http://www.chacha.com/ is a search engine where you actually have people helping you in a sort of chat session. I did a "search with guide" and found that while the results take longer, it's comfortbale to explain what you want to a person. I even know someone who became a guide.
The new guide said, "I've been toying with ChaCha for a few hours...I made it through all the training, achieved Pro status, answered a few more queries for info, made some money, and now I achieved Master status, which means I can invite some other Guides who are interested in doing this. My sponsor (the one who sent me an invite) loves me....which is nice.
If anyone has tried making some money from being a guide, please do leave a comment.
http://www.msdewey.com/ is the other search engine. Search results seem fine but Ms. Dewey gets impatient if you keep her waiting. She can be amusing for a minute or two though...
We all want better search engine rankings. Most webmasters struggle to get these rankings on their own while only a few of us turn to professionals for help. One such professional SEO is Aaron Wall (I don't know if Aaron is still doing his consulting thing - he used to if I remember correctly have a consulting service where he charged $75 an hour and of course he sells his SEO book).
Another is Jim Westergren. You know he can get the job done because he finished second (missing first place by a few minutes) in the v7n SEO contest.
To find out about his services, you have to go to SEO Fusion where you find that he has the right approach to SEO (link building). The one thing I'm not crazy about is their "under 100 links page" thing when buying permanent links. Make that "under 10" and you've got my business for sure.
I do use several link-building services, but I am considering hiring an SEO to do all my optimizing so that I can concentrate on dealing with advertisers.
My new blog, Healthspan Blog is doing fairly well for a few not too competitive keywords in all the major search engines. There are a lot of health sites out there that need to rank well in order to bring in the big money. I suppose I would like healthspan blog to rank well as well.
I'm hoping that with specific titles like Where to buy Cordyceps sinensis strain Cs-4, I'll get the attention of people searching for specific health realted information, and hopefully some will be bloggers with a link for me.
I often see webmaster on various forums advising people to publish great content and let links develop naturally. I hope Healthspan Blog benefits from that, but it doesn't usually work in my opinion. I've got a couple of new sites (3 months old or so) with amazing content and no links to show for it.
It seems like all the high ranking sites are out there to make money and won't be linking to me unless I pay. University sites might be an exception, but good luck finding one that is still updated. Most of the ones I've come across haven't been updated in years and have lots of broken links to show for it.
Another new site. I bought this one cheap, 40 bucks. But since it had been made with yahoo sitebuilder I had to spend a good hour or so cleaning up the html. I wanted to cry when I saw that html...
Anyway, this is a weird site for me. It matches my sports theme, giving me 4 sports sites now. The weird thing is that it's a negative site about poor officiating in the NFL. I see very low CTR with YPN and Adsense on my Sports sites anyway, but I would expect this one to be even lower. Who wants to buy something after reading all this stuff about how bad the NFL refs are?
So, how do I market it? I already have it listed in my Jtrotta.com directory. And the previous owner had set up a reciprocal link with another site about poor officiating. But it's pretty sad when you can count a site's links on one hand and still have over half your fingers leftover.
Wow Directory is having a special (5.00 express submissions this week, so they're next on my list. From there, I'm not really sure where to promote this one outside of directories...
Google still has only 1 page of my dating site indexed. Yahoo still doesn't have any pages indexed but does show 3 backlinks (Google shows none). MSN? MSN has indexed 32 pages. MSN has me rnaked #1 for my sites title, date culture, 2 for dating culture, and 2 for intercultural dating.
Interestingly, while a search for site:http://www.dateculture.com shows only one result, Google has me ranked #1 for date culture, 10 for dating culture, and not in the top 100 for intercultural dating.
John Scott's interview with Dr. Jakob Nielsen on SEO has lots of interesting bits, but the first thing that jumps out at you is the prediction that PPC advertising will cost more in the future because so many companies waste their budgets on banner ads. I honestly don't see that.
Anuyway, there's lots of great stuff on web usability and SEO so I suggest you read the interview.
