Best Anchor Text - Week 5

I'll continue the look at trying to find out just what is the best anchor text for use within a link by reviewing what has happened to both sites after 5 weeks. To see what else has happened, have a look at the Best Anchor Text Experiment.

In both cases I've been lazy over Christmas and both were last posted to 14 days ago, with 9 posts in total.

Site 1 - Home page cached 3 days ago and archives 12 & 30 days ago. 8 posts are cached: 1, 3, 5, 2 X 8, 2 X 14 & 18 days ago.

Site 2 - Home page & December archive cached 2 days ago, no November archive still. 7 posts are cached: 2 X 3, 7, 11, 2 X 13 & 16 days ago.

There does seem to be a slight favouring of the first site, but not to the extent that I expected.

Automated Link Exchange Sites

Which automated link exchange sites do you use? For some of my sites, and many of my customers' sites, I use LinkMachine.

For example, CompareMortgageRates and FinanceHunt both use it to good effect.

What I like about it is it is easy to install and use afterwards. I installed it onto a new customer's site yesterday and timed the process. Including setting up a new email address (so he can keep his link exchange emails separate from his business emails), installing and setting up link machine and linking to the new pages from the existing pages, I had the entire process completed in 15 minutes.

He now just needs to check who is requesting link exchanges each month and check they are still linking back. If he upgrade to the full paid version then a lot of this is done automatically.

Best of all, the basic version if free - so he now has his link building automated and it's not cost us any cash.

If you are looking at installing an automated link exchange onto your website, then LinkMachine might be a good place for you to start.

Week 11 Results

Once this hits 3 months I'll stop posting results weekly, but I'll keep an eye on results, maybe recording the first Saturday of each month. Determined to find out what could be affecting my CompareMortgageRates.co.uk website!

Site 1 - Home page 42 days ago and 1 archive 4 days ago (no archives were listed last week). Now 8 posts (up from 7) - 4, 6 X 9 and 33 days.

Site 2 - Home page 10 days and archives 4 & 9 days ago. Posts 3 X 2, 2 X 3, 3 X 4, 2 X 6, 2 X 7, 10 & 15 days.

Site 3 - Home page 7 days ago and archives both 2 days ago. Posts 2 X 3, 2 X 4, 3 X 5, 5 X 6 and 7 days ago.

As I've noticed with other sites, there's been a lot of Google activity this last week. Maybe just taking advantage of Christmas and the internet being a bit quieter? Or maybe preparing for a refresh of the database? Results will change shortly if so.

Sites 2 & 3 do seem to be getting closer on the results, there aren't the marked results of previous weeks. So maybe I'm proving that target=_blank doesn't make any difference. There's a very slight difference, but if anything, it could be slightly in site 3's favour, which does use target=_blank.

The other complication is that I didn't prevent site feeds of any of the sites, so there are now sites out there linking to these sites by using the feeds. So that is watering down the effects of the experiment, hence a reason for letting it drop slowly.

Flash Web Design

Flash Web Design - friend or foe?

I did deal with this a while back, but it's one of those items that gets brought up time and time again. And I'm in the middle of redesigning my own website and looking to see if a little flash animation could fit in there.

But what about Flash Web Design - is it good or bad? Personally I see nothing wrong with a small animation here and there on a website. It can give the site a bit more interest and Flash Web Design can help to draw attention to certain areas - latest news and offers.

What I don't think is such a good idea is Flash Web Design for the entire site. At the very least you are dubbling your work - you should first create the non-flash site then recreate it all as flash. Then both sites need to be kept up to date.

Why this way? Well, if you create the flash web site first then the html version, you can create a website that is dependent on flash features that cannot be converted to HTML. It is then inaccessible to certain people and search engines.

There's nothing wrong with using the clever features within Flash Web Design to brighten up a site or create short cuts, but if there isn't a similar HTML version available, you are penalising yourself as the search engines and some visitors won't be able to see the entire site.

Listen to What You Preach...

Have you ever made a suggestion to a customer about the layout of their own site and then realised that you yourself should probably do the same?

One site that's about to go live has plenty of text on each page, so I've suggested to the customer that she includes a line or two at the top of each page to summarise what that page is about - telling the reader what they are about to read. It means the reader doesn't have to continue with the page if it's not relevant to them and they know the information they want is on that page if it's relevant.

