Google optimization – how I blew it

One of the ways I use my blog is to test various search optimization techniques. I’ve written successful post with review of expedia as flight booking website and optimized it to get high ranking. I got pretty high in some good keywords and was playing with it a bit. I’ve written two other posts about my experience there – you can see them here and here.

Encouraged by good results (I got ranked first before expedia for “flight booking website”) I continued optimization effort. And suddenly it all blew up – I disappeared from Google rank almost totally. I got detected by Google as spammer and de-listed.

If you are interested what made me there here is it – first read my google optimization updateon what worked for me right before I got delisted.

I haven’t stopped there and tried on. I’ve focused on “flight booking” to improve my ranking there. The way I wanted to do it was by introducing this term as “category” in wordpress. Benefit of such setup was huge – with this there was page created in WordPress listing all articles in category “flight booking”. Link from such great source as http://wordpress.com/tag/flight-booking/ is great boost for rank. That’s at least how it should be…

For me – that was last action – I disappeared then. What normally is big benefit was this time nail to my SEO coffin. Reasons for this:

• this link was from place not related to flight booking – potential hint that it’s spam
• I simply overdo this – keywords related to flight booking within article were very dense
• another possible theory (anyone can confirm?) is that google tracks history of my ranking – this constant improvement, especially via content changes and links from strange places over short time – this may be treated as warning sign by Google.

So – be careful with your optimization efforts. Don’t blew it! To end on more positive note – in next post I’ll write happy end of the story. I’m back in the ranking now. How I get back to SEO business for “flight booking website” – read soon.