Website search impressions decline

[farstate]

We have seen a decline in search engine results impressions over the last month or so with a more noticeable drop around the time the Google Penguin update came out. From a lot of commentry around on the web, a lot of people are blaming this update for such declines. Rather than just accepting this apparent balancing of the web, I now have the ongoing task of making whatever adaptations are needed to try and restore the previous levels of traffic.

Our business is a small specialist lock company who mainly manufacturer the products but also sell online although at prices above those of our distributers/B2C customers. My initial thoughts were that well, we are trying to compete at achieving high search result positions with huge multi-national retail sites who have large marketing spends and resources available, and thus why would we have a change. However, this seems a bit defeatist!!

A few of the actions I have been taking are as follows:

• Introducing the use of the rel canonical and rel alternate tags where page content is the same (e.g. myurl.com/dir1/dir2 and myurl.com/dir1/dir2/ - note the trailing slash) - I am paranoid over duplicate content but would have thought if it was one the same site, then Google would just ignore one copy
• Ensuring all titles, meta keywords & meta descriptions are unique
• Ensuring that heading 1 tags are used appropriately
• Avoiding keyword stuffing
• Avoiding the use of link building schemes

We are shortly about to embark on a social media project - we currently don't run a blog or an active Twitter or Facebook account and from my research, Google are now very, very keen on genuinely popular sites - i.e. those with real reviews, mentions, etc on social media platforms.

Does this all ring true? Can anyone offer any advice, shared experiences or even just moral support!!??

[ralph.m]

We are shortly about to embark on a social media project - we currently don't run a blog or an active Twitter or Facebook account and from my research, Google are now very, very keen on genuinely popular sites - i.e. those with real reviews, mentions, etc on social media platforms.

Don't forget that social media also make more direct connections with people, which is possibly more powerful that just waiting for these people to stumble upon you in a search engine. Getting traffic to your site is not just about search engines.

[Stevie D]

Introducing the use of the rel canonical and rel alternate tags where page content is the same (e.g. myurl.com/dir1/dir2 and myurl.com/dir1/dir2/ - note the trailing slash) - I am paranoid over duplicate content but would have thought if it was one the same site, then Google would just ignore one copy

The problem around duplicate content comes when you have different routes to the same page – you'll almost certainly find that you have some inbound links that include the trailing slash and others that omit it. If those two URLs are resolved separately then, as far as Google is concerned, it looks like there are two pages, and the link juice is being split between them. By telling Google that they are just variants of the same page, you ensure that all that googley goodness is channelled into the one page.

[seotrafficsearch]

Seems like you've taken a hit from the penguin update. The sad part with these updates is we never know why exactly are we being penalized or pushed down in search results. All we can do is avoid using any of the short cuts to search engine optimize the site. And yes, do not avoid link building schemes, just avoid bad link building techniques. If you do not build links, your site wouldn't stand in the competition.

[jasonmartin]

Don't forget that social media also make more direct connections with people, which is possibly more powerful that just waiting for these people to stumble upon you in a search engine. Getting traffic to your site is not just about search engines.

Yes Social Media is just perfect platform to meet targeted audience because many of people love to gather their required information here and their are some websites which are quite trustworthy.