A drop in the rankings - Is this a Google Slap?

03 Oct 09 3:00 pm

A drop in the rankings - Is this a Google Slap?

I have been following the Niche Marketing approach to keyword research, making a Moneyword Matrix to find those keywords that have a high search volume/low search results combination. This is a fairly laborious process (I cannot afford any fancy software for this yet!), involving a Google Keyword Tool/Traffic Travis search for a likely bunch of KWs, then putting each KW (in Phrase Match quotes) into Google search and noting down the search results number. Eventually I achieve a list of suitable KWs, each with 1,000 global monthly searches or more and less than 10,000 results. Then I write my web pages around the most appropriate KWs for the product I'm promoting. All this is SEO only, by the way.

I have been getting increasing page rankings for about 25% of my pages, and increasing number of backlinks.

In the last few days I have noticed a dramatic fall in the number of visitors to my site (I can't analyse individual page stats because Google Analytics is playing up, but that is another story). Also, of course, a corresponding fall in numbers of hoplinks.

Doing a quick check on my keywords and the moneyword matrix, guess what? I find that KWs that had excellent search results last month (ie less than 10,000) ALL now have increased by a factor of 10! 8,000 results for one KW are now 84,000, and this is typical for a whole category that I have checked so far. This could seriously affect my page rankings and visitors, if true, and could be playing havoc with my on-page SEO. How on earth can I optimise my pages if the underlying statistics are so wrong or variable?

I know that Mark (and others) have said that we should take Google's stats with a pinch of salt, but are they THAT bad and inaccurate? Or am I being Google Slapped in some way? Or am I missing the point somewhere?

Glad of anybody's thoughts on this before I get carted off to the nuthouse!

Kieran