An Entrepreneur’s Journey of Transformation

Pushing the Limits with Google SEO

October 9th, 2007 Posted in SEO, Internet Marketing

So I had a bummer of a day yesterday…

One of my most successful niches which was destined to provide me some cash flow has basically… tanked. This is because I was relying on Google and the mighty power over there decided to knock me down from #1 to #35. Now I’m not exactly sure what happened. When you’re dealing with Google SEO, you never really know what’s going on.

However, I think I know what it might have been.

I was pushing it in terms of what I could pull off and still keep my ranking. When I reached #1, I tried some tactics with Adsense and how I structured my pages that I now regret. I don’t want to tell you exactly what it was, but what I did ended up reducing the number of pages on my website.

And I paid for it.

I was getting a crazy amount of traffic from Google. Let’s say about 250+ a day and the traffic was decently targeted as well. I was pulling in about $10+ a day, which is no small sum for me.

Then again, I am getting some traffic from MSN and Live suddenly. Microsoft must have done a major revamp of their SERPs because I’m now ranking well in many of the keywords that I ranked well in Google

Anyway, I pushed the limits, and I paid for it. Bummer!

I did feel it too. I was pretty down for awhile. It seems that all successes and failures are amplified when you are on your own especially when you’re still at the level of trying to pay for your food.

Anyway, I got over it by realizing that I now know where the limit was. If I didn’t do it, I’d be wasting my time creating a bunch of websites that would have all tanked. It’s also given me much more certainty and faith in my abilities to rank well in Google.

It’s not like what I learned is something new. It just validated what I have been reading. Sometimes you just need REAL experience to knock sense into you. It’s always too tempting to go against principles and try to game the system.

You eventually pay for it.

But I don’t think it’s something you should avoid. There is nothing better than experience to put you back on track. However, make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Fortunately, I had the good sense to not do it with my other niches until I saw it pan out.

You live. You Learn.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Losing a potential $300 a month STINKS though! Let’s see how forgiving Google is while I work myself up from #35 to #1 again.

  1. 7 Responses to “Pushing the Limits with Google SEO”

  2. By Michael on Oct 9, 2007

    That is a definite bummer. Maybe new competition is discovering your niche. Google is currently doing major changes to there algo. A lot of websites have already taken effect. Maybe they got you too. Anyways, good luck getting back up in the SERPs.

  3. By Carl on Oct 9, 2007

    Yeah… I think it’s a combination of the new changes to the SERPs as well as my fairly recent risky move.

  4. By Rahul Bhambhani on Oct 10, 2007

    Don’t worry about it Carl, you’re going to bounce back no doubt. Every negative has an equivalent seed of benefit. See the benefit and make it happen. I bet you’ll be making $700 a month off this site in no time :O

  5. By CatherineL on Oct 11, 2007

    That is bad Carl. I have done that before - you wind up doing too many things at once, and by the time your ranking slips, you don’t know which one was the bad one.

    Hopefully, you’ll be able to work out which one it was and do something about it. Let me know how it goes.

    Is this site you’re working on part of your web 2.0 project you mentioned?

    Catherine

  6. By Carl Zetterlund on Oct 11, 2007

    I’ve got 3 projects right now. The one I was talking about is more internet marketing related although I use Web 2.0 sites to rank well. I try to make money with affiliate marketing. I’m basically going after hot products. It’s kinda short term. I guess I could spend my whole life chasing product trends, but that’s not what I want to do. I just need to food on the table right now. It seems the fastest way to float my boat.

    I did mention a Web 2.0 before. That is one that requires me learning Ruby on Rails. It’s still in development. It’s been awhile since I’ve coded anything and also learning Ruby on Rails for the first time slows things down.

  7. By Carl on Oct 11, 2007

    @Rahul - Definitely true. The lesson I learned is greater than the short term profits I lost.

  8. By Asako Tsumagari on Oct 15, 2007

    The similar thing has happened to my site as well. # of visits from Google was going up every day, and one day, it dropped almost to 0. I thought it was because of my messy URL structure. So I tried to recover it by fixing my URL structure, adding a sitemap and tags, etc. And it started recovering, and then one day it dropped again. This time, I did not do anything wrong (or right - basically I did nothing).

    I am now giving up on SEO, it seems impossible to figure out what Google wants to do. I decided in the end I can not trick Google.

    I hear they change the rule quite often, so that people can not figure it out.

    I hope you will recover your traffic and income soon!

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