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Who is Interested in the SEO Secret Sauce?
Posted by earthandeconomy • 4/06/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: Marketing, optimization, Ranking, search, search engine, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, SEM, SEO
I will share some flavorful recipes for how to spice up your blog so the bots love what you are cooking. I will list each recipe in a separate thread.
If you want professional blogging advice I recommend you visit Dosh Dosh or ProBlogger.
Here are a list of ingredients I will add in subsequent posts:
- Backgrounders
- WIP Examples
- Choosing a Domain and IP
- The Hilltop Algorithm
- Keyword Expansion, Frequency and Density
- Link Types: inbound, internal, outbound
- Social Media and Tools
- XML, XHTML and Tags
- Chaos vs. Order
Preheated...PS, if you are and SEO chef, please don't hesitate to share your recipes in this kitchen.
User Comments
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If there is no interest in this discussion I am going back to green
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Its Sunday, don't expect a lot of banter anywhere -
Thanks, overlooked the obvious. Should have known there is a direct correlation to typical traffic patterns (minus seasonality).
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For the majority of new websites and blogs SEO is dead!
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Episode 1: Backrounders
Perform a search in google for the name Richard Rupp and look for the fourth indented listing with the following title: "LinkedIn: Richard Rupp"
As you can see, social media sites have their own algorithms which work successfull for profile pages. We will see many more examples in future posts and how to leverage this.
Experience, out of the way let's move on to the first most competive SERP we have ever achieved. My first most competitive SERPs were in 2003 when I secured first page listings in google for Web Hosting and permutations (e.g. ecommerce web hosting). Some of my 2003 optimizations still have first page SERPs even though the sites have not changed much since then. I will share in examples in future posts, where I am allowed to.
What are your backgrounders? What were your most difficult SERPs and are some of the practices you used in the past still working today...despite all of Google's dancing?-
earthandco, let's test your hypothesis of social medai sites having their own google algorithm by doing some other tests. Though instead of searching on a term that isn't competitive, do a search for "vacation rentals", "real estate" or some other highly competitive term. The top 10 serps show 0 social media results.
The fact that you had a top placement in 2003 is like saying you were the number 1 hunter when man lived in caves. 2003 isn't anything like 2008.
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For this statement "For the majority of new websites and blogs SEO is dead!" I agree with it partially. It is true that many new sites and blogs will find difficulty getting out of the sandbox, but I guarantee many of the same principles that worked in 2003 still apply today. The difference today, is that social media is an integral part of the strategy, where it was not as prominent before. You have to think outside the box. Tell me any keyword you want placement on and we can assess if it is possible to do it...including acquire the site that owns it if it makes fiscal sense. This may not be "organic" but you had better bet that there are companies doing this. I can name upwards of 20. The SEO strategy I will focus on is not related to a property acquisition strategy...which is extremely lucrative. It is related to the good old fashioned way of "meticulous" consistency.
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It isn't quite SEO anymore. It is more of a Social Media optimization strategy. Prior to 2003 there was still a fairly wide gap between people who knew what got your ranked and what didn't. Around 2003 the techniques for ranking high in Google became common knowledge. Because of this Google started clamping down because everyone and their dog figured out what to do. Executing a purely 2003 SEO strategy will not get you anywhere in the rankings. Today ranking requires a much more organic, creative approach that when executed effectively results in the consistent and continuous linking to your site. The alternative is to use social media optimization either by hiring someone who has leverage in the social media universe, which is an expensive proposition, or by getting highly involved in social media. To offer good old fashioned "meticulous" consistency will only work if you are able to charge a ton of money as the amount of leg work is massive. Moreover, for social media optimization to work, you need to be authentic. Being authentic requires a much closer relationship with your client, understanding the client's business, needs and way of communication. If you aren't authentic in social media, you will never succeed.
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I am not living in a cave my friend...quite the contrary. My post in 2003 was about my first SERP...not my most recent ones.
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Algorithms used by Google in 2003 are different than those of today. Back in 2003 there was still the wide use of Meta keyword tags which are redundant today.
SEO is simple....
Keyword in Domain
Keyword in Title tag
Choice of keywords, keyword density, keyword placement
Linking with keyword anchored text
Linking from authority websites
Linking from relevant sites
Not much else to it...I have blogs I started last week on the first page of Google and getting hits.
www.squidoo.com/learn-search-engine-optimization
I posted to my blog today (My blog is a little over a week old) and within 2 hours I am on the first page of the big G and getting hits
Search term: Mars advert monks (Not a keyword with huge competition granted)
www.google.co.uk/search?q=mars%20advert%20monks&btnG=Google%20Search
My site is 6th one down... www.greatadvert.com-
It won't be showing up in a week or two.
Your link to your squidoo page is misleading. That isn't a blog that you created a week ago.
By the way, if you think you are getting PR from these discussions you arent.
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Tony you mistake what I am saying, the Squidoo page is to show more on SEO...my site is the one at the bottom called greatadvert.
