And Google Keeps on Dancing…

LOL. Just L-O-freakin’-L.



In a recent article, I talked some about how Google can (and does) make SEO and getting good ole’ organic, FREE traffic a pain in the ass. And judging by some of the email I got, I’m not the only one who thinks this.



In fact, I actually closed with the comment that "…So the next time you’re pulling your hair out wondering exactly just what you should be doing in your SEO efforts, you can take comfort in knowing you’re not the only one who doesn’t know…because Google probably doesn’t even know either."



(I sure hope the Google spiders didn’t read that and report me to the ‘Big G’. They might be watching me right now…just *what* is that red, flashing light outside my window, anyway?)



Well, here’s a quick follow up to that post…and further proof that sometimes all you can do is just shake your head and laugh at the stuff that’s "supposed" to work when doing SEO and getting good rankings in google.



You’ve heard of the "Google Dance", right? In case you haven’t, the concept is simple:



You do something different on your site. Say your site is brand new, or you put new content on it, or redo a page with on-page optimization factors, or go on a backlinking campaign, or whatever. Point is – things change somehow.



Well, the "Google Dance" is generally when your site or page, due to this new change (whatever it is), jumps up the rankings in Google. It will generally bounce up and down – sometimes quite drastically – for a bit of time (generally a couple to few weeks) before Google simmers down and puts your site/page where it deems it should have its rightful place in the almighty SERP.



Now, traditionally, the "Google Dance" (as the phenomena is known) applies to sites that have a lower ranking, jump up in ranking, fluctuate up and down, and then settle back in where they were before (the original low ranking).



And that makes sense when you think about it. Take a page Google isn’t putting tons of importance on, draw a bunch of attention to it, Google gets all excited, jumps it up in the ranking, then when Google finds out it got all hot & bothered for nothing, it just settles it back where it was (or hopefully for you, a little higher).



But WTF is Google doing when it does the opposite?



For instance…in my last post, I mentioned that one of my sites had two separate pages that ranked on the first page of Google – one page at spot #1, and the other page at spot #2.



(Nevermind that the page I’ve done the *vast* majority of all the SEO work for is actually ranked LOWER…but I talked about that last time.)



You might remember that I made the comment – and in fairly sarcastic fashion, I might add – I decided to do a little SEO bump, by posting some anchor text-specific backlinks to the page at the #2 spot by posting to a couple blog directories and a number of articles directories.



The result…by posting more backlinks…and thus (supposedly) increasing the possible SEO of said page…it dropped from #2 all the way down to the 2nd page of Google.



Yup – time well-spent.



But never fear! For I was just a victim of the "Google Dance"!



See, a number of days later, my page actually jumped back up from the 2nd page of the Google results to #2 again!



*sounds the vuvuzelas*



So instead of my page being ranked low, then jumping up high, then back to low again…my "Google Dance" did the exact opposite. I ranked high…dropped down low…and then went back to being high again…and, incidentally, the same exact spot I was before I tried to do the little SEO bump.



I guess the lessons to learn here are:



1 – Google is indeed unpredictable



2 – Google does indeed like to dance (and almost everything they do is temporary)



3 – I would have been better off not trying to improve my SEO rankings at all*



(*The jury is still out on that last point…but I’m not ruling it out.)



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