When Your Site Traffic Slips or Gets Booted Out

Webmasters who are serious about their websites eventually get sucked into the world of SEO where serp watching becomes a necessary addiction. They learn soon enough that search engines are fickle and prone to changes. What they (search engines) call updates and improvements usually translates into worry and panic for the inexperienced webmaster as they watch their sites bouncing up and down or even get booted out of the serps. Experienced webmasters too, are never immune to such changes. A search engine algorithm change can cause a sudden decline in traffic and earnings. :ohman:

Here’s a couple of tips to help new webbies when you find your site’s ranking or traffic slipping down :

1. PANIC! It’s a necessary reaction that you just can’t avoid. Don’t worry, your ability to handle these sudden surprises gets better eventually.
2. Rant and Rave! Also a necessary reaction. Go ahead and let it all out. After you’ve got everything out of your system and you’re ready to tackle the problem…
3. Check your site’s main page. Is your site live? Have you inadvertantly uploaded a wrong version of your main page?
4. Check your RSS feeds. Many webbies forget to check the validity of their RSS feeds after they make modifications to it. An invalid RSS feed can cause a huge decline in traffic to your site.
5. If your site is dynamic (database driven), check your database to make sure the tables, queries and links are OK
6. Check the forums. You’ll find the latest news about SEO at : http://www.webmasterworld.com.
7. Check the blogs. If you’re experiencing a problem with Yahoo! then the blog you need to head to is : http://www.ysearchblog.com
8. If it’s a Google issue, a good place to start is at : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog
9. Participate in the forums and blogs. If you don’t find any post similar to what you’re experiencing, make a new post and ask. You are never alone. Communicating via forums is a great way to find out that there are others facing the same situation as yours. It helps knowing that you’re not alone.
10. If there IS an update going on in the serps, then hang loose and wait. Chances are it’s just a temporary thing that will settle down.
11. Check if you’ve inadvertently made changes that would cause your site to be banned (more on that in future posts).
12. Learn. Managing and marketing a website isn’t something that comes overnight. You gotta roll with the punches.

I’ve said it many times before and I’ll keep saying it… making money online isn’t as simple as making a cup of instant coffee. It takes time and effort. SEO is a necessary part of it. Hope the post helps in some way.

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