Google slapped

**kcheung** · 23-01-08

Just had my first experienced of getting a slap from google, sites till in their index, but...

background - sites about DJing, mostly generic content, but on occasion especially with reviews i tend to copy and paste some of the content then add my own comments. I write about 2-5 articles a night after work,I occasionally throw in a link bait type post and write with a focus on a handful of keywords and recently begun link building as follows:

on targeted directory's on DJing
on wikipedia (no follow tag) but its relevant)
on yahoo answers (over the last few nights i got a bit carried away and answered a whole load of questions on iPods, which to be fair are relevant to the site) - i suspect this was what dropped my rankings.
on DJ forums - no as much just one or two posts here and there.
on technorati and digg and facebook

my traffic for yesterday (small i know but this is a hobby for me) was 286 (highest ever), normally i get over 100+, today i saw only 104 hit as of right now (5pm) so i'm guess it won't hit more than 150 tonight, significantly lower than i had hoped. same day in previous weeks was 170.

I'm wondering if this is cause to be worried and if there is something i can do to improve these results?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Ken

**moredial** · 23-01-08

You have not given enough information. Just a dip in visitors does not mean very much. Could be just one position in the SERPs.

You need to monitor the search terms bringing in visitors and the position for each of those search terms, daily. If one drops, then you can start to look for the reason.

Just saying traffic is down says nothing.

**Cheapdvds** · 23-01-08

u could try using seo elite or something similar to monitor your google position for certain keywords , this may help in seeing number of visitors related to google position

**kcheung** · 23-01-08

hmmmm, thanks! really appreciate the advice, I know i should have provided more information on the keyword searches, thing is it wasn't jsut that search terms as such, but also the number of searches i was getting coming to my site... for instance for some of the really long tail stuff i do pretty well, eg: 'Tips for DJing on a computer' but today, it seems the number of searches coming into my site is down significantly, and this was what caused me concern:

specifically, 7 inbound searches today, normally its between 30 and 40 a day that arrive at my site.

Do you think this has any bearing?

Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it!

Ken

**3wdl** · 23-01-08

Do you still rank for the long tail terms? Sites have up and down days in terms of traffic..

**fizzbird** · 23-01-08

Originally Posted by kcheung

Do you think this has any bearing?

Could be just one of those things?
On my wedding site the traffic isn't high but it's predictable as anything. Now and again it will spike through the roof - this is often a case of a blog or forum member posting a link. It can last a couple of days and then goes back to normal.

Interestingly, traffic always peaks when there is a football match on terrestrial tv

Converesely, I can have odd times when traffic drops significantly for a day or two. Maybe due to some girly s***e being on TV - not investigated this though tbh.

**kcheung** · 23-01-08

the long tail stuff wasn't deliberate on my part but happened as a result of me being addicted to DJing technology, but it seems even those have been affected by this lack of search results, seems that its gone down in rankings for virtually everything really.

Fizzbird, yeah maybe its just people are too upset about Heath Ledger to be worried about DJing...

most of the inbounds seem to be coming from referred traffic as a result of my rather fanatical link back session on yahoo last night...

looks like my site is mirroring the trends in the stock market.

**moredial** · 23-01-08

Originally Posted by kcheung

most of the inbounds seem to be coming from referred traffic as a result of my rather fanatical link back session on yahoo last night...

One figure I heard recently is that linking, if done well, can reduce your reliance on search engine traffic down to 5%. Apparently search engines are the source of only 5% of all traffic.

If you are getting referrals, then your linking is worth a lot more to you than worrying about what some search engine is doing this week.

You keep saying that your traffic and ranking is down. Without saying what you have been over the last few days - say, #1 yesterday to #8 today - it could just be a normal fluctuation in traffic.