you remove the hidden text it will take a long time, if ever, to recover from it. Don’t do it. It’s not only bad for your search engine ranking. It’s unethical.

5. Using keywords that have nothing to do with your website.

Putting popular keywords on your web page for the sole reason of attracting people to your website is a huge mistake. Using unrelated keywords can get your website banned from the search engines.