My new intercultural dating web site is getting indexed. A few hours ago I put a listing for it in my directory. Google has already indexed the index page. Yahoo and MSN have not. Well I've added a link from my ESL site, and the V7n.com website review forums (hopefully everyone likes my new dating web site because I love it and don't want to make any changes). Soon my directory submitting person will be submitting to free directories that don't require recips. Let's see how long it takes for my sociology of dating site to get indexed, shall we?
So my ESL web site has finally carcked the top ten for English as a second language on Google. Sure it's coming in at #10, but that's better than where I've been and the competition is pretty tough. Still #35 for ESL.
Surprisingly, while Google rankings get better my Yahoo rankings dropped a bit. Where I used to be on the first page I'm now #14 for English as a second language. I dropped all the way to 39 for ESL.
I haven't done a whole lot to make this happen. I've actually been focusing on bigger money sites like my travel site.
A comment on back to number one in Yahoo asks if I recommend the Digital Point coop. Sure I do. But learn how to use it before you get started.
You don't want the bulk of a sites links to be transient, as many coop links are. I used to send more coop weight to my travel blog because it makes more money than my other sites.
Now I know that my travel blog can't safely handle all that weight. I send more weight to my less profitable education site which already has many thousands of backlinks.
I've yet to try Link Vault although many people swear by it. I will tri it too, when I ahve a bit more time to learn the system better. For now I'm divvying up my Digital Point coop weight as best I can. I have much of it going to deep pages in my sites that I'd like more people to see.
So by all means check out the Digital Point ad coop. Just use it wisely.
Long time readers may remember that my travel blog was dropped from yahoo's search results for a number of terms where i used to be ranked number 1. This was due to yahoo penalizing sites with too many rotating links (like the ones I was getting from the digital point ad coop which propelled me to the #1 rankings in teh first place).
I dumoed most of the coop links and paid for some reciprocal link building on rent a coder. I'm back to #1 for my three main target keyword phrases on Yahoo.
Interestingly, Google still prefers to show completely irrelevant results instead of my site. In fact if you do a search on Google for travel plan idea, the tenth result will be some comments from my travel blog without the blog entry itself. How useless is that result?
I recently dropped to 63 in google for the keyword ESL (talking of course about eslgo.com). I thought there must be some problem since I had been constantly moving up and had been in the 20s not two months ago.
So I did a search for allinachor:esl as as we've come to expect from Google the results amtch the actual esl search results almost exactly. In fact I'm #63 for the allinanchor search too.
So why am I falling so swiftly in SERPs and with the allinachor. I do a search for link:eslgo.com which showed over 16,000 a couple of weeks ago. Today? link:eslgo.com = 781 and all variations like www and .com/ and with http:// are also 781.
Where did my 15,000 links go? Even Yahoo shows only 2,420...
I appreciate the recent comments about the coop and Yahoo. So far there is no new evidence supporting my theory that the coop can be used to ban a competitor's site. A new theory is that during the recent Yahoo update they decided to do some summer cleaning and targeted sites with more coop links than normal links. If this is the case, one needs to wonder what will happen during the next Yahoo update. Will more coop sites be penalized?
I had been writing for a couple of months about how the Digital Point Link coop turned my travel blog into my best performing site in terms of income by pushing me to #1 ranks in Yahoo for some important keywords.
The recent Yahoo update has left many webmasters scratching their heads since numerous sites with coop weight pointing at them no longer apper in results at all. Naturally this is seens as potentially catastrophic for Yahoo since anyone can point their coop weight at a competitor to see them removed entirely from Yahoo results.
There are several experiemnts going on right now. So far one established charity site is gone from Yahoo! after Shawn at DP chose to help it as an experiment. My travel blog had no DP ads on it. Only incoming coop links. Clearly yahoo will need to change something since they have no way of determining who is pointing coop weight at a site. That has always been why search engines don't penalize webmasters for inciming links. They don't want site's competitors manipulating their results. It seems that Yahoo has left themselves vulnerable to just that...
I while back I wrote that I was going to target Malfunkshun with my new grunge message board. Well I decided to target grunge music as well. It jsut doesn't look that competitive. Sure enough I'm already at #5 and with the exception of wikipedia I don't see much competition in the way.
I'm not doing too well for Malfunkshun yet...
