5 things to consider before you apologise to Google and ask for your Pagerank back
I'll hold my hand up high - I apologised to Google and removed the text links from the site. I tried to make things right but nothing happened. My Pagerank has remained at 0 (despite having been PR5 before the incident) and despite 2 pleas to Google to let me back in. I've had no reply from them - so I've decided that 2 months is enough. Here are some factors to help you decide what to do:
1. Look at your stats
More importantly look at how many visitors Google is sending in your direction now and compare that to how things used to be. Here's how mine looks:
At first glance it seems like the PR5 to PR0 transition really hurt - but then if you take into account that Ubuntu 7.10 came out in October 2007 it suddenly becomes clear. So that spike in October is something that happens every 6 months when the next Ubuntu release comes out. So with that in mind, I'm actually doing better now than I used to be. That's important. If your stats have taken a mightly plunge, then it might be best to try your hardest to get back on good terms with Google. Not for me.
2. Look at your income
Once you've looked at your statistics look at your income. Are you making loads of money from selling text links? Do you always have full advertising slots? If so then it might not be worthwhile returning to Google's index because you'd lose this excellent source of income.
3. Look at alternatives
There are loads of good ways to drive traffic to your site; for inspiration see my article 10 free ways to get blog exposure - none of these include Google. You'll find that doing good work and promoting it in the right way can be far better than the lucrative gains natural SEO can give. If one piece of content can go viral it can keep your site afloat for several months.
4. Have you got a community?
When John Chow was banned from Google it didn't really matter because he already had such a strong and vibrant community. With a community they do the hard work for you. They are repeat visitors and they're likely to promote your content for you - submitting it to social media sites etc. If you've got a good community then you don't necessarily need the organic hits that Google can bring.
5. RSS RSS RSS RSS RSS
Too many bloggers become obsessed with their SEO; trying to get 5 more people a day on their website for a specific keyphrase. Really you want more people to be repeat visitors - and your RSS feed is a great mechanism for doing that. People subscribed to your RSS will automatically be notified of your latest content - provided you have exciting content and (slightly) sensationalist titles they should click through. More RSS subscribers leads you more towards #4 (community).
So there you go, 5 simple points to help you work out whether it's worth apologising to Google are going it alone with no Pagerank. For the meantime all Google have done is remove our Pageranks - but should they start removing us from the index altogether, then we might have problems. That would be a harsh step to take and I hope it doesn't come to that.
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