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Google loves blog updates

We recently ran an historical analysis of several clients’ blogs and noticed a distinct pattern–SE activity picks up with more blog updates.  This isn’t rocket science–it’s always been suspected that frequent updates factors into crawl frequency.  It’s also not unreasonable to think of this process as a “race”–the more your blog gets indexed and the more you target fast developing non-competitive terms in competitive niches, the higher the chance your pages will rank well.  The big revelation is how the most recent Google algo changes reflect these concerns.  It appears that the algo change is placing a heavier emphasis on FRESH CONTENT for blogs.  So older entries that used to get a lot of love and attention from Google slip down as time goes by.  Apparently, the recent algo change results in older posts sliding down much faster.  This might be caused by 1) finding and giving more weight to the “latest info” on the particular subject and/or 2) the impact of Caffeine’s social media orientation that prefers late breaking or currently spreading info.  Also, the May Day update’s change in how Google handles long tail searches factors heavily too in “not exactly on point” posts being pushed down.  Being slightly off point and lack of updates may mean a steep decline in SE traffic.

What can you do?  Focus on news analysis (with original quirky/personal analysis), and , worst case but it’s probably the least you can do, news summaries.  Takes a lot of time?  Costs a lot of money?  Thankfully, there’s an affordable and effective solution to these issues.  And I’m not talking about RSS-pimping or “autoblogging” either.

Photo Credits: Danny Sullivan

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pompano 29 August 2010 SEO , 2 Comments

Google: Hypocrite, pimp, or clueless?

Unless you’ve been smoking rocks or hiding under one, you’re probably well aware of Google’s current Netwide manhunt for sites that buy links to get a SERP advantage.   Here’s one of the more famous blowouts: izea’s payperpost.com program paid bloggers to blog about sponsors and linking to them without the no follow rel tag.  Result: Google struck back by reducing the participating blogs’ PR to 0.

Indeed, Matt Cutts has blogged and spoken quite a few times on the evil of selling backlinks.  We thought this was the Google official policy.  At least until we saw this Adsense ad when checking our stats in an online SERP checker tool:

Click the Thumbnail to view the large image
adwords-hypocrisy

The problem with this is there’s no vetting whether the links being sold are merely submissions–which should be fine since the sites submitted to can still VOLUNTARILY post the link or deny it.  They are not getting paid either way.  You are paying for the submission service.  The problem is when people GUARANTEE a certain number of links.  Then the smell of either collusion or worse, being placed on a site’s own internal network, becomes overpowering.  We support submission services due to the voluntary placement explanation above.

What we don’t understand is why Google would take adwords ad placements for GUARANTEED links or ads that imply GUARANTEES such as the ad above without at least thinking of the implications regarding its avowed anti-linkselling policy.

What do you think?

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High Revenue Admin 30 November 2009 SEO , 3 Comments

Sites you can use for linkwheel building

If you’re getting on the linkwheel bandwagon for supercharging backlink value, you can use the list below.  Whatever you do, make sure you don’t use a familiar linkwheel pattern.  Don’t spam or your linkwheel will be worthless.   Make sure to populate the system with REAL AND USEFUL CONTENT.

The more “random” the linking pattern is the more “natural” it will look to search engines and the less likely you’ll get penalized.

425mb.com
99081.com
blackapplehost.com
blog.com
blogetery.com
blogmas.com
blogr.com
blogs.mu
blogsome.com
bravejournal.com
brinkster.net
dreamhosters.com
drivehq.com
easyjournal.com
edublogs.org
fateback.com
fc2.com
fortunecity.com
freehostia.com
freetzi.com
graffiti.net
i.ph
jabry.com
multiply.com
officelive.com
prohosting.com
qsh.eu
redrival.com
sitemix.jp/blog
t35.com
ueuo.com
ugu.pl
v3host.be
webcindario.com
weebly.com
wordpress.com
xm.com
xthost.info

If you don’t have the time to design, build, and execute a link wheel, click here for affordable outsourced linkwheel building services.

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High Revenue Admin 30 September 2009 SEO , 4 Comments

Use longtail keywords to roll up to larger terms

If you’re optimizing a site that is in a very competitive space, you may want to look into getting a list of TONS of longtail keywords for your niche.  Filter and rank them based on competition level.   Optimize for the lower competition items first. Here’s the tested and proven strategy you might want to try:

1)  Build content for the first priority long tail keywords but mention secondary priority keywords in subheadings and content body.  Keep track of your secondary priority keywords and where you mentioned them.

