A funny thing happened on the way to Unchained:
Right about May 16th, BloodhoundBlog fell off of Google’s radar. Dozens of search terms that have always been reliable sources of inbound traffic — terms you might think of as being BHB’s “short head” like zillow.com — suddenly stopped producing.
I watch our numbers pretty closely, so I was aware of the sudden drop in traffic. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened: We had plummeted in the SERPs for terms on which we had always been very strong.
As to the why, I know nothing. It’s plausible we hit a Google penalty, but I have no certain knowledge of this — nor do I ever expect to have any certain knowledge of this. It’s also plausible that we ran into a hiccough in the search algorithm.
Certainly we have done nothing even remotely Black Hat. To the contrary, we lean all over the idea of clean, content-based SEO, and we lean even harder on the idea of building communities of like minds, not search-borne aggregations of fleeting butterflies.
The fun part was, I didn’t have any time to deal with it at the time. Saw it happen. Figured out what had happened. Had some ideas about why. But I was up to my ears in Unchained work, plus money work on top of that, so I had no time to deal with the problem.
Finally on Wednesday I was able to drop a request for review on Google, telling them that I’m a good boy and don’t deserve to be treated like a bad boy. Presumably, in due course, they will review the site and either agree that this is so or tell me explicitly what they want me to change. This could take weeks, possibly months.
But here’s the interesting part of the story:
It does not matter.
The growth of this community has never depended on Google. Obviously some people found us that way for the first time, but the overwhelming majority of our regular readers found us through some kind of referral mechanism:
- Links from other weblogs or web sites
- Comments I left on other weblogs
- Press mentions of BloodhoundBlog
- Direct (“You gotta check out this site!”) referrals
Of those regular readers, most see our content through RSS or email subscriptions. Our hard-click traffic — right now, with no short-head traffic from Google — is about two-to-one click-throughs to direct entry. In other words, a huge number of people are typing our URL into the address bar of their web browsers or pulling us out of their favorites menu.
Say the truth, you didn’t notice any difference, did you? We’re posting normally, the posts are being read normally, and we’re getting our normal quantity of comments. The same people you expect to find here are here, and the quality of debate is unchanged. For the moment, we have lost hundreds of daily inbound clicks — most of whom would have had zero impact on BlooodhoundBlog in any case. Before this transpired, we were riding at around tenth place in BlogTopSites’ real estate category. Without any short head from Google, we’re still in eighteenth place.
The point? It’s one I tried very hard to stress at BloodhoundBlog Unchained: Content is king. Google can bring you visitors, but only solid content will bring them back as regular guests. The effort to build an on-line community of like minds starts with giving those minds a reason to come back.
Technorati Tags: blogging, BloodhoundBlog Unchained, disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing, real estate training, technology
Dan Green says:
Happened here, too. I was ranked #2 for “mortgage blog” for a few weeks — even after the last Google Dance.
And it’s not a “coming from left field” ranking, either.
1. I write every day about mortgages
2. I get a lot of in-links from other bloggers
3. I’ve been doing it this way since January 2005
Anyway… Sometime last week, I noticed my traffic was down and when I checked with Google, my Web site had fallen to 40-something in the rankings.
The strange thing was — my business as a loan officer hasn’t been impacted. The calls still come in, and my inbox stays full.
Thank you, Database Marketing.
I made the point on BHB in January about how traffic from Google is like a student reading a book in the library — he’s not there to buy.(https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=2521)
Consider this comment an affirming post-script.
May 24, 2008 — 4:06 pm
Greg Swann says:
Thanks, Dan.
I feel better, anyway. I’ve been expecting a Great Reevaluation for weblogs for quite a while. Frequent changes don’t equate to added relevance, so I anticipate that we’ll start to lose traction to more-canonical static sites.
What we’re going through may be something different, but, as you note, it doesn’t hurt anything either way.
May 24, 2008 — 4:11 pm
Chris D says:
I’m not sure if you’ve checked rankings back a couple months’ ago, but some sites got a lift and then got dropped again after last weeks algo change.
Some of my clients got bumped back up, and they’re ones who should be ranking really well. Lots of the updates seem to have affected blog-related link juice.
You’re absolutely right about the importance of non-search traffic for a site like BHB though. People shouldn’t freak when the engines shift the algo.
Great article about dealing with algo updates one of my coworkers wrote. http://tinyurl.com/47zglm
May 24, 2008 — 7:04 pm
Tom Vanderwell says:
Greg,
Very well said. If you do the content right, if you give people a reason to come back, it doesn’t matter about the search engines.
As an experienced lender, but a relative newcomer to blogworld, I have to admit that I was a bit “put off” by a lot of the talk about SEO. Yeah, that’s important, and you need to get noticed, but the real thing is that you need to keep talking about the right things.
Thanks for keeping the focus in the right things. Doing the right things for the right reasons will always work in the long run.
Tom
May 24, 2008 — 7:38 pm
Mark McGlothlin says:
An SEO oriented associate reminds us often – “great content builds a committed community of site users.” Algo shifts come and go…..