I've been complaining for a while about all the old news articles and the bowling ball site appearing in Google searches for NFL Giants. Wll things are getting better, with my football blog coming in at #5 and being beaten only by other Giants footabll sites.
After #5 things aren't so great. 6 and 7 are old news articles as is #9. But I'm not complaining now that I'm back where I belong on the first page.
Also I'm #4 for ny giants news and #8 for ny giants football. Traffic is up!
So my health message boards are #1 on MSN search for "health message boards" and overall MSN is getting my site ranked well much quicker than Yahoo! and Google. The other day I had 65 visitors from MSN, 3 from Yahoo! and 1 from Google.
Yahoo! search has ESL go ranked #12 for "ESL" right now. I need to move up a few spots to get on the first page. My plan is to use Digital Point's free coop advertising exchange network on a few more sites.
I think this will work because while the coop has helped me a lot with Google it has helped even more with Yahoo - My travel blog was nowhere unitl I started using coop and now I'm getting hundreds of people from different travel related search terms...
Google results keep getting worse. I now do more searching on Yahoo! than Google. Here's another reason why.
I've been writing about the search "travel plan idea" for a long time now because of my travel blog which seems to be on Google's blacklist. Now a search for travel plan idea shows up two empty comment submission forms as results 4 and 5.
These are by far the most ridiculous search results I've ever seen. Why link directly to the comment submission form where people can't even read the blog entry they are about to comment on? It just makes no sense:
FamilyFun: Travel: Plan the Perfect Family Vacation
Great ideas and advice at Family Fun ... travel with kids, advice on planning last-minute
vacations, travel games for ... Plan your ultimate family spring break getaway, ...
familyfun.go.com/family-travel/ - 35k - 25 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pagesHonduras Vacation Travel - Plan the Trip
... You are in Section: 'Plan the Trip' Part 1 - Ideas for the Honduras Vacation Theme
Part 2 - Honduras Travel Guides Part 3 - When to Travel Honduras - Fairs and ...
sidewalkmystic.com/Honduras_vacation_plan_1.htm - 26k - Cached - Similar pagesTravelocity: Great Prices on Airfare, Airline Tickets, Hotels ...
... 3 days; Flexible dates. Search your choice of airports for the lowest prices.Compare
the best prices on and around your dates.Search a wide range of travel dates ...
www.travelocity.com/ - 71k - 25 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pagesTravel plan idea blog: Comment on Florida Travel information
Travel plan idea blog. Comments: Florida Travel information. Post a comment. Name:
Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Yes No Comments:
www.esl-blog.com/cgi-bin/mt/nospam.cgi?entry_id=300 - 5k - Cached - Similar pagesTravel plan idea blog: Comment on Brazil
Travel plan idea blog. Comments: Brazil. Post a comment. Name: Email
Address: URL: Remember personal info? Yes No Comments:
www.esl-blog.com/cgi-bin/mt/nospam.cgi?entry_id=275 - 5k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.esl-blog.com ]
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Normally, my sites get indeed rather quicly when they are new, but www.buy-links.com seems to be taking forever. It's been in my sig links on V7N, sitepoint, and digital point. I also have several directory listings including UTN and thisisouryear as well as some reciprocal link directories.
Still, Google won't index my site. I suppose I'll try submitting to Google, but I've never had to do this before... Yahoo! has 64 pages indexed and that's probably about right... Yahoo has been outperforming Google in a few cases recently...
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A web search for "NFL Giants" turns up mostly old news articles:
NFL.com - Official Site of the National Football LeagueThe #10 site should clearly be #1 (which it used to be) and my poor Giants blog is ranked #24, 17 spots below a bowling ball site!
www.nfl.com/nfl-homeYahoo! Sports - NFL - Giants: Hand pulls groin
sports.yahoo.com/nfl/ news?slug=fanball-giantshandpullsgroin&prov=fanball&type=lgnsYahoo! Sports - NFL - Giants 20, Redskins 14
sports.yahoo.com/nfl/recap?gid=20040919019Football.com - NFL - Giants
www.football.com/nfl/giants.shtmlGoogle Directory - Sports > Football > American > NFL > Teams ...
