Google Penguin Update: After the Slaughter

Let me preface this by stating up front that I am not an SEO expert. I'm just a small businessman trying to get by.  

As I wrote earlier, I own a website that was hit extremely hard by the Panda update. Below are two charts that show just how sudden the drop was.  My site went from about 3,000 daily impressions to about 300.

The image below is a closeup of the graph following the devastating drop after April 25.

 

My efforts so far have had very little improvement on the overall traffic.
Even though the site has slowly inched forward in the rankings, its not enough to make any significant difference. The difference between clicks from page 1 to page 2 is gigantic. Even on page 1, the difference in clicks between top listing and 2nd or 3rd is also gigantic.

The net result for me has been that my Google Adwords has increased by nearly $1000 per month. Sales have declined, although its still sustainable, yet much less profitable that it was previously.

My Google Webmaster account does not give any hints. There were no emails warning me that I had bad links. Just a sudden drop.

The most frustrating part of this is the lack of transparency by Google.  There are fair questions that I and many other small business owners need to have answered so that we can either fix whatever damage that Google has perceived, or that we know to just move on and do something new.

Is Google penalizing me,  or does Google just think it found better content to replace mine? I have no idea.

If I'm being penalized, how do I know?  Can I fix it?  If so, how? 

Do I have bad links? If so, which ones, and will I be forgiven if I remove them?

By having access to all of my webmaster data and my Adwords account, how do I know that Google didn't run some special algorithm that revealed that by knocking down my organic ranking it could make an extra $1,000 a month off me in Adwords fees?

Basically, I'm leaning toward the idea that the cause is lost. I've began creating new websites with new content.  One of my new sites, a simple Blogger blog is already in 4th place on page 1, and all over page 2. My shill content is (imho) a poorer experience than the other professionally written and highly targeted content that Google hates, but what can you do.  Google seems to love content that is new, just for the sake of new.

I still think that the Penguin update must be rolled back or a major adjustment made to it, simply because I can't see this continuing... eventually Google will have enough data to see that it has made a mistake.  It will also be interesting to see how their share of the search market fares post Panda. I'll be looking for a gain in Bing at the expense of Google.

Why Google's Penguin Update Will Fail

"Quality of inbound Links and the quality of content are not firmly correlated."

Last month Google rolled out its Penguin update, the alleged purpose of which is to improve the experience of searchers by penalizing websites with "spammy links."

There is flawed logic with this approach that is destined to result in the failure of Penguin, or at least will require a major adjustment.

Yes, its true that many websites have bought links to promote their sites and also to manipulate Google's results.  Why? Because for years Google rewarded link buying behavior with a good position in organic searches.  Google created this problem, but now suddenly it wants to put the genie back in the bottle.  Google has decided that any websites that have what it considers an "unnatural" link profile will be slapped with a penalty.  I actually own a website that was rightly "A #1" for its search term, and for years sat on that throne.  Yes, I bought links.  Big deal (I won't identify the site because, well, I'm scared of Google).

The reason that Penguin will eventually fail is that in many cases, such as mine, the content of the site is excellent. In my case the content is well planned, original, updated, and the best source for its niche subject.

Although my site was knocked way back to the bottom of page 5 presumably for links Google considers spammy, that content remains excellent. In fact, its much better content than the other 200 or so pages that are ahead of it.

As with many my things in my life, I don't think my experience is unique.  If this happened to me, then it probably happened to you and half a million other websites.

It's difficult for me to believe that a company like Google, which purports to place a premium on serving up excellent content for its users, will be satisfied very long with delivering second rate content.  Just to make a point with people it's angry with.

Links and the quality of content are not mutually exclusive.  And with many articles now being posted on blogs by scared SEO Pro's who are scrambling (unsuccessfully it appears) to try to remove the thousands of links that were placed on these website, it just ain't gonna happen. Although I sense an excellent business opportunity for the owners of link and directory website to charge for the removal of links, the fact is those links are here to stay.

The only thing that Penguin will accomplish is to encourage a different kind of behavior that Google will eventually deem undesirable.   Google, do you really think I'm going to contact 5,000 link website owners with an individual request to remove my link? Really?

I've already began aging the .NET version of my site. Website owners will simply abandon their "spammy" sites with great content and start over. We go to the top once, we'll get there again because its our livelihood.

Thanks to Penguin, the web will simply become that much more cluttered....   Great content with crappy inbound links,  buried by hastily built sites with lesser content that outrank the good stuff.  Crap at the top of Google's search results, which is exactly the result they are trying to avoid.

Once Google realizes this error, one approach they could take is to consider whether any 'new' spammy links are added. If no more are added over a period of time, then give more tilt to the quality of the content and allow the sites to rise again.  But if Google takes too long to do this, then their actions will continue to encourage the pollution of the internet.

Or Google could provide us with a method to "disavow" a link through its webmasters tools.  Or how about a "badlinks.txt" file on our website that tells Googlebot that we agree with them that the following links are bad. Mea culpa!

Inbound links are not spam.  Bad search results at the top of Google are spam.  Google only has itself to blame for the problem.   If it hadn't been so easy to game Google in this manner for so many years, I wouldn't have had to play this game. I wouldn't have had to fight fire with fire.

This is why Penguin has failed.

UPDATE:

[Note: since I wrote this 2 days ago, my site has crept up from bottom of page 5 to be the last listing on page 3.  Meanwhile, a shill blog site I built to provide links suddenly now is on page 1.  That's astounding, since the content is just crap. I will begin to add good content to this site and see if I can leverage it to the top of the page 1. 

Ultimately, great content will trump inbound links. I just have to believe it. No way is Google going to continue to embarrass itself like this.  I wish I was brave enough to provide examples for you. It is a lot of fun watching Google squirm, but I don't think its in my best interest at this time.]

Google Plus is a big disappointment so far.

So all this noise about Google+, the Facebook killer.  I have read they are over 10 million users and growing like crazy. Yet, if I try to log into Google+, I'm greeted with the message: "Right now, we're testing with a small number of people, but it won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone."

Why on earth would Google want to promote this service when only a paltry 10 million or so can actually use it? It's irritating to say the least, and my interest is waning. This reminds of the Orkut debacle, when Google did the same thing.  I couldn't log into that service either, unless I was invited. Guess what? No one invited me to Orkut and I setup shop on LinkedIn and Facebook instead.

Come on, Google! Open the doors already and let us in!  I'm tired of standing in the rain.

Six Reasons Why Google Adwords Sucks

1. Google will give your keywords a "low quality score" but  will not tell why.
2. You can screw for weeks with improving your landing page, keywords and ads all you want, but your quality score still won't move.
3. Google will lower your quality score suddenly and without warning, raising your cost per click 20 times. By the time you figure it out, you will have paid $3.00 for each click you were previously pay .15 cents for
4. Google will "recommend" new keyword "opportunities" for you, but these keywords will register as "low quality" if you add them to your keyword list.
5. Google reps will say they will call you back, but they really won't. They don't care.
6. Google thinks they know more about your business than you do, but they really don't.

If there were another game in town, I would move all of my Adwords business today.  Google is acting like an evil monopoly.  Google Adword's suck-ass quality can only bode poorly for Google as emerging competitors like Facebook, Bing-Yahoo, Baidu and others begin to get their acts together.

The unfortunate bottom line is that Google doesn't give a shit about serving its small long-tail customers. Now that they're a giant, they could give a shit about the ants that built the pile that is now Google.