Paul’s site vanished from Google over a month ago.  Dropped like the proverbial hot stone into the cold abyss of Google-blivion.  Is it a penalty or is it just a natural phenomenon?

You seem to have had plenty of experience of dealing with penalised sites in the past, so I’m hoping you might be able to provide a little bit of advice for me regarding one of my sites - http://www.preschooltoysandgames.co.uk/

I started the site late November 2008 and it did okay over the Christmas period, then around late February early March virtually all traffic from Google stopped. The site is still indexed in Google but it doesn’t seem to appear in the serps till at least page 4 for any keywords.

It used to be on page one of Google for a number of phrases such as -

Charlie And Lola Toys
postman pat toys
postman pat special delivery service toys
Sylvanian Families Willow Hall

Now you can even do an exact search for the domain name “Preschool Toys And Games” and the site doesn’t appear till the bottom of page 3 - and with only 8,760 competing sites surely my site should be on page one given that the words appear in the domain, title, and on the page itself? It used to be on page one for that phrase even without doing an exact search.

Iv’e only been building affiliate sites for about a year so there’s a good chance one of the following newb mistakes has led to it being penalised -

I did pay to have the site submitted to about 50 social bookmarking sites, it turns out that some of the sites it was submitted to aren’t the best quality in the world. My understanding was that Google devalued these types of links though rather than penalise a site though.

It’s a wordpress based site and I was unaware that every time I made a minor change on a page I was pinging the site, but that was early on when the site was still ranking ok. I’ve since disabled pinging using a plugin.

Of course theres always the chance that it’s just not ranking very well, but do you think my site has been penalised?

And if it has, would it be worth putting it under another domain?

It’s not the end of the world if I can’t get the site ranking again, but more than anything I want to make sure I don’t make any mistakes with other bigger sites.

I’ve had a look through your site and can’t see anything wrong with the content or Wordpress structure. Google is behaving mighty oddly towards your site though. I can’t get it to rank for your own unique snippets of text without quotation marks around the phrase.  Grab any bit of text from your Postman Pat page and you should generally be on page one.  Here’s what’s happening with your site: -

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Originally+set+in+the+gentle+but+busy+village+of+Greendale&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enGB249GB249

As compared with a similar sized snippet from my mens underwear site, BlokesUndies.co.uk:-

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Latino+men+are+well+known+for+their+love+of+underwear+&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enGB249GB249

Based on my own experiences, that’s pretty ominous from a Google penalty point of view. You’re absolutely correct when you say your site should be ranking better for its own name. You’re currently hanging out at result 63 from the term “Preschool Toys and Games” without quotation marks: -

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=preschool+toys+and+games&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enGB249GB249&start=60&sa=N

As for your supposition that Google will ignore low quality links, that’s right but alas they sometimes don’t ignore what they see as spammy link building techniques.

Here’s an example of what’s happening on searches conducted on your content: -

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enGB249GB249&q=%22Children+will+especially+love+acting+out+stories+with+Peppa+Pig%22&btnG=Search&meta=

As you can see, a scraper site is ranking and yours only shows up when you ask Google to show omitted results. This is something I’ve seen before on my own sites when an automated filter had been applied. This is not widespread however, in most cases it’s your site turning up which does sort of rule out the scrapers being to blame.

I do think a penalty has been applied to your site.  You should be showing up for unique snippets of text from your own pages, and you’re not. Your site is still showing for those searches with quotation marks around them and will eventually turn up for its own name, albeit on the 3rd page of results, which suggests it is some form of automatic filter rather than the dreaded manual penalty. The fact that your site has now been down for over a month makes it look like this may not be a blip as a result of a mistake when Google updated (although you can never rule that out!).

You mentioned pinging Google every time you updated your site – this will not negatively impact your rankings and wouldn’t have incurred a penalty.

Given that you have said you paid for link activity and had this penalty befall you soon after I think we should focus on that as the most likely cause. It seems like your site is being suppressed in the rankings rather than being blown totally out of the water. I’m reluctant to use terms such as -30 penalty or similar though, because these penalties / filters are never straightforward and don’t seem to have any hard and fast rules.

I think the best thing to do is to see if you can get the links to those naughty sites removed, and submit a reinclusion request. If you can’t, you can always try to submit a reinclusion request and tell them what you did, say sorry, and that you’ll be good from now on. It certainly won’t do you any harm.

Other than that, I’d add some more unique content, get some decent quality links and see if the situation improves with time. Alternatively, you could start again with a new domain – the choice is yours!

