Does Google Think Your Site Sucks?
Over the past weekend, I was asked by a reader… “How do you know when Google search dislikes your Niche Store?” It’s actually a very interesting question that DOES carry a few indicators you can watch for, to prevent the inevitable. Don’t get the wrong idea of “inevitable” meaning your site will be dropped from the G index! Your site may very well stay indexed forever, but the most popular search engine will just stop sending traffic!
Check Your Referrer Log First!
Depending on the log program you use to measure site analytics, it’s a pretty quick glance to see if Google likes you or not! In cPanel, you can right to the Web/FTP Stats icon, then head into your AWStats application. Once inside, skip past everything else and head right down to the “Referrers > Origin” section, which will show you where your external visitors came from.
Here’s a Site That Google Thinks Sucks
The screenshot below comes from a site thats almost 3 years old and actually has RISING traffic every month for the past 3-4 months, but as I will explain below the image, Google thinks the site sucks – actually, it does! I didn’t need search trends to tell me that. :-)
How Do I Know Google Thinks it Sucks?
Its a pretty quick discovery in this sites case! Google owns about 80% market share in search, and while you don’t want to rely on search traffic completely for your sites success, this image tells the story!
Looking at that image, I can see that 432 visits have come from search engines.
- 237 – Google + AOL
- 109 – Yahoo
- 86 – Windows Live + MSN + Bing (All are Microsoft)
Its pretty basic math… IF Google owns 80% of all search traffic, then they should also own 80% (approx) of my search referred traffic, right? In this sites case, Google refers about 55% of all search driven traffic, therefore Google MUST think the site sucks! (Again, it DOES!)
In addition to AWStats, I also installed Google Analytics about 4 months ago, and I can see that the site enjoys a nice bounce rate of 72%. Meaning 72% of the visitors came to the site and either backed out, closed the window, or left the site without visiting any additional pages. On some of my very successful sites, the homepage bounce rate is in the 30-40% range, which is still high, but not out of my own bounds. Some of the internal pages however, are in the low teens for bounce, which is very good!
When you look at your bounce rates, don’t take the single site percentage as the whole picture… you really need to look at the different entry pages and measure them individually! Even though your site may have a 60% bounce, you might find that some of the pages are bouncing much fewer, and only the homepage needs work!
About the Site
This is where it starts getting interesting! First and foremost, it a 100% BANS site! Yes, I still have a few! But what strikes out as most interesting, is that I have done alot of work to make the site unique! Unique content, few product listings, growing number of inbound links, and pagerank 3! In addition to the dev side, the site DOES earn money every month in ePN! Not alot mind you, but enough for me to justify doing some work to make it better!
- 100% BANS Backend
- PageRank 3
- 294 Inbound Links!
- 95% Unique Content!
- Only 4-8 Product links on every page!
- Last Update – 5-6 Months ago!
What Can I Do to Make it Un-Suck?
As much as I hate to say… I am going to drop BANS from the site and rebuild it into WordPress. I can take whats already there and reuse it on the new site. I will also look at the different areas I can improve on, like product reviews or ratings, top lists, etc.
I will actually plan to relaunch the site at the end of the month, so I have a end-of-month baseline to use as an indicator of my efforts.
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Does Google Expect More from a WordPress Site?
- What do You Know about Site Linking and Google?
- Digging Out of The Google Supplemental Index
- Google Burned my Website to the Ground!
- Google Caffeine Update in Full Swing?
- Does Google Hate Competition? You Decide…
- Should you Convert a BANS Site to a PhpBay Site?
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Good luck!
I think we all have a few sites like this kicking around.
I have held off turning them from a BANS on root/WP site to a pure WP site though. Mainly because I am lazy though!
I will look forward to seeing the results of your tests.
@ Tao –
I will add another post this week with the results from a previous rebuild, earlier this year. The turn around has been very dramatic!
I have stopped even building WP/BANS sites… with the phpBay plugin, its just as quick and easier to do them as full WordPress sites.
Mark
Mark, do you take the content from the old site and copy and paste to the new site or are you worried about duplicate content when going this route?
Mark,
A while back you mentioned that you don’t like to group all of your sites on the same Google Analytics account because you believe that Google keeps track of what you do on your various sites.
If I believe one of my GA accounts is costing the sites on it a bad rep(which none of them earned I assure you)can this be undone?
What are your thoughts about testing out any new sites on a new hosting AND GA account and using that GA account for only one site?
Jeff
Google shares a large percentage of the blame because it doesn’t listen to site owners as to how a sight should be listed. I have a site that Google doesn’t love – at least not the way I want to be loved. I want to be listed for particular keywords on the site as a whole for which it is moderately hard to rank front page. I am in the top 20 for these and they bring in 15% of the traffic. Instead, of rewarding my effort on pages I want to rank higher for, Google ranks me high for words from inner pages that easily take the number one spot in lesser categoriesand sends a low number of surfers who discover that the sight (other than content on a few pages page) really isn’t about the lesser catergory subject, so they bounce. I’ve thought about ditching those pages, but how do you ditch pages that are #1 in the rankings to give attention to pages that are 20th? I should say that that these pages getting traffic are not pages that monitize well as they are not product oriented. On the site as a whole, Yahoo sends more buyers than Google because I am ranked in the top ten there for the harder words..
@ Jake –
I make use of almost all of my original content AND URL’s.
- /old-content-page/
301 rediredirects to
- /new-content-page/
Granted, the old content wasn’t doing too much to impress the search engines, but with the flexibility of a blog platform and the varying ways you can cross-relate pages/posts etc, it does help bring it back to life!
