If you’ve read my story you’ll know that I make money in a wide variety of ways from my beginnings with a video game website, to selling information products, doing consulting calls, building and running content focused websites etc. The reason why I like to make money in several different ways is because the markets are always changing and it’s entirely possible for a market to fall apart overnight.
Google recently made a major change to their search engine results pages and while I normally don’t comment on a lot of SEO news I think this recent 12% change to all Google US results is worth talking about. Before we go any further, you might be wondering if my websites were affected by the recent changes by Google?
Short Answer: No.
Fortunately, the websites I build were unaffected by the changes that Google put into place that changed 12% of the Google US Search Engine Results Pages. (You can read the details of the changes here).
Should You Be Afraid Of Google Algorithm Changes?
Yes, of course you should be afraid of what Google may change because you can literally have an income stream cut off overnight. This is precisely why when I build websites I set out with the goal to create a website that is better than the #1 ranking website for my target keyword. This includes creating better content than the #1 site and getting more links from equal or greater sources than the #1 website.
While this sounds simplistic in theory it really can take a lot of work to build a great website; however, as I’ve illustrated before it can certainly be worth the effort especially when you can turn around and sell that website for six figures.
How To Sleep Easier At Night:
If you realize that the goal of Google is to provide users with the best experience then it makes perfect sense that your goal should be provide the best experience too. There is no set formula to build the best user experience for your website because it will change from website to website but one of the ways I sleep easier is when I look at the rest of the search results and fail to find a website that is presenting information better than I am. If you think about it from this perspective it makes it easier to know that there will be a place for you in future years as Google search gets better and better.
(Note: For today’s Google search quality links still play a critical role and I believe they will continue to for several more years. So while quality content is important don’t forget that’s only half of the puzzle)
Were your sites hit by the Google update? Share in the comments below…
Coming Up: I’m going to do another big update discussing my Amazon earnings as well as posting an update in my series on how to make a profitable information product. Stick around…
I agree. Doing what google wants ultimately will lead to longer term business success! 🙂
Yes, and although you can make money from loopholes it’s a lot more risk than just focusing on building quality sites 😀
Hey Chris ,can you tell me which host site the best to make a good website and by the way which host site are you using?
Thanks
Bluehost or Hostgator are good initial options. I use Pagely for this blog.
I must admit I was worried my sites were going to drop too, but when I thought about it the content of them is good, the links are from high PR sources and (knowing a bit about software myself) I think it would have to be a very smart algorithm that decided I was eventually trying to make money from my sites. In fact, like you, I’d like to think that my sites were actually providing some sort of service. Definitely more than the link farms etc. that I think they were targeting.
I agree with Dino Vedo, you gotta follow the rules and development and run by the rules. The good thing about changes is that people paying attention to changes (there will be more) will have a god outcome and get better rankings and make more money.
Personally (im not american) my sites did not change much at all:)
I checked out my rankings for dental blog and dental forum and found that my results were not changed, my top keywords are keeping my site on first page of google for high competitive keywords and on first rank of google for low competitive keywords.
Nice glad t o see you weren’t affected by the changes.
Oddly enough, the PageRank of my main blogs home page dropped, leaving many of the sites inner pages outranking (pagerank wise) it. Could just be a glitch though, because all monitored search engine rankings remain unscathed.
Well, for the most part I don’t even bother looking at page rank anymore these days. All I want are rankings in the search engines…
In general I don’t either. But unfortunately most newbies do. And because I happen to write a blog about SEO, i’m pretty sure they don’t take my tips as seriously as they would if the site had a higher PageRank.
I could care less about it on any of my other sites!
That’s true. I hear that all the time from people that know just a little bit about running websites. They’ll ask what is your page rank. If they then ask me how many hits I have then I know they’re even more noobie than I first anticipated… 😀
I think it’s important for webmasters to start looking for traffic sources outside of Google. Yes, I know search converts easily but we should try and find other ways/avenues that contribute revenue as well. Such as building a mailing list and finding prospects in social networks or forums… where people are looking for our product. Sometimes the venues are better ways to find customers if you establish yourself as an expert
I had already forgotten about the google algorithm changes until I just read your post. Now I am paranoid because my traffic has been slightly down the last two days, but I think my sites are still fine. There are a lot of sites that scrape my content (and those are probably the sites that will get slapped by google), so I wonder if that will have any affect on my sites in one way or another.
Yes, I read your story about how you make money in a variety of way’s,
Infact I even heared about it in a Teleseminar Replay…,
(BTW thanks, you really – opened my eyes – with your info
about ‘variety’ in linking to products within the content,
and telling about just simply getting visitors onto Amazon!)
Anyway,
I do know that SEO is important, and that you have to provide the user with the best experience, giving them what they want, Only the ‘SEO-ing’ (and how to position my Blog(s)) is something that I still find a little difficult to figure out. For example when people – using the search engines – type in their Keywords I am wondering if they usually only type small characters or also use kapitals, and when I am going to optimise do I have to optimize for both small and kapital versions of my Keywords or doesn’t it matter?
All the Best,
HP
Congratulations on being listed on Eric’s blog (my 4hr workweek), Chris!
Both he and Pat Flynn have been recommending InfoBarrel quite a bit recently. (It was one of the first links on Eric’s latest post) (and…If you can’t trust Pat Flynn, who can you trust?)
