Well, it looks like Google decided to slap some of my affiliate sites - and hard, too….. It’s even more painful because I was just recently bragging about ranking very well for some competitive terms (chalk it up to things that make you go “Hmmm….” ???).  I guess this is a lesson in not sitting still and taking things for granted when it comes to high rankings.

The sites are still in the index, but nowhere at all on the actual SERPs.  I’ve not recently made any major changes, have done nothing black-hat, have not purchased any links, everything is squeaky-clean white-hat, etc, etc…. and *poof* just like that they are not being displayed in the SERPs for some reason.  The only thing I can figure at this point is maybe it’s purely because they are affiliate sites.  They are not blatently obvious affiliate sites (they are well-designed, good quality,  good user experience “private label” dating sites and not full of the typical spammy-looking affiliate links).  Don’t know if it’s a bonafide penalty or just a temporary algorithm tweak.  I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that it’s just one of those temporary things that happens from time to time.

To rant even more:  2008 has been a very, very bad year for me personally.  A lot of sad and unexpected events and losses in my personal life - but business had been doing well all year.  Now it seems that 2008 has decided to give me one or two last nasty surprises before finally fading into history.  I’m usually a fairly optimistic person, but 2008 really sucked in a major way and I can’t wait to start over again with a clean slate (hopefully) in just a couple of weeks with 2009.

To turn this thing around, I’m going to start making a list of New Year Resolutions for 2009 in regard to website promotion ideas.  I’ve got to find other (less Google SERP-reliant) ways to make my site visible to potential customers.  Here’s the list so far:

• Work harder on and update the actual content sites more frequently (they have links to the dating sites throughout)
• Put more effort into reciprocal link exchanges (I know, it sounds so 2002).  This wouldn’t be for the purpose of gaming the search engines, though - sometimes the right partnership can really bring in some good, high-quality targeted traffic.
• Do more article marketing
• Build up a mailing list from site visitors (something I’ve 100% completely resisted doing so far - but will now seriously reconsider)
• Get more involved in Social Networking/Web 2.0 stuff
• Ramp up on paid search campaigns
• Look into paid advertising placement on other highly targeted sites

I’m sure there are about a million other things that can be done as well, so I’ll be keeping a pen and pad of paper handy for other random ideas.