Im not expecting any PR out of this I am trying to make a point on SEO!-
How about the ranking of your vvide blog?
The strategies you describe are old. They have been arbitraged out. -
My ranking for VVIDE is high in search engines too, take the keyword what makes a good manager....I am number 6 on the first page. I hacve always done extremely well in SEO through what I follow on my Squidoo page.
www.google.com/search?q=What%20makes%20a%20good%20manager&hl=en&pwst=1&star...
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TonyB, I am glad you brought up the mortgage and travel industries which are saturated with competition. Yes, you can own first page terms on those results, but as short term strategy should leverage a media acquisition strategy over building a property because of the players in the space.
For the sake of discussion let's accept the known fact that some terms are a lot more competitive than others, agreed? However, there are still terms out there that are tail now but will be more competive in the future.
For example, environmental keywords do not yield a large amount of traffic today. However, if trends remain the same, this will change in the near future and we can count on the media for that. And you will wish you started to build today if you could guess what the trend would be in 2 years. I am looking at a 7 year trend which I have seen still works today.
10+ years ago a guy name John Pike started a little security website by just posting news articles related to military information. Today the poorly designed site gets over 500k visitors. I help with a few minor change to his template for him and he now has a SERP for the keyword WMD (among others) first page Google. If you are building a property, assume it will be around for years to come if you are building anything of value you will be able to leverage the size of your index to strategically target and/or acquire the keywords you want at a later date. Of course it is not going to happen over night.-
Earthandeconomy, I agree those terms are saturated and long tail terms may be where to focus on. Though most people do not have 10 years to hang out waiting for their long tail terms to go into the head. The premise of being in the long tail is that the quantity of terms that rank should be large enough that having a term from the head doesn't matter. However to rank for massive numbers of long tail words still requires a site that has a lot of google love. In 99% of cases this will be an older site such as John Pikes. You know too that it is easy to do SEO on a 10 year old site and get it to start ranking for highly competitive terms.
It is not that easy to get a new site to rank utilizing traditional SEO unless you are either highly creative and create massive buzz and inbound links, are an online celebrity or have a ton of cash to be able to buy your google love.
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Yes arbitrages do exist for sure, definitely. I wish I had never been a part of them. But when you acquire a property you can still apply the same principles I will share to effectly optimze that property better than when you acquired it...which demonstrates that the principles I am willing to share do have a measured impact. Take any of the best properties out there. Name just one. Facebook, Huffington Post, Linkedin...I guarantee they could make changes to components of their SEO strategy and see an incremental lift and own key terms that drive traffic, if that was their focus. In fact, what percentage of authors for high profile blogs do you think don't pay attention to SEO? In my first post I referred to chaos vs. order. Simply blogging sporadically and submitting links to any service without a strategy is chaotic and has very little order. I will suggest that an "ordered" approach will yield better results than blindly bloggin with the hopes that simply blogging is enough to attract visitors.
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Im not talking about arbitrage as in Google ad sense arbitrage. I meant the gap between those who knew about google's algorithm and those who didn't know, closed.
SEO for a strong site is easy. The challenge is for brand new sites. I believe that SEO for new sites is dead. It needs to be done however traditional SEO strategy, on a new site, is not going to get you traffic.
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Tony B, do you agree with some of the ideas or no?
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earthandeconomy, yes I agree with most of what you are saying. I just think that SEO is only a tiny part of the overall strategy for getting traffic to a new site.
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Definitely agree with your perspective. So let's start with the assumption that we are identifying a trend today and going to build a long term property which will have a historical index in the future and be well positioned. Yes, I am well aware that John's site has a historical quality score and thus it was easier to leverage it to target SERPs. So, using the same principle that John did when he started the site, I too am going to set out to secure SERPs for "green" terms which I bet will have more traffic in the future based on current media trends.
Proceed?
Please continue to challenge the assumptions.-
I like the way that sounds. You definitely will do very well in the future if you start targeting green terms today.
The challenge though is if you offer to do this for someone else, unless they clearly understand that the SEO part is a long term strategy, you will more than likely have a very frustrated client. This gap in search engine traffic could be filled in by social media optimization.
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Oh, definitely agree that SEO is a small strategy. But I will also say that those "arbitrages" you mentioned are definitely focussing on snatching up the properties that have SERPs for high traffic terms because they yield the best media margin. So, yes SEO when building from the ground up is a small part of the strategy, and acquiring optimized sites is a much larger part of the strategy. With this in mind, I am setting out, knowing that SEO sites yield the best media margin because you don't have to pay for traffic in an attempt to build a SEO property from the ground up...leveraging prior principles and using trending analysis to identify future market opportunities or niches.
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If someone is serious about doing business on the net, they should buy an aged domain.
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Make sense? PS, E&E is a hobby by the way and a place to play. I am very involved in a current startup working on an algorithm for multivariate testing...but that is a whole completely different discussion which we won't explore.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_statistics-
what's the startup?
