The Webmasters Tool Box

Google is dancing again! A full tilt all out boogie,
a long drawn out rumble somewhere near cursor heaven.
My own keywords are going up, down and out the door.
Take your pick. Just want the bloody thing to stop.
My nerves are shot… three years of hard work may just
go down the drain and there’s no end in sight!

Fellow webmasters will recognize my slight desperation,
my total sense of unease when Google dances. It all has to
do with pre-conditioning, psych majors will know this,
I am well conditioned to react. I have been burnt horribly
by Google dances in the past so my panic is almost palatable.
Forget Pavlov’s dog, when Google dances, webmasters like
me salivates.

And Google is really dancing this time, Jagger has nothing
on this baby. Nobody dances like Google, even puts Seinfeld’s
Elaine to shame. And if you’re new to the webmaster’s favorite
folly, a Google dance happens with Google adjusts its ranking
algorithm, causing a ripple effect and adjustments in the
rankings of keywords. Sites move up or down. Previous major
Google dances have been called Florida, Austin, Bourbon…

When Google dances, webmasters sweat bullets. And it’s not
all in their heads. It’s not psychosomatic. Horror stories abound,
about honest hard working webmasters (not a black hat to be seen)
suddenly waking up to find their site or sites gone from Google.
Thousands of daily visitors/customers to their site vanish
in an algorithmic fog overnight. Swift. Brutal. Painful.

Gone, top ranking keywords nowhere to be seen. Gone, visitors,
visitors, visitors. Gone, sales, sales, sales…

More times than not, the sites come back or regain their
positions (rankings for popular keywords — for the totally
uninitiated, keywords or keyword phrases are what people type
into search engines to find what they’re looking for), keywords
are the conerstones of the whole Internet. Without them, the
Internet as we know it, would not work.

Mastering Google means mastering your site’s keywords or phrases.
Get a top ten SERPs ranking for your keywords and changes are
very good you will have a successful site. Webmasters work
for years getting their site’s keywords up into the
top keyword ranking spots. Countless fortunes have been made
by those who have mastered the game. Countless fortunes have
tumbled when Google dances.

Of course, the sensible thing to do is for all webmasters
to unite and bring Google down a peg or two. At least in our
own minds, if not in the real world. Don’t place so much
importance on Google. Yes, it’s very important, but snap out
of it. The more webmasters whine and moan about Google’s
erratic dances, algorithm and rankings – the more power we are
giving Google.

Why is Google still so important to webmasters? MSN and Yahoo
are gaining ground but Google is still the top dog and here’s
why: As far as the search engine market goes, whether it’s
wearing a halo or a cursor, Google is still the only game in town.
According to Alexa, a company that tracks web traffic, the top
three sites on the Web are 1-Yahoo, 2-MSN, and 3-Google. However,
when you compare where people go on these sites: search.yahoo.com
accounts for only 9% of Yahoo’s traffic and search.msn.com only
7% of MSN’s total traffic; whereas most of Google’s traffic is
search traffic. This is a big distinction.

Once burnt, twice shy. Years ago, the Florida Update totally wiped
my site from the Google Radar. Hence my total apprehension
when one of these dances comes along. I wanted my site to survive
the next Google dance so I put some simple strategies into place that
would hopefully help me weather this and future Google dances.
Strategies that you might also find helpful to fight your
own private battle with Google.

Here’s what I did and what you can also do:

Find A Good SEO Expert

Find a good SEO expert and have him or her in your corner.
I found Brad Callen. One of a very few people who truly
understands Google and knows how it works. I learned much
of what makes Google really tick from Brad. I advise you to
find or hire a SEO expert like Brad to help you out with your
site or sites. Just the fact of having a SEO expert in your
corner makes handling Google a little bit easier.

Link Only To Safe Sites

One of the simplest ways to keep on the good side
of Google is to make sure all links on your site
link only to sites that have a PR4 or over.
Don’t link to bad neighborhoods, avoid linkfarms like
the avian flu.

One Keyword To A Page

The major mistake most webmasters make – they don’t
focus on one keyword phrase per page. Try to keep
your pages separate, write on one or two closely
related keyword phrases for each webpage and you
will see a big improvement from Google. Don’t keyword
spam but sprinkle your keyword phrase and variations
of it throughout your copy.

RSS To The Rescue

Creating an RSS feed and Blog for your site’s major keywords
is as simply as starting a free blog with Blogger.com
(owned by Google), it can be done in a few minutes.

I favor using Blogger because it now has the Google Blog search
bar at the top. Blog search will bring in a lot of traffic and
your content is instantly indexed in Google. What more can you
ask for. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate RSS, it’s going
to play a major role in the Internet of the near future. Especially
when Microsoft comes out with its Longhorn browser which will
be RSS empowered.

Embrace Article Marketing

If you can string two sentences together start writing articles
on the major keywords or topics of your site. Place your
links in the resource box of your articles and submit them
to online article directories like EzineArticles.com or
buzzle.com. Write helpful ‘how-to’ articles and other
webmasters will place your articles on their sites and
you will get an ambundance of one-way links back to your
site. Google loves these kinds of links and since the
sites picking up your articles will all be related to
your site’s topic, these will be relevant links.

Customer/Visitor Focused Content

Besides high PR links to your sites, Google also loves
content. Write unique content that’s related to your
site’s topic and write a lot of it. It’s the main reason
anyone bothers to come to your site in the first place,
so make sure you have good original content. Add high
quality articles from sources you respect and your
visitors will have another reason to visit your site.

Keep saying to yourself: content is king, content is
king. Make sure you put that belief into practice and
Google will reward you nicely. Well, maybe. Nine times
out of ten.

Actually, this time my site jumped to PR5 and my Google
backlinks went up. Also some of my keywords are up but
most have stayed the same. Overall, my traffic from
Google remains the same which is very worrisome, if
I moved up to PR5 — my traffic should theoretically rise
also. I saw a dramatic rise in traffic when my site
went to PR4.

Such are the little puzzling mine-fields, whether intentionally
or not (I can’t believe anyone could be this sadistic!) Google
throws every webmaster’s way. Over time, if you let it
get to you, it will drive you stark raving bonkers.
Especially, if you are seriously building an income, lifestyle
and well-being around the Internet and by default Google.

For every webmaster, Google is a never ending endurance
race of strategies, positioning and planning. Keeping
one step ahead of this search engine while keeping
your eyes peeled for the men in white, is a never ending
struggle. One every webmaster must fight and win on their
own terms. Follow the simple steps above, and you will be
better prepared for the next Google dance.