What you Need to Know to Recover your Google Rankings

An SEO Introduction

If you have seen a drop in your Google rankings, it is vital for you to first establish whether your site has been hit by either the Panda or the Penguin algorithm. Penguin is the cause if you can see a search traffic drop on the 24th April 2012.

The keywords that dominate your exact match anchor text are the ones usually hit the hardest by Penguin. The free back-link checking tool at www.majesticseo.com is the most convenient way to analyse your current keyword anchor text.

Linking Profile

The keyword density for each keyword link needs to be less than 5%. You need to reduce the volume of keyword rich anchor text links. Replace them with Brand links, URL based links and ‘junk’ links. Ideal Brand names include your registered company name or the name of your website. Your URL links should be a mixture of different permutations of your domain name;

http://www.xyzcompany.com
http://www.xyzcompany.com/
http://xyzcompany.com
http://xyzcompany.com/
www.xyzcompany.com
www.xyzcompany.com/
xyzcompany.com
xyzcompany.com/

Focus on building high quality links from different Class C IP addresses. Links on content related sites will help your Google rankings much more than unrelated sites. The PR score and trust score are crucial for your back-links. Build back-links from website pages with back-links.

Using Link Networks

You should avoid automated link networks because Google doesn’t like site owners using them and sooner or later you will be penalized for using them & see further google rankings demotions.

On-Page SEO

Along with reducing the off-page keyword density through Penguin, Google has changed it’s requirements for on-page keyword density too. Maximum keyword density on-page should not exceed 2% – get your keyword density checked at www.seo-seo-seo.co.uk. The page meta description is frequently used in SERP’s below your page title. This is an opportunity for you to increase click through rates from the search engines which counts as a measure of your sites user engagement.

How Visitors Engage with Your Content

Slow loading websites don’t rank very well. Use YSlow in Firefox to test the load speed of your site content. Your site visitors should ideally stay to read your content. Those that leave straight away contribute to your site ‘bounce rate’ which needs to be less than 55% for top Google rankings.

Visitor Page Views

Google measures the quality of your site by looking at the average number of pages viewed by visitors. The more pages each person looks at, the better your content is perceived to be. When Google sends you a visitor, it gauges how long they stay on your site. Longer visits indicate relevance and high quality content that your visitors are engaging with.

Recovering your Google Rankings

In order to rank well, you need to address all of the above criteria. Together they all add weight to your Optimisation campaign and will give you the top Google rankings that you are looking for. Each individual element of SEO relies on the other criteria so all of your on-page and off-page SEO is tied together.

Start with a 175 point website SEO audit from Deeho and find out the current health of your website. Contact Deeho today and let them show you how you can improve your websites SEO campaign performance and recover your Google rankings again.