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Definitely agree with that 100%. An aged domain does give you a definite advantage. Assuming you don't botch it by switching too many variables at the same time (whois, IP, hosts, etc.).
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Ive never had problems with switching IP's, whois and hosts on a domain. In fact we switched all of them with blogcatalog and we didnt lose a beat. What do you know about google and manual penalties? Have you heard of them manually penalizing a site for non long tail terms because the site competes with google?
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My partners would shoot me if I mentioned the name. To protect the names of the innocent I will spell the domain backwards omrak.com. Should see an extremely fancy under construction page!
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LOL yeah that's an incredible page.
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There is a lot to say about your account standing...and sometimes that is the size of your spend monthly (if you catch my drift). I have seen manually penalties imposed and overlooked...especially with regards to PPC. For large accounts (talking over 1 million a month on spend which gets you a lower tier of account rep)...you are subject to a manual review process. It is very common for a rep to review a landing page to see if a keyword is present on it.
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Is that an example of what you meant?
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I meant in organic results. Assuming you have no PPC account.
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This question is an intersting one:
Have you heard of them manually penalizing a site for non long tail terms because the site competes with google?
I have not directly had experience with a case that would prove that...but I do believe based on reading that the Hilltop algorithm is still very much at play. You are familiar with this concept correct?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilltop_algorithm-
Is hilltop their way of determining authority sites?
I'm talking about site like Technorati that competes with Googles blog search. Despite millions of inbound links to Technorati, you will rarely find them ranking for non long tail terms.
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This is the concept that a link to another larger community that offers a multiplicity of resources (e.g. a directory) is a larger vote of confidence than a link to a shallow site. I believe we can attribute the success of Wikipedia to components of this algorith. Wikipedia is considered a "subject matter expert". Other factors in the score involve types of domain (e.g. .edu, .gov, etc.). Links from these types of domains also contribute to a higher quality score because they are perceived as having the "best expert pages". This is where blogging gets muddled. Again, a Huffington Post would fall under the category of an "Expert" which carries much more weight than any other normal site with similar traffic size and PR.
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Wouldn't Technorati fall into this same category. Yet you don't see them ranking.
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We can deconstruct Technorati as an example and look at their structure. I think we can make some assumptions (minus a manual negative weighting process) as to why their sites are not indexed. I do not know for certain how Technorati is manually weighted by the engines in direct correlation to their algorithms. I can make some assumptions knowing that I have an account with them, based on the SERPs they get indexed just by me simply creating an account. A good way to explore this is to do a search for a domain without the TLD in Google and see what services are indexed over others and makes some adjustments.
FYI, congratulations on being the second indented set of listings for our domain. Tells me BlogCatalog is doing something right.
www.google.com/search?q=earthandeconomy-
I believe there is a manual penalty on the site. Where it had ranked for non long term tails in the top 2 or 3 results, the site went to the 3rd and 4th pages. The same thing did not happen to long term tail results.
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I don't think Technorati is in the same category. Take a look at their directory category of business and its PR of a 2. Something is not right if this is the case for their main site.
www.technorati.com/business/
pr.prchecker.info/getpr.php?codex=aHR0cDovL3d3dy50ZWNobm9yYXRpLmNvbS9idXNpb... -
Basically, as you know, a page this is one directory deep should conceivably have the same pagerank (if moving up 1 level) or a level lower than the index (which is an 8). If their directories one level deep are indeed a PR2 they should take a look at why. Look at their enterntainment caegory (no data) and lifestyle which is a PR1. They are textual links and not images either.
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how would you explain that for BC? BC has pretty high pr passing through the site.
whereas the site used to rank in the top for blogs, blogging, bloggers within a day it went to the third page.
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Question, I noticed you made a change to a category. You renamed the Environment category to Green...and your path structure still references the term environment: www.blogcatalog.com/directory/environment
What other types of "signature" changes did you make recently that might have cause you to slip on terms as you are potentially being reindexed?
For this example, why the decision to change from the word environment to green...and further, what would the impact be because you can not rename the folder path to green to match the titles. This is what I would refer to as "inconsistency" of "order". -
Seems like a very small example but there is a much deeper concept behind it. Because if all anchor text to your site was linked with the text "Environment" (you know the impact of changing it to Green), for example...thus why you did not change the path most likely. Unless, there was also a system constraint.
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Typically we wouldn't change a category name though there were some advertising considerations behind that change. On site anchor text was also changed to Green.
We could have changed the path though this would have caused the page to lose its pr.
I believe there is something else that causes larger term rankings to fall overnight.
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If I were a crawler and I read was only reading the url:
www.blogcatalog.com/directory/environment
I would assume the topic for the site is "directory environmment" Thus I would expect a metatitle, meta description, meta keyword (less important) to contain the phrase "directory environment".
However, this is not the case, so consistency is broken. Like I said, it seems trivial. But it is very important to look at consistency and thus why I refered in the opening post about three link types: inbound, internal, and outbound. This is an example where your internal url does not match your internal tagging; an example where inbound urls may not longer be optimized if they had "environment" anchor text; may no longer be optimized if your outbound related links were pointing to the wrong "subject matter" experts based on related content ("directory environment" is much different than "green blogs").-
I think you are giving too much weight to the text in the URL. Inbound,internal,on page factors are much more important than what's in the URL.
