Does google hate small sites?

[~kev~]

My blog is right around 4 years old. The domain name is almost 5 years old.

It seems like no matter how much content I post, how many pictures I upload, how many videos I post, the traffic stays about the same.

Google refers the majority of my traffic. But it seems that the flow of traffic from google has stagnated.

Lets say that in 2009 I had X number of articles, which brought X amount of traffic.

Over the past 2 - 3 years the number of articles as doubled, but the amount of traffic did not double.

I am going to guess the length of my articles is around 600 - 800 words. Some articles are close to 2,000 words while other post are in the 500 word range.

Why doesn't the amount of search engine traffic go up as the amount of content on the website increases?

Its like no matter how many articles I post, the flow of traffic never starts moving.

[stone]

Google likes fresh content.

If these posts were all on html pages, and you were going in and adding extra details to each page, I suspect that you would see the increase in traffic that you're looking for.

Back when my site was entirely html pages, and I was updating each of them constantly, I had some dynamite numbers.

I took a couple years off from my site, and the traffic & pr plummeted. I'm not regaining my previous numbers by blogging, but I did stop the traffic from disappearing.

[Brave7]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

the flow of traffic never starts moving.

I agree with you that Google is in phase of rankings only big sites. They favor site very active in a selective list of social media. As far as the small businesses, we have been forced to promote our businesses on Google Adwords and Shopping products or face the eviction of organic search.

Without forgetting that the organic search is shrinking tremendously to let the Adwords, Shopping products (Pay systems) and Google products (Youtube, etc) overlap by a ratio of 2:1.

Google looks like a Sam's club now and we aren't in it anymore or way down even nowhere for some of us.

[Jason_Martin]

Yes google is bringing very strict algorithms to maintain quality results.

[Cricket]

How much social networking are you doing?

[ronnyroll]

it is natural, you can better select different category.

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by Cricket

How much social networking are you doing?

A little here and there.

I might submit a link to digg or stumble every once in awhile, or post a link on a facebook page, a link here and there on a youtube video.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

A little here and there.

I might submit a link to digg or stumble every once in awhile, or post a link on a facebook page, a link here and there on a youtube video.

Survivalist pages can pick up quite a following on Facebook, especially when images are involved that can be easily shared with others. (Make sure those images include a link in the description!)

People have different preferences when it comes to how they interact with sites. Some prefer a forum setting, others may prefer blogs or social networks like Facebook. In my humble opinion, it is important that you meet the preferences of your target audience by offering a variety of ways for them to be involved with your sites.

If you add the fact that social media is known to be a signal with at least Google, it may be time to jump on that band wagon.

Just my 2 cents...

[stone]

Originally Posted by Cricket

(Make sure those images include a link in the description!)

oops...
I haven't been doing that on my FB page...

I've visited ~kev~'s site, he has incredible activity on his forum.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the problem is that the blog posts aren't being read?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by stone

oops...
I haven't been doing that on my FB page...

I've visited ~kev~'s site, he has incredible activity on his forum.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the problem is that the blog posts aren't being read?

Social networking is a wonderful way to bring people to your blog.

[Carrieli]

You had better do some other ways to drive traffic as you submit articles in your blog. Google prefers fresh content and also the divesity of promotion. So you can share your articles in different ways.

[curier]

google doesn't hate them they just don't like them )
now seriously , Google loves fresh content so .. these means pretty huge sites

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by curier

google doesn't hate them they just don't like them )
now seriously , Google loves fresh content so .. these means pretty huge sites

There was an article awhile back about sites who either buy articles, have guest posters, allow article submission,,,. Some of the sites were posting close to 400 articles a day.

The root of the article was asking how a small single poster site can compete against massive sites that create so much content.

The answer was, you can not compete. Its impossible for a single author blog to compete against sites that have dozens, or even hundreds of authors.

Have the days of creating a site, and that site ranking well in google behind us?

There was once a time when someone could open a fan site, and that site would rank well in google searches.

Here is an example, back in the early 2000s there was a site called pudland. Pudland was a site were people could upload maps for the game warcraft II.

Pudland went off line maybe close to 6 or 7 years ago?

In a forum I opened several years ago, I started using the keyword pudland in a bunch of the threads. The threads using the pudland keyword were pushed way back in the google results.

No matter what keyword I tried, google would not show results for searches.

Sometimes google will not even show results for exact matching keywords.

Originally Posted by stone

oops...
I haven't been doing that on my FB page...