I think it would be a mistake to participate in any kind of mass submission scheme in the future with new projects. The general rule of thumb you have to follow with SEO is that if it seems to easy or good to be true – it is!

Greetings Google penalty fans, and welcome to another thrilling update on my all too frequent tangles with the Google algo cops!

So on March 30th I wrote a post complaining that once again I’d fallen victim to the whims of dear old Google and had been handed a right old royal slapping on my new mens undies site.  Refresh your memory here if you need to.

My site was so badly slapped it wasn’t ranking for it’s own name :(   The hunch I spoke of in that post proved to be correct.  As soon as I removed the plugin that was causing oodles of hidden text to be displayed on each and every page was removed I saw an immediate “bounce back” in organic traffic.

This Told Me A Few Things: -

• The featured content plugin was definately to blame - the other scraped content was still alive and kicking at that time.  NB - for users of this plugin I believe there are settings to prevent this, I’m just a lazy affiliate who never reads instructions.  What can I say?!
• The penalty might have been for the hidden text, but could also have been for dupe content.  Now it seems that sometimes when I talk about duplicate content penalties someone jumps up and tells me there’s “no such thing”.  However, I contend that there is… but not for single incidences of dupe content. Not even for the odd wee issue here and there.  In my experience, Google tolerates this to a certain extent and does what it says it will.  It chooses the “right” content to rank. However, should you go beyond what Google thinks of as acceptable you’ll soon find yourself winging your way to Google-blivion.   As with all things algo related there will be a threshold over which you really should not go! Worth bearing in mind.
• This penalty is taking a while to lift. Despite a return to search engine visibility, there are still many pages of my site affected.  You can see this from the gentle increase in search engine traffic over the months of April and May despite me not having added much at all in the way of content.  Pages are only ranking again once Google has been around and spidered them again.  Hence I deduce if you have had a penalty of this nature it is a dashed fine time to start posting fresh content like a madman and thinking up as many ways as possible to get Google respidering your entire site to speed up your recovery process.

I hope this update has helped.  As always, I didn’t like it but I certainly learned something from it!  Will it be the last time? Probably not, but I’ll tell you guys this here and now, I will NEVER let a Google penalty get the better of me.  Come hell or high water I will ALWAYS solve it.

I hate search engines getting the better of me

It’s been a long time since I’ve really had that many Ask Kirstys so I was delighted to get a message via Twitter from a long time blog reader, Chris, which we then followed up with an e-mail conversation.  Here’s his question: -

I have just started to make money on FB but have started using Yahoo with terrible conversion rates. For 5 days I have had 300 clicks on my Yahoo ad and 134 clicks to the merchant with 2 sales!

I’m promoting a very competitive mobile phone offer using general keywords such as “best mobile phone deals”.

Is this normal for PPC? The ad is clear and to the point and so is the web page. Any ideas on how to improve the conversion rate?

I am hoping to follow your lead and be able to jack the 9-5 grind but
it seems I am million miles away at the moment.

*Note: - Chris has asked that his site not be shown here.  To make my response make more sense, his landing page is in a grid type format and features a list of mobile phone handsets, including images,  currently available on a very competitive monthly contract with a major network.  His current Wordpress theme is very basic and is a simple black and white offering with no graphics or colours.

My Ideas on Chris’ PPC Pain
OK. I think there is a fair bit you can do to try and improve the performance of this site. It’s clear from our conversations that you have put a lot of time into researching mobile phone deals and keeping your site information fresh and up to date. You have gotten that very right, so well done on that score.

As you will be aware, mobile phones are incredibly competitive.  However, I do feel that when you have already managed to create a couple of sales from 134 clicks through to merchant that you’re doing pretty well and might just have something that could be built upon.  People often think that because they are losing money a project has been a failure, but this is not necessarily always the case.

In this particular scenario there are two things we can do to try and make it work:-

1. We can attempt to improve your landing page and calls to action to get some more of those punters you’re paying for through to the merchant.

2. We can look at ways to find cheaper and more targeted traffic through to your site which will convert better.

OK, so first off here is a checklist for your landing page: -

• Product Features – Although you’ve made a nice and clean looking grid and have clearly stated at the top of the page the what the very attractive monthly contract price is,  you need to cater for what internet savvy shoppers expect to see.   I always tell people that you can liken the state of mind of an internet shopper to someone who is half asleep or is viewing the world through a “haze”. They rarely read things properly and if they’ve been comparison shopping there’s a format they’re going to expect to see.  I suggest a couple of additions to your grid. Pop the monthly contract price in each row and also the contract length.  The reason for this is that people will first seek a phone they are interested in and then look to see if the contract terms are compatible with their expectations.