A few minutes ago I was skimming through the new version of my own website and realised there are quite a few pages with plenty of text that just get straight into it. Now I've got to go through the new version and add a line or two (in a clearly different font) to the top of each page to introduce the page - for example "Below are details of our web design services available to local customers" etc (Webdesign Southport page).

Don't just talk about it - lead through example!

It Took It's Time

The site that I mentioned a couple of days ago that hadn't been cached by Google was finally visited on Monday. Coincidence - or power of a link from a blog?

I have noticed how quickly new sites are picked up that I mention on these pages, compared to those that don't get a mention.

At elast my customer should be happy now, although might be asking why I dodn't mention it in th eblog earlier - probably because I had no reason to!

Best Anchor Text - Week 4

A quick followup to the Best Anchor Text Experiment.

Site 1's home page was cached 4 days ago and the archives 7 & 23 days ago. It's the current archive that's been cached this week. The 9 posts are all cached - 4, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10, 11, 11 & 13 days ago.

Site 2's home page was cached 7 days ago and December archive 6 days ago, November archive is missing. All of the posts are cached - 4, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 & 21 days ago, plus 1 not reporting the status (Google problem?).

Both pretty similar at the moment, but it's next week's results in which I though some differences might start to appear.

Google's Christmas Card List

I've made it onto Google's Christmas Card list for the first time, thanks to the success of the site CompareMortgageRates. At least it's that site that's driven most of the Google Adsense revenue for me over the past year.

Just a shame that in October the site dropped in ranking and I've struggled to move it off pages 5 - 7 of the main keyword since then. CompareMortgageRates seems to bounce around between these pages every day.

A card might not be the most exciting thing to receive, but it's nice to be recognised (even if part of the millions) by getting one. Maybe I'll recover the site soon enough and be seeing another Google Christmas card next year - it's something to aim for! And I think being on Google's Christmas Card list is something to be proud of!

Week 10 Results

A late followup on the SEO experiment.

Site 1 - the home page was last cached 35 days ago and the 2 archive pages that were cached have now vanished. The number of posts cached is up from 2 to 7 - 2 X 2, 10, 2 X 12, 13 & 26 days ago.

Site 2 - home page cached 13 days ago with archives cached 2, 5 and 13 days ago. Posts were last cached 3 X 3, 3 X 4, 2 X 5, 2 X 6, 7, 2 X 8 and 14 days ago.

Site 3 - home page cached 4 days ago and archives 2 X 3 and 5 days ago. Posts were cached 3 X 3, 3 X 4, 5, 6, 7, 2 X 8, 12, 14 and 15 days ago.

Half of the posts on site 1 are cached, all on sites 2 & 3 are cached, but there's very little difference between sites 2 & 3 at the moment, except maybe a bit more recent caching on site 2. Not really a significant difference.

Are You Website Changes Not Being Cached?

It can happen quite often. New website is published, taking down the 'in progress' sign, and you look at the Google cache of your site a week later, 2 weeks later, a month later....

But you are disappointed. The cache is still not the new site - it's still saying the site is under construction and all that hard work is going to waste!

This happens quite a lot. A customer registers their URL then comes to us some time later for a site. We publish the site and a month later we're still trying hard to get Google to visit. The owner of Empowering Confidence asked me why this is the case today, and this is her situation.

Basically, search engines visit your site when they first discover it. They come back a short while later and go over it again. If all they find is an 'In Progress' sign and no changes, then they will leave it longer before they next visit. And then longer, then longer, then longer as with every visit they find a site with little text and no changes.

They just lose interest in you. That's what has happened to Empowering Confidence and Google hasn't visited for almost 2 months, so now I have to persuade Google to visit the site. And that's not easy. It's far easier for me to work with a brand new URL than an existing one!

So what can you do if you desperately want to protect your preferred URL but aren't ready to build a site? Well, for a start, save yourself the hosting fees and just go for the email package. Why put up an 'in progress' sign? Is that going to get you more customers than no site? If you really do want to put up an in progress sign, then use the robots.txt file to ban all search engines from your site. As soon as the site goes live that file can be changed and then search engines will be all over it.