If what you are saying is correct, then when you do a search for a term, that term should be dominant in the URLs of the results. Do a search for the term "blogging" and you will see that this is not the case
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blogging&btnG=Search
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When you lose control of this consistency is when you are not longer effectively optimizing your site in a very structured way.
Based on the metatitle for your page and the intro description I am assuming your top keywords are green blogs (derivatives include: blogs, blog, green blog, etc.)
Let's run a very primative test to see how you score for the term green blogs for this page: www.blogcatalog.com/directory/environment
According to this tool you did not score that bad:
www.instantposition.com/seotestresults.php
Now imagine if every user-generated page within your system had a "signature" that was optimized best-foot-forward so the bots would like it. This is when you come out of the gate expanding the size of your footprint in a very automated fashion much like Linkedin is doing for user profile pages.
Again, that tool is merely one simplified example of deconstructing a single page within the entire strategy.-
If carried out throughout the site then it may rise to level of having a material impact on the results.
However, in general, the url itself doesn't have much impact on relevancy.
Do a search for the term "blogging"
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blogging&btnG=Search
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Definitely there is a hierarchy to how elements are weighted as part of the strategy and the url name is only one tiny facet. I am using that tiny facet as an example of inconsitency. The more consistencies you have, the better you are in relation to the algorithm. Let;s say for example the algorithm factors in only 10 things all equally weighted for the purpose of this example (which we know is not true).
1. Domain name
2. Path structure
3. Meta title and tags
4. Image names and alt tags
5. Hyperlinks with anchor text, titles and path names they link to
6. Links to and from high PR "subject matter experts"
7. Whois information, IP and number of years domain registered
8. Page load performance and response times
9. Overall keyword frequency and density
10. XHTML validations and scripting
Ok, so now let's say that your images don't have a naming convention and metadata. Your site is linked to from a bunch of affliate sites with low PR. Your XHTML fails validation for an early bug at the header. Your page response time is greater than 5 seconds. Any your urls are dynamic with a lot of cruft.
In this example, for arguments sake, you score a 5/10 or 50%. Do you honestly think you can compete for SEO.
These smaller examples are merely a microcosmic representation of a much larger picture. Never downplay the importance of the smallest items.
Consider this. In a very real world example I have seen designers blow off coding for other browsers (e.g. won't code for Safari, don't care about that resolution, not worried about JS enabled). These collective "trade-offs" are like a slow "leak" over time and are like leaving money on the table. I have seen minor adjustments to items like the ones I talked about increase landing page conversion by more than 10% which resulted in millions of dollars to the bottom line...it is all a matter of perspective relative your need. Doing 50k visitors a mo. Probably not a big deal right? Serving a banner ad off of Yahoo!'s home page...you can see 50k in 50 seconds (no joke)...that is a big difference. The small stuff is leaving money on the table. Every time you tell yourself you don't have to code to the lowest common denominator, you are possibly setting yourself up for a slow leak. -
Anyhow, it is not healthy to suffer from analysis paralysis either.
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Good conversation. I would very much like to continue it later. I have not seen No Country for Old Men (slash SEOs) and I am about to.
Talk later. -
One more item for you Tony...waiting for my wife to be ready. You had said you change the titles for advertising which I am assuming is associated with the AdSense in the right rail. If you really want to make the most of of your media for that position you should be pulling in category-specific CPA media, assuming you can negotiate a very good price per acquisition. You guys are big enough to negotiate pricing directly with clients rather than being a publisher. Anyhow, those are assumptions based on what I have visibility into.
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Trust and community should be first and foremost for you, because you have an awesome community here. I would definitely prioritize that over ads for sure.
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earthandcommunity
thanks for the conversation. You have amazing insight into this. Community is number 1. The ads aren't for adsense though that's probably what is showing at the moment.
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Alright gobbledygookers translate this into specific real world examples which can be used for a simply crazy blogger. Give specific examples which are immediate or I won't believe anything you are saying. It is like the man who comes in and says I get 1000 hits per day on my swimwear site.
1. Domain name
Why should I buy this, I promised people I would never spend money on my blog.
2. Path structure-- What does this mean, where do you get a clear description of what this is?
3. Meta title and tags-- This I understand. You put in a title, description and tages.
4. Image names and alt tags
Alright how do you increase traffic using image names?
5. Hyperlinks with anchor text, titles and path names they link to
This is new to me.
6. Links to and from high PR "subject matter experts"
I am not sure about this one.
7. Whois information, IP and number of years domain registered
I'm new here.
8. Page load performance and response times
I have a slow loading page.
9. Overall keyword frequency and density
This is not hard to figure out.
