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Archive for the ‘SEO my Ass’ Category

5 Ways to Annoy the Search Engines

14 Feb

The search engines don’t take kindly to sites that try to manipulate the search results in their favor. Black Hat SEO firms and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to twist the ranking factors. For instance, having a lot of links pointing to your site is important for SEO, so spammers get links from low quality, spammy sites to boost their link number. Never mind that these links are coming from spam blogs, they choose quantity over quality.

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1. Throwaway domains

Google specifically warns against throwaway domains in their SEO Webmaster Guidelines. A throwaway domain is a domain that has very little real value, and is just used to build link popularity to a second site. Many black hat SEO firms will use throwaway domains to build up links to one client’s site, only to redirect those same links to a new client’s side when they lose the first account.

2. Doorway pages

A doorway page is built to make one site more relevant for numerous search queries by stuffing it with keywords. This page is not part of the site’s navigation (meaning no visitor could find it), but it is built into the site structure so the search spiders can crawl it. Sites that use doorway pages to make it look like they are more relevant are often de-indexed once the search engines realize what they are doing.

3. Keyword stuffing

Repeating the same keyword a hundred times on one page of content may make it appear more relevant to the search engines, but it absolutely kills the user-experience. The search engines aren’t looking for a magic number when it comes to keywords. Stuffing your content will only hurt you in the long run.

4. Duplicate content

Some duplicate content was created on purpose (stealing another site’s article and claiming it as your one) and some duplicate content is an accident (homepage.com and homepagedefault.com). Either way, duplicate content can get you in a lot of trouble with the search engines.

5. Dead links

Nothing is more frustrating for a visitor then running into dead pages all over a site. The search spiders will also discover these links and flag them.

The people behind the search engine algorithms are some of the best in their field. They know that the spammers are just waiting to exploit a loophole in the system for their benefit. That is why they are constantly updating and tweaking the algorithm to make it better and, in a sense, smarter.

I’ve spoken with numerous site owners who don’t understand why their competitor (who is employing black hat SEO techniques) is outperforming them in the SERP. I have to keep reminding them that success gained from spamming is short lived. Sooner or later the search engines catch on to what they are doing, and the site will suffer because of it.

 
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Posted in Blogging, SEO my Ass

 

Building Link Popularity – One Link At a Time!

10 Feb

Link Popularity and how it pertains to your pages is a key metric in the relevance model of search engines. Just like high school, it was all about popularity and getting in with the clique. Somehow this characteristic carried over into search engines and how they assess your site.

They say that beauty resides within, similarly, then much can be said about starting from the inside (your websites internal links) and strengthening the self-referral mechanism for your content to attract recognition (external links).

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Just in case you forgot, increasing link popularity through virtual theming (strategic deep linking) and optimized internal link architecture allows what percentage of link popularity you garner from others to go that much further in propelling your site up the rankings.

How popular is your website?

Despite the narcissistic love affair we can develop with our own sites, sometimes on-page factors are just not enough, you need to nurture your content with links to get the job done. Here are 10 ways to increase your reach, increase link popularity and make your site more attractive.

  •  Getting links from Blog Rolls (site wide links) a few of these from the right place and your set.
  •  Blogging Frequently and Expanding your Audience through RSS Feeds (emphasize quality in each post, since you never know which organization or power-user may link back to it and send a barrage of traffic your way).
  • Or if that is not your angle, then at least by updating your content more frequently, you will entice search engine spiders (who will frequent your site expidisiously to share your content with the world). The more pages you get into the search engine’s index, the higher percentage of traffic, exposure and conversion your pages can potentially reap as a result.
  • Offer a Free e-Book. Spiders crawl PDF’s (and their links as well), in addition, the download serves as an off-line brochure with links pointing back to your site. Another savvy option is to distribute the e-book (via bit torrent) as a link building strategy.
  • Have you considered Article Marketing and using links in the authors box to deep link to your most relevant pages.
  • Directories – more like a time released link building method, but a great way to augment other methods.
  • Reciprocal links (yes, they still work, but the more targeted the niche and the less links on the page the better).
  • Offer value through tactful comments on related blogs that are contextually ethical to drive traffic (no spam / link dropping). If your intelligent reply wins the favor of the readers skimming the comments, you could be looking a steady stream of relevant traffic (which is the real goal of link building).
  • Forums, find a thread, propose a solution. Not to mention forums have the ability to sprout page rank quickly and pass valuable link juice from the sheer number of pages.
  • Social bookmarking, never hurt anyone, share the link love while getting a boost in the SERPs (search engine result pages) from sites with massive link weight.
  • Build links from your own sites internal link dynamo, never look past your own pages as authority links (sub folders often are treated as external sites and can pass vital ranking power among the sites internal link architecture).