May 25, 2008 — 7:07 am
Rick Belben says:
Greg you may have dropped in google temporarily but you already had your season ticket holders who did not need a google click to get to your blog. If the content is good they will find a way to come back.
May 25, 2008 — 11:06 am
Maureen Francis says:
Same thing happened to me, and it happened on the same day. The good thing is that I was getting a lot of traffic from search terms that were not helping my business, so I don’t mind losing the ranking or the traffic from those terms. Nor do I mind losing the inquiries from business that I did not want in the first place. Google gaveth, and, in this case, I am glad that Google taketh back!
May 25, 2008 — 12:27 pm
Matt McGee says:
Great post, Greg — and very true. Any search marketer worth his/her salt will tell you that diversification is the key to success. We all must build defensible traffic, i.e. – traffic that doesn’t rely on the whims of search engines.
The irony here is that one of the expert speakers at Unchained specifically suggested not to allow comments on your real estate blogs because this hurts your keyword density/SEO. So I wonder … where would your blog be without comments and without this great community?
Me? I’d much rather have a strong, long-term community on my blog than have the perfect keyword density for whatever the current algorithm might be that day.
BTW, I’d be glad to donate some time to examining this issue for you. Saved another friend’s blog from a Google problem a couple months back and might be able to help here, too.
May 25, 2008 — 12:58 pm
Barry Cunningham says:
Matt, BHB and even my blog were not the types of blogs that the “SEO expert” was talking about.
Our blogs (mine, yours I suppose and BHB) endorse the comment nature of blogs.
However on a real estate specific site, the home buyer doesn’t leave comments. So the only people leaving comments are other bloggers. Look around, go to some prominent real estate blogs that are in place for selling real estate. The comments you will see are more than likely from other bloggers NOT the consumer.
If the consumer wants to comment they will send in the forms, register or email. I see no need for comments to be open on a real estate specific blog which is different than an industry blog.
May 25, 2008 — 2:36 pm
Matt McGee says:
Hi Barry — that’s the response I kinda expected. “One type of blog is different than another type of blog,” or “You can’t build community on a B2C real estate blog.” That’s the easy way out. I’ll respectfully disagree. 🙂
May 25, 2008 — 5:19 pm
Jay says:
Yeah the idea of losing my rankings scares he** out of me. I’m trying to learn/experiment/figure out the direct mail/farming path to regular listings for the sake of diversity and having another source of buyer leads (sign calls, etc.) than my website/blog.
$1000 spent and no listing appointments. I still have a LOT to learn##!@@!@# Whatever. Can’t wait to catch up on unchained.
May 25, 2008 — 7:05 pm
Barry Cunningham says:
Matt I did not say “You can’t build community on a B2C real estate blog.”
I said I don’t want any comments on our real estate for sale blog. Big difference.
What I said is the consumer does not make comments for the most part. Not sure how many real estate only blogs you have visited but very few comments are made by the consumer.
I welcome comments on my industry blog, but my demographic IS different on my real estate blog. It’s not a cop out or “easy way out”.
One blog is DESIGNED for one purpose, the other a different purpose. It’s not by accident.
Unless you are buying a house from the broker we are working with I’m not interested in your comment on the real estate for sale blog. We are’nt having a problem communicating with the consumer .
May 25, 2008 — 7:34 pm
Bob Wilson says:
Wanna bet?
May 25, 2008 — 9:06 pm
Barry Cunningham says:
Bob yes they sometimes do..what i said above was “very few comments are made by the consumer.”
Of course with the largeness of the blogosphere the occasional comment will come from a true consumer. But really..what are we talking about in terms of comments on a reale state sales blog…very, very minimal..and not enough to even warrant this conversation.
Bottom line, as we learned last week..do what works for you.
May 25, 2008 — 9:17 pm
Portland says:
It’s true that Google rankings come and go, but I’m sure that if your site disappeared from the results entirely you would lose quite a bit of good traffic. It may be that you don’t need that traffic, but as a consumer of real estate information, if your blog post has the answer to my question that I just typed into Google, then I would want your site to show up. A lot of time and energy has gone into the making of this blog, and it’s not just the latest posts that are relevant, it’s also the random post that shows up as an answer to a question that I ask the Googlepedia.
May 25, 2008 — 10:11 pm
G. Dewald says:
Awhile back I did a guest post on KPIs at MyTechOpinion. One of the things I covered was “traffic sources” and why it’s important. Your experience is a textbook example of why understanding (and diversifying) traffic sources is important.
With all the talk of disintermediation lately we should all be pretty aware of the Google’s position in relation to ourselves and our customers.
May 27, 2008 — 7:59 am
Dan Green says:
Post-script: My Web site is back to #2 for “mortgage blog”. Google must read BHB.
June 2, 2008 — 2:57 pm
Tom at the Real Estate Bloggers says:
If you look at the most of the top sites, you will see that at different times they have gotten Google Slapped for no reason that they can determine.
This even happened to Darren Rouse, the problogger himself.
So you are in good company to say the least.
T
June 17, 2008 — 7:32 am