Getting out of the Google Bunker

I few days ago I wrote about one of my sites getting struck down by Google. The site was doing pretty well and I’d recently started filling it out with more informational pages as well as general interest pieces related to the niche rather than it just being a site full or products (albeit with unique product descriptions of 300 words each). It was ranking pretty well for a number of search terms then overnight on the 12 of May 2011 it was deranked for a load of those keywords falling out of the top 200. It still ranks for its exact match domain keyword but is now hovering around the bottom or page one rather than being nailed to the top of the SERPs like it was for the past year or so.
I’ve been reading about Kirsty’s experience which sounds similar to mine although on a much bigger scale. For me this is just one site of many but as its fate could befall my other sites I thought I’d have a go at getting it back in the SERPs so if it does happen to any more of my site at least I will have some info or what to do or not to do.
So far what I’ve been doing is the following:
- Create a twitter account I’ve created a twitter account and am in the process of following as many people I can who are related to the niche. Hopefully a few of them will follow me back and maybe one day might retweet my site.
- Create a Facebook page I’ve had the Facebook like buttons on my site for ages but its not been linked to a page so I’ve not been able to track how many people have clicked them. Hopefully I can get some fans and then perhaps get some traffic from Facebook to show social proof to Google and also diversify my traffic sources a bit as 99.99% of my visitors come from Google.
- Keep adding new content I’ve read about people leaving their sites when they take a hit from Google and waiting for them to come back of their own accord but I think I will keep adding content as normal and try and get a new page or post added every few days.
- Keep building links I’m going to keep on slowly building links for this site. For months I never built any links and it got to number one for its main keyword but when I started adding more pages and targeting related keywords I started building links for them. This might have been what triggered the Google slap but it wasn’t anything major like an Xrummer blast. I went from no backlinks for a year to more than none all of a sudden. I will keep adding the odd Web 2.0 property and article or blog post.
- Try and reduce bounce rate On nearly all my site I like to make it as easy as possible for my visitors to get to the merchant sites. I don’t see the point in making them jump through hoops so they can buy a product. I promote a product with a review and an image and often a price comparison and then if they decide they want to buy the merchant is just one click away. I hear Google doesn’t like sites where the visitor only visits one page so I will need to try and create a bit of a labrynth on my site to keep the user there for a few pages before giving them what they want and what they came for.
That should keep my busy for now. Any other ideas of things I should be doing?