... New York Giants News
directory.google.com/Top/Sports/Football/ American/NFL/Teams/New_York_Giants/News_and_Media/BostonHerald.com - Other NFL: Giants 28, Cowboys 24
patriots.bostonherald.com/otherNFL/ view.bg?articleid=61597&format= -BostonHerald.com - Other NFL: Giants struggling inside opponent's 20
patriots.bostonherald.com/otherNFL/ view.bg?articleid=50970&format= -Brunswick Bowling Balls. Brunswick NFL Giants (2004) Viz bowling ball.
brunswick/brunswick_nfl_giants__2004__viz.shtmlSI.com - NFL - Giants' Manning shines but Steelers hang on 33-30 ...
www.cnnsi.com/2004/football/ nfl/12/18/bc.fbn.steelers.giants.ap/The Official Site of the New York Giants - Giants.com
www.giants.com/
I'm up to #3 for SEO tips despite the fact that I've done nothing to help myself other than posting a few more entries. Google seems to be getting more random nowadays, as my friend Rainbo Rick's site is down to #13. We were 5 and 6 not too long ago...
Yesterday I thought it was strange that I was #26 for the very competitive "ESL" and the less competitive "English as a second langauge". Must of been a temporary reshuffle by Google, because ESL go is now up to #11 for "English as a second langauge" with no change for "ESL".
On Jan. 1 I bragged about being #9 for "English as a second language" and in the thirties for the much more competitive "ESL". Now, strangely enough, I am #26 for both. It's very weird because ESL is so much tougher than English as a second language.
My travel blog is still #1 for "travel idea" on Yahoo! and has moved up to #8 for my other targeted phrase "travel plan". I'm also #5 for "travel blog".
Google is still turning up poor results with pages that link to my travel blog beating my travel blog for all three pahrases. Why can't they be more like Yahoo! and put me on the first page?
So my English as a second language site has made it to the first page for one of the big keywords I've been targeting! I am #9 for English as a second langauge (16,000,000 results and Overture shows about 330 searches/day while Wordtracker reports 400).
While I'm still in the thirties for "ESL", that word is still sending me twice as much traffic as "english as a second langauge" even if it is only since Jan. 1 and Jan 1 saw little traffic (I guess no one was studying).
While I wait for everyone to wake up, I figured I'd check out the SERPs. I found some surprises. The results for "NFL Giants" on Google (I've been complaining about those SERPs for a while) have improved. I am #2.
My stock market blog is up to 21 for stock market investment. I'm getting lots of offers to link to certain very expensive research tools in return for free access, but I think that soon I'll be able to start selling advertising for cash rather than research tools I don't need.
Then again, with all the traffic Yahoo is sending my travel blog, it's hard not to spend all my time working on that one. It is already earning many times more than the stock market site with Adsense...
Digital Point's free coop advertising exchange network has bumbed my stock blog up to #61 for "stock market investment". Just a few days ago (a week maybe) I was #192 and all I did was join the coop... Well I also started writing about Vioxx (as it affects Merck stock) but I doubt that pushed me up 120 spots... Hopefully it'll make me some money though...
So Google recently shook up its search results for the term"SEO tips". #3 and #6 seem virtually the same, so Google isn't doing a particularly good job here. This blog is #5, and my friend Rainbo Rick's SEO tips are moving up. I don't know what happened to SEO book, which used to be right behind me. I don't see it anywhere in the top 40 now... Strange because it's #13 for SEO...
A lot of people are ahppy about the new Yahoo! results. Me too. My previously unprofitable travel blog is doing quite well. It's weird, I've got #1 and #6 for "travel idea" (same site but #6 is a sub page). My stats show a huge number of referrals, but my keyword stats don't show anything much. They have "Bangcock" listed number 1 at 6 referrals. I can't find a link from Yahoo's home page, so the traffic must be coming from search. Why isn't Urchin telling me which search terms they use?
Overture shows 1,074 searches/month for Novemeber so they must be coming through searches for travel idea... I never did like Urchin much
I'm now up to 184 on Google for "stock market investment". As far as I know the only new links are coming from the Link Coop. I'm getting ready to start getting my other sites involved.