What are you still doing here reading this? Just think of all of the link opportunities that are could be passing you by. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes you just have to do the work to polish the reflection in order to share that beauty with others.

Search results don’t magically appear in the top 10, so get out there, mix it up and start building link popularity – one link at a time.

 
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Posted in SEO my Ass

 

SEO Tips for Link Flow Distribution

09 Feb

What is link flow distribution in a website and why should you care? Link flow is a metric implemented in SEO which assesses the volume of link equity (accumulated PageRank, citation factor and nodes of relevance) a page has and how it passes along that equity via outbound links to other internal or external pages.

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Depending on the degree of inbound links from other pages within your website or from other web pages online provide characteristics that distinguish that page in search engines.

For example, a page can rank in search engines as a result of:

  • Aggregate On page Factors
  • Consolidated internal links
  • Off page inbound links (with specific anchor text)
  • Domain authority and some degree of on page correlation

For the sake of analogy, link flow is like the circulatory system for a website, if it is crimped, a page suffers from link attrition, if the arteries (links) to a page are plentiful; the page flourishes as a result of being nurtured from subordinate pages and takes on the role of a preferred landing page.

Essentially, there are two types of pages in a website (1) the pages that are intended to rank well and garner conversion from consumers and (2) supporting pages housing informative, relevant content created for the purpose of (a) increasing the semantic footprint of a website to increase topical relevance and (b) link to preferred landing pages.

This alone when coupled with another prominent element known as domain authority can catapult newly dubbed preferred landing pages into the spotlight in search engines. The source of the link becomes less important as the degree of trust and domain authority increase for the source of the page providing the link.

For example, amazon.com is one of the most authoritative domains online, hence an internal link to a page is often more powerful than an entire website competing against it. Internal pages within Amazon can rank from a few inbound links, whereas a competitor may require thousands of links to equate to the degree of link flow passes along from the internal links within Amazon alone.

This is why you cannot always count links and assume that volume is the only metric which applies weight within ranking algorithms. They must be assessed based on internal link flow, page authority, domain strength, trust and how old the page is and whether or not it is grandfathered (algorithmically) into the top 10 results.

Also, additional considerations are the number of outbound links on the page providing the link and the number of outbound links on the preferred landing page dramatically impact buoyancy in search engines.

This is considered a component of link-loss or rather hemorrhaging link-flow (like a bucket with 100 large holes in it). Under this analogy, it doesn’t matter how much water you put in the bucket, it all ends up spilling out (ineffectually)

For example, we apply a tiered system to websites and categorize important (pivotal) keywords that are part of the parent theme (semantic cluster) that define the purpose or (primary focus) of a website.

By elevating these primary themes into the navigation, breadcrumbs, footer links, secondary navigation from specific pages in the sidebar or server side includes – this way, you can sculpt the link flow distribution within the website to correspond to your primary ranking objectives.

In addition to creating prominent regions of relevance through implementing site architecture or design changes, simplifying elements such as minimizing outbound links per page and consolidating link flow on themed (similar) pages can also reinforce a stable search engine position (without having to resort to off page tactics to produce rankings).

 
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Posted in SEO my Ass

 

Developing Link Weight using Internal and External Links

08 Feb

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Understanding link weight, topical relevance and the power of optimizing internal and external links is a crucial component of SEO. Assessing how and why a site occupies multiple top 10 positions is not difficult to determine, if you know how and where to look.

