I mentioned in the week 3 results of by SEO Experiment that something strange happened on day 21. I didn't want to say what had happened to see if a pattern formed, and it certainly did.
First, it's interesting to note that although both blogs that are linked to have links on the same places, Google is reporting that blog 2 has 7 links, blog 3 only has 6 links. It seems that 1 of the links was missed by Google.
So, we might expect site 1, with no links, to be least popular, site 2 with most links to be most popular and site 3, with almost the same number of links to have almost the same popularity. But do search engines ever do what we expect?
Well on Yahoo, site 1 is ignored - it isn't getting the pings. But sites 2 & 3 are similar. But then I never questioned whether it took note of the target="_blank" statement.
On Google, here's the latest days' results for number of pages cached...
Day 20 - Site 1 still has 3 pages cached, site 2 8 pages but site 3 suddenly takes the lead with 9.
Days 21 & 22 were the same as day 20.
Day 23 and site 2 lost a page.
Day 24 and site 1 increases to 4 pages, 2 drops to 7 and 3 drops to 8. Interesting to note that site 2 was mostly cached end of October, site 3 beginning of November.
Day 25 and sites 2 & 3 both lose another page.
Day 26 no change.
Day 27 (today) and site 2 has dropped to 2 pages.
I can't explain why the site with no links has 4 pages cached, the site with most links has just 2 pages and the one in the middle has 7 pages and that's the only one to have been cached recently.
So as far as Google is concerned, the site with no links is doing better than the one with most links. It could be that because of the better links site 2 was cached and dealt with earlier and is showing a pattern the other 2 sites will show but 8 - 10 days or more further behind. I'll keep watching...
Saturday, 10 November 2007
Friday, 9 November 2007
One Way Link Building
Yesterday I talked about one way link building. Can I just point out that for the forums I was not suggesting spamming! All that I meant was that if you already actively take part in forums then change your signature to include your main (relevant) website address if you haven't already done so. Please don't go posting just to link to your sites - these places are far too clever for that and detect this almost instantly.
Right, now I've got that out of the way, how can you get loads of links from blogs? The obvious answer would be to post comments on blogs, but most blogs (sensibly) use the rel="nofollow" tag to prevent this. And I agree with this.
What I have noticed recently is schemes that allow bloggers to be paid for mentioning and linking to other websites. And this is what I think the guy I was looking at was doing with his website. It's obviously a great way to get one way links, but never having tried it I cannot say whether or not it brings much success.
To be able to be paid to blog you must have a blog of 90 days old. Unfortunately, this blog is just under that, so I can't sign up and find out what it's all about for a couple of weeks.
Be assured when this blog hits 90 days old I will be doing so and telling more about it!
Right, now I've got that out of the way, how can you get loads of links from blogs? The obvious answer would be to post comments on blogs, but most blogs (sensibly) use the rel="nofollow" tag to prevent this. And I agree with this.
What I have noticed recently is schemes that allow bloggers to be paid for mentioning and linking to other websites. And this is what I think the guy I was looking at was doing with his website. It's obviously a great way to get one way links, but never having tried it I cannot say whether or not it brings much success.
To be able to be paid to blog you must have a blog of 90 days old. Unfortunately, this blog is just under that, so I can't sign up and find out what it's all about for a couple of weeks.
Be assured when this blog hits 90 days old I will be doing so and telling more about it!
Thursday, 8 November 2007
The New Link Building
So just what was this guy doing in yesterday's post that the millionaires and big sites had missed out on? How can a shoe string budget site so well trample sites with thousands, even tens of thousands in marketing budgets? What can we learn for our own sites, like my Compare Mortgage Rates site?
The answer was remarkably simple. I looked through the first couple of pages of links to his site as reported by Google to see what he was doing. I figured that if Google lists these links first, they are the most important links. What I noticed was that there were loads of links to his site from 2 main sources. Neither of them link exchanges:
1) From internet forums. He was posting in discussions, sometimes related sometimes not and in his signature linked directly to his home page.
2) There were lots of blogs (just like this one) pointing to him.
The forums seems easy to do - sign up, make sufficient posts and survive the trial period then continue to post and include your URL in the signature. Start with one or two, as you get the hang of it join more.
The blogs aren't so easy. There were too many for them all to be his doing so what I suspect he's doing there is paying people to mention and link to his site in their posts. As look would have it, I'd already started to investigate this before I saw his links, so I recognised what he was doing.
I've started investigating one such scheme, I'll let you know more tomorrow.