10. XHTML validations and scripting -
Let's address one at a time. Item #1. There are many reasons for owning your own domain:
1. The obvioius reason, you own it! Case and Point:
www.wlwt.com/money/15795941/detail.html
2. You have your own distinct brand which you can use to build trust with users. If you are part of wordpress.com or blogspot.com and you want to be more than a blog, then what?
3. Acquisitions of your domain or the company that owns your domain. If I were a media company looking to acquire a media property I would not purchase a subdomain of another technology if I have my own platform. You can do it to turn a quick buck, but at the end of the day you can't standardize.
4. Display URL for PPC. Short distinct display URLs convert better. And if you are using someone elses subdomain, then you can have your own subdomains.
5. Real examples of domains. Which would you rather own? Which one would you trust more? Which one is easier to remember? Which one would work better in a PPC ad? Which one would be easier to brand?
A. online-education-degree-programs.com
B. worldwidelearn.com
C. education.blogspot.com
Is there reasoning behind why you would never spend money on your blog? Making that statement means your time isn't worth anything, which I don't buy. -
@earth&economy and TonyB - thanks for the opportunity to eavesdrop and learn more -- much appreciated -
Item #2 Path structure-- What does this mean, where do you get a clear description of what this is?
This is termonology used to refer to how you "structure" your URLs including domains, folders, files names and possible parameters.
Type in feedburner.com and you will be redirected to: www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
Notice you are redirected to a URL with "www" and two directories or folders deep /fb/ then /a/ and the page "home"
That is the path structure.
If you click on their RSS feed you will notice the URL:
feeds.feedburner.com/BurnThisRSS2
Does the Feedburner URL look familiar? Guess who owns that URL if all of your subscribers are subscribed to it? More about it:
www.dailyblogtips.com/do-not-send-your-subscribers-directly-to-feedburner/
Anyhow, the path structure is important for a number of reasons:
- it is part of a display url (PPC and SEO)
- it it is too nested with too many files in a folder it will be difficult to crawl
- if it contains information, users can guess at the patterns to your site and possibly expose private information (for example maybe the /a/ or /b/ stand for two versions you are A/B testing?) or maybe index.jsp?id=209 is one of your clients and the numbers are sequential so a person can change the number and see all of your clients.
You should setup your URLs depending on your strategic needs, whether it is PPC, Organic, for media buys, emails sends, etc.
I prefer to have a clean structure that is static so I can build up reciprocal links to my site knowing the folders will be there for a long time.
what can you guess about the structure of these urls and which would you prefer?
test.yoursite.com/a1/beta/
yoursite.blogspot.com/blogging/
yoursite.com/online/schools/california.html
california.onlineschools.com/
Where you can find info on the topic. I searched for a resource and found this quickly. I did not read the entire article but appears to have some examples (what can you say about their url structure, haha?):
blog.etrix.ie/2008/03/24/seo-friendly-website-url-structure/ -
3. Meta title and tags-- This I understand. You put in a title, description and tags.
Yes, you can simply tag things or you can take a more "structured" approach. Remember that almost everything you tag, name, or organize will be indexed by engine and if their algorithms don't place emphasis on a tag now, who is to say they won't later. Imagine this hypothetical scenario. The US passes legislation requiring sites to comply with an accessibility mandate...so now: "you must learn how to make browsers and media players accessible to people with disabilities, and how to make them work better with assistive technologies."
www.w3.org/WAI/
Tag everything according to W3C standards and your code will parse better and last longer and be more future proof than if you didn't. Don't expect Wordpress to go back and recode your site for your code does not validate for XHTML.
Here is me practicing what I preach for the most part:
validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fearthandeconomy.com
I will give you a much more detailed example of an optimization for a page in a later post that builds on all concepts I outlined in the first post.
Still with me? -
Continuing on #3 take a look at this example of tagging for a tail term:
Navigate to this page:
www.instantposition.com/seotest.php
For the URL type in: earthandeconomy.com
For the Keyword or phrase use: green content
Now, consider that my index page is the only page in my site that has any type of optimization for the word green content and I would say it is really not even optimal by SEO standards. So why is my site on page 1 for Google for the term "green content" when I don't have anything truly optimized for it? I am completely white hat too.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat
In fact my current meta title on my home page does not match the SERP...because I made the changes for this example so you would see a page that optimized to make instant position happy. There is a lot more to it than this.-
PS, you should check the search for the term "green content" for our site in Google, 1 day after making the adjusment to the home page based on the example in this post. That is quick movement. Keep in mind I have no content on the site that is optimized for the exact term "green content" except the home page.
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4. Image names and alt tags
Alright how do you increase traffic using image names?
Quickly, alt tags are a requirement for XHTML standard.
Here is more about using EXIF information in JPGs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif
If you are familiar with Google Webmaster tools you will see there is an option to turn on enhanced image search.
I won't dive into this one two deep, but I will say google is working on a beta to let users tags images.
Image names contribute to keyword density.-
Hey earthandeconomy;
I have been a web-designer for 5 years and while I understand some of what your talking about a good bulk of it is flying straight over my head LOL
If you could dumb it down a bit i'm sure the info is pretty helpful.