• Calls To Action – Make them buttons shiny, and make them bright red!  The current grey colour is quite pale and isn’t very attention grabbing.  Also consider “Shop Now” instead of “Buy Now”. Make them feel like they are not yet committing to a purchase. I like to think of this as the affiliate “soft sell”. Get them mobile phone names in bold text also.

• Feel Of The Page – your current page is very clean cut and plain with no colours or decoration at all. Whilst this is a good thing for the area around your product comparison grid, I think the rest of the page could do with feeling a little more like a mobile phone shop and needs a little bit of colour to help people feel they’ve come to an authority site. It doesn’t have to be very much, perhaps you could simply find a more smooth looking Wordpress theme.

And The Traffic….

• Your current search terms are incredibly generic - I’d suggest that first of all, you lower your bids on these terms slightly to bring them closer into line with what represents a profit for you. There’s no way I’d ever launch a campaign on such general terms to start with. I tend to do things the other way round. First of all I…

• Find Some Highly Relevant / Cheap Search Terms – The terms you’re already targeting are ones which I would associate with people who are at the start of the online purchase research process. What you want to do is try to plug in to people who have already decided what they want. For example, go to town on variations relating to the phone models you are featuring.  Swap terms like “best mobile phone deals”  for more targeted ones such as “best Nokia 5800 deals”.

• Really Go To Town On Highly Targeted Term Variations. Work out every possible variation someone might search for a mobile phone contract on and add in your brand name variations. I suggest you do this for one or two phones at a time, monitoring performance as you go. If things are working well, add more phones and if you have a good margin, look at adding more general terms.

Finally

I do think that as well as still chipping away at this site and trying to make it work (quitters win nothing) you should try to find another niche to get stuck into. Mobile phones will always be a toughie to learn the ins and outs of this trade and it can be really hard to find consistent profit. Find something less competitive with a lower CPA or commission and hone your skills on that.

Just a short post from me to say thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to nominate me once again for this years A4U Awards.

As you all will be totally fed up with me saying, I love the world of affiliate marketing and sharing my thoughts with you about it on here.  It’s really just the icing on the cake that other people find my internet meanderings enjoyable enough to give me the nod in the form of a nomination. It really does mean a lot.

As always, big up kudos must go to the other nominees.  These chaps all have excellent blogs that should be in the RSS of everyone in the industry: -

Jason - Onelittleduck.co.uk

John - Lammo.net (at last John!!!)

Kieron - Here.org.uk

Lee - Leemccoy.co.uk

If you’d like to vote in this year’s awards for the blogging hopefuls or any of the other categories You Can Do So Right Here.

(NB - Vote Hannah Swift For Publishers Choice Account Manager!!!!!)

Finally

To all of you who have let me know you enjoy this blog, or that its helped you in some small way, from the bottom of my heart - thank you. Every time I hear that I feel like I’ve just won something.  It’s your enjoyment of this blog that really keeps me enthusiastic about writing it!

Good luck to everyone nominated and I hope all those attending the awards have a great time.  I deeply regret I won’t be able to attend and enjoy the shindig of the year

It’s been a funny old week you know.  I don’t think I’ve ever suffered with jetlag quite so badly.  Perhaps it’s a sign from the great affiliate gods that I need to calm down my travelling ways and stay put for a wee while!   I’ve languished the week away in my jim jams, sat like a poor wee waif hunched over my keyboard in the hope that some kind of notion to work would strike.

It’s hard to get back to reality and work after such an awesome trip.  Once more I find myself in the difficult position of trying to get my affiliate groove back on after a hiatus.  I’ve written about this quite a few times, and I still think it’s the most difficult part of our job.  After all, the vast majority of us have nobody expecting us to do very much - and so at certain times that’s what happens… NOTHING!!

