Avoiding Google Hell

If you keep up with search engine optimization (SEO) news at all, you may have heard the buzz caused by this article in Forbes and Matt Cutts’ (a Google software engineer) response.

So, what’s the big deal? Basically, a couple of dudes were making mad loot in the diamond selling business until Google dumped their high-ranking pages into its supplemental index. This resulting in both guys losing hundreds of thousands of dollars each in a few months time.

No one seems to know for sure what happened, but there is some speculation that the sites were “slapped” for employing shady SEO tactics, like creating more than 300 links to outside sides, most of which were not relevant to diamonds or even jewelry; and creating duplicate content.

Matt, on the other hand, says this:

It’s perfectly normal for a website to have pages in our main web index and our supplemental index. If a page doesn’t have enough PageRank to be included in our main web index, the supplemental results represent an additional chance for users to find that page, as opposed to Google not indexing the page.

So, what does this mean to you? Well, my advice is this:

1. Don’t try to manipulate your search engine rankings. Give your visitors what they want, making sure you use solid, white-hat, non-tricky SEO common sense.

2. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t let your search engine traffic be your only source of income. The Google “powers that be” can be fickle — even if they are just a bunch of bots. In short, spread yourself around.

Here are some methods of generating traffic that don’t rely heavily on search engine traffic to your site:

• Article Marketing
• Blogging For Business
• Press Release Marketing

So, have you experienced a Google slap: A suddenly dive into the supplemental index? And what are you doing to prevent a sudden downswing in your Google traffic from killing your business?