| LED Digest 2213: Tactics and Trust |
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6 posts on 3 topics, discussions cover Improving Rankings, Anchor Text
and Linking, and Dropped Rankings. Interesting post by Eric Ward featured...
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======== CONTINUING ===============================The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................. July 28, 2006 Issue no. 2213 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Suggestions on Improving Rankings ==-- ~ James Miller "Before you do anything though, register with Google Sitemaps..." ~ M. Shabeer "Haven't heard of any SEO/SEM awards..." --== Anchor Text & Linking ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "...don't mistake the weight of link *quantity* for the weight of link anchor text." ~ Eric Ward "...sites which the engines give anchor text credit to will become fewer and fewer." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Dropped Rankings ==-- ~ Reg Charie ~ Dirk Johnson From: James Miller Subject: Improving rankings > Please visit my website at maternityactivewear.com and kindly give > me some suggestions as how to improve for ranking purposes. - Lilian Phuong Dang, LED 2211 You don't rank very high! In fact your highest ranking on Google comes from a site called Mom in the City. I would say the main problem is that your site just has details on maternity clothes. So do many other sites and so do all the consolidation sites. So you have to distinguish yourself from everybody else. Unfortunately, such things as style, colour, fit, don't score highly with search engines. You can do one of two things :- 1. Pay money to an SEO company to give your site lift. But they are a bit like drug pushers in that once you stop taking the fix, your site nosedives. 2. Spend money on your site so that it gives itself that lift. I always do the second. Before you do anything though, register with Google Sitemaps and see how your site rates for various searches that find it. Often you'll find that it gets found with searches that aren't really about your products. I would also look at Figleaves which is the most successful lingerie and swimwear site in the UK. They always have lots of lifestyle sections about the best swimwear for your shape, new men's briefs etc. You should have a section like the best maternity clothes for running, best for the city etc. Update them frequently, when you get new stock in. I would also add a section for men buying presents for their wives and partners. I remember when my wife was pregnant in the 60s clothes were a problem for her, so I used to make her dresses. That gave us all a good thrill! So I suspect a lot of men would want to get involved. A last point is that here in the UK, Agent Provocateur, the up-market lingerie company run by one of Vivienne Westwood's kids has gone into maternity underwear. So perhaps some up-market movement will go down well. In my view only pay for listings in search engines as a last resort. But if you have to, are you in the right business? Hope all this helps. James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: M. Shabeer Subject: Improving rankings > I recommend Cindy McMahen of nexusinteractive.com. > She has recently received some awards for her SEO work ... - Mary Johnson, LED 2212 Plain curiosity - What awards? Haven't heard of any SEO/SEM awards. M. Shabeer -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Anchor Text > ... Google and all the search engines take into account link > text for rankings. Google "failure" and visit the cache for the > US President's Bio. You will see a message that reads: > These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: failure. - Detlev Johnson, LED 2212 > I can find quite a few of these examples where the anchor > text puts an irrelevant page in the top ten search results. - Brad Waller, LED 2212 You guys have committed one of the classic blunders. The first and most well-known is "don't get involved in a land war in Asia". But don't mistake the weight of link QUANTITY for the weight of link anchor text. Those abnormal searches don't occur because of one or even a handful of links. They occur because of a large number of links. Google never put as much weight on linkage as SEOs continue to believe it did. But because SEOs convinced themselves that Google put that much weight on linkage, they focused on linkage, and by overwhelming other factors through linkage they succeeded in improving rankings (the hard way) enough that they felt had proof of the concept. All the SEO community has ever proven about linkage through the years is that you can use it to beat your way to the top through a long, tortuous process. Michael Martinez "Cuando Maria canta, canta para mi" http://www.michael-martinez.com/ http://michael-martinez.blogspot.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Eric Ward Subject: Linking Hi all - Totally agree with Detlev that anchor text is part of the algorithm and can impact results. What I meant to convey was that anchor text is also just another thing that can be gamed, and the engines know that. Just look at all the link building services that offer to get you keyword rich anchor text links. Every day a few million more pages with keyword rich anchor text links are launched, all for SEO reasons. For me, once a tactic has reached this level of saturation, it's just a question of time before it's useless. That doesn't mean good anchor text is *always* useless, but rather that the sites which the engines give anchor text credit to will become fewer and fewer. In a word, trust. Keyword rich anchor text link on a .gov page that's 9 years old? Very trustworthy. Keyword rich anchor text link on a .biz page that launched last night? Not so much :) Eric Ward http://www.ericward.