Where Did My SERPs Go?

It’s a problem you hear at various times when webmasters discuss their sites. Where did their rankings go?

Now, most often they mean Google rankings. This is because it’s easiest to track Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) as they have the API available and there are many tools out there to track them. Not to mention, Google has been the leader for so long that many webmasters rely on them to make a living.

But when the SERPs drop, webmasters feel it. Traffic vanishes, sales go down… it’s a very painful experience.

Fortunately, there are ways to limit the damage. The best ways is quite simply have unique content on your site. If your site has information that can be found all over the internet, you have to worry about the duplicate content filter. Create more content and give the search engines more chances to find you.

It seems like webmasters always have something to blame when these drops happen. If you do link exchanges, you worry that maybe reciprocal links aren’t worth anything anymore. If you talk with other webmasters hosted on the same company, you worry that maybe your host has problems with Google. If you’re doing anything you even suspect might be sneaky, you worry that maybe you got caught.

So how do you cope? The first thing to realize is that you may have done nothing wrong at all. Give it some time, create more content and see if your rankings come back in a few days. Some major drops are nothing more than a hiccup, even when they feel like the flu.

You also need to consider if you are only taking advantage of one source of traffic. Not only are there other search engines out there to consider, there are more ways to market. Get your website out there. Participate in forums which allow you to link to your site in your signature. Advertise offline. Try a press release.

All search engines like traffic. It’s hard to say what exactly they like, as it varies from search engine to search engine, but if you worry first about what will interest qualified, interested traffic, you may not have so much time to worry about what the search engines think. You might even find that the search engines like what you are doing.

Driving traffic through multiple means should be a habit for any website. You might take a hit when your SERPs drop, but you’ll still have customers.

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