Mark
@ Jeff –
Google most definitely DOES keep track of your every move on the web! How much they pay attention to it is another thing that only they know…
I do not have multiple GA accounts and only use one for my own sites. On ecommerce sites I manage for local businesses, I DO set them up with their own… to keep theirs and mine separate.
I DO believe G keeps track of everything associated with your accounts, and I rarely use webmaster tools… but GA, I use often to track specific metrics.
You may have what I said mixed wih hosting… I will pull a subpar site off specific hosting accounts in a minute, once I realize they may be hurting others. Not so easy with GA…
@ David –
I wouldnt pull any of your pages off… just use them, and the well ranking subjects, to build authority on the pages you want to rank better!
If you want to rank for “Widgets” and rank well for Red widgets, blue widgets, and green widgets… continue writing content around the subjects you rank good in, and continue linking back to your landing pages for the phrase you WANT to rank well in.
Look at it all as a “keyword funnel”… longtails coming in the top, and over time (maybe years) filtering everything into the shorter, higher volume phrases at the bottom. It takes a lot of long tail phrases to get through that funnel, before the single word terms start ranking well.
Mark
I’m confused! Google is sending very little traffic to your site and yet it is ranked PR3? I thought ranking was an indication of what value and authority Google places on a site?
@ Denise –
I know your feeling!
PR is actually a measure of the sites quality, based on the quality of your inbound links and other sites linking to you.
Really plays no, or very little part in traffic…
I have a few PR3 sites that rank well for one single phrase, but no others!
Mark,
what do you have on your homepage?
@ Christine –
Not even ONE product listing or Ad… (except 1 sitewide header banner)
The homepage currently contains a brief paragraph about every other section of the website!
Mark
is the banner an affiliate link? have you tried experimenting with removing it? just curious….
@ Christine –
Its a very relevant affiliate banner, being fed through the Google Affiliate Ad Network… (Not adsense)
I have not tried removing it, but truly don’t think its the banner making the difference on the site, its the lack of updates and fresh content.
Mark
@ All –
The more I look at the post, hell ALL search engines think the sucks, not just google! :-)
I have the same problem …
— I have a PR 3 site that gets little traffic and a PR 1 site about the same subject that really kicks A**
—The back links and the number of articles are different and one was a bans site now PR 3 the other never was it has always been a wp site… maybe more article backlinks will help me??? with the PR 3 site or just sell it and focus on the other.
***on a side note… the new update for the redirection plugin caused some problems for me today… made a mess and I had to go back to the previous version to make it work right again… so do not just update on all your sites until you check on a slow site first…
@ Otis –
Good to see ya man! PR really has no factor on site traffic… its simply a measure of the quality of inbound links.
Inbound links are important, but again, not the be-all, end-all. I have a couple different sites that do fairly well, with little to no backlinks at all!
I have already started planning the removal of one of my few remaining BANS sites, just to see if makes a difference.
M
Mark:
I have an older site that’s a pure BANS play and is still indexed with a pr3. However, it virtually only gets Yahoo traffic and hardly any from Google. It really sucks, except that I do get some conversions from it.
I think it’s a good niche, and am considering doing a completely new WP/PhpBay site with a 301 from the old to the new. This, rather than converting the existing site to WP in the root.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
@ PotentMix –
Same story here on the BANS sites. Unfortunate, but it is what it is.
I’ve had a few very successful conversions to phpbay/WP… htaccess redirected all volume pages to the new setup (I used a new domain also) and the site was an instant hit in Google!
Went from being a nearly deindexed BANS site to one of my top 10 producers in less than 30 days! Even got a PR1 during the latest PR update 2 weeks ago, due to all the old inbound links to the old site.
I am about to rebuild another from BANS to WP/phpbay and will walk through the steps here… hopefully it will get easier as time passes! LOL
Right!
Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do. New WP/PhpBay domain and 301 from the existing one. I’m going to do it only because I do get some good sales, even with the crummy, low volume traffic I’m seeing. All my previous niche research supports giving this a shot.
A lot of my old BANS sites have virtually no signs of life, so I think I’ll just let them sit and do whatever they do.
Another thing that occurs to me is that I’ll be able to incorporate all the newer plugins, PhpZon, ReviewAzon and PhpOstock. That’ll give the new site some added muscle and diversity.
If Ebay does what Amazon’s fixing to do… those of us in NC are up crap creek!
Man – Google is a funny beast, when you really think about it.
I love when I see those IM guys who swear by their grandma’s cooking that they’ve figured out the big G – when in actuality they’ve simply had an occurrence.. nothing more.
I’ve seen some of the crappiest sites on the planet hold top search position for multiple keywords… for no justifiable reason other than they’re old and have links. But they haven’t been updated in two years, and they look like garbage.
I’ve always found that when I ignore Google and do what I do best, that is when my sites seem to perform better across all the SE’s.
@ Elijah –
Spot on Dude!! I think its too easy to get hung up on search and demand data, that the time spent reviewing HOW to best write content, is MUCH better spent just writing it!
Forget about over optimization, ranking, keywords etc, to a degree and just keep on truckin with the content!!
I hear ya on junk at the top also!!
Rebuilding site seems to be the newest trend. I have many sites that need rebuilding. The redirects always scared me but the newest wp- plug ins are working for me now.
I built some real crap like most beginners do. I also have 50 or so new domains sitting. Arg. But I promised myself I would change what isn’t working and site flip them. According to the site flipping manifesto you can take these old crappy sites fix them and sell them in a matter of days. Wrote a blog post about it.
I’m growing tired of appeasing the Great Google.
So I always said in business. ” Plan Your Work and Work Your Plane”.
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