In the past few months we have started to notice an issue with our blog post traffic for one of our niche product sites.

What we have noticed is that at least once a month for about a week we lose about 50% of our blog traffic.

In the analysis for this it looks like that a good proportion of our blog posts just disappear from Google search. For instance, for one blog post in particular we are ranking #1 in Google for a particular keyword. About 5 days ago we started to lose traffic again so I checked that keyword and sure enough we are nowhere to be seen in Google for it.

Yesterday I did a search using quotes for a particular string of text in that post and the post didn’t register at all. In other words, it was de-indexed (is that a word?) from Google. Today I checked it and the post has reappeared but it is still not ranking anywhere for it.

In the past few months it has done the same thing each month. Very weird…but in all cases so far the posts eventually go back to their original ranking and the traffic will return again.

I know this can happen with new posts but these are posts that are up to 3 months old. Is 3 months still considered a new post?? I would have thought not but who knows with Google.

Anyone have any ideas on what the problem might be?

UPDATE 1: Within about an hour of writing this blog post the site started ranking again for the missing blog posts. The post described above is now back and ranking at #1. If it recurs again next month I will update this post with new info.

UPDATE 2: Well its the 14th February as I write this second update and Google has yet again taken out a good majority of our blog posts. Actually they are still in Google but they are no longer ranking like they used to. I have no idea why this is happening on a regular basis. It usually lasts about a week so I will update when the posts are ranking again.

UPDATE 3: It’s 9th March and the blog posts are finally ranking again. This has been the longest so far – just about a month. Since I have been trying to figure out what is causing this I did make a change to that blog so I am not sure whether that is the reason why it is ranking again. What I did was change the Post Title default in the All in One SEO plugin. The default displays the blog post title along with the blog name in the title. This means that the blog name shows up on every single blog post title. My thinking is maybe Google sees this as duplicate titles. I changed it a couple of days ago and now the blog is ranking again. I guess we will just have to wait and see whether that has done the trick or whether the blog will lose its ranking again next month.

UPDATE 4: About a day after posting Update 3, the blog lost its ranking again so traffic has died again. I think the next step will be to add nofollow tags to the Amazon links we have in each post.  Each post is a review of an Amazon product but it is all original content and in no way resembles the content on Amazon so I know that isn’t the problem. But each post contains 3 affiliate links to the Amazon product being reviewed. We all know that Google doesn’t really like affiliate sites so I am wondering whether that is the problem. I thought perhaps for every third blog post we should add the nofollow tag to the affiliate links. We will be doing this over the weekend to see if that makes a difference.

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Classified ad marketing is a quick and easy way to make money online without having a website or blog. This is a great bum marketing technique.

It basically involves placing short text ads on free classified ad websites. Within each ad you place an affiliate link to a product you are promoting. When a visitor to your ad clicks the affiliate link they are taken to the merchants website and if they purchase a product from that site, you get a commission for that sale.

The trick here is to choose classified ad sites that already rank really well in Google. In this way you are not only getting the traffic from the classified ad site itself but you are also, and more importantly, getting search engine traffic as your ad will rank on the first page of Google…or at least that is our aim. A couple of good ones are Craigslist.com and usfreeads.com.

To make this work, you need to find keywords to use in your ads that are not very competitive. In other words, you don’t want to compete with millions of other websites to get your classified ad on the front page of a Google search so choosing low competitive keywords is the key.

Step 1: Choose a product

The first step is to find a product to promote. We recommend using Clickbank if you are just starting out but other affiliate networks include Commission Junction, Linkshare and Shareasale, just to name a few.

Now rather than repeat myself, take a look at my article on How to make money with forum marketing to see how to go about choosing a Clickbank product.

Step 2: Find keywords that relate to those products

In the title of your ad and also in the ad description you need to use appropriate keywords so that firstly people can find your ad when they do a search in Google or any of the other search engines and secondly so that your ad ranks highly in the search engines. Use Wordtracker or the free Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that relate to the product you chose to promote.

Step 3: Place your ads

There are a number of free classified ad sites on the Internet. Just do a search in Google and you will see plenty. The one we like to use however is called USFreeads. This site gets a lot of traffic and ranks well in Google so you don’t need to do much work to get your ad ranking.

You will need to sign up with USFreeads first – you can do that HERE.

When creating your ads the main things to remember are to use the keyword you choose in step 2 in the title of your ad and also as the main heading of the ad itself. Use H1 tags to highlight the title and then place the keyword another couple of times in the ad.

You will also need to add your affiliate links in the ad so that readers of your ad can click through to the product.

Step 4: Social Bookmarking

Once you have placed your ad you should add the link to a few bookmarking sites to boost the ads ranking. Also getting a few backlinks from other websites will help.

Important

Remember that this is a numbers game – the more ads you can put up the better. You will find that some ads do extremely well and get you a lot of sales whilst others will do nothing. This is why you can’t just stop at one ad – just keep pumping them out. If you can do 10 a day great, if you can do 20 even better. Just get as many up as your time allows. Even just two a day is better than nothing – by the end of the month you would have 60 ads up.

Once you start making money it is highly recommended that you pay for the monthly subscription to USFreeads. At $9.95 it is well worth it.

Well it appears Google has had their last pagerank update for 2008. From what I can tell it looks like the results are mixed with some bloggers moving up to pagerank 5 and 6′s. On the other hand there is also a notable amount of bloggers who have gone to a pagerank of zero….nasty!.

This blog has moved from a pagerank 1 to a pagerank of 2. Not bad considering we no longer bother actively going out and looking for links. In fact we don’t promote this blog at all anymore.

In contrast however one of our niche websites in which we actively look for links has moved from a pagerank 4 to a pagerank of 3. It appears that all our other sites have stayed the same.

How has this affected us? Well apart from seeing a difference in the green line on the Google toolbar it has made no difference whatsoever. Traffic hasn’t changed and rankings haven’t changed.

I used to be so caught up in the Google pagerank and would check constantly to see whether a new pagerank had come through. I got so good at it that even now I don’t need to hold my mouse over the green bar – I can tell straight away what the pagerank is by just looking at it. Fortunately I don’t do that anymore.

Old habits die hard however so every now and then I still glance at the little green bar at the top of the screen as I did this morning and noticed a pagerank change.

In my opinion the Google pagerank is really just a rough gauge as to the value of a website – it’s nothing more than that. Don’t get too caught up in it.