My ESL web site is up tp #46 for "ESL" but stuck at #21 for "english as a second language" and up to #7 for "english second language".
I mentioned how my backlinks went from 226 to 184, possibly as a result of links.html type pages not passing pagerank. However they recently went up to 283. I don't know why exactly as I've been too busy to go looking for link partners (I have been exchanging links with people who contact me). There are also some new internal pages.
By the way, the reason I've been too busy to do the linking thing is the same reason I haven't been blogging much recently. As always it involves work, but more recently a dog bite on my nose!
Anyway, I recently let my forums get indexed because I want more anchor text. 500 or 600 pages have been indexed so far, but none of them have PR. Still that anchor text must be helping.
I think I've had these sites up about a week: www.learn-english-grammar.com and www.learn-english-vocabulary.com Until 30 seconds ago I had only one link going to one of the sites (both sites link to each other from every page, but only the index page will be counted unitl I remove session IDs because these are phpbb message board sites). That link comes from the index page of a PR 6 site that has few outgoing links. The link has only been up three days.
According to my Google toolbar and this neat PR checker, I already have PR 3 for both sites. A search for link:http://www.english-grammar.com shows no results.
My stock market idea web site is now #7 in Google for "stock market idea" (1.7 million results). As I wrote when I complained about Google's sandbox, I was #19 a few days ago. No new links or anything to explain the jump.
I know at least one webmaster who is renaming pages that used to be links.html or similar because those pages (but not others on his site) stopped passing page rank after the latest Google update (in which I and many other people lost page rank).
My ESL site remained page rank 6, but backlinks showing on a google "link:http://www.eslgo.com" search fell from 226 to 184. There are many possible reasons for this, but one is that "links" pages are no longer passing page rank.
This makes sense to me since pagrank is supposed to help Google measure quality. Now most sites trade links with anyone willing to reciprocate and PR is becoming less important. If only links from content pages pass PR, pagerank might become meaningful again...
I just wrote about the Google sandbox effect, but there's something else worth mentioning. I started this site, www.travel-plan-idea.com, and www.stock-market-idea.com at about the same time: January 2004. As I mentioned the travel site has been hit the hardest. Then the stock market site.
What about this site? Let's compare Google results for an allinanchor search with Google results from a regular Google search:
allinanchor:free seo = 7 / regular search = 5
allinanchor: seo tips = 5 / regular search = 6
allinanchor: free seo tips = 1 / regular search = #1 (and #2)
allinachor: better search engine rankings = 2 / regular search = 29
Now I should note that these are not get rich quick keywords. seo tips is the one bringing in the most traffic (about 1 visitor/day). Still there's a big difference between the sandbox effects on my different sites.
I recently wrote about how a site of mine was getting very bad Google rankings despite strong results for allinanchor searches. A helpful reader told me about Google's sandbox effect. When a new site comes along Google gives it a temporary boost in search engine rankings. Then the sandbox effect kicks in. For about three months after losing the new site bonus, the site is buried in the rankings. The only thing to do is continue adding links and content for when Google lets your site out of the sandbox. Other search engines don't seem to have a sandbox...
While this seems to be part of Google's algorithm, it seems to effect different sites differently. As I already wrote www.travel-plan-idea.com is #1 for allinanchor:travel idea but not in the top 100 for a regular Google search. On the other hand, www.stock-market-idea.com is #1 for allinanchor:stock market idea and #19 in a regular Google search. The main difference is that the travel site has a number of links from external sites while the stock market site has very few links from external sites.
That SEO chat article I linked to at the beginning of this post mentioned that maybe the sandbox effect is based on incoming links; maybe incoming links become less important for a while. This would help explain why my travel site is getting hit harder than my stock market site. My stock market site relies mostly on internal linking for anchor text so external links counting less don't have such a big impact. My travel site has fewer internal links than links from external sites, so external links counting less has a greater effect.
Now this is just conjecture. It could be the comptetiveness of the keywords or something else...
So I have this travel blog, www.travel-plan-idea.com targeting some not too competitive keywords like "travel plan" and "travel idea". The problem is I'm not in the top 100 for either in Google.