P.S I only mention the fact that I'm a web-designer because I work in the field and i'm sure others are clueless.
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5. Hyperlinks with anchor text, titles and path names they link to
Let's deconstruct an anchor tag. Probably this one will get stripped by BlogCatalog, but let's see.
Inside an "A" tag you can place a title tag (title="some text"). You also have the text they hyperlink encloses. Both of these elements have weight. The title= is the tag that is displayed like a "tooltip" when you hover over a hyperlink. When a crawler follows a link it stores the words in the anchor and the title and uses the words to determine what the site is about.
Again, go to Google Webmaster tools and look at what Googlebot sees and you will get a sense of the words it indexes in your site's content and in external links to your site.
Your hyperlinks from other sites to your site are important because they contain information in them that tells a crawler what your site is about.
If your site is about widgets and external sites which are using your hyperlink have text and titles that say "home"...no good.
I am a visual person, so when I read over this explanation I realize it is difficult to absorb. Again, will provide a better example later. -
6. Links to and from high PR "subject matter experts"
I am not sure about this one.
This is very important for your strategy. If you are linking to unrelated with low PRs sites and unrelated sites are linking to you with low PRs then you will not be perceived as a credible resources.
Your strategy for getting "reciprocal links" should include links from .edu and .gov sites if possible. You will be perceived as a more credible resource if this is the case. This is similar to sites with high pageranks.
Read more about the Hilltop Algorithm to get an understanding:
tools.devshed.com/c/a/Search-Engine-Tricks/Analysis-and-Implications-of-Hil... -
Here is an interesting article pertaining to Google checking your domain expiration date...but you don't own a domain so this shouldn't be a problem, right?
tihomir.org/google-checks-your-domain-expiration-date/
Another resource that goes into Google ranking factors:
www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm
Should give you ideas. -
There is talk and I quote "Landing Page Load Time Will Impact Google AdWords Quality Score"
www.seroundtable.com/archives/016457.html
I have done conversion tests by forcing slow response times. There are direct correlations to conversion after a certain point.
But even more important is what happens when your page takes 5 seconds to load and you have the compounding effect of 100 visitors trying to access a page at the same time. Probably you won't experience this blogging unless you get picked up on the Drudge Report or Yahoo's home page...but just imagine if you have 500 visitors before the first page finishes loading (after 5 seconds). -
thegnr...just saw your message. Will try to bring it down a notch. Sorry.
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Thanks earthandeconomy;
don't feel bad I was tutoring a client in flash once and I was just going and going and I looked into his eyes he had this glazed over look LOL I had to bring it down.Thanks for understanding.
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I really started my blog with the philosophy of not spending money. The goal was to push the envelope in how far I could get without spending a dime, free site submission, free hosting, etc.
My time may be worth something in a way, I was hoping that the site would
generate enough advertising revenue to cover buying a domain name. This
did not happen, and I learned some interesting things about adsense and
affiliate programs that are well interesting. In other words, I thought I
could "bootstrap" with advertising revenue.
While this may seem unprofessional, It is more a statement of grumpiness than anything else. I know it would pay off more in the end to buy things. The idea of linking to important sites is a good one. However, wouldn't it be better if I linked to major writers like Ellen Datlow, or Jeff Vandermeer in science fiction, than .gov, or .edu. I am not that interested in tying directly with these markets. The anchor text for photographs is a rather interesting idea. -
This is not "flying over my head". I'm reaching in some areas but overall I'm fascinated. I'm also feeling validated re: the research I have done but not put into practice as yet.
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Alright friends, let's fire up the range. I believe I do recall the following quote from wehireu stating
Alright gobbledygookers translate this into specific real world examples
And, upon the advice of thegnr I was asked to turn it down a notch.
Now I am not saying what is about to follow is perfect by any means, but it is a start. Consider you have all been invited to play in a sandbox where we can leave our impressions. Build what we want and wipe away what we don't. Test our 2003 assumptions.
I have a very real world example I have put together in an attempt to create a living example. I am hoping our collaboration will make this example a success.
Details to follow in next post... -
Here is the context:
- We have a domain that 301 redirects to a single page of valid XHTML content
- The domain is a .info domain, newly acquired today for $1 on April 8, 2008
- There are no reciprocal links currently pointing to the content but the content is linking out
- The domain does redirect to a page within Earth & Economy but there are no links from E&E (currently a PR4)
What we want to learn:
- How long it takes for the page to get a PR
- How long it taks to get a page 1 SERP for specified search term
- What minor adjustments can we make to move the page up and down in the results of google
- How long does it take for changes to reflect in Google's index for this page
- What negative impacts, if any do we see when linked to by unrelated content or social media sites
These are just a few of the examples of items we will set out to answer. If you already have assumptions, please share. We can take bets. No work is required on your part except to collaborate here.
Our goal is to push the single page into positon 1 in google for a single search phrase as fast as possible in a very calculated manner.
