How to regain your website traffic from Google's content farm crackdown?
Google.com's latest release to tweak the search engine perhaps is the most important change that has been done to the google organic search since google was launched in late 1990. It was done to combat content farms who produce unprecedented amount of content on demand. which means they would find out what people are looking for today and accordingly to create content that in most cases is very thin. What is really means is that they simply create a page that has the search keywords in it and optimize the page to make sure it ranks high but offers no value. it was done on a such a large-scale that some of the prominent bloggers on the Internet started blogging against Google. They accused Google off half supporting these content forms by giving them traffic from a search engine. Google in response did a major release that tackles the thin content on the sites. They didn’t just go after Content Farms but went after all sites that produce content that is not useful to the end users. Beside the ranking factors Google used in the past; it now ranks sites based on number of additional factors such as original content, how good is the content, how many ads does the site have on a particular page, how many pages have a very little value compared to pages that are actually valuable for the end users etc.
All these changes bundle together in late February rocked the webmaster world. Lots of site owners woke up that morning and lost traffic and on the flipside there are sites that gained additional rankings and traffic.
That sent a message to the site owners and search for how to fix your site for google started doing the round online.
Like everyone else i was looking for the answers and came up with a conclusion which I will share at the bottom.
The extent of Google change and outcomes of it, is still too early to judge but what the site owners need to realize is the fact that forget Google, forget the search engine, forget the social media, first and foremost you have to offer a value to your end users, which stands above others, a value which the user will come back again and again for.
You have to look back and think Realistically why did you really start your business in the first place, what made you stand out, what is your unique selling point, why should people come to your website compared to many other websites offering the same products and services.
You have to go back to your initial drive for starting your website, back to the future to find out exactly the reason that prompted you to start this website and if your reasons do not answer as to what is the value for end users; chances are very high, with or without google change, you won’t be around next year.
Get back to the basics, find out how many people are coming to your website, where they are coming from and how many of those people actually are sticking around or better yet how many are coming back the next day and the day after? How many people actually tell others about your service and how much time do your site users spend on average? If your stats show no repeat traffic, and direct navigation is not increasing, regardless of Google’s latest change, your business is not going to go far.
Conclusion
To regain your website traffic from Google's content farm crackdown, Don’t build your website just for the search engines, find a niche and build your site with end users in mind and offer a value that forces them willingly to come back again and again. You don’t just want traffic; you want targeted engaged users who spend time and money on your site and it will only happen if they get real value out of it.
Tags: content, crackdown, farm, Googles, regain, traffic, website