prevent rankings drop

You know those houses that are all shelled in… with capsuled steel windows that can open to reveal the daylight or completely close shut to put the dwelling into twilight zone? Or those “zombie” shelters built feet and feet below ground, with beautiful living areas, advanced lighting and power technology included? Those people got it goin’ on. Now, consider your livelihood. How would you like to know it’s bulletproof…just like that previously described house or bomb shelter is? If you’re an Internet marketer, this should be just as important to you as it is to the landowners on Doomsday Preppers (a reality TV show where all the people prepare for earth’s apocalypse with aforementioned and described dwellings, for the non-nerds out there).   Let’s Talk About Preparations… For The Rankings Apocalypse   Hey, it’s a serious thing to make yourself sure of. With all of the algorithmic updates and changes to PageRank that Google is using to try and minimize black-hat SEO it’s likely that, unless you’re one of the bigger companies out there, you’ll be hit. One day you might wake up and find out that your visibility and rankings have dropped drastically (like many sites did in 2011 after Google’s Panda algorithm update). How do you prevent this from happening in the future? Or, if the worst should happen, what do you do if you lose visibility? Fortunately for you there are ways to defend against it happening and ways to reverse your rankings if it does. Most of these strategies you should be using right now to defend yourself because, as everyone knows, “the best offense is a good defense.” As long as you’re implementing strategies early and continually cultivating hits and strategies in unambiguously legitimate ways then there will be nothing to worry about when it comes down to another Google PageRank update.   1. Links How can you prepare for a “zombie apocalypse,” so to speak, that could (could not, could, your pick, hmm, or Google’s pick?) occur and fell your link strategy? Private Link Networks Are Dying! It’s common knowledge that PageRank takes into account incoming links. In order to prevent your site rankings from getting hit with penalties it’s vital to let your links come as naturally as possible. This means that there should be no private link networks! Google is going full force and ripping these shady techniques out by the roots. Honestly, private link networks might not be a temptation for the big boys but for a startup it’s a tempting and temporary solution for rankings, that can get your site slapped with a penalty. Incoming Hyperlinks. But even if you’re not intentionally attracting shady links, you may have some less-than-savory links coming to your page and affecting your rankings. The links themselves may not be the problem but it might be overused anchor text that is the dead weight that might get Google to drop the hammer on a keyword it sees too often, according to a Moz blog on how rankings can vanish. There’s also a problem if the quality of the hyperlinks isn’t good enough. Google adds any anchor text linking to your site to your keywords. If your incoming links are frequently using “click here” in anchor text then your visibility will skyrocket when someone searches “click here.” But who actually does that? If you find an important site linking to you with bad anchor text then contact them and ask them to change it. Don’t Look Stupid. While you’re watching the sources that are linking to you, check to see the other places they’re linking to as well. Google sure is. If your site is linked on the same pages as www.terriblewebsite.com then you’re going to be associated with that crowd rather than other, authoritative sites. This goes double for your outbound links. For one thing, you’ll lose credibility with your visitors if you’re linking to unreliablesources.co.uk just as fast as you’ll drop in the Google rankings.   2. Design Obviously this is almost as important as your linking strategy, and remember—this includes real people too, since it’s the forefront or cover to your strategies. Forget Search Engines. The New York Times didn’t get readers through keyword mining and artificially inflating their readership by tricking them into picking up a paper. They gained rankings and popularity by being a quality newspaper with generally reliable information. Giving people what they came for will gain repeat visitors while making pages for search engines will cause visitors to bounce out faster than a boxer’s speed bag. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use smart SEO strategies but deliver what you promised and you’ll have to worry a lot less about gaining rankings, traffic or conversion rates. Watch Your Visitors. Another way to gain traffic, and conversion rates, is to simply pay close attention to your visitors. This means that you should always be thinking about optimization (even during website redesigns). Whether it’s making a responsive website that is viewable on PCs, tablets, and smartphones or making the behind-the-scenes aspects easy to crawl through and audit, providing an easy, pleasurable experience will keep people coming back and increase your rankings. Remember Search Engines. Google’s PageRank algorithm isn’t just going through your website and links to pick up on exactly what you are and whether you’re worth it. They’re going through your background nuts and bolts. Use your meta descriptions even if you’re not using meta keywords (which are basically obsolete for the time being). But, really, this falls under forgetting search engines too because it’s your blurb on a search engine page. If you make your meta description more interesting than your competitors then you’ll see your click-throughs jump.   3. Content This is considered today as a foundation of SEO. So let’s see just how you can be ready for the zombie world when content changes, too. Be Useful. There was once bottled water… for pets. Notice that last sentence is in past tense. Everyone who guesses … Read more