Google Bowling - Have you been struck?

When you hear rumblings of negative SEO, and your rankings suddenly drop, it is easy to think you’ve been struck by someone else in the nasty game of Google Bowling. Whether you have, or have not, the solutions are the same, and you start by looking not outside, but inside, for the fix.

It is hard to tell whether someone else has played dirty unless you see a bunch of shady links to your site blossom overnight, or unless you see other sites taking the lead featuring your content, etc. But it can almost be a waste of time to look for those without first looking at your own site.

Most of the time, the root cause is on your own site. Even if someone else does play dirty, they can’t get far unless you help them out! Like the Count of Monte Cristo, who was able to bring his enemies down because of their own actions.

Look first for keyword stuffing, and second for pages that lack meaningful content. Make sure those things are not present before you start looking further afield. Then, look at backlinks that you had that might have been devalued, causing a drop in your rankings.

In all cases where we’ve been called in to address a drop in rankings, three elements were present:

1. Keyword stuffing on pages. This was often put in three or four years ago, and not removed when search engine guidelines tightened progressively. Sometimes it has been blatant and very obvious, other times it has been more subtle.
2. Lack of meaningful content on pages that should have had good content. Your site gets best traffic when all pages bring traffic in their own right, and that is dependent on good content.
3. Backlinks on low quality directories or paid directories which had formerly given a boost to the site, but which have recently been devalued.

Clean up your site first, then look elsewhere. It will do you more good, and will benefit you more long term.