3 days later I see a few steps forward from my stock market blog's old rankings. For the term "stock blog" I went from 2 to 1. "Stock market investment" went from 198 to 192...
I suppose that's pretty good since it has been 6 days since I joined the link coop to get one way links.
Despite being #3 for allinanchor: nfl giants, my Giants blog continues to fall. Fist it fell from 4 to 13. Now it's down to 21. The search results continue to be very very poor including old news articles and bowling ball sites.
In a way I've given up. The site attracts between 100-200 uniques daily without Google (it seems to depend heavily on how well the Giants are playing). Adsense is bringing in some revenue, about as much as (actually a little less than) I can make selling one home page text link ad. That deal for 20/month has not been completed yet and the link is not up so it's not causing the fall.
Adsense revenue will fall after the season ends (and the Giants season is pretty much over) as ticket sellers are less interested (like visitors will be on clicking).
What I've done instead is use the pages to get links (through Digital Point's link coop) to my stock market blog. For the record, I don't think the 5 unrelated links on each page caused the fall as I only put them up a few days ago and the fall had already started.
Near the end of June, I wrote about my main ESL site's index page. It was #46 in Google for "ESL". Well I haven't been doing any work on that site really. I haven't even been doing link exchanges because I was so overwhelmed with emails. I finally have my WSNlinks directory up and am finally getting back to linking.
But somehow, I've increased to #39 for "ESL". It may have something to do with anchor text from an acitve message board that links to my site from every page. Anchor text is also behind Google bombs.
Also, a blog that links to my site from every page recently went up to PR 6 which may have made ESL go more attractive to Google.
Then come the less likely theories. There are rumors that older sites benefit from their age in the Google algorithm, but this is probably myth. Age of links is another rumor I've heard. A link that goes to your site for a long time is more of a vote than a new link... There's an interesting thread that raises both issues on Devshed's forums.
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When I wrote about getting off Google's blacklist, my travel blog was #8 for "travel plan idea", 82 for "travel idea", and nowhere for "travel plan".
With no new incoming links, the rankings are improving... sort of. #4 for "travel plan idea", 134 for "travel idea" (still #1 for allinanchor:travel idea). This can't be explained by Google's blacklist - Why would they have me at #4 if I were blacklisted?
It does sound like the Google sandbox, but I've been wondering about that since June and the site has been up since January. Plus other sites of mine have not been affected as badly (sites with fewer links did better).
I must be getting penalized for linking into a bad area. When I first started the site I found many travel link exchange systems and I used a few figuring it was a quick way to get hundreds of links. Now I wonder if that was a smart idea. I think I'll be setting up a WSNlinks directory and deleting all my old links - maybe it's time to start over.
Oh and there is one other difference. The travel blog has been my least active. Less fresh content might mean longer sandbox time. Anyway, you know there's something weird going on when Yahoo sends you 283 visitors and Google sends you 3!
I wrote about the fluctuations for the search term NFL Giants yesterday. Today my Giants blog seems to have settled down at #13! Why a drop from 4 to 13, you ask? Good question.
What's strangest is the extremely poor quality results Google is showing instead. For example there are two articles from Yahoo! sports about old Giants games. Now if I want a site about the Giants, I don't want a several weeks old news article about one game...
Then there's a New York Giants bowling ball. If my site's not more relevant than that, then I should be locked up.
So why the change you continue to ask. Still a good question. I'm still #1 for allinanchor: nfl giants. I picked up some new links from blogspot blogs. I thought those would be extra helpful because of their template system. Usually a link from a blogspot blog = a link from every page of that blog. Perhaps Google thinks I'm now buying sitewide ads and is punishing me for it. I do have reciprocals going to each of the blogspot blogs which isn't normal when buying ads, but that's the only thing I can think of.
I've noticed my Giants blog ranking #4, #10, and a few places in between the past couple of days for the search term NFL Giants on Google. The interesting thing is that my other sites don't seem to be moving around much.