Hopefully we will come away with some very good learnings and best practices. I have laid the foundation... -
Let's unveil the domain. I dedicate this dollar domain to wehireu. Here are a bunch of memorable quotes to kick it off:
"I'll buy that for a dollar"
"Da Da Da Da Da, I'm Lovin' It- The dollar meal"
"Dolla Dolla Bill Y'all"
"I want my two dollars" - Better off dead -
Loud Orchestral Fanfare Playing in the Background
The search phrase we are pursing a SERP for is Green Example
Here is our sandbox: greenexample.info
Welcome to a real world example. Let's see what happens, shall we -
This post is the first "reciprocal" link to the new domain. The content is related to the discussion but not related to what we would expect for the term Green Example. BlogCatalog uses a no follow instruction in outbound hyperlinks. Google and MSN will not index the content from this link. Pity, we will add one more new link to the domain tomorrow.
Please don't link to the domain so we can keep track of our calculated changes, where possible.
Take care. -
I am very interested in feedback about the page based on your assumptions using best practices. Deconstruct every element of the single page to make it "perfectly" optimized. We can discuss changes or a simple strategy, like what would happen if we stumbled it, or possibly used Digg? What would happen if I added it to claim ID? Or linked to it from E&E's footer. These are all possibilities.
Remember, the goal is to achieve a first page SERP for the term Green Example as quick as possible in Google. We can toy with Yahoo! and MSN as well, after Google.
Suggestions? -
Yes, by the way it is in a shared hosting environment. Can move it to dedicated, as fast as you can say DNS propagation, if it becomes and issue.
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Next step. Let's agree on the single biggest adjustment we could do to have the largest impact towards the goal of achieveing a SERP for the term Green Example. Till Tomorrow...
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Exercise: can someone answer if our example page is being penalized because it links back to itself through a 301 redirect which goes to another domain?
It does this twice, once on the header image and once in the footer. -
Today, let's do a search on Google to see if there is any history on this domain. Possibly we will have reciprocal links to already because someone else owned the domain prior.
www.google.com/search?q=greenexample.info
Look, in the first results an indexed whois page comes up which leads us to here:
www.who.is/whois-info/ip-address/greenexample.info/
Wow, we sure can tell a lot about an individual using a service like whois. If the listing is not private we know:
- IP address
- address
- email address
- phone number
- name
- location
So, let's take a look at the creation date and expiration date for the domain. It looks like it is only registered for a year.
What are your thoughts on whether domain age affects ranking for a search engine algorithm?
www.seomoz.org/blog/a-little-piece-of-the-google-algorithm-revealed -
I say yes the age of the domain will be a factor. The 1 year expiration will be a factor i.e. two, three, etc. would be better.
P.S. I'm sorry to say that I have 3 appointments today so I must go now but I will be watching this thread and I will check in again when I can later this evening. Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. -
This looks like a good start.
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Check out this SEOmoz article about Google's patent if you haven't already:
www.seomoz.org/article/google-historical-data-patent
Items in this document will help to frame the context for some future discussion and tests. -
Let's recap a few assumptions:
plus [+], minus [-] or unknown [?]
[-] our .info domain compared to .com
[-] 1 year domain renewal vs. 10 or 5 etc.
[-] url redirection using 301, compared to no redirection
[+] keyword in the domain
[+] XHTML Validation
[+] Speed test performance
[+] Optimization score by Instant Position SEO Doc
[?] no private registration for whois
[-] 22 counts of phrase "green example" with 17.32% density
[-] see SEOmoz article relating to spam detection and punishment
[-] no changes to document over time and unrelated content to keyword
[?] impact of traffic on existing domain in relation to this orphaned page
What other positive, negative or unknown factors should be considered in for the current v1.0 version of our green example?
If you had access to create one single link to greenexample.info in an attempt to get it indexed by search engines...what would you recommend?
Please share your ideas, if time permits. -
Here is a question? If we get our page indexed for the term green example (assuming we created our reciprocal links using the domain greenexample.info) which domain will be displayed in the SERP? Is it even possible to get our domain indexed and displayed if it is a 301 redirect?
Please share your learnings? -
Let's hedge our bets. Do you think it is even possible to get a page 1 SERP for our single page for the search term "green example"? If not why? What would you do different and why?
If you think it is possible, how long do you think it will take and why? -
Ok, since there were no suggestions for the first source to create a reciprocal link, I have chosen to create a claimID account. You will notice a search for "greenexample" without a space has no results related to our project today. www.google.com/search?q=greenexample
Let's see just how fast claimID shows up for a search for greenexample and possibly even our main term "green example".
Here is our new profile page for claimID:
claimid.com/greenexample
On our profile page we added a single link to the site. This is our first reciprocal link.
What should we do next? -
We completed adding the claimID badge to the footer of the site to complete the reciprocal link (ClaimID is linking to us and we are linking to them).
What information will a search engine index for our new image that links to claimID? Does it make a difference?