In fact, you can essentially assess how and why a site is ranking for a number of phrases from (1) analysis of the site structure (2) the links, both internal and external (3) the age of the domain (4) the amount of topical information on the subject, and (5) the degree of authority the site has developed as a result of momentum and search engine trust.

  • Determine how many pages are indexed. A simple site:yoursitename.com search command will do.
  • Determine how many pages (out the total number of indexed pages) are indexed with a particular keyword using this command in Google, or Yahoo site:yoursitename.com keyword to research. If the site is 1000 pages and there are 800 that have the phrase present, then that is an 80% saturation for the phrase.
  • Determine if the pages are internally linked properly, from results from #2, how many of those pages are augmenting each other and if so, how and what keywords are linking them together. The top 10 results will suffice.
  • It stands to reason that in order to rank for a term, the ratio of the keyword can determine how relevant a result is returned. Which do you think search engines prefer, a site with 10 pages on a topic or a site with 50 pages on a topic?

 

By linking to your own pages from other pages in your site that have tremendous link weight (like a homepage or the homepage of a blog), then you clearly send a signal to search engines that that phrase or group of semantically related material is a predominant theme on your site.

This is enough to warrant further consideration from both human visitors and search engine spiders about the basis of the site theme.

Here are a few key metrics for consideration:

Internal linking – Is there a clearly defined champion, or is each page like a pawn getting sacked in Chess without an overall goal in the optimization strategy. Choose a champion with your internal links. Just like you can augment a pawn with another pawn and literally lock down the board in a game of chess using pawns in tandem. The same exists if you understand the importance of internal linking.

It is possible (aside from standard navigation) to use text links internally to augment unique attributes of each of the topical pages to serve a greater goal. If you wanted to wait for the correlations to evolve over time before the started to pass link weight, that is one thing, but why wait when you can aid evolution of the site organically through giving search engine spiders something they can sink their teeth into.

Remember in the first step, we assessed the number of pages, in step two you determined how many pages were indexed with a specific keyword using a simple search command. Now put that information to good use, after you have your results from number two, select the most appropriate landing page give it the endorsement from internal one way links.

Simply create links from each of the top 10 results to the selected landing page using keyword rich text that searchers would use to find that page. If you are looking for the most searched terms, then you could use Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool or traditional keyword research tools.

Link Weight

Now that your have selected the most relevant page, perform a link analysis and determine the quality and quantity of links required externally to create and upwardly mobile page in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

One quick way to assess this is to perform a search for the main keyword, look at the first search result (that is not a homepage) typically your will see homepage/keyword-rich-naming-convention.html, then look for two things the number of backlinks to that page externally (using yahoo) as well as how many links internally from other supporting pages.

You must note that, a page can rank highly as a result of internal or external links or a combination of both.

If the pages are light (2-3 links) build links to your links with link insurance (build links to the top 10 supporting pages to add velocity and authority to the new landing page) as well as add 5 fresh links to the landing page to encourage spider activity.

Deep Link / Page Link Ratio – Finding the ratios and percentages of saturation, link popularity and site structure can shed light on why that pages ranks the way it does.

Sometimes, all you need are a dozen links from external sites to break out from having a strong page on your own site and appear as a top ranking search result for multiple keywords on the topic.

So, in essence a page can rank highly as a result of the quality of links per page and how many related pages are themed and interlinked with solid anchor text.

So, the next time you are curios why a competitor ranks so well for a phrase, look at the number of pages they have indexed on the topic and the number of links pointing at those respective pages (the top 5 should suffice) to gain a better understanding of their optimization strategy.

There are one of two strategies they are more than likely utilizing. The first is, to have a site based solely around those keywords with a lower threshold for optimization due to a concise number of pages or your could create an authority site with various interrelated topics (that all support each other holistically).

Sites with under 30 pages are ideal for the first strategy, sites with hundreds or thousands of pages are often using the second and most prominent “content ranking strategy”, which by far is the most difficult to overcome.