Onwards & Upwards Rodney…

So this time my “getting back into it” checklist is as follows: -

• Tidy house to within an inch of its life and make sure everything is where it should be once more. Although this actually sounds like an avoidance strategy, it’s very important to me that my house and surroundings are perfect before I can work.  Mess stresses this affiliate lassie out big time.
• What on earth was I doing before I left? Yep, first thing I need to do now that I’m actually able to do more than sit and look at my stats is to try and work out where I’d gotten up to with my projects at the point I left for the UK.  I hope you’re not looking to an answer to that one… I tend to just sit and scroll through my sites until unfinished tasks jump out at me and make their way in a notepadward direction!
• Motivate myself to jump back into work on Monday. Errr…. ok, this is where the problems might just start, LOL.  Personally, I’m motivated by the potential for results, so on Sunday evening I’m going to sit down and work out what I’ll achieve when I sit down and do 3 months hard graft.  Hopefully this will get me pumped and mean I start the week running.
• Motivate Duncan to jump back into work on Monday. Answers on a postcard

Was It Worth All This Schedule Havoc?

Oh god yes!  There’s no job like this in the world and who else honestly can just nip off for a month and still earn a full time wage.

Hopefully I’ll get back into the swing of things soon and be blogging away like a mad thing. If anyone has any Ask Kirsty’s to help me get going again, please drop me a line… you’ll be doing this affiliate blogger a big favour.

Finally, We Have A New Team Member To Help Us Out

Meet our newest employee.  For once, he’s not a poisonous spider!

This is Lazlo and his self appointed role here at Affiliate Stuff towers is keeping my lap warm when I’m working, and making sure to savage my fingers whenever any important phone calls that I really need to concentrate for are on the go!

Every affiliate should have one of these important organisational tools, here’s hoping he’s going to help ease me back into work.  He sure does make the office a much more pleasant place to hang out!

Greetings!  As I’m still having bother concentrating properly on work but am still gamely sitting at my laptop just in case I get inspired I reckon I might as well help some people out with an “Ask Kirsty” session on Twitter.

If you have any questions about affiliate marketing, or web promotion type stuff or even just want to shoot the breeze hit me up and I’ll do my best to answer your query in 140 characters or less!  If my answer is likely to be too long for twitter I’ll try to find you a resource from my own or someone else’s blog that is relevant.

I’m at http://twitter.com/AffiliateStuff and I’ll be responding to tweets from now until Thursday afternoon!

Yes guys, its time to think about the future!  This interesting wee question was delivered to me today via Twitter when I commented I’ve had bloggers block whilst trying to work out of my Mum and Dad’s dining room (not easy!!).

The single question that came back really struck a chord as it’s been on my mind quite a lot recently.

I was asked: - “do u expect putting up aff. sites till granny-hood? How do you see the future?”

Not a broad question at all there *ahem*.  I think like most people, when asked to consider the future in a career you’re completely happy with you automatically think “I can see myself doing this job forever.”

A Couple Of Subsequent Thoughts Then Remind Me That’s Unlikely

1. 15 years ago this job didn’t exist.  The affiliate of 5 years ago and 10 years ago operated in dramatically different ways and market conditions.  It therefore follows that by the time I reach retirement age the way the information superhighway works and the purchasing habits of humankind will be beyond all recognition.  Will affiliate marketing even exist in 20 years time?

2.  Looking around, all the smart cookies are putting a few eggs outside the affiliate basket.  This makes me think I should be doing the same.  But what should I do?  Notable people such as the UK’s fave affiliate blogger Kieron Donoghue have started up ventures such as Content Now and are diversifying away from total reliance upon the affiliate stream.

So How Do I See The Future?

Quite alarmingly, I find myself unable to look beyond the end of this year.  I know the world in which I work will change constantly and that I’ll need to keep up with those changes if I want to survive. I’ve complete faith in my ability to do this but in all honestly, I see the future as completely uncertain.  This is both exciting and terrifying. What if I find myself out of a job in 5 years time? Certainly the world in which I work is almost unrecognisable since I started out as an affiliate 5 years ago.

Creating My Own Certainties

This is something I started doing as soon as I went full time.  I’ve always been a bit of a worry wart so rather than spending all my income I have invested a lot into property.  I own 2 houses in the UK which I’ve bought to help provide for me in my later years.

Beyond that, I have a vague desire to invest in some kind of offline business where my online marketing skills might help tap into new markets and generate new customers.  I’ve a further ambition that having my own e-commerce site based upon my knowledge of various niches could be an interesting venture, but it would be one I’d need to embark upon with others who have knowledge of the mechanics of running an online store.

So Where Does Your Future Lie?

What do you all think?  Will you still be working in affiliate marketing when you reach retirement age? (which will be 95 by the time we all finally get to put our feet up!)  Where does the future of affiliate marketing lie?  Will the internet even still be there in 50 years or will the ice caps have melted leaving us all living in a very bad Kevin Costner film without Facebook and Twitter to help us live worthwhile lives?

Greetings blog fans and do excuse the longer than normal pause from my direction.  I decided to go completely offline for an entire week whilst in Austria. This was followed right up with a trip to Ireland during which I also went internet “Cold Turkey”. Very daring I thought!  I have to confess I didn’t think much about work up until I had a very interesting experience at the hands of one of our lovely hosts in Austria.  Keen to ensure we experienced the best the area had to offer they treated us to a wee go on their burgeoning business - a high rope course!  Needless to say I nearly had what we call in Scotland a “hairy canary” when presented with the need to clamber over difficult rope arrangements high up in the tree tops.

As you can tell I survived, but experiencing something that was so far out of my day to day comfort zone did give me a fair amount of food for thought.  You really realise what’s important in life when despite the many safety harnesses they strap you into your treacherous bloody brain convinces you that you’ll die if you make a wrong move!

Now this kind of experience does two things

1. It makes you proud you went so far outside your comfort zone, learned something new, and survived the experience.

2. It highlights that your daily concerns and “what you know is important” is perhaps not as important as you’d previously perceived.  A good dose of perspective is achieved!

How Does This Translate To Affiliate Marketing?

Well guys and gals, I’m not asking you to dangle off a rope high above the forest floor to improve your affiliate performance, but taking a good look at yourself to see if you are stuck in an “affiliate comfort zone” might be a dashed good idea.  I’m not just talking to affiliates here, this applies to anyone involved in the glorious technicolour world that is our beloved industry.

I believe there are a number of areas that many affiliates start to get “over comfortable” with, and I do include a number of my own sins here which I frequently strive to remedy!

• Falling victim to the belief that something which didn’t work for you once ago won’t work ever. You tried it, things didn’t work out, and you’re never going near it again.  Sound familiar?  We’ve all had it at one stage or another.  However, there’s nothing that annoys me more than when I later discover that actually I was just trying with the wrong merchant or at the wrong time and that I’ve been missing out on a juicy revenue stream.  Same can apply with the names reversed for those of you on the other side of the fence!
• The cardinal sin - I Know It All And Nobody Has Anything To Teach Me - This could so easily turn into an undignified rant from me about some of the notions and attitudes of underexperienced network or agency staff who seem to have attended the Reginald Perrin school of customer relations.  However I shall leave that one for another day.  Anyhow, affiliates are the bloody worst at this.  Don’t get me wrong, the strongly held conviction that their own methods are good, effective, and the best is the reason why there are so many damned successful affiliates out there.  But would it really do any harm to consider there might just be some rare soul out there who has something to teach ya?
• The flip side of the above coin - Believing Everything Anyone Ever Writes About SEO And / Or Affiliate Marketing. This is more of an area where beginners can get dragged down.  Approach every bit of information you read with a bit of scepticism.  Treat nothing as gospel until you have thoroughly tested it yourself.  The sad fact is that there’s rarely a “cut and dried” answer to anything very much in our industry.  Google is one prime example of this - never, ever expect consistency from that direction.  They might well have rules, but they don’t enforce them with anything approaching a steady hand.  Lets face it, if they did clever black hat types would exploit it in an instant!
• What I’m Doing Works - I Have Nothing New To Learn - Although you definately shouldn’t muck about too much with tried and tested methods, I believe it’s important to keep up to date with new things and push yourself a little out of your comfort zone to learn about them and test premises you hear about on the grapevine.  Similarly, maybe you could try dipping a toe in the water with a new niche that is strongly related to an area you’re in already.  Sometimes the results can be very surprising, and even if it does turn out to be a load of old crap - you always learn something!

Whatever your affiliate comfort zone is, step outside it a little bit today.  It doesn’t have to be a massive change of direction (in fact I strongly advise against that sort of carry on!).  However, take a wee step into the unknown, feel the fear, and reap the benefits!

G’day (or should I say “Och Aye The Noo!!”) and greetings from me sitting jetlagged on my Mummy’s couch in Bonny Scotland.

I got in yesterday afternoon and I’m feeling pretty damned good actually.  I employed some new techniques on my latest longhaul adventure which meant I had a pretty decent time of it in the dreaded Economy Class.  I thought I’d share these with all you guys as I am feeling remarkably good for someone who has just spent 24 hours sitting in a space just slightly larger than a tea tray!