2) Optimize for the first priority items.  Build links using cheap outsourced linkbuilding services.

3) Once you rank well with first priority items, build your secondary priority keyword pages.  Take out the list you made at Step #1 above and link from those pages to your new pages.  Keep the linking to a minimum (1 per page is enough).  Mention tertiary terms.  Keep track of them.

4) Optimize the secondary keywords.  Repeat this process until you are targeting the most competitive terms in your niche.

5)  This process “banks” authority and “rolls up” to higher volume and higher paying (but often less converting) terms.

What will speed up this process?

The best form of “SEO” is quality content.  That’s it.  Period.  Good content will inspire your readers to link to you.  However, you can speed this process up by using social bookmarks, linking to the content through blog comments, sending the link to relevant discussion email groups.

Will I be spamming?

There is a line between welcome content and spam.  Know that line.  Good, relevant, and useful content will almost always be welcomed since it ADDS VALUE to ongoing online conversations about your niche.  How you present this content also determines whether it will be regarded as spam.  Blasting the same message over and over again will probably get you banned for spamming.  Same with formatting your message in obnoxious ways.  Use Web 2.0 sites to get people to “taste” your content.  If it is good, they will do your job for you.  Regardless of what you do though–never give up and keep thinking “LINKS LINKS LINKS“.  Keeping links in mind focuses you on the task at hand–make every second you are online count.

What if I don’t have the time to ROLL UP?

If you don’t have the time, energy, patience or motivation to roll up your site project, outsource the job to someone who does.  Webmasterlabor.Com will do your SEO project for you and send you periodic job reports and progress reports.  They can do this AFFORDABLY–you set a monthly budget, they propose deliverables, you agree, they do the work, you get reports.  Nice and easy.  No fuss.  No muss.  Contact them today.

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High Revenue Admin 21 August 2009 SEO , , 6 Comments

Longtail Keyword SEO: Site rank vs Page Rank

Special thanks to SOURCE:

Let me clarify that what I am about to present to you is not about ranking your site, or your Home Page. It’s about Ranking Your Specific Long Tail Keyword Phrases… these are your money phrases, the phrases that people use once they have narrowed down their search – the Keyword Phrases that MAKE MONEY!

The first thing you MUST understand if you want to Rank Well for a Long Tail Keyword Search Phrase

PageRank is not SiteRank – Pages rank on their own for specific search phrases. You can not rank a single page for every phrase you want to rank. While you want a diverse incoming link base, you want those incoming links to be tied to specific anchor text phrases and to specific pages.

Too often people who do not understand this principal go out and just get as many links as they can and actually do themselves irreversible harm! They create untargeted incoming links that just confuse Google.The result is non targeted keywords hurt Your Rankings. People waste way too much time trying to rank their Home Page for a ridiculously large set of keyword phrases. They lose site of the highly profitable Long Tail Keyword Phrases.

A well crafted page that is optimized for a Long Tail Keyword Phrase can outrank even high authority sites! Why? Because Google rewards information that is targeted to the search phrase over authority… they want to provide the “Best Match” for the search. This is great news for the Internet Marketer – it’s the loophole smart Internet Marketers leverage to make big profits.

Let me give you an example:

Today I am researching a specific niche in Google in the Automotive Industry… a 3 word phrase “Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3″

Here are the particulars:

Google Local Volume: 22,000
Anchor Text with Phrase: 770
Competition: 137,000 *

* This is not really competition; rather the number of times this phrase appears on other pages in Google’s Index.

Google Page 1 results for this Targeted Keyword Phrase:

#1 PR 0 – that’s right ZERO!
#2 Site has a PR of 4
#3 is also Zero!
#4 is PR 3.

What does that tell you about the PR as a ranking indicator? Answer: It is not! You rank for the phrase and the page content NOT the site!Why does this PR ZERO Page using this Targeted Keyword Phrase Rank so

High?

The #1 Site contains the EXACT keyword Phrase in both the Title and the URL and has a nice distribution in their body text.The URL does NOT point to the Home Page, rather a highly targeted content page directly related to the search.

More Analysis:

I placed the High Ranking URL in SEO Elite so I could examine the linking structure and anchor text. The results are as follows:

Incoming text links:

• PR 4 – 1
• PR 3 – 1
• PR 2 – 4
• PR 1 – 4
• All other incoming links show no PR!