The more relevant pages with links, the more authority a site garners. As those links age over time, they can create a challenge for a seasoned SEO to overcome, however there are other tactics one can utilize in such circumstances to overcome insurmountable odds.

It is not always this easy (using a quantitative approach), but until you drill deeper into their content, links and structure you never know, so it is a great starting point for initial research.

 
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Posted in SEO my Ass

 

Market Samurai Keyword Research Tools

07 Feb

Market-Samurai-Free-Trial-Now Market Samurai - it just does not get any better than this!  Market Samurai is without a doubt the BEST marketing tool available for anyone involved in affiliate marketing.  This program offers the top keyword research tools available!

Market Samurai is offering a FREE Trial that allows you to use their keyword research tools to prove to you how good this really is!  They are even giving some nice promotional items free to get you to download the free trial!

I can assure you I know from experience that this is the tool you need.

I started out with SEnuke Pro ($127.00/month) and … I requested and received a refund.  It has many excellent features but my primary concern was for keyword research!

Then I tried Micro Niche Finder ($97.00) and…  I again requested and received a refund.

I then decided to try Market Samurai ($149.00 one-time charge) as it seemed a huge number of members of Wealthy Affiliates used this program.  I am a member of Wealth Affiliates and in talking with some of the users of Market Samurai decided to give it a shot.  I was pleasantly surprised!

seo-my-ass-infoImportant Tip: Sign Up for the Free Trial Offer and then, after checking it out, purchase it!  You will be offered a significant discount if you purchase it while on the trial period and before the trial period ends!

First off, after using Market Samurai HEAVILY, pounding Google for keyword research, I very seldom get a Google “time out”!  Market Samurai has proxy servers set up so that the searches will rotate throughout their network of servers keeping you hidden from Google without timing out.  FANTASTIC!  (You need to set this up in the setting screen for the program to take advantage of this great feature!)

I have never seen such a fantastic keyword research tool!  You can go into tremendous depth to not only find keywords based on competition, but to also make sure that they will be profitable Buyer Keywords.  It uses the principle of 4 Golden Rules with this set of keyword research tools.

Here is a list of some of the modules currently in Market Samurai:

Keyword ResearchKeyword Research Tools: Keyword research tools as you have never experienced before!  It goes into enormous depth in analyzing keyword competition and to make sure it is a keyword that will generate purchasers to your web site, not information browsers.

SEO CompetitionSEO Competition: You will be able to analyze the SEO (search engine optimization) competition generated around the top 10 web pages in your keyword’s competition so that you will know before investing time and money what your competition really is!

MonetizationMonetization: Market Samurai will help you find the best vendor for your niche with in-depth information through ClickBank, Amazon, Commission Junction, and PayDotCom.  It will then assist you in creating ads and sales letter and publish them to your site.

Find ContentFind Content: You can use Market Samurai to search the net to see what other competitors for the keywords you chose are doing to promote the niche.  Save time and money to be sure you are using proven tactics to gain that number one ranking in Google.

Publish ContentPublish Content: The module aids you in researching, writing, styling, tagging, publishing and promoting your content – all without needing to leave the editor.  This saves you a lot of time and effort work on your campaign!

PromotionPromotion: The promotion module gives you 14 sources for finding quality backlinks. It also equips you with a powerful “Ping Back” strategy to quickly and easily achieve thousands of quality links from quality, high-ranked, authority blogs in your specific niche.

DomainsDomains: Locate high quality, keyword-optimized domain names available to register or unearth available established domains you can use to boost your rankings.  This is an enormous
SEO strategy overlooked by many (including myself when I first started out).

Rank TrackerRank Tracker: Market Samurai’s Rank Tracker helps you to monitor your search engine rankings, and giving you a valuable feedback mechanism – showing you what you need to do to rank better. It will show all 3 major search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN)!

AdwordsAdwords: It has already been announced the launching of a new module for the benefit of those who use Adword Marketing.  Market Samurai is constantly looking for ways to improve and add to their services for its members at no additional charge!

Download Your FREE Copy of Market Samurai

 
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Posted in Backlinks, Keywords, Reviews, Tools

 
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