SEO What the Hell Happened?

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I think I figured out exactly what is going on with my website and why it lost so much ranking. It has nothing to do with content vs ads, amount of content on a page, page speed, or any of that other stuff webmasters have been talking about.

It is a combination of a few things: authority, web address, and links.

Authority:
My website doesn't have too many links to the homepage. Other sites ranking higher have more links to the homepage and less on the inner pages. To remedy this, I need to simply get more links to the homepage.

Web address:
Sites ranking higher have the keywords in their web address. Mine only has partial. I'm not going to change this. I'm sure this is something Google will tweak sometime anyway.

Links:
Some of the links which were giving the website so much power are now gone (host went offline or directory listing deleted) or the links have been given less power by Google for whatever reason. Either way, I can't control it. I can only try to get more links.

I've been hitting my head against the wall ever since the Panda Update to find out what the hell happened to the website. But these seem to be the only true reasons.

A month gone by and no noticeable changes

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Since I announced my new venture into starting a new link campaign, I have found that no real changes have been made towards the amount of traffic received. This is horrible. A month long worth of work and nothing to show for it.

I have another angle to take on this and hopefully it works out. However, I'm quite a bit disappointed in this outcome. Perhaps a few more months and this idea would work, but I'm not ready to wait that long for it to turn out. Too much money is being lost right now due to loss of traffic.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Update Stating There's Not Much of an Update

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If you keep up with the blog, you know that I do a lot of testing. I'm trying to find a new way for better links. I've tried link baiting, simple article writing, creating widgets, and good ol' plain content writing. However, with the new changes at Google, that doesn't seem to be enough.

A ton of links don't seem to show up on Google Webmasters any longer. Whether this is due to major devaluation, the links disappearing, or under-reporting by Google (which, of course, they were known to do in the past) I don't really know. But what I do know, is that PoemofQuotes is no longer at the top of some major keywords.

In the past, I would become complacent with where the website laid. Getting the traffic and the money was great, especially when not much work needed to be added to the website in terms of link building and SEO. Of course, that was rather silly of me. Link building and other SEO should always be done.

I'm continuing with my current mission of link building. So far, there isn't much results. But much of that has to do with me being sidetracked to fix another issue with the website. Now that I'm back to link building, we'll hopefully see some results in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I created a new squidoo page titled Best TV Quotes. Check it out.

Marketing is Tough, So is Creating a Popular Squidoo Page - Funny Quotes Addition

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I've been doing quite a few things on Squidoo over the past few months, although I've taken a little break recently. Squidoo is a site which allows members to write articles about anything you can think of, as long as it isn't pornographic or illegal in nature. This allows marketers to use the service in order to create backlinks and gain exposure from a new audience.

One article which I'm currently trying to pump juice into is Funny Quotes. This is a long and tedious venture, but the rewards of doing so will be aplenty.

Here's what I'll receive in return: money directly from Squidoo, money indirectly from Squidoo members.

This sounds great, right? Of course it does. However, it isn't as easy as it sounds. Squidoo members are close-knit group for the most part and like most communities, community participation is a must.

Luckily, I'm not too interested in Squidoo rankings for this particular page. I want the traffic and links.

Changes Still Affecting Sites

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Google's major search engine results changes rolling out has changed the traffic being sent to PoemofQuotes quite a bit. Not only have many major keywords not been sending traffic but even minor keywords are down.

The devaluation of certain links have definitely taken a huge toll on PoemofQuotes. I do not trade links nor spam the links in questionable areas. However, a major part of link-building has been through EzineAricles, Squidoo, and other article directories.

The overall traffic sent to EzineArticles was said to be down the first couple weeks of the rollout but has since climbed back up to their norm.

So what is the true cause of PoemofQuotes's traffic failure?

It's a tough question to answer, but when looking at the major keywords on Google, I notice a few things right off the bat. The number one keyword for [funny quotes] is new, as are several of the other top 10 (including what I would call a spam site). Going past the top 10, I start to see a few blogs without comments but many posts.

Going back to the front page, I begin to notice a trend. Fresh content. If they aren't blogs, they still contain user generated content. If they don't contain either, they contain links to other websites, usually unrelated and the unrelated websites have links back.

Hmmm... I thought Google fixed this years ago?

So it's back. Unrelated link trades can generate huge gains in the SERPs, at least at the current moment. This may just be for non-money words. However, it seems to be working quite successfully.