Only 19 incoming links total! All .com’s no edu, no .gov, no .net – Okay we all know that Google doesn’t like to show us the full results so one could infer there are additional incoming links… but the trend for low PR sites in this case is evident.

Age of the Sites Linking in:

The majority of incoming links are from sites created between 2004-2008

Authority Directories

Not listed in Yahoo, Wikipedia, or DMOZ

Anchor Text Analysis

Anchor Text from incoming links is split almost equally between the 3 keywords.

Cross Linking

This site cross links extensively between other company owned sites using specific targeted keyword phrases. Because the links are relevant it appears to be helping not hurting. So much for cross linking penalties! You should infer that it’s okay as long as the links are relevant. This is a sticky issue, but all you can do is test it for yourself.

Domain Age

This site was registered in 1998

Conclusion:

While you can not draw specific conclusions from a single Case Study with a single keyword phrase you can infer the following (I see these trends over and over as I do keyword research).

PR does NOT matter for Long Tail keywords… get over it, forgetabout it, and move on. I do not believe it matters for any ranking. It’s just an indicator like a thermometer that says… yes we know about you and think your site is just nifty. Google is not publishing information to the general public in their PR indicator that really makes any difference to you.

Keyword Anchor Text is CRITICAL. Do NOT mix up you keyword anchor text when commenting, posting to forums, etc. You want an even distribution of your keywords… there are plenty of scrape sites and other sites you can not control who will mess this up for you. If you are targeting “Safe Baby Toys” the most variation you create for your own links would be to rearrange the words like this: “Baby Toys that are Safe”, “Safe Baby Toys”, “Safe for Baby Toys”… filler words like the, and or etc. don’t matter.

The Age of your site absolutely matters. The older the better. Not much you can do about this. This is the reward for being an established business. If you have a great idea, buy the domain now, put up a little content and let it settle in. You’ll need it later.

Use your keyword phrase in your Title in Exact Form. Put it in your URL and include it in your body text. I see this over and over in top ranking results.

You should target your incoming links for each specific phrase to the page with the content, not your Home Page (Unless your Home Page is the target destination for the Long Tail Keyword Phrase).

FYI: The PR 4 site that ranks #2 has 50 “Dot Com’s” linking back to it from PR 1-6 sites and it’s getting beat! It does not contain the same high quality targeted anchor text link structure. It just has a lot more authority.

So if you are focusing on long tail you now know what to do! You still want high quality authority links… but you want to focus on your keyword phrase and anchor text. A high authority site will always outrank you all things being equal, but if you do your homework you can move to the top with Long Tail Keyword Phrases!

Good luck.

PS: If you have high authority and targeted Long Trail you can really cash in. You’ll get there, but focus on these principals, and make money now while you grow!

Software used: SEO Elite, KeywordResearchPro, Aaron Walls Free FireFox

SEO Plugin

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High Revenue Admin 28 July 2009 SEO , , 5 Comments

Barack Obama is your new bicycle

I use Google autosuggest for SEO.  It’s great for finding subniches and high value targeted topics to blog about.  However, it does produce WEIRD results sometimes.  Check out these gems….
Barack Obama is your new bicycle…  Talk about metaphors.  Hmmmm.  Albert Hoffman type bicycle (Road to Eleusis) or are we talking about that famous ET scene?

NOTE:  Click on the thumbnails to see the Large version

obama

Interesting list for British people.  What’s with the bad teeth search?  Austin Powers gag line gone meme?

british

Who the hell does the search below?  Jonathan Swift fans?

google-chinese
Interesting search about American people…  American people will “never knowingly adopt socialism”.  Niche search.  Probably a good title to target for upcoming right of center blogs…  Most likely ad provider: blogads.com?  They have ads on many conservative sites.

untitled

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High Revenue Admin 25 July 2009 SEO 3 Comments

Google ignores long link titles?

Short titles are better for backlink building?

dwarf

This post made my eyes pop out: Google favors anchor text links of 55 characters or less for link building.  We have noticed that from our own linkbuilding efforts that shorter text titles get picked up more often by backlink tools.  Caveat: just because the link doesn’t appear on a backlink tool’s results doesn’t mean Google doesn’t count or follow the link (assuming you built on do follow blogs/sites).

During a recent campaign, we compared two clients–one had a very short (12 characters) keyword text link.  The other client had a longer (31 characters) keyword text link.  While we managed to get the latter client from deep within the bowels of Google to the top of the third page after three weeks of work, the first client enjoyed a nice jump from way past page 10 to the middle part of page 1.  Coincidence?   Pretty much same link sources, linking methods, and link timing.  One key difference (besides niche), the length of anchor text.