The answer was remarkably simple. I looked through the first couple of pages of links to his site as reported by Google to see what he was doing. I figured that if Google lists these links first, they are the most important links. What I noticed was that there were loads of links to his site from 2 main sources. Neither of them link exchanges:
1) From internet forums. He was posting in discussions, sometimes related sometimes not and in his signature linked directly to his home page.
2) There were lots of blogs (just like this one) pointing to him.
The forums seems easy to do - sign up, make sufficient posts and survive the trial period then continue to post and include your URL in the signature. Start with one or two, as you get the hang of it join more.
The blogs aren't so easy. There were too many for them all to be his doing so what I suspect he's doing there is paying people to mention and link to his site in their posts. As look would have it, I'd already started to investigate this before I saw his links, so I recognised what he was doing.
I've started investigating one such scheme, I'll let you know more tomorrow.
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Google Is Getting Cleverer...
Yesterday I was talking with a customer about link building and general search engine optimisation.
We were looking at various sites, including my Compare Mortgage Rates site and working out why that had dropped. Looking through Google, it's 550+ links that I've checked are still in place are reported as only 8 links. This massive drop is now been blamed for the site's massive drop.
We then went on to look at my customer's other site and his competitors. He named the top site traffic wise (out of his research) and it was a big name I recognised, using affiliate links, ppc and a huge warehouse setup. But the surprise was the second placed site. This was a guy he knows who runs the business from a spare bedroom with stock in a friend's barn. He wasn't a rich man when he set up in business, just very clever at what he does. He's beating the next best sites we looked at by miles - and these are millionaires happy to throw their pounds into marketing their sites.
When we started to look at how he was getting his site to the top of the listings - the tricks he was using. It didn't take us long to see that he was using techniques that I'd heard about before, just maybe not invested enough time in trying them out.
But, on the whole, he wasn't wholesale link building. We looked at another site I maintain (for a customer) and of his 600+ links only 12 show on Google. Less than 4%. Seems that Google is getting good at detecting link building and just ignoring it.
So in a day or so I'll at what this guy was doing and what we can all learn from him. And I don't think the answer is spamming people for link building. Gone are the days of Ms Yeager & co sending me masses of emails telling me they've just visited my site and how good it looks....
We were looking at various sites, including my Compare Mortgage Rates site and working out why that had dropped. Looking through Google, it's 550+ links that I've checked are still in place are reported as only 8 links. This massive drop is now been blamed for the site's massive drop.
We then went on to look at my customer's other site and his competitors. He named the top site traffic wise (out of his research) and it was a big name I recognised, using affiliate links, ppc and a huge warehouse setup. But the surprise was the second placed site. This was a guy he knows who runs the business from a spare bedroom with stock in a friend's barn. He wasn't a rich man when he set up in business, just very clever at what he does. He's beating the next best sites we looked at by miles - and these are millionaires happy to throw their pounds into marketing their sites.
When we started to look at how he was getting his site to the top of the listings - the tricks he was using. It didn't take us long to see that he was using techniques that I'd heard about before, just maybe not invested enough time in trying them out.
But, on the whole, he wasn't wholesale link building. We looked at another site I maintain (for a customer) and of his 600+ links only 12 show on Google. Less than 4%. Seems that Google is getting good at detecting link building and just ignoring it.
So in a day or so I'll at what this guy was doing and what we can all learn from him. And I don't think the answer is spamming people for link building. Gone are the days of Ms Yeager & co sending me masses of emails telling me they've just visited my site and how good it looks....
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Flash Web Design
I talked yesterday about including flash in web sites and I'm all for it - in moderation. But is there ever a time when a complete flash web design is called for, or at least can be justified?
I suppose that if you aren't in need of search engine traffic finding your site, your users are happy to wait whilst it loads and you need a lot of graphical displays then yes, flash web design is useful.
But what about people without flash, or accessibility. Again, I suppose there's times when these may be overlooked - I can't think of an example, but there's bound to be someone to argue the case. But aside from that you should consider a non flash site alongside the flash site. This means that you are producing twice the work.
In this case, would it not be better to have some of the site as standard HTML and just link into flash elements as required?
That's my reasoning behind one of the sites I'm currently working on - when more material comes through. It needs to look spectacular, but be search engine friendly. So most of the pages are HTML, but the products go to flash web design instead. It's not an e-commerce site, just showing off the products. So this combination works great.
But I'm not convinced there is a reason for building a totally flash web site.
I suppose that if you aren't in need of search engine traffic finding your site, your users are happy to wait whilst it loads and you need a lot of graphical displays then yes, flash web design is useful.
