I see this all the time. Someone would put a lot of effort into link development and then ask me why it did not work. I often have to tell them that they were wasting their time. Next time you are developing your backlinks think about how long they will actually stay where they are now.
The age factor plays a huge role in seo. If you ever had time to read through Google’s patent you would have discovered that they do in fact mention the freshness of links as well as various changes over time, such as anchor text. Trust me on this one. Google loves aged domains, backlinks, anchors and so on.
It is pointless developing backlinks that will stay there for less than a month i would say. From my personal experience it can take up to 3 months before you start getting some serious juice from your backlinsk. Give it 6 months and if your backlink is still there, you are laughing.
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Have you noticed how hard it is to seo a competitive keyword for both Yahoo and Google at the same time? You would often find yourself ranking well in one of the search engines but not the other. The main problem is in algorithm differences. Even though Google started giving more weight to keyword density over the last few years it is still trailing behind Yahoo. In plain words Google is still pretty much about quality backlinks, whereas Yahoo loves high keyword density (5% +) and does not give as much weight to backlinks. “So what is the problem then?” - you may ask. Why not just increase your keyword density to keep both search engines happy? The problem is that Google has been known to penalise seo-ers for keyword stuffing. Even though sometimes the so called “keyword stuffing” can be minor and not so deliberate. This is quite interesting actually because some seo-ers are able to get away with this and other don’t.
Every time i start a seo campaign i face this dilemma. Do i want to rank on Google or Yahoo? I think Yahoo is yet to win. Even though in some cases you might find yourself better off ranking in Yahoo rather than Google.
PS: It is possible to rank well on both search engines without having to take the risk of fiddling with your keyword density. Its just you will need to improve other seo aspects such as backlinks quality and age in order to balance out the lack of keyword density, which will take time and effort.
When checking your stats pay attention to longtail referring keyphrases or those keyphrases that you think might have low competition. In most cases you will find yourself ranking well for such keyphrases. For example exposedseo ranking 8th for “how to make money rings”. Believe it or not this keyphrase brings me a bit of traffic every day. Because the competition for such keyphrase is so low it won’t be hard for me to optimize for it and jump to number one spot. You probably know that the traffic difference between the first and 8th spots can be very significant.
So what i usually end up doing is browsing through my stats and picking out these keyphrases. Usually all it takes then is one backlink from a quality, related site containing this keyphrase in the anchor text and you will see yourself jump to the first position. This is very easy to do and does not take long. Give it a week or so and you should see your traffic improve.
PS: “how to make money rings” might not have been the best example as people searching for this keyprase might not be too interested in seo and marketing. Go for keywords that you think will help you .
Just in case you don’t know what nofollow is you can find more information here. To cut the story short its an attribute rel=”nofollow” that was introduced in attempