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Where Did My Website Go?
An Explanation to Search Engine Results in Brampton There are many reasons why your Brampton website’s position in the search engine results will vary. One day your Brampton website could be in the top 10 for a particular key phrase, and the next day you’re not on the first page. Changes to a website’s rankings are constantly occurring because changes on the Internet are constantly occurring. But, we can narrow the cause of the change down to four different sources: your website has changed, your competitor’s websites have changed, Google has made an update in the algorithm it uses to determine search results, or you or a competitor got caught using grey area SEO techniques.
In order to stay current, many website are updated on a monthly,
weekly, or even daily basis. The small changes that are made to the
page can have an effect on your page’s keyword density, and this
could in turn have an effect on your rankings for any particular
keyword. Minor website updates should not influence your positioning
very much. But, if the changes are drastic, or your website had
previously been fine tuned by a search engine optimization
specialist, any sort of change will certainly affect your rankings.
Yes, I am referring to Google to generalize the whole search engine market, but lets face it, not only do most website get the majority of their traffic from Google, but the term “Googling” has become synonymous with web search. In simpler terms, the algorithm is a mathematical points system which determines your website’s placement in the search engine results. Nobody knows exactly how Google determines search results, but us search engine optimization specialists have identified approximately 600 factors that affect rankings. A change in the algorithm will certainly affect your website’s ranking, but the change probably won’t be too drastic. Google would not make a significant change to the algorithm because it would probably knock the world out of orbit. Well, probably not, but a big change would have significant repercussions for both Internet websites and users. Therefore, Google prefers to merely fine tune this algorithm to ensure against drastic changes.
Depending on your industry or geographic reach, your website could
be competing against several dozen to several thousand other
websites - all fighting for position with certain keywords or
phrases. This fact alone makes it far more likely that changes in
your competitor’s websites will effect the search engine results
than changes to your website alone. Every website owner wants to be listed on the first page or make the top
10 results for particular keywords or phrases. The problem is that
there is only room for ten websites, and you may be positioning for
a popular key phrase. Not all, but some of your competitors are
updating their website and adding new pages on a regular basis.
These additions add more competition to the search engine race and
make it more difficult for you to achieve your top 10 position.
Website owners should not have the ability to manipulate the search
engines results. The fact that SEO specialists have the ability to
do so violates the integrity of the search results. But, the fact of
the matter is, we have rough (but not exact) ideas of how Google’s
algorithm works. Most SEO specialists use techniques that are
referred to as “White Hat”. These techniques are more natural, and
while Google doesn’t like the search results to be manipulated,
white hat techniques are not frowned upon.
I’ve outlined the major reasons for changes in search engine
results, but sometimes the changes really can’t be explained. These
changes are referred to as hiccups. After a ranking change, it’s
best to sometimes just wait it out – within a week or two your
website may return to its original position. So, the best thing to
do when you notice a change is not to over-react. As long as your
website has been professionally optimized for the proper keywords
and phrases, and possesses a large and ever growing list of
backlinks, you should stay on top. |