GDS or Google Dance Syndrome is a sickness
seen in Google Search Engine when it gets too much of information about a site
or it reacts to one of its own animals (aka, panda, penguin, hummingbird, zebra
bla bla.. ) in an unknown way. Funny?
It’s not! Only people who have seen their keywords
getting impacted by GDS know it all. It is serious and leads to a lot of frustration.
When I experienced this for my ecommerce site, I didn’t know what was wrong.
I questioned myself again and again. Did I
:
- over-optimize my site
- get too many backlinks from somewhere
- get impacted by one of the Big G’s – animal
- did my competitors do too well to push me out on rankings
- someone play malicious
- I lose my good backlinks
Have you questioned yourself any of these?
If yes, chances are that your site is affected by GDS.
WHAT DOES GOOGLE DANCE MEAN?
Let me talk about that in a common man’s
language. A keyword on my site ‘satin scarf’ ranked on 12th
position. I woke up one morning and as part of my normal tracking activities,
noticed that the keyword jumped from 12th position to 208th
position in Google. I missed a beat, actually a few. I checked and rechecked if I made any
mistake, but the fact was that keyword was far too out. A shift of a couple of
places in either direction is natural. It could be because of a number of
reasons. A jump that big, means my business for that specific keyword is gone. While
I have been waiting for my keyword to come to #1 page, it has vanished
altogether.
I wait for a day or two and three and four.
The keyword moved sideways but did not get any closer to its initial 12th
ranking. Panic?
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IF YOUR KEYWORDS DO GOOGLE DANCE?
Relax. If you have not employed any black
hat techniques to get your site ranked in the past, there is nothing to worry. In
my case, I was doing everything right. I was writing a lot of good content on
my blog, I had products added to my site almost daily, the traffic on my site
was increasing every passing day, and the social marketing was improving. I
could not think of anything for which Google could penalize me. But I was disheartened.
I was frustrated. It was months and months of hard work. In addition to the
keyword jumping off, I checked some more basics.
- Google webmasters has no malware or manual actions or messages
for my site.
- In fact, there were few positives. A few days later the SEO Analytics Reports were out and the domain authority for my site had increased by 1 place and page authority by 2 places.
So what exactly was wrong?
NOTHING!
I saw my keywords dance for about 7-8 days and at the end of it, it climbed to position 8th. As I write this post, I see that the keyword is in the images on the first page of Google. That brings in more traffic than before, because a picture speaks better than words.
NOTHING!
I saw my keywords dance for about 7-8 days and at the end of it, it climbed to position 8th. As I write this post, I see that the keyword is in the images on the first page of Google. That brings in more traffic than before, because a picture speaks better than words.
So my belief is to follow the Google guidelines for on-page and off-page SEO and practice ethical techniques. All Google does is over a period of time,
it reassess the site. That could be because of one of its
algorithms, or for the fact that you have received some qualitative backlinks
that need to be reassessed and then your domain re-positioned in the SERP. As
long as the keywords are jumping, you should feel that something is more to
happen. Google is not done yet. For my other competitive keywords, I have also
seen them being completely out of SERP, even non-existent till position #500.
They have come back, some have done better than before, and some have gone down
a little.
SHOULD WE STOP SEO ACTIVITIES WHEN GOOGLE DANCES?
What is important is to believe in your
techniques, follow the right path and keep working on quality content. I would
not recommend stopping your SEO activities when you see Google dance happening.
The dance goes on for about 2 weeks. Not working for 2 weeks would definitely
bring you a drop in rankings. So just keep working on quality content.
So when Google dances, you dance to its
tunes. Coz if you have played it right, you would be safe, not sorry!
Hope this gives you a bit of relief. If you have experienced Google dance, go ahead and share your findings.
Hope this gives you a bit of relief. If you have experienced Google dance, go ahead and share your findings.
