Google Search Query Ranking And Alexa Rank Improvement
I have just had a large positive shift in both my Alexa ranking over the past 2 weeks. Simultaneously my Google Webmaster tools has shown the biggest ranking gain I have ever shown in my targeted search queries..... What have I done differently to deserve this?
Search Traffic from China, Ukraine, France and America
I been getting a huge volume of page hits from China, Ukraine, France and America over the past couple of months and I used the Christmas Break downtime to try and sort out which IP addresses these were coming from. I had thought this comment spam wasn't too big a priority and hadn't done anything about it immediately. I had initially thought that as I have to approve all comments before they are published this wouldn't hurt my rankings..... WRONG Assumption.... My Alexa rank went down for 2 consecutive months as page hits from Ukraine and China went way up.
Deny Blacklisted IP Addresses From Your Website
Cutting to
the chase... all I have done is use IP Deny Manager (free on my C panel)
to try and stop unwanted Bog spam sites from hitting from my site. The more I denied blacklisted sites the better my rankings have improved. The biggest single change I noticed was when I went from 400 impressions to 6000 impressions in Google Webmaster tools in one day. I dropped back again to around 500 the next day and have stayed there, but the Google Algorithm obviously was very interested in what I had been doing and has been rewarding me with daily improved search term rank.
Adelaide Architect
Improved rank for the search term "Adelaide Architect" has been the best change for me. In 2 weeks Google has pushed me from second page to halfway down the first. This term is one that SEO firms market for and so has a lot of competition. I have studied the code from other sites that rank well for it and most of the ones above me are obviously manipulated by SEO firms. I manage my site myself and have always been a bit upset by the fact that obviously SEO manipulated sites were ranking above mine. I have struggled for years to get "above the fold" on First page of Google for "Adelaide Architect" by supplying informative pages about what I do (which is Architecture in Adelaide). Every single ranking place improvement has been hard won.
Google Rewards Good Information
General consensus is that Google rewards good information. The problem is that it also creates penalties. Having lots of traffic from sites that are blacklisted is not a good thing. Unfortunately blog comment spam and scraper sites also like to hit sites with lots of good information. My thoughts are that it appears that penalties and rewards were balancing each other until now and my recent action of denying access from these unwanted and blacklisted sites has tipped the scales and I'm now reaping gains I should have been seeing before, but until now had been masked. It is "early days" yet & I am hopeful that the new Status-Quo will continue to create gains for me. Google is unpredictable however and one shouldn't make too many assumptions too soon..... I will post an update on this in a few weeks.... until then it is nice to imagine a world where hard work really does pay off and the good guys can actually win.