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Reg Charie Subject: Dropped rankings > I have changed my website's home page back > to its original (larger) size, which has lots of content. > I will wait to see if it regains its high ranking for > Restaurant Software the next time it is Googled. - Bob Sheridan, LED 2212 Hi Bob, It looks like Google has "tightened its belt" again doing further refinements to its ranking algorithms. There is a thread at WebProWorld discussing how well ranked sites are disappearing from the listings, as yours did: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=314793 If one looks at the sites that have lost their good rankings, they all look like they were written for the search engines. By "written for the search engines" I mean that the sites are using their keywords in their page text many more times than is necessary. This can be considered "spam" in the eyes of the search engines. Bob, do you think it is necessary for a visitor to see the word restaurant 68 times on your main page? Your first 63 word paragraph has it repeated 6 times. You also have 7 images in a row with the same alt text tag content. If you write for people, and you take into consideration that the search engines are trying to mimic the way people search for information, your results will be much better. By all means, use < Hx > tags, bold the key points, add your alt tags, but do it for humans, not robots. I achieved a ranking today in Google, placing sixth out of over 83,000,000 sites and I used the keyword phrase once in 300 words. The rest of the text is all pertinent information for the keyword phrase. Thank You, Reg Charie www.dotcom-productions.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Dropped rankings In response to Bob Sheridan's post, I did some close examination of the back link profiles for both sites that he mentioned. It revealed situations that I have observed before. My primary advice is for him is to begin a program of earning editorially-reviewed, subject-relevant back links from sites that are in his realm of interest, and keep doing it indefinitely. The back link profile of his site currently does not show that kind of well-established link popularity. I don't want to make assumptions about how the link popularity for his site was established, as I don't know. But a close review of the current backlinks (using LinkSurvey.com) does indicate that many of the links are coming from the type of sites that are under close scrutiny by Google. That is, sites with no content value, massive numbers of outbound irrelevant links, and little or no link popularity of their own. Again, it may not have been due to action on the part of Bob to get these links, but they are there. These are commonly known as scraper / text ad sites, and they are built only for the purposes of selling direct paid text ads and AdSense ads. Curiously, even the URLs from these kinds of sites indicate what they are, as compared to other types of links. Visiting them confirms it. It's not stretch to claim that these are the kinds of sites that have been specifically targeted by Google. The worst examples now show public service ads in the AdSense positions, meaning that Google has likely taken some kind of preventative action against the site. Many sites inadvertently end up with links coming from these sites due to the "scraping" of search results from genuine search engines, or they may have purchased links through a text ad link broker, or submitted to one of the many "free directories", and those directories use the submissions as content on a "family" of sites. The only real consequence is that, if a site once relied on links from such sites for a boost in free search results, those links may no longer be of any value at all. It's probably just link nullification, and not penalization, otherwise, sabotage would be rampant. As Google finds these families of sites, they get nullified. So what can appear to be an algorithm change is merely the effect of localized link nullification, carried out across a series of suspect "family" sites that may use common markers in their site structure. An AdSense violator may well run hundreds of these sites, thus providing Google with easy identification of the domains. Any site relying on links from that family get nullified, and that may affect their rankings, if there are not many other links supporting the site. Am I speculating? Yes. But it is speculation based upon what Google representatives have said, as well as their webmaster guidelines, and what I see happening in real search results. It's just my take on this. The best advice it to set about to get links from sites that have real content, a legitimate reason to exist beyond just running ads, decent link popularity from other relevant sites, and responsible outbound linking policies. This constitutes a link from a trustworthy site, and it will convey genuine link popularity that counts. You may have to reciprocate to get such links, or, in some cases, maybe not. Reciprocation is not the issue. It is the type of site that matters. It also explains why sites who have reciprocated responsibly within their realm continue to do well. Those sites have links to and from other legitimate sites that practice genuine editorial review and community involvement. That's just the kind of thing that the Web was built on, and that's what Google rewards. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com www.linkstrategy.com
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