Well, my stock market blog is finally number 1 in Google for "stock market idea". I'm #8 for "stock market ideas". I didn't think that the "s" to make it plural was so important. Now I wonder if I have to forget about my SEO "success" and pick a new keyword target. Looking at the top ten search terms referring people to the site, I see:
1. investment blog
2. stock market blog
3. ustarcom
4. lbtt.pk
5. stock blog
6. lbtt 6
7. bush kerry stock market
8. phizer stock
9. stocks
10. stock market
In fact of the 186 different search terms people have used, "stock market idea" doesn't show up once. A few keyword suggestion tools show that no one is searching for "stock market idea". I'm pretty sure they used to be or I wouldn't have targeted those keywords. I guess I should check on the popularity of my targeted phrases more often...
I've written about how my travel blog seems to be on the Google blacklist. My site, travel-plan-idea.com is slowly moving up in Google search results:
travel plan idea = #8 (Blogshares info page on my blog is #1).
travel plan = not in top 100
travel idea #82 = (Blogshares page on my blog is #8 while Blogshares page on my stock market blog is #38)
Clearly there is still some wacky stuff going on when a page about my stock market blog ranks 45 spots better than my travel blog and the page about my travel blog ranks about 75 spots better. I am encouraged that I'm actually in the top 100 now. I see no reason why the rankings won't continue to improve. It doesn't bring in much traffic, but it's nice to see the site is #6 for travel idea on Yahoo!
On September 13th I was #7 for SEO tips. I changed my title (which also changed my anhor text since the title on every page links to my home page) to reflect my new target "SEO tips". Now, about a month later, I'm #4 for SEO tips in Google. The point: the anchor text of your internal links is vital, especially for sites with lots of content pages. Link to your index using your main keywords in the anchor text from every page of your site.
So my New York Giants blog is doing much better than the football team. I used to be top ten, but I'm currently up to #4 in Google for "NFL Giants". I've added the site to a few directories (I certainly have more to go) and I've been a busy blogger adding lots of fresh content...
Still nothing special to report about other search terms for this site. Still, I've come a long way: just a couple months ago I was #40 for "NFL giants".
So I came back from summer vacation and found traffic was down on my ESL site. I just went to my stats and looked at the search terms people were using to find my site. "English class" and some variations used to be a big one, but not anymore. I check Google, and where I used to be #1 and 2, I'm now 21 and 22.
Allinanchor I'm 23 and 24, but there's a big problem. The URL ranked #24 is linked to from every page of my site. It should be way ahead of the URL ranked #23 as I have over 3,200 pages indexed by Google. The other page probably has 20-30 pages linking to it. I guess Google stopped paying attention to my footer. That's annoying.
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Here's an article about the importance of search engines that raises a few old points but a few very interesting ones (even though I'm skeptical, they're worth mentioning).
1. Don't expect users to spend much time navigating through your site. Provide relevant links to your context on the probable lnading pages.
2. Some search engines will penalize you for using keywords in the stem of a URL. This means that www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com would be OK but www.whatever.com/seo.html would not be. This of course is pretty worthless without some mention about which search engines. If we're talking about Google, this is important. If we're talking about Ted's search engine, no one cares.
3. "Relevancy is vital. Some search engines will also penalize a site for irrelevant links or irrelevant keywords." Again, which search engines?
4. Pointer pages should have useful content according to this article. Really thoguh, I suppose any relevant content would do. The search engine spider will never know if the content is actually useful to humans. They used to do this based on link popularity, but I bet a pointer site with crappy content could find lots of reciprocal link partners these days...
A Google search for "travel plan idea" shows two pages about my site (in blog directories) first and second. I clicked on dissatisfied with search results and wrote Google about how they're making people click twice by listing pages about the site instead of the site itself. Besides, who wants to see a page about the site? Most people search for the information the site contains.
I also did about 30 reciprocal links yesterday, so we'll see if that helps. I sort of doubt it though as i already have a few backlinks for this site, more links that I have for other sites that are doing better in the SERPs...
I've been writing about www.nfl-giants.com and the search term "nfl giants". Well today I see myself in the #9 slot. I still have very few links from other sites, but I must have about 150 blog entries now. Pretty soon I'll have to start the serious SEO...
update 10-16-2004: It seems that patience, continued linking, and a little fresh content are having some effect in getting my site off Google's blacklist.
