Here's my biggest SEO mistake which has cost me $1000's in lost
revenue. Don't make the same foolish mistake!

                                   


My Biggest SEO Mistake And How You Can Avoid It
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins








Imagine this: for years you have kept the number one
spot in Google for a very lucrative and profitable 
keyword phrase. This keyword alone adds hundreds of 
dollars of daily income to your bottom line. Then 
suddenly your number one keyword starts bouncing like 
it's attached to a yo-yo with a fifty foot cord. 

One day your keyword is at #1 in Google, next day it
drops to the #50 spot. Ouch!

You're scrambling to find out the reason for this
disastrous fall from Google's graces. After you have
exhausted all your cuss words, your limited but very 
fine-tuned SEO brain goes into overdrive and starts 
dissecting the problem.

Newer sites have suddenly catapulted into your
once glorious spot. You know some of them are buying
links because a few of the sites in the top spots
have even approached you for links. But link buying
is not the real problem because a few days later
your keyword has bounced back into the number two
spot.

Your first assumption: Google is launching another
one of their countless updates to how it ranks their
index and everything bounces/dances for awhile. But the 
SEO forums are fairly quiet and no major updates are 
on the radar.

What's happening?

The most puzzling aspect of my keyword meltdown 
dilemma is the bouncing back and forth. The obvious
reason - there must be some Google filter that my page
and/or keywords are triggering. Something within Google's
200+ ranking factors is causing a few of my most
valuable keywords to suddenly become bungee jumping
wannabes.

When the same thing happens to another one of my 
long standing top 5 keywords - I know I have a serious 
problem. I am definitely doing something wrong with my 
site or my link building; probably both!

Most of my SEO and link building is done through 
article marketing; I submit informative articles to all the 
free article directories on the web and my articles get 
picked up and placed on thousands of sites. In my 
resource box at the end of these articles I am 
careful to vary my keyword anchor text links because 
it's generally believed that Google has a keyword
quota - repeat the exact same keyword phrase too
many times and you risk getting banned for keyword
spamming.

Any link building has to appear natural in the eyes 
of Google. This is only SEO common sense, someone
linking to your site naturally will use many different
text or words in the link. But for years I have been
using link bait - quality articles, ebooks, videos,
software downloads... so that webmasters naturally
link to my sites because of the quality content their
visitors can receive. These webmasters use many 
different anchor text in those incoming links to
my sites.

If a keyword quota is not the problem, then what is
causing this yo-yo effect? Why are my keywords bouncing
in Google? And why is it only in the lucrative U.S. 
rankings and not in other countries?

Then while closely monitoring my keyword results
in Google I found what I believe to be the problem 
and my mistake. I say "believe" because with Google
nobody is sure what is happening within their algorithm,
including the engineers who created it. Over time
it has become so complex and interactive, nobody can
honestly predict what results it will cough up.

In my case, Google was listing both my main index homepage 
and my optimized page for the same keyword phrase. This 
appears to be diluting the ranking of both pages. The optimized 
page was at around 50 and my homepage came in at the 95 spot. 
However, this is more my mistake than Google's, since I 
inadvertently placed the same keyword phrase in links on 
my homepage going to other interior pages and not necessarily
to my main optimized page which I wanted ranked in Google.

Let me explain further, I develop sections of my site
that are keyworded to different markets generally relating
to my main site or domain. For the keyword phrase in 
question, I have a well established page that's linked
from hundreds of related sites around the web - this is the
page that should be ranked for this keyword phrase since 
it is the most relevant, not my homepage. Likewise, on
my own site I have constructed my pages so that PR flows
to this optimized page. For years, this optimized interior 
page held the number one spot in Google.

However, recently when Google was spidering and updating 
my site in their index, they picked up that keyword phrase 
and linked it to my homepage as well as to my optimized page 
- causing both pages to drop in the rankings. Now when Google 
re-indexes my site and DOESN'T pick up the keyword phrase 
on my homepage - my optimized page pops back into the #2 
spot in Google, or at least on the first page results. 

Only problem is - I have been using this linking structure
or this practice for 4 or 5 years but only now am I seeing 
those rankings drop. Could Google be cracking down on PageRank 
Sculpting within your own site? Matt Cutts discusses this issue
in a  recent blog post. 

Matt Cutts on PageRank Sculpting 














Google seems to be randomly selecting text from your page to 
index and this can be quite fluid each time they re-visit your 
page. Now it seems to be more of a hit and miss, which keyword 
phrase your page is ranked for in Google; definitely giving SEO 
a bad name and lowering the effectiveness of Google Search!

There are probably off-site penalties as well in play
here too because I also made the same mistake of linking 
another keyword phrase to my homepage, instead of to my 
optimized page where I want and where my visitors should go
because it has the most relevant content for those
keywords. As far as I can judge, this is misleading
Google and causing my rankings to drop for both pages. 

At least, this appears to be what is happening but with Google 
nothing is certain. Besides, if this was the case, couldn't 
someone easily sabotage another site's rankings by creating 
links to your competitor's homepage with your mutual keyword 
in the anchor text as long as that competing site has this same 
keyword on a sub/interior optimized page rather than on their homepage. 
Or if Google has a keyword quota, could a less than scrupulous 
competitor sabotage your rankings with thousands of spammy links 
to your content in order to make your rankings drop or be penalized. 
We are talking revenues in product sales changing hands, corrupt 
people have done a lot more for a lot less! Google would never 
let that happen, would they? Could they even stop it from happening? 

Shiver me timbers!

But this bouncing keyword effect in Google has probably
more to do with what you place on your site and homepage.  
Be careful of the keyword phrases you use on your homepage 
and don't link to other interior pages using the same keyword 
phrase other than your optimized page - the one you want listed 
in Google's results. Try to coach Google into only listing your 
optimized relevant page for that all important lucrative keyword.

What really complicates things, if Google lists both pages 
(your homepage and optimized page) together in their SERPs
you will probably be jumping for joy because this means you 
will be getting much more traffic, especially if this double
listing is on the first page. Many search engine marketers,
myself included, really target this kind of double listing 
in Google because no matter where it appears on the first 
page - you still get much more traffic than a single listing.

Now, lets try to summarize, you want double listings for your 
keyword as long as they are together - say in the #1 and #2 spots 
in Google. But you don't want to make my mistake and have two single 
listings in the #50 and #95 spots in Google for your favored keyword, 
as this appears to dilute the rankings of both pages. PageRank
Sculpting maybe something you should pay attention to on your site. 
Be extremely careful of how you link to your homepage and/or your 
optimized page for the same keyword phrase and be careful of how 
you use that same keyword on your homepage. In the process, try to 
coach Google's algorithm into listing the right page for your chosen 
keyword phrase. Hold your breath and pray that thing hasn't developed 
a mind of its own while nobody was looking. 



... 

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous 
websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools 
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins.



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