We now have three images on our page, each named differently. So if an engine were to index the three images (including alt tag and href titles) what would the density percentage be for the word green example, when comparing the three image names?
Does it matter? -
BAM! And this my friends is how we get our first SERP, position 1, for our new claimID profile showing up for the term "greenexample" in less than 25 minutes! It is not "green example" (with a space between the two words) but it will do for our first link.
www.google.com/search?q=greenexample
Now the engines are indexing our profile page and crawling through to our site. Not even Google sitemaps or site submission can say they are that fast!
Let's recap quickly. We spent one dollar on a domain, a few hours on a content page and a few minutes on creating a claimID. I would say, not bad progress for a little work. Shoot, writing these posts is taking longer than that by far.
What's cooking next? -
this is interesting but just so you know, I am new to this SEO thing, anyone kindly give me simple explaination about it? -
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@earthandeconomy
I just got glasses today and I'm having a hard time keeping up (vertigo and nausea). Please do not stop. I'm lagging behind but I think I am tracking you. -
There one minute and gone the next...why do you think the claimID listing was dropped?
What should the next move be? -
I am going to remove the link to greenexample.info from claimID to see if the claimID listing returns as a SERP, to test my assumption that it was penalized because the .info domain had no history and was redirecting. I am not certain if claimID profile page will recover. I have not run this test before. I have used claimID with .com domains that are not redirecting, and they are still currently on the first page...which leads me to believe that our existing configuration is weighted differently. I can only speculate as to what the cause is, so I will try variations to see if I can isolate why. In the meantime we should try another method of linking to attempt to get the page indexed.
Suggestions for another potentially high impact link that could assist with getting the green example indexed? -
Ok, good news, greenexample.info has been indexed and is showing up in google for a search for the domain. Notable, as expected, the domain listed in the results in not .info and insead it is earthandeconomy.com. Ok, so now let's do a search for a longer keyword phrase that is in our title to see if there is a SERP for a tail term.
I type in the search phrase "a collaborative information resource" which is part of our metatitle and wahlah, we have a position 8 SERP in Google
www.google.com/search?q=a+collaborative+information+resource
And if we do a search for "collaborative information resource" we are in position 10. Very interesting considering "a" is considered a stop word.
Anyhow, this is a great start.
Recap,
In 3 days, we were able to:
- spend one dollar on a domain
- spend a few hours on a content page
- spend few minutes on creating a claimID
- get a page 1 SERP for a tail term "collaborative information resource"
- removed link to .info from claimID profile (we'll keep an eye on this to see if our profile pages picks back up and maybe our tail term SERP disappears)
So what do you think? I think we are witnessing a real world example. I would love to hear your suggestions for what to do next?
Let's see what tomorrow holds... -
Another interesting test I am going to run is frequently searching for the SERP for the term "collaborative information resource" and then clicking on it. I have heard rumors that clicking on a results will drive it up in position over time if it is receiving more click throughs.
What do you think, is this true or just another SEO urban myth?
Let's see... -
Ok, one more teaser. Maybe you would like to see a position 1 SERP after three days for a term in the title of our page? I saved this one:
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=green+example+collaborative
Mighty real...
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True, it is definitely a very tail term, but hey, maybe with a little branding we could make it popular. In fact, I bet the domain is available if you want to start your own green example collaborative.
Ok, maybe not...hope you are enjoying this. I know I am... -
And last but not least, I was holding out for this one.
FOR ALL THE NON-BELIEVERS WHO WANTED A REAL WORLD EXAMPLE OF A PAGE 1 SERP IN THREE DAYS FOR A BRAND NEW .INFO DOMAIN...BAMMM!!!
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=green+example
That ladies and gentlemen that is the Green Example. We had better take a screenshot in case it disappears. It does not get any more real than that. -
Well, we don't mind being positioned above Jessica Alba after only three days of work...
Get your minds out of the gutter.
PEACE -
TonyB can I quote you "For the majority of new websites and blogs SEO is dead!"
I don't mind being a minority!
Did I mention I love this community?
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FYI, if you are smart about your optimization you will also get indexed for the inverse of your search term too.
www.google.com/search?q=example+green
Let's hear it for another SERP for the phrase "example green"
I heart algos... -
Post #105 I dedicate to BlogCatalog. No SERP on yahoo, but a search for our domain does yield a result:
search.yahoo.com/search?p=greenexample.info
It is very interesting the text that was used for the description.
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Smell the sweet aroma of a successful green example.
Day four, the dust has settled, let's count our SERPs (including claimID ones) and conclude this chapter.
1. green example
Google positions 1 & 2
www.google.com/search?q=green+example
2. example green
Google position 5
www.google.com/search?q=example+green
3. greenexample
Google positions 1, 2 & 3
www.google.com/search?q=greenexample
4. green example collaborative
Google position 1
www.google.com/search?q=green+example+collaborative
5. (a) collaborative information resource
Google positions 8 & 10
www.google.com/search?q=collaborative+information+resource
Hopefully you found this exercise helpful for providing ideas.
Take care. -
You rock!
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