I wrote a while ago about how google hates my travel blog. Well I've been getting a few more links and a google search for link:http://www.travel-plan-idea.com shows 30 links, about half from external sites. Still not in the top 100 for "travel plan" or "travel idea".
My site's entry on blogwise is ranked #8. How is a page about my site ranked better than my actual site? The blogwise page is PR 5 but so is my site. And my site is #1 for a Google search allinanchor:travel idea. There's something going on here...
I wrote a couple weeks ago about how my New York Giants web site had gone from #40 to #19 in the search engine rankings. With no new links I've moved up a few more spots to #15. I think that adding blog entries (each one links to the main page with nice anchor text) is responsible.
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I wrote back in early June about how my Giants web site was #40 for the search term "NFL Giants". I'm happy to report that I'm up to #19 in just under two months. I didn't do anything special. I added a few link partners (maybe 2 or 3) and tons of new content as I kept blogging (of course like with this blog I had to take a break cause of the dog bite). All the new content means that more and more pages from NFL Giants.com are showing up in my backlinks.
Maybe when I said a page a day makes the search engines stay I was right... Of course I am going to try to get links from different IP addresses and see if I can't get into the top ten before the football season starts in September...
From a recent Comission Junction newsletter:
2. Natural Search - Outside of the necessary resource hours, it's free! Content is an absolute magnet for the search engine spiders/bots. The more valuable content you can create, the better your search engine ranking.Content, Content and More Content: Experts recommend adding a new page of content per day and keeping it "fresh" over the course of time. Along with product pages, reviews and testimonials will personalize your site. In addition, they will compel your consumers to return for new reviews or look for an opportunity to add their own. Focus on adding value for your consumers vs. attempting to crack the search engine algorithms, which is a dynamic variable outside of your control.
Emphasis mine. Seems like blogs and message boards have an easier time here... The reviews section seems like a great idea and encouraging users to submit their own is a nice way to get free content. Regarding trying to "crack" the search engine algorithms, I still say it's all about anchor text.
Not too long ago I reported a sudden increase in rankings for my stock market blog. I'm still number one for allinachor:stock market idea. However, I'm down to number 16 for a regular Google search. Perhaps I'm back in the sandbox or maybe I never got out.
Annoyingly, a site that links to me is beating me: My site's page on blogwise is #6!
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.
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 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.
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).
This post is based on some SEO history with ESL go.com:
1. My Yahoo and Google rankings as of April 30. I was #65 for ESL.
2. My experiment with repeating the same keyword three times in the title.
3. How Google treats keyword stuffing.
4. My comparison of two similar keywords: On April 27 I was #18 for "English as a second language" and #8 for "English second language".
Anyway, what I did was change my title again, this time to "ESL go - free English as a second language: learning & teaching ESL" because I wanted to do better for "English as a second language". It didn't really work out as planned. From #18 I went to #22. For "English second language" I went from #8 to #11. But for "ESL" I went from 65 to 59. This craziness means that I didn't learn anything from adjusting the title, possibly because Google changed its algorithm. One possibility that wouldn't surprise me is that Google didn't appreciate me keyword stuffing the title (although one site in the top ten has "ESL" in the title three times).
So I wrote about how suggesting my site via Google's "help us improve" link worked for my New York Giants football site.
I tried again from a different computer (different IP) and suggested that they didn't need both giants.com and newyorkgiants.com (#1 and #6 for "new york giants") in the results since they are exactly the same site. And I mentioned my site too. So far I've been ignored...
I complained a few days ago about www.nfl-giants.com. Google had me ranked at PR 5 but only Yahoo! had me listed in their search results. I did a search for "NY Giants news" on Google and clicked on the "help us improve" link. I suggested my URL. I'm now #6 out of 596,000 results! Hopefully that will translate into some nice traffic! I'm #33 for NFL Giants, but I still have to work on NY Giants and New York Giants (not in the top 100 for those two). Looking at the competition, I see no reason why I shouldn't. I think I'll try making a couple suggestions. I'll report back if I get some results...
