August update and things are going in the wrong direction.
Since my last update things have been going a little down hill. I initially thought that my travel sites had largely escaped the impact of the ‘Panda’ update, but it appears I may have been wrong. Visitors to my site have steadily dropped, largely because the links to my sites have been dropping from the Google index.
Why? Most of my links have come from article directories that allow ‘Follow’ links. Since Panda targeted content farm sites (i.e. article directories) they have had no choice but to implement ‘No Follow’ tags on any outbound links. Nobody is entirely sure whether No Follow links are as negative as they were before, but for my sites it has had a huge impact.
The solution? Revamp my existing sites and set up new links, using the Do Follow article directories and my own sites. This is with the exception of Hubpages. Whilst their site still allows Do Follow linking for users with a 75 score or more, the fact that most of my hubs are for promotional use has severely impacted my scoring, which means they are not likely to be Do Follow for much longer. Furthermore, Hubpages have implemented their own ad program for hubbers which so far have earned hubbers quite a bit of money. The one thing I notice about those hubbers who are benefiting the most from the ad program is that none of their hubs are for self promotion. From now on, any hubs of mine will be for fun, not promotion.
So where does this leave me? My Joomla site experiment will now be on the back burner while I get my most profitable site back on Google. I have no idea how long this will take, but needs must. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.
