My Search Engine Rankings have dropped recently - Why?

There can be many reasons behind search engine rankings being dropped as mentioned below.

SPAM Techniques used in Website
You may have used hidden text, doorway pages, duplicate content on various web pages of the website, cloaking, over optimized web pages etc in your website. Search engines don’t like this.

So, remove all hidden text elements from your website or rewrite those & make it visible. In case of doorway pages, remove it or rewrite those pages with proper look & feel, having different title & meta pages for each page, variance in content for each doorway page, limiting outgoing links to 40 per page & remove keywords stuffing content. Cloaking should be avoided completely. For Over optimized web pages, remove extra stuffing & repeating words, keep keyword density upto 3-4% & place targeted keywords at importance parts of webpage properly.

If you have web pages that contain similar content then remove those pages which are not of relevance OR rewrite all those pages targeting different keyword per page making sense to visitors. Idea behind is not to repeat same content & speak differently.

Major Changes done in Website
If you have done any major changes in your website content recently then it is likely that it may affect your current search engine rankings. If you wish to retain those rankings, then make minor changes in existing content and add related content for new targeted keywords, if possible.

Incase if you have made changes in site structure, web page URLs or webpage name then again it may affect search engine rankings. It is because of some external web pages may have linked to a particular web page of your website, which is no more available or because of path changed. In such a scenario, care should be taken in redefining a new site structure & what impact will it create. E.g. 1) For web pages that already have PR, it is advisable not to make any changes in URLs or page name. 2) Those webpage(s) submitted by you to different search engines & directories, it will be good if you don’t change path. 3) For all paid or banner links available on your webpage, it should not take a risk unless you know what you are doing.

Server related problems
If your server remains down or experience downtime more often, then you lose visitors. Not only that, search engine crawlers may fail to index your webpage(s), if it visits on the instance when your server is down. Such instances may lead to dropping of search engine rankings. So, select a good, reliable web hosting vendor that listens to your server related problems & responds promptly.

More & More websites
Adding of new websites every day increases your competition particularly if it’s related to your industry or site theme. In addition to this, routine updates & changes made by your competitors may give you a pinch. Plus, changes that happen in search engine algorithms makes it more difficult. Under this scenario, keep a close look on all these changes and react strategically.

Source: Web2Promote - An Internet Marketing, Web Promotion and SEO Guide

Does Google Adwords helps in improving Organic Search Engine Rankings in Google?

Answer is NO.

Google Adwords is a Paid Advertising that offers instant traffic whereas Organic Listings is Zero cost advertising that helps in driving relevant traffic. Both are totally different and work independently from each other.

In order to receive high rankings in Google, it depends upon several factors like Google PR, back links, title & meta tags, indexing frequency, keyword density, prominence & proximity, website popularity etc. Google uses its special secret formula using these factors to display its Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) based on keywords or keyphrases keyed in. It keeps on updating its formula & parameters that affects search engine listings from time to time. Also, more and more websites are adding globally, which leads to increase in competition level.

On the other hand, Google Adwords can be designed to keywords, location, audience & budget specific. It definitely helps in driving most relevant & traffic over organic listings. But it has no connection with search engine ranking factors that Google follows for organic listings.

Does Blogging helps in boosting Search Engine Traffic?

Of course YES. Answer to this question is simple.
As you may have heard that, Search Engines like fresh content. This is true. Blogs are informative, interactive and dynamic websites, where you can find good amount of content on various industries, topics and ideas posted by blog users. This makes blogs updated so often that they rank higher on search engines particularly Google.
So, you can start your own blog, throw good topics of discussion or some informative material useful to your targeted visitors and then encourage them to visit your website on similar topics or to know about your website & offerings. Also, one can receive comments or feedback to your postings from blog visitors/groups.
Another important thing that make these blogs so special are most of today’s popular blogs are designed search engine friendly and possess good features like RSS feeds, receiving email alerts on new postings, supports customization on look & feel, insert plugins etc.

Some well known blogs are
• http://blogspot.com/ (BlogSpot)
• http://wordpress.com/ (WordPress)
• http://blog.com (Blog)
• http://blogsavy.com/ (BlogSavy)
• http://www.xanga.com/ (Xanga)

Importance of getting listed at DMOZ?

DMOZ (earlier known as Directory of Mozilla) popularly known by Open Directory Project. Its world largest human editor based directory of quality websites. Website can be submitted to this directory at NO cost, but in order to get listed at DMOZ; one should strictly meet its submission guidelines. Once submitted, it is reviewed by directory volunteers (editors) assigned for that particular category. On editor’s approval, it gets listed at DMOZ under that particular category.

DMOZ - http://www.dmoz.org

It holds great importance in search engine industry. Many search engines & directories including big names like Google, AOL & MSN receives directory listings from DMOZ. So getting listed in DMOZ receives an upper hand and improves your positions in search engine rankings.

Above editorial from Web2Promote is purely informative & based on research & experience.

Important Tips before submitting a website to search engines & directories

Before you begin with site submission (or link building) campaign, below are few tips that could be helpful

• See that your website doesn’t have any broken links and is fully functional. Make sure you have all pages available with well optimized, relevant content & proper tags.
• Submit your website to those directories that contains quality websites, having good Google PR & Alexa and receive regular postings.
• If search engines or directories are very specific to your website theme, then reciprocal linking can help
• Prepare title and meta tags carefully addressing to your target audience and following the guidelines as mentioned for site submission.
• Prepare 2-3 different set of title & meta tags and use them alternately. Also don’t rush to complete the campaign in one shot. Divide it into phases and execute at proper intervals to avoid Over Optimization Penalty (OOP).
• Submit your website to the most relevant or matching category
• Before submitting your website, check whether your website is already listed or not. To check this, you can use “search box” and key in your website name or url or your website title. If it is not listed, then only you can go and apply for url submission.
• It is advisable to submit your website to first below mentioned websites before submitting to other free online search engines and directories.

http://dmoz.org/add.html (DMOZ)
http://www.google.com/addurl (Google)
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ (Yahoo)
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx (MSN)
http://www.altavista.com/addurl/default (Altavista)

• Always insist for manual submission over automatic submission using software.

Above tips from Web2Promote is purely informative & based on research & experience.