To cut a long story short, there is a glitch internally that is duplicating pages at a rate of knots – up to 60,000 times. No wonder that Google says nah! And, that’s why I don’t come up in organic search nearly as much. Obviously in terms of stats this has meant a drop but to be honest, I’m very comfortable with the numbers as they are – for a blog, they’re very healthy, and more importantly very sticky. The fact remains, though, that I cannot move to the next level or grab back those lost stats with things as they are. The very fact that readers or users have to really search around for BBB to appear is very annoying and not at all user-friendly – the very last kind of reader experience I want for anyone coming to BBB. I’ve had a hugely comprehensive audit (and hugely expensive, I might add) from one of the best SEO agencies in the UK who have been nothing but kind and helpful.
They recommend that BBB cannot remain on Blogger and gain more stats. If I stayed, I would stay static pretty much, and while that’s okay in many ways, I think every blogger needs to see some growth in order to stay motivated. In some ways, I feel kind of devastated – I didn’t even know this could happen. I’m just like many other bloggers who really have no clue about the technical aspects and can very easily remember a time when Google didn’t rule the world and we were all just happily blogging along. Google runs a harsh system when it comes to bloggers – it doesn’t really differentiate between blogs and websites when it crawls, so things like very short content could get you a penalty and reduce your search. A lot of blogs are made of short content. The internal duplications have meant that basically, Google thinks I’m cheating, and it’s through absolutely no fault of my own, and obviously, I’m not. But hey, tell it to the spiders.
So, BBB is going through some more mending work and then it’s going to move to WordPress in the next couple of weeks. I am so sad to leave Blogger; it’s the platform that I learned to blog on and silly as it is, I’m going to feel a little lost without it. I really don’t relish learning a new system so I’ll ask ahead that you forgive any inevitable hitches in a couple of weeks time when the move goes ahead.
It’s costing thousands to get out of this mess (there are many other functionality issues besides), so I have to thank my lucky stars that I decided to take some ads so at least there is something to one side to pay for it, otherwise the only other option would be to start a new blog, or to abandon BBB and blogging althogether.
So, that’s it..for readers, I don’t think the move to WordPress will have much impact, but inevitably things may look a little different, and definitely I will make some L plate mistakes!
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