I wrote about how Yahoo! must like me better than Google. I take it back. Yahoo! likes me for certain keywords while Google likes me for other keywords. Perhaps by comparing the differences, I can hypothesize a bit about differences in the search engine algorithms. All analysis is for www.eslgo.com
ESL: Google = 65 / Yahoo! = 32
ESL is in my title three times. Maybe Yahoo! appreciates repitition in the title more than Google. Aslo I talked about my keyword density. Maybe Yahoo! counts density more than Google.
English as a second language: Google = 18 / Yahoo! = 43
My title says "English second language" (might add the "as a"). Maybe Yahoo! is more interested in the missing "as a" than Google.
English second language: Google = 8 / Yahoo = 133
I have no idea about this one!
Teaching ESL: Google = 5 / Yahoo = 9
The closest one I tested. Also the one I spent the least time optimizing my site for because it means less traffic than a high rank for "ESL". Currently, it's not one of my meta keywords, but I think I'll add it and see what happens. They keyword density for this one is much lower, but it does appear somewhat frequently at the top (in the title, the main heading, the first paragraph). I wonder if Google emphasizes the top more than Yahoo!
Anyway, just some guesses about things that might explain this. Don't base your SEO on my guesses!
I did a Google search for "English as a second language" and saw that ESL go.com was #18. Not bad. I should be able to crack the top ten. Then I remembered that "as" and "a" were not included in the search. That's why I changed my title from "ESL go - free English as a second language..." to "ESL go - free English second language..."
I did a search for English second language. ESL go.com is ranked #8. How odd. If "as" and "a" are not counted why are the search results for English second language and English as a second language so very different?
I use Google for all my personal searches, and I get far more traffic from Google than from Yahoo on my main site, eslgo.com (despite being ranked 29 on Yahoo! and 65 Google).
However, Yahoo has been much quicker to list my new sites. For example I just wrote about how nfl-giants.com has a page rank of 5. For the search term NY Giants news (one of the main targets) I'm number 10 in Yahoo! but nowhere to be found in Google. I was quite happy to debut with a 5 since I didn't link to it from my PR 6 eslgo.com (worried about irrelevant links). However a good page rank doesn't help if I'm not listed in any search results...
Considering my current rankings on Yahoo! and Google, it's pretty obvious that search engine rankings are determined differently, very differently. For the search term ESL, ESL go.com is #30 on Yahoo and #65 on Google.
For the search term "stock market idea", stock market idea weblog is #1 on Yahoo but nowhere to be found on Google despite its Google page rank of 5. If I could do as well on Google as I do on Yahoo! I'd be pretty happy...
So I recently wrote about moving my image map to the bottom of my code. I seem to have moved up two spots to 65 for the search term ESL. I guess that's not the best SEO technique out there.
As I mentioned before I have about 100 internal links that go to my home page as "ESLgo". I'll be converting all those to "ESL go-free English second language" and we'll see what happens...
Also, I'm probably going to start writing about some of my other sites soon.
In my previous entry and comment I mentioned that I seemed to have settled at 80, but then "ESL go" went to 78 for the search term ESL on Google. Now, I've gone to 69. Now maybe the google dance hadn't really finished and it's still winding down, or maybe the time visitors spend on a site is really important in Google's formula for determining rankings.
I read somewhere that if you click on a web site after doing a search, the engine monitors to see if you come back to the search results. If you do, then the site you clicked on didn't have the information you needed; it was a bad search result. If you don't come back, then you must have found what you were looking for; it's a good search result. I wonder if I moved up 12 spaces by clicking on my domain (I only did it 3 or 4 times) and not going back to the listings? Probably not; seems too good to be true. But I think clicking and not going back to the listings can certainly help.
I appreciate the recent comments about the coop and Yahoo. So far there is no new evidence supporting my theory that the coop can be used to ban a competitor's site. A new theory is that during the recent Yahoo update they decided to do some summer cleaning and targeted sites with more coop links than normal links. If this is the case, one needs to wonder what will happen during the next Yahoo update. Will more coop sites be penalized?
http://www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com/ad_network_222.php