My New Strategy...

Over the past year, I have been dealing with what appears to be a penalty from the search engines...

At first, I tried taking down all my sites and then bringing them back online one by one.  Then, I tried deleting all the blogroll links...but that didn't work either.  I tried completely revamping each and every site.  Again, that didn't work.  My sites are still languishing on page 5 or 6...

Finally, after a great deal of thought, I decided that I could no longer keep trying different things, frantically trying to figure out how to get out of one search engine's "sandbox." 

All that I was doing was continually changing everything...and if you think about that for a minute, you'll understand my new strategy.

You see, part of the reason that you patronize a particular store, be it online or off, is because it is familiar.  You trust it.  It always delivers the same service.  And, it looks like the same place every time you go there.  Now, if that particular store never looked the same, and you could never trust it to be open when it should be open,  and further you never knew what to expect...how many times would you go back to that store before you found somewhere else that better met your expectations?  Not long.

That's what I was doing to my online business...in my frantic changing, rearranging, and updating, I was sabotaging my own efforts.  I am trying to create a stable, long term business...not some little fly by night sites that will make money, then that I must frantically change every single time a certain search engine updates it's algorithm.  Further, if you think about that, do you honestly think that search engine will include or direct people to sites that cannot be trusted?  Sites that change so rapidly?  Sites that are there one minute and gone the next?  I don't think so either. 

So, I stopped changing everything.  I am back to working on my sites, but I am following my original business plan, and I am building sites that will not change every five minutes.  In other words, I am in it for the long haul.  And, yes, even though I am still languishing on page 5 or 6 for most keywords, the slow growth that I am experiencing now should be sustainable growth...and not a flash in the pan that's gone before you know it.