• Noise Cancelling Headphones - You have to buy them,  a total must have.  Not only do the movies sound better but they block out a lot of the background noise that ends up really wearing you down.  Oh, and screaming children!
• iPOD loaded up with Audio Books - I’ve used this before as I put them on when I want to go to sleep.  Nice soothing narration at low volume combined with my new headphones meant I was pretty oblivious to what was going on nearby when I wanted to sleep.
• Take a massive big pillow and HUGE fleece blanket. Yes, a lot of people did laugh at me both in the Airport and on the plane when I turned up with a cosy bed in a massive bag.  But then I got 7 hours fairly solid sleep and they didn’t, so they weren’t laughing when I was sending up the big Z’s.  I even had a dream!
• Use The Business Class Toilets - The way Emirates have their planes set up, the business class loos are located behind the forward galley.  They leave the curtain open so they can get in and out, and this means the sneaky economy traveller can dash forward for a bit of business class loo time.  No queues as their presence is not advertised to the rest of economy by way of a green light.  Rejoice in the floral arrangements, revel in the presence of genuine towels with which to wipe your hands, and enjoy higher standards of cleanliness which mean you are a lot less likely to stand in mystery liquid on the toilet floor in your socks (yerrrcchhhh).
• Melatonin Herbal Supplement - I took a melatonin supplement every few hours during my journey and I slept much more soundly / easily both during the journey and last night when I got home to Mum’s.  I usually wake up at 4 or 5am and can’t get back to sleep when I’ve been flying.  This time, I got 12 solid hours and woke at 8.30am feeling pretty darned good.

Sorry if you were hoping for an affiliate post, but this is the best I can come up with under the circumstances and perhaps some of you will find it useful, ha ha ha.

Just as well I am feeling good.  Today I’m driving up to Stirling to go on a Hen weekend prior to my good friend Kathryn’s wedding and Duncan will be paintballing and generally hanging out with the rest of the stag party at the same time.

More “Affiliate Stuff” from me when I recover fully!

Imagine if you will, a 70’s style gameshow complete with host in spangly Gold Lame jacket, permatan, and gleaming white teeth….

“Hello ladies and gents, boys and girls and welcome to another fascinating episode of… “What’s my Google Penalty!!”

“This week’s contestant is a familiar face here on What’s My Penalty and she’s really wondering how the hell she got here again.  Please welcome… KIRSTY MCCUBBIN!!”

*Crowd goes wild, insert Hammond organ medly, Cue Google Robot Dancing Girls…*

Yep, It’s Happened Again!

Over the past few days my brand new site Blokes Undies has been on a bit of a downward spiral in the organic traffic stakes.  Over the weekend it stopped ranking for its own name, which is usually a strong penalty indicator.

So What Is It THIS Time Kirsty?

Well, at first I found THIS when I searched for D&G Maxi Logo Boxer Shorts (opens in new window) and was fairly convinced that these nasty scrapers had gotten me a Duplicate Content Penalty with their scurrilous spamming activity.

After a quick consult with the kind people over at the A4UForums I filed various Spam reports, shortened my feed content to stop people nicking content that could knock me from the SERPS, and generally stewed in my own juice.

But Was it That?

See, one thing you have to remember about trying to work out a Google penalty is that the first thing you find, compelling as it may be…. isn’t necessarily your issue!

I had also found another funny little issue with my indexing, where content on the site seemed to be attributed to lots of different pages by Google, despite only appearing on one. Example Here (opens in new window)   but as it had been present for a while I’d put it down to “a bit of a Google glitch” and a couple of people said they’d had similar in the past.

“Can’t be that then.”  I thought.

And I Reckon That’s The Nasty Little Game Show Type Trap These Situations Can Pull on You!

I’ve seen lots of “Google Penalty Checklist” type posts, and in not one of them does it say “NEVER rule out anything.”

Fortunately, the indexing situation was nagging away at the back of my head.  I don’t like leaving issues and expecting them to fix themselves.  Earlier, I finally thought to view the source of one of my pages… just in case there was an outside chance there might be some odd thing on there.

And What Do I Find?

Arrghhh!! The featured content gallery plugin I posted about previously doesn’t only post nice pictures and titles… it features content excerpts from each post as well.  On my site, they were within the source code of each page, not visible to users, and indexable by Google.  Not good.

Having checked out some other sites using the plugin I think I must have gotten something wrong with the install as I’m not seeing the same issue on any of them!

Ho Hum…

Well, all I can do is wait and see how it all pans out now.  Honestly, how many penalties can one girl just trying to “get it right” actually create!  I think Wordpress is great, but the amount of issues that can happen without you knowing about it because of how automated and brill it all is are many and varied.

It’s never dull is it?!