The SEO Void

Recently, I noticed an alarming anomaly on Google: sites occassionally drop off the face of the keyword phrase planet, disappearing into what I refer to as the ‘SEO void’, which is somewhere between the SEO sandbox and a bottomless pit.  This doesn’t happen for a single keyword phrase, but for all keyword phrases.

At first I thought I had been penalized for overoptimizing my site and, after furiously searching for remedies to this problem, I accepted the fact that I would have to tell my client that I had somehow destroyed their presence on the internet.  As I was not looking forward to this conversation, I procrastinated several days, telling myself that there was a glitch in Google’s system and the site would return to its previous rank.  I waited several days and, lo and behold, on the third day the site returned to the SERPs at a higher position than previously listed.

This happened yet again with another client with similar results.  Somewhat more composed this time, I waited several days and once again found that my site returned to the SERPs with higher rankings.

I don’t know why this happens, as it occured in both instances between crawls.  I do know, however, that the only solution is to wait it out.

Geoff Hoesch is the owner of Dragonfly SEO, a Maryland SEO company.