Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization

It turns out a having a Web site be mobile friendly is not quite as critical as I thought.

At some point Google made certain changes to their page rank algorithm.  These changes really impacted my business.  The changes really hurt the ranking of web pages which Google felt had too many similar links or too many similar rich text inbound links.

At one point it was good to have keywords (text) linking to your Web site.  I made lots of them.  Now it seems I made to many, possibly too many from the same domain.

I've been updating some of my old Web pages to modify and in some cases remove links which may be hurting my Web site traffic.

Meanwhile I continue to receive promotional material from google trying to get me to join their AdWords advertising program.  I won't do it.  They control search results and they also benefit when the results are shaken up because more businesses need to advertise as a result of their shake ups.

Mobile Friendly or Die Slide Scanning

Mobile Friendly Web pages.

I recently dumped a previously successful Web page to make it a new, mobile friendly Web site.


For over a decade my slide scanning pages were really rocking it.  They'd come up in the top ten for my targeted search terms, bringing in work to my little home office based business,  from all over the United States.

About 2 years ago search engines started favoring mobile friendly sites, especially when the searching was done on mobile. My slide scanning service pages suddenly took a big hit, going from their consistant spot on page one, back to page 3!  Ouch !

The result was a huge drop in orders from across the country.  Instead I'd only get the occasional order from local people...those who likely put in a local modifier in their search string.  A word like Massachusetts or Boston, added to the typical search string, would bring up my page on top.

I had good luck with a newer mobile friendly site for my drone photography business at www.aerialphoto123.com

So I finally broke down and made the jump to a mobile friendly web site using GoDaddy's Web site builder.  It costs a bit more than their standard FTP hosting but I'm hoping the new mobile friendly site shows up for people who search for slide scanning services no matter where they are.

I also had two pages at different domains to promote the business.  Search engines don't like duplicate content, so i shut down one of the pages.