If you are interested, my InfoBarrel product is now up for sale:
https://flippa.com/auctions/124872/Sales-Page-AND-6-Book-Course-Product-Aligned-with-Exponential-Growth-Website
You will see a killer testimonial from Pat Flynn there. In the hands of the right internet marketer, this product is worth tens of thousands of dollars (at least). Pat, single-handedly, has referred hundreds of people to InfoBarrel.
I am sure you see the tremendous value of having a product so perfectly aligned with a site like that. The auction is coming to an end shortly.
I just simply don’t have the time, resources, or marketing leverage to take this product to where it will become in the hands of the right marketer.
Hey Howie,
Hit me up via email in the future for stuff like this. In either case thanks for the offer but I’ll pass primarily because I just prefer to avoid buying information product websites when I buy websites but good luck with the sale.
Chris
Great advice. I’m glad I don’t use any auto blog software. I knew that stuff would get killed eventually.
Chris,
Greetings mate. I was lucky and escaped any damage last week. It was early Feb when I took a hit but it bounced back better than ever on the 22nd. WOuld you belive nearly triple the visitors than before the hit.
I reckon the general consensus is to yeild to the G and give him what he wants. Write for people, It pays better.
[…] Guthrie, who also owns a number of niche websites,�wrote about the change. �It sounds like his sites weren’t affected negatively either. �Here’s a […]
I know you’re a fan of exact match domains, have you seen a hit from Google on your exact match domains and would you still recommend buying them? Brian Horn has a post where he says about the latest Google update:
February 24th: “Exact Match Domains” are history. There are some exceptions of course, but unless they are a .com and have age and size, they have been pushed to the back of the pile.
http://beonpage1blog.com/2011/03/the-google-farmer-update-and-how-it-sunk-millions-of-sites/
People like to use headlines to convince people to read their blogs etc. everyone does it (including me) and calling things “dead” or “history” always get high click thru rates. I’m still buying and using exact match domains but of course Google could discount them sometime in the future but in this business you need to focus on the here and now and make money while you can and at the same time try and look out at what’s on the horizon.
If you feel like they’re going to be penalized soon then it’s probably not worth investing AS MUCH money as before, on the other hand I’m still loving them.
The other thing to remember is that you could just use an emd as a good base to get your start in trying to rank.
Seems that the Google change is really the talk of the net, but fortunately it didn’t affect me so far… 😛
Well, like you said, strive to provide the best experience to your readers. I follow the formula of great content, relevant content, and detailed content.
My sites also either held steady, and in the case of one lucky site, had a traffic spike.
In general I think those selling with Amazon were not hurt – it was those with the spammy Adsense all over their sites who got dinged.
Normally I worry when there are algo changes, this is the first Google update which I found to be merely interesting (and in the case of watching Ezine twist in the wind, fun). I think Google has done the right thing this time and I’m not just saying that because I’ve gained from this update!
My sites weren’t hit but they would’ve been if it had happened just a few weeks later down the road. Cause I was going to be doing a lot of bum marketing using EZA to get high in the search ranks. Had written like 30 articles!
Guess not those articles are going towards the blog haha.
I get the feeling that google takes into account the length of time that readers spend on a site to rank it’s importance. Which means the better the quality of the content the longer your readers will stay and consequently the higher your site will rise in the rankings.
So the most important factor is content and for my (non-eshop) sites then I always build content carefully and place a few inbound links in place before going over board building pagerank.
I have found sites that climb up to number one in the rankings with very little input from me beyond filling the site with interesting content at the start.
My site was on page 2 two weeks ago.Now it is slowly going back.What is the problem?
I’m up across the board with my rankings, which is nice to see. The change did prompt me to start looking at other models, however, namely promoting physical products. One site tanked, but I think that has more to do with the Google dance than any Algo updates.
I thing the best way to deal with such google algorithm changes is not to depend entirely on search engine traffic and find more different ways to drive traffic to blog or website.
Yah that’s always an option but Google traffic converts way better than any other type of traffic in my experience. People can have their 50+ retweeted articles any day, I’d prefer a top spot for a competitive keyword over anything else.
Hi Chris – I guess the farmers slap hasn’t hurt the people who produce their own content. But what about the upcoming algorithm change that is going to give less weight to keyword driven urls. I just finished the niche profit course and I just launched an exact match url site that is moving up the serp for my key word. No garbage just clean how to info. What are your thoughts?
Hey Claude, Matt Cutts only said that they may change ranking factors on keyword domain names. He hasn’t said it with certainty yet. My opinion is to stick with what keeps working now and if things change I’ll simply pivot with the change.
I do agree that in the next year or two brand could play a larger role in ranking and who knows perhaps then I’ll say don’t use keywords – make up brands and try to be the best brand in your niche instead lol.
If you broaden your marketing activities to thinking beyond just google traffic then you will have covered yourself if you were to have issues with a google algo change. Look at starting social networking campaigns using facebook pages, twitter and sites like stumble if you have good content.
Hmmm, I’ve never found social media to be that effective in driving sales. People go on Facebook / Twitter to waste time. They go on Google to decide what to buy. That’s been my experience at least.
Google algorithm has introduced major changes making blogs more informative and user friendly for readers. As a reader I feel that Google’s rankings matters a lot but a blog which runs only for search engines is also not something readers get drawn to. It was an enriching experience to have read the comments from reputed bloggers.