There’s been a buzz in the SEO community regarding a possible algorithm update by Google last month.  Nothing official yet, but there does appear to be truth to the rumor.  I ran across a posting at Webmaster World discussing the update and have been contacted by multiple webmasters and business owners shopping for SEO services.   Each situation has been unique, but the theme has been the same:  A massive ranking drop (almost overnight). 

After some research, here is what we found:

First, the majority of our client’s keywords have actually increased their natural search engine rankings.  Across the board, overall traffic is up.  We attribute this to our best practices approach to internet marketing.

 Secondly, after a preliminary review of the quality/quantity of back-links for the prospective sites, we found an alarming number of blog and other paid listings.  Most of which were NOT from quality industry themed websites. 

Q:   Why did our rankings go up while there’s were drastically penalized? 

A:   Same answer as it’s always been.  Focus on relevant, quality link partners and your rankings will stabilize.  It costs more (in tme and money) to acquire quality links, but worth it.  As I mentioned above, the sites were focusing many of their inbound linking efforts on irrelevant blog links (many of which were blog farms) and other spammy rented text links. 

Here’s a suggestion:  Outsource your search engine optimization or make sure you spend your time on quality not quantity.  For example, if you choose to pay a blogger to write a review of your site, find a blogger that is relevant to your site (if your a real estate brokerage firm located in Atlanta, GA then find a Atlanta based real estate blog).  Next, make sure that the blog has true readership (do most of his/her posts have educated comments?).  Finally, review the blog.  Is it a true web destination with resources for web visitors, or is it blog written by a non-native speaker whose sole mission is to get paid a nominal fee for a post?