But what about people without flash, or accessibility. Again, I suppose there's times when these may be overlooked - I can't think of an example, but there's bound to be someone to argue the case. But aside from that you should consider a non flash site alongside the flash site. This means that you are producing twice the work.
In this case, would it not be better to have some of the site as standard HTML and just link into flash elements as required?
That's my reasoning behind one of the sites I'm currently working on - when more material comes through. It needs to look spectacular, but be search engine friendly. So most of the pages are HTML, but the products go to flash web design instead. It's not an e-commerce site, just showing off the products. So this combination works great.
But I'm not convinced there is a reason for building a totally flash web site.
Monday, 5 November 2007
To Flash or Not To Flash???
Should you include flash on a website or not? That's a big decision and opinion varies a lot. Some people are horrified at the thought of having flash on their website, others consider it essential.
I think it's like chocolate and wine. Both of these we are told are good for you - in moderation. Have too much and you'll make yourself ill. Abstain and you are missing out on the feel good factor and a few beneficial properties.
The same goes for flash. If you build an entire site in flash the search engines won't be interested. But if you include a little snippet or two, in small files, then the effect can be worth the effort.
There is the danger that this is rapidly take to the extreme. One customer saw that I'd put in a small flash animation and insisted that the size was increased and the number of frames doubled - then was horrified when my prediction of a slow to open page came true.
Everything in moderation - including flash!
I think it's like chocolate and wine. Both of these we are told are good for you - in moderation. Have too much and you'll make yourself ill. Abstain and you are missing out on the feel good factor and a few beneficial properties.
The same goes for flash. If you build an entire site in flash the search engines won't be interested. But if you include a little snippet or two, in small files, then the effect can be worth the effort.
There is the danger that this is rapidly take to the extreme. One customer saw that I'd put in a small flash animation and insisted that the size was increased and the number of frames doubled - then was horrified when my prediction of a slow to open page came true.
Everything in moderation - including flash!
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Week 3 Results
Time for a recap of the latest results on the SEO Experiment.
Recap: The Second Week ended with the first site - that with absolutely no links, not cached. Site 2 - with normal links, had 8 + pages cached and several pages with PR0 whilst site 3 - linked using target="_blank" had only the home page cached. In that case the home page had a PR0 and the rest were grey barred.
This week: A week of changes!
Day 15 - site 3 was also cached with one of my own blogs (the majority are syndicated articles).
Day 16 - Site 2 lost a page - down to just 7 pages cached, whilst site 3 was up to 5 pages. At this point I thought things were balancing out...
Day 17 - Site 1 appeared again, with it's home page cached; site 2 was back to 8 pages and 3 had 5 pages. I also added new posts across all 3 blogs - all posts similar themes but different writing. Monitoring when these posts appear, but (2) and (3) did show on Google an hour later as being updated.
Day 18 - Was the same as 17.
Day 19 - Site 2 also had an archive page, but this was identified as duplicate content. Site 3 is up to 6 pages cached.
Day 20 - Something strange has happened. I'll leave this until next week when I've had time to watch what else follows....
Basically, after 19 days:
Site 1 - no links - just the home page is appearing.
Site 2 - links - all posts of over a week old appearing (cached about a week ago).
Site 3 - links, but target="_blank" - home and a couple of posts appearing.
There is, at the moment, a difference between the 3 sites. Site 1 is being cached - because of the pings. 2 & 3 are showing a lot more search engine interest, with 2 slightly more interest and better page ranks.
At the moment, it does look like for a new site the target="_blank" does affect the link. Not completely like other ways of blocking the link. But from the results to day 19, I'd much rather be in site 2's position.
Recap: The Second Week ended with the first site - that with absolutely no links, not cached. Site 2 - with normal links, had 8 + pages cached and several pages with PR0 whilst site 3 - linked using target="_blank" had only the home page cached. In that case the home page had a PR0 and the rest were grey barred.
This week: A week of changes!
Day 15 - site 3 was also cached with one of my own blogs (the majority are syndicated articles).
Day 16 - Site 2 lost a page - down to just 7 pages cached, whilst site 3 was up to 5 pages. At this point I thought things were balancing out...
Day 17 - Site 1 appeared again, with it's home page cached; site 2 was back to 8 pages and 3 had 5 pages. I also added new posts across all 3 blogs - all posts similar themes but different writing. Monitoring when these posts appear, but (2) and (3) did show on Google an hour later as being updated.
Day 18 - Was the same as 17.
