The recent Google penguin update had a negative impact on my Amazon affiliate websites. The worst impact was one of my oldest affiliate websites was completely de-indexed by Google. All the income that I was getting from this website just ended over night. I had several other websites that dropped dramatically in their rankings. Oddly enough some of my new websites that had the least amount of content actually ended up moving up in the rankings. I don’t understand why an older website with more content would be treated less favorably than a website created a few months ago with only 5 posts but that is what happened.
I know some people faced with this impact would just throw their hands up in the air and quit. For the first couple of weeks I buried myself in reading as much as I could from SEO experts that were making suggestions on what to do to recover your website ranking. One of the suggestions that resonated with me was to use websites that rank highly in Google. Most people were recommending Squidoo and YouTube. I already use Squidoo so I decided to give it a go with YouTube.
Below are 3 videos that I created that shows you how quickly and easily it is to create a video that you can upload to YouTube. I will walk you thru step by step how I created the video. You can look over my shoulders and watch as I create a video. I am creating these videos now to get ranked highly in Google. Each video is just a few minutes long with the first video being the longest. The last video is the actual video that I created.
Please leave a comment below if you use videos in your ranking strategy or not. If you use video what products or methods do you use to create the videos?
Video 1 – Creating the presentation
Video 2 – Capturing the presentation
Video 3 – Creating the actual video
![](\"https://lh4.ggpht.com/w85uMftfxsFb_wbjOJXgPiFx-8L8PpEC-QEfwac6uazZlNsaPSwzZ5XN9881k6FFOQaawgWnwigMFFp4Xcss=s0\")
Jennifer, I think you are made of sterner stuff than I am! When my total income and traffic plummeted from the WP sites I had had up for several years and put a lot of work into, I basically sat down and bawled. That got boring after a while and right now I am having a Squidoo summer, updating old lenses and even winning Lens of the Day for the lens I linked to here in my website link! But it’s not a money page. (Squidoo makes sense for me for Amazon because I live in Colorado, one of the states that Amazon has dumped.)
I’ve made some Youtube videos in the past, with Keynote on my Mac, and I will try your method. Recently I was researching a specific product on YouTube and had to endure a bunch of extremely short and utterly useless sales pitch type videos, all done in the past couple of weeks by different people, so there must have been a WSO.
What you’ve described here is better than a lot of WSOs. This week I’ve been making a spreadsheet of backlinking places and when I thought about YouTube, I just thought I’d have to postpone that. But now I will move it to the top of my list! Thanks.
Zana,
It is great to hear that my videos have been helpful. Videos are a great way to get traffic to your website. I am an affiliate for non-Amazon products and I have used videos to a great advantage. For one product I created 2 short videos and both are ranking on first page of Google.
I can understand your frustration with losing everything when Google changes the rules. I was frustrated and wanted to throw in the towel. I think your method of doing Squidoo lens is a great strategy. I am trying to get Erica Stone to let me interview her about her success with Squidoo so hopefully you will see a future post about this.
Jennifer
Jennifer – Excellent and very educational post!
I’d like to share with you and your readers that Youtube videos definitely work and will produce traffic if done the right way. The site you see when clicking my name is nowhere to be found in Google, but is still on pg. 1 in Yahoo and Bing.
Making very unfancy but effective videos is extremely simple. I have a number of videos running that I made with Animoto.com that rank well and bring me daily traffic.
I made some “slides” with MS Paint and used some images from the web. These are definitely not high quality videos, but the whole point is to get people to click over to my website and it works.
If you Google TV ANTENNA REVIEWS you should see one of my videos at the top of page 2.
PS – It would be nice if you could re-record video #3 without that background noise.
– Neill
Neill,
Thanks for the heads up about video #3 which I have now rerecorded! I agree using videos is a great way to bring traffic to a website and it is much easier to get ranked highly with videos than getting a website ranked. Your own success with videos proves this to be true. Thanks for sharing!
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer
Thank you for sharing this. I also had my best sites main page disappear and other not so big sites were fine. This penguin is a strange thing! I still believe that things have not yet settled down and my site and hopefully yours too will come back.
Good for you for trying something new. I haven’t watched the videos yet as it is late so I have bookmarked this and will watch them tomorrow.
All the best
Kay
Kay,
My 2nd oldest website was wiped off the map with the latest Google update so it can happen to anyone. If you want to succeed you have to adapt and overcome and keep trying things and not rest on your laurel. I hope you get time today to watch the videos. Let me know what you think once you watch them.
Jennifer
Hello!
LOVE the tips you share in your videos. I liked seeing how you give an overview of what people are saying about a product on Amazon, I’ll have to try that!
I was curious if you have a strategy you’d recommend to boost a youtube video’s ranking in the search engine (ie. to try and get it on the first page, top 10 spot). Let’s say it’s currently in the top 100 and you want to try and boost it up. Do you have a strategy/system that you’re fairly confident in for increasing youtube video rankings?
Thanks again! 🙂
My brother suggested I would possibly like this blog.
He was totally right. This post truly made my day.
You cann’t consider simply how much time I had spent for this info!
Thanks!
I am glad that your brother recommended my website to you. Glad to have you on board.
Jennifer