I've visited ~kev~'s site, he has incredible activity on his forum.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the problem is that the blog posts aren't being read?

The blog is on a different domain name as the forum.

The blog also acts as a portal to other sites I have an interest in promoting. The more traffic the blog gets, the more traffic the other sites will get. The goal is to build a network of sites, with different entry points into the network.

My blog is one entry point into the network.

[Brave7]

@ Kev

Social media is one thing but is your site, forum, blog, etc made for just regular computers?. Are your platforms compatible with mobile devices?

It is going to be a major target audience, and it is the right time to take the train before it is too late. Of course it will ne more and more difficult to get exposure because the ads will be displayed first and Google know it. But any source of organic traffic is good to take even with the mobile devices.

http://www.seobook.com/mobile-seo

[TechUpdates]

Are the articles projecting the same old stuffs? If yes then maybe its time to change the niche a little bit..

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by TechUpdates

Are the articles projecting the same old stuffs? If yes then maybe its time to change the niche a little bit..

Negative, I have a wide range of articles and topics - camping, boating, fishing, gardening, hunting, all the way to commentary on human rights.

Some of the stuff gets a little repetitive, such as gardening or fishing.

How many times can you post about obama and human rights without being a little repetitive?

Topics are seasonal, such as elections, hunting, fishing and gardening.

[mikesideas]

Sorry to hear that Kev, no I would not say Google hates them I have a few small sites 10 – 20 pages doing OK but the sites I add daily content to are doing much better, have you checked to see that everything is indexed? And how they are positioned in Google for the target keywords of each article? And before you add new content are you checking to see how much the new content will be worth to you? Traffic volume and location mainly

[billzo]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

My blog is right around 4 years old. The domain name is almost 5 years old.

It seems like no matter how much content I post, how many pictures I upload, how many videos I post, the traffic stays about the same.

Google relies heavily on incoming links for ranking. So, small websites are not going to have many incoming links and won't rank very well.

Also, as to your statement about traffic staying the same, I sometimes wonder if Google throttles traffic down by tinkering with website rankings on a daily basis.

While my traffic numbers from Yahoo and Bing fluctuate, the daily traffic numbers from Google are pretty constant.

Keep in mind: Google makes almost all of its money from advertising. Every visitor Google sends you for free via search engine referrals is $0.10 or more you didn't have to pay Google for.

On more than one occasion I've been a victim of the "Google Sandbox". A new site is started and slowly builds traffic for a few months then WHAM!, Google traffic drops by 80% overnight.

Then Google sends me an email a week or two later suggesting I sign up for some paid advertising.

Coincidence???

[Cole001]

Hey kev, after asking this question i am just wondering how small business can rank better comapre to other sites...
i have two openion as well, you can find out small business web site on rank in fact very good rank with "seo services" & "seo company" keyword with us competition only.

but, on the other hand i am not going to neglet your site which is lost from the traffic as well from the ranking, as you said above.

i would like to add on above points that you should work out on user interface with the help of facebook, twitter & other social media sites. as cricket said.

what about google plus & other places evenif myspace is popular amongst the one
content in external site to drive traffic to our site is one of the best & organic way to get quality traffic..

i would like to see your site as well do some research on that why it's happend like that.. (as i am not expert but i love to research complicated studies)

Thanks,

[Brave7]

Originally Posted by billzo

Google relies heavily on incoming links for ranking. So, small websites are not going to have many incoming links and won't rank very well.

Very true and this apply to social media. The big corporations have more advantages, sites that review brands (mosly made for adsenses), blogs, forums, etc

I sometimes wonder if Google throttles traffic down by tinkering with website rankings on a daily basis.

Again this is very true. I had in the past ordered many articles, then put them on my site. We had more traffic of course, then after a while going back to our regular traffic numbers. We also discovered after unlocking our images file getting the same numbers of traffic, but this time from Google images. So I believe that google determine a traffic range depending of the site importance. It makes me think that if you add 10% of page, you aren't getting much more traffic, because you are still in the same range that Google determined. Perhaps adding 25% page would be significant to change the traffic range.

Keep in mind: Google makes almost all of its money from advertising. Every visitor Google sends you for free via search engine referrals is $0.10 or more you didn't have to pay Google for.

I wonder how Google will make money without our sites, so what Google send us aren't free, we let Google crawl our sites so they can make money in exchange that they rank our sites.

It isn't free to run a site