Day 19 - Site 2 also had an archive page, but this was identified as duplicate content. Site 3 is up to 6 pages cached.
Day 20 - Something strange has happened. I'll leave this until next week when I've had time to watch what else follows....
Basically, after 19 days:
Site 1 - no links - just the home page is appearing.
Site 2 - links - all posts of over a week old appearing (cached about a week ago).
Site 3 - links, but target="_blank" - home and a couple of posts appearing.
There is, at the moment, a difference between the 3 sites. Site 1 is being cached - because of the pings. 2 & 3 are showing a lot more search engine interest, with 2 slightly more interest and better page ranks.
At the moment, it does look like for a new site the target="_blank" does affect the link. Not completely like other ways of blocking the link. But from the results to day 19, I'd much rather be in site 2's position.
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Customers Are Sent To Try Us
Sometimes it seems that customers are sent to try us out! Yesterday I had just finished publishing a new website and was in the process of handing it over when the question came - could we change the background colour of the links.
And change the colour of another part of the screen.
And move the links to another part of the screen.
And change the entire menu structure of the website.
And change all of the graphics on the home page.
And change the text in some buttons.
You get the idea. The back end of the site stays the same but the entire website look and feel is to be changed. How we managed to get so far through the project without him raising these issues I just don't know. We were passing latest samples of the site to the customer a couple of times per day and small changes were coming back, but how it becomes an entire restyle the day it's published, I just don't know!
It's back to the drawing board for that site. It will go live again in a few weeks!
And change the colour of another part of the screen.
And move the links to another part of the screen.
And change the entire menu structure of the website.
And change all of the graphics on the home page.
And change the text in some buttons.
You get the idea. The back end of the site stays the same but the entire website look and feel is to be changed. How we managed to get so far through the project without him raising these issues I just don't know. We were passing latest samples of the site to the customer a couple of times per day and small changes were coming back, but how it becomes an entire restyle the day it's published, I just don't know!
It's back to the drawing board for that site. It will go live again in a few weeks!
Friday, 2 November 2007
When Sites Get Dropped
Have you ever suffered pages, even an entire site, dropping from Google?
At the beginning of October I wrote about a site that totally vanished from Google and I suspected Duplicate Content Filters.
The background - I'd published a one page website for a customer and then about 60 to 75% of the page content was duplicated onto a local business directory. A short time later, the new site vanished from Google. I checked links in, did some links building etc, but week after week I couldn't get the site listed again.
It was then that I discovered the directory listing. The text on the listing was changed, which didn't take too long, then it was left for time to take it's course.
A couple of weeks later and Google had cached the new version of the directory page and magically, the new site had reappeared in the listings.
This teaches us 2 important lessons:
1 - don't copy someone else's text - make sure your text is original, no matter what it takes.
2 - if you are creating a listing somewhere - use new text! You might be doing more harm than good if the directory is older than your website.
At the beginning of October I wrote about a site that totally vanished from Google and I suspected Duplicate Content Filters.
The background - I'd published a one page website for a customer and then about 60 to 75% of the page content was duplicated onto a local business directory. A short time later, the new site vanished from Google. I checked links in, did some links building etc, but week after week I couldn't get the site listed again.
It was then that I discovered the directory listing. The text on the listing was changed, which didn't take too long, then it was left for time to take it's course.
A couple of weeks later and Google had cached the new version of the directory page and magically, the new site had reappeared in the listings.
This teaches us 2 important lessons:
1 - don't copy someone else's text - make sure your text is original, no matter what it takes.
2 - if you are creating a listing somewhere - use new text! You might be doing more harm than good if the directory is older than your website.
Thursday, 1 November 2007
October Roundup
October seemed to be one of those months when I just don't stop, but have very little to show for it. Hardly any new sites went live during October, but hopefully that's because there are loads to do over the next couple of weeks.
The first goes live later today and another customer is desperate to be live within 10 days and others are just finalising sites. Looks like November could be a very busy month for publishing!
My site that's dropped down the rankings is still hovering between 5th & 7th pages, 8 days later. Customers who have experienced the same I managed to recover in a week - so why not my own site! It's infuriating. There's no obvious reason for it to have dropped mid week. Just one of those things, I suppose.
The first goes live later today and another customer is desperate to be live within 10 days and others are just finalising sites. Looks like November could be a very busy month for publishing!
My site that's dropped down the rankings is still hovering between 5th & 7th pages, 8 days later. Customers who have experienced the same I managed to recover in a week - so why not my own site! It's infuriating. There's no obvious reason for it to have dropped mid week. Just one of those things, I suppose.
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