So basically, my battle is that I’m struggling to rank organically for anything at the moment – even my site name – and my google webmaster tools is showing indexed urls: 0. This would suggest Ive been totally dropped from the index for being a ‘thin affiliate site’, however there are some rankings left for other terms and I am still showing up under the site: command. This gives me a very small hope that perhaps what I am experiencing is no more than some sort of filtering process as google familiarises itself with my site, its age, its backlinks and its content.

So what can I do about it? I have no idea really but my gut is telling me to put some time into creating 1 or 2 really useful articles (I mean, really useful, not just 500 words of relevant text that sounds sort of useful) and to write a couple of original ‘news’ items for the site with some outgoing links to sites that rank in the top 5 in google for my target keywords to ‘associate’ myself with some respectable sites.

The salt in the wound with all of this is that last week, when my site enjoyed a 2 day return to page 1 of google, I sold 3 items….

Anyone else been through this? Am I overreacting? Is the indexed urls: 0 thing normal? How can I fight this?

- Edit – I’ve just been trying to read about why my indexed urls could be 0 and I’ve stumbled onto a Google Caffiene update thread….could my rankings drop have anything to do with google’s long awaited ‘caffeine’ update?

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Take this one, for instance…

I came across a blog post today talking about how google was dead, or rather, how SEO just went all tits up.  I found myself drawn in as it was an interesting read in itself but when I got to the end I couldn’t help but feel like this was the arse end of a bad ripple from somewhere up at Tier 2 (a wannabe guru) which had filtered down and now those at the very bottom were re-writing the same article they had read up at Tier 2. Its like a panic effect where some important points get lost in translation because we’re all so used to focusing on SEO and rankings and lots of the scrapers at the bottom of the line just reword what was already written above without actually thinking about what they’re writing because they’re so focused on popping out 2 posts a day to meet the next target and gurus are gospels so what they say must be right. I don’t know, you get all them cool chess pieces at the back and then them little shitty ones at the front that do all the shitty work..it was a bit like that.

Anyway, the problem with this tradition though, is that we’ve all gone mad and lost sight of what google has always been about.  Providing relevant content to its users.

And this is precisely the reason why I don’t think google has gone tits up or, indeed, will ever go tits up (to the point of no return at least).  At the end of the day, google makes money by providing as accurate a set of results as possible, so even though the chance of localising campaigns and geotargeting SERPS is practically set in stone for our future, we should not look at this with disdain or within an armageddonesque context. It is not the end of SEO!

How Can I Say This, I’m Not Bruce Willis!

Well, if google’s most singular goal in life (lets naively assume they’re not out just for our money just for a second and just for the sake of this article) is to deliver accurate, representative, relevant content, then surely that content spans beyond geotargeting and localisation?  For example, if you have a product that gets shipped nationwide and you build a worthy, reliable, authoritative website that distributes goods and services nationwide and you optimise your site with this in mind and market it and build a big, respected brand around it, then surely google cannot ignore it? My mind wanders here to play.com, amazon.com, ebay.com…its not possible that google will filter out these websites because of geographical restraints because they have such a huge, global presence therefore my thought process goes along to think that if you are already optimising your site to be the ‘biggest in its niche’ then surely your 250 page website about chinese dwarf hamsters will be just as relevant to Dr Frank in Transylvania as it would be for the Church of Stathamology in LA?

The important factor here being the nature of the data sought, which is, let’s just remind ourselves and the Gurus of SEODOM, what search is all about.  If its information, then geographical restraints won’t matter.  If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a specific product then surely local results are a good thing?   When I search for a beauty therapist to wax my ass crack I don’t want to be presented with Ass Waxers from brunei when I live in England just because theyve got a million links and some clever way of making every page relevant to my search no matter whether I’m looking for nipple clamps or neoprene gyroscopes, nor even Ass Waxers in london if I live in Yorkshire…but if I am presented with Ass Waxers in Yorkshire…and the one that was SEO’d the best is at the top…then its a win/win, right?

For commercial products/services, the well SEO’d site will still outranks its counterparts in its region because that is the nature of search, and for information, the well written, super king authority site will still outrank localised information sites if they are more relevant to the content the user is looking for.

It doesn’t matter how it gets interpreted by the Super Gurus on Tier 1 or the wannabe wannabe wannabe wannabes at the very bottom of the pile (like me), google is just doing us all a favour and if you have a website that sells local services/products (and lets face it a good 75% of small businesses do), then you’re in a stronger position for the future than you’ve ever been.  For those that sell nationally, just remember the golden rule:

Solve The User’s Problem First, Then Sell Your Products Later and You’ll be Alright.