This seems nice to know and everything but, as many webmasters can attest to, sometimes it’s the super long keywords that deliver the better ROI.

So… if this tip works for your niche, definitely give it a try.  However, if your niche favors long keywords, I’d say stick to what works best.

Photo credits for Dwarf warrior

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High Revenue Admin 16 July 2009 SEO 8 Comments

Google’s latest update slams many adult TGPs hard

As if Thumbnail gallery post (TGP) operators don’t already have enough to worry about, Google’s latest update crushed many TGP sites’ SERPS.  Thumbnail Gallery posts are adult sites that shows either short text descriptions or thumbnails that go to adult content galleries.  Usually, when you click the link or thumb, a certain percentage of them redirects you to another site.  That is how these sites exchange traffic.

Speculation abounds at many adult webmaster forums as to the reason for this downgrade.  Some point to smart thumbs’ coding.  Others point to Google’s increasingly strident focus on original content.   Even others point to the issue that most TGPs don’t really have much content–they just redirect traffic from one site to another.  Regardless of the reason, this recent fiasco might yet be another nail in the coffin of the once dominant promotions model for adult content on the Internet.  TGPs used to rule the online porn landscape.  Now they are threatened by the rise of tube sites which don’t feature pictures but videos.  And not just any video.  Full length videos.  Few of these tube sites redirect traffic.

This isn’t the first time there’s a ‘changing of the guard’ in online adult content promotion.  The first adult sites called “circle jerk” sites (CJ) merely traded clicks between sites.  If a user enters one site and clicks a link, he is automatically redirected to another site… aftter getting hit with a ton of popups.  After CJs came the TGPs and adult “free site” link lists.  Then the adult blogs.  Then the Tubes.

7/1 UPDATE:

According to many separate sources, the SERP “hiccup” described above has subsided and TGP rankings have now stabilized.  Not quite like it was before but definitely way better than the thumping described above.  Fingers are crossed as to how long this will persist.

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High Revenue Admin 20 June 2009 SEO 1 Comment

Social Bookmarking and Bing: Quick bump up

Everyone’s got their own guess as to how Bing works.  Current speculation centers on whether Bing copies Google’s recent devaluation of certain link strategies like link scupting and Google’s crackdown on paid links.  One thing’s for sure, based on our recent experiment on the effect of DO FOLLOW social bookmark linkbuilding, Bing is not very discriminating.  Notice the nice bump in the traffic chart below.

bing social bookmarking

We’re continuing our tests and also looking at other tests for Bing–duplicate content tolerance, meta tag impact, and other key SEO variables.  Check this blog often for updates :)

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High Revenue Admin 19 June 2009 SEO , 3 Comments

Search Engine Traffic Comparison Report: Bing vs. Google

bing versus googleAccompanied by a lot of speculation and anticipation, Bing.com was recently beta launched by Microsoft as a replacement to their MSN search engine.  MSN, as many SEOs agree, is a fairly “easy” engine to optimize for.  Since its focus tends to be more on “on page” optimization, many webmasters had better luck with MSN than with Google.  Based on some webmasters’ reports with Adsense-powered pages, MSN traffic produced more clicks than with Google.  Understandably, many webmasters and site publishers are nervous about the Bing changeover since Bing uses a differing ranking algorithm than MSN.

We looked at the recent stats of one of our more established inhouse mainstream blogs.  Based on the initial results, Bing actually produces better traffic quality than either MSN or Google.

Click on the thumbnail below to enlarge:

bing-vs-google

Quality of Traffic: Bing vs. Google

Based on these figures,  search traffic from Bing had a lower bounce rate and viewed more pages than visitors from Live.com, MSN, and Google.  For adsense-centric sites, bounce rate and page views are key indicators of traffic quality and likelihood of Adsense clickthroughs.

Quantity of Traffic: Bing vs. Google

As for actual SERP rankings for the test site, volume traffic keywords that were #1 at Google with nested multiple listings were #2 to #4 on Bing.  We’ll keep monitoring this to see if it changes.

Photo Credits:  The Bing Logo is a registered Trademark of Microsoft Corporation.  Its use here is strictly for review, illustrative, and other legally permissible uses.

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High Revenue Admin 8 June 2009 SEO , , 10 Comments
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