This doesn't make any sense because a search for allinanchor:travel plan shows me at #5. allinanchor:travel idea and I'm #1. Also crazy is a search for "travel plan idea" shows sites linking to me, but not my actual site. I've got a few quality links (used to be PR 6 but after the recent update PR 5). I don't think I've been totally blacklisted because I'm think I'm still passing page rank. For example a search link:www.esl-blog.com shows my travel site as one of the back links.
Of course text links are better than image links because of anchor text. So naturally if your main navigation is an image map, you want text links too, probably in the footer. And of course you want Google to count the text links on the footer rather than the anchor text-worthless image map links. I thought I had solved this problem (on my ESL web site by moving my image map code to the bottom (underneath my footer html). I figured that text links on the bottom that said "ESL go-free English second language home" would help me out for important keywords like "ESL" and "English second language" or "English as a second language". Even thgouh Google says it doesn't count "as" and "a", the results were different.
Well they still are different from each other, but they are not much different than they were April 27. For "English second language" I'm exactly the same, at #8 (#6 allinanchor). For "English as a second language" I'm up one spot to #17 (#15 allinanchor). Now I recently allowed Google to index my message boards which should mean that 1,000 or so pages get indexed at some point. If my allinanchor rankings go up, I'll know it's working - I'll know Google is counting my text links in the footer. If they don't I'll cry. And then I'll try to figure out a way to make sure Google counts my text links...
Sponsored by Web Design Company Manchester, UK
I recently reported how drops in page rank didn't have an adverse affect on my search engine rankings. Here's a speculative article that discusses the declining importance of page rank.
Be careful about the obscure advice:
"If you really want online success in Google, think about customers and how to attract them, develop for them, cater to them, and find others who share that methodology (in plain english: more 'unique' content and different approaches to display that content and linkage that extends that content 'both ways') and Google will reward you. Shortcutting this -- Google consistently won't."
This basically says that unique content and linkage is good. I think everyone knows that, but we also know that unique content is not enough. One good thing about a ton of unique indexed content is that it gets you more anchor text. See cheap content.
Sponsored by New Product Reviews
Threats to Google points out that there are some lawsuits brought against Google because they now accept bids on searches for registered trademarks. This may impact Google's profit as the pay for litigation and could possibly lose revenue.
It may affect advertisers too. If someone searches for your competition, you might want an ad up there to lure the searcher to your business instead. For now Google allows that; Overture doesn't.
1. A tool for Google Adwords publishers to use when forming advertising campaigns.
2. Overture's search term suggestion tool
3. Digital Point's keyword suggestion tool, which shows popularity on Overture and WordTracker
So www.nfl-giants.com is #40 for "NFL giants" on Google. However, an allinanchor search reveals that nfl-giants.com is #2 for anchor text. Now I've written before about the close correlation between anchor text and search engine rankings, but clearly there are some cases where this correlation dosn't hold true. I wish I knew why...
One more example if you're interested. The same nfl-giants.com is #4 for "NY Giants news", and #1 for an allinanchor search. This means that the site isn't being penalized for every search term (1 and 4 are close - 2 and 40 are not), though I guess it's possible that it's being penalized for "NFL Giants" and not "NY Giants news". Still I can't think of any reason why it would be penalized, and more links from other sites use "NFL-Giants" at the anchor text, so why would it be penalized for "NFL Giants" and not for "NY Giants news" (a term that has only or at least mostly internal links).
One thing I love about blogs is that it's easy to change the title of every page and since that title is linked for all my blogs (I use movable type) that's some serious anchor text. For example, I hit #10 for "stock market idea" with my Stock market investment blog, but I still wasn't seeing much traffic so I decided to go after "stock market investment" too. My new title: A stock market idea & stock market investment weblog
Another site went up to #4 for "NY Giants news" (#3 for "NY Giant news"). I'm getting good traffic but not from that search term. I really wanted "New York Giants" or at least "New York Giants football". I figured I was diluting my keywords too mcuh with "NFL-Giants: NY Giant news from a New York Giants football fan" so the new title is NFL-Giants: NY Giant news - New York Giants football. By the way, for all you page rank fans (Hey I like PR too but it's more like something to look at than something that gets you good rankings), this site dropped from PR 5 to PR 4, but search engine rankings increased. I haven't lost any links and two of them come from PR 6 sites so I can't explain the drop. But I'm not too worried about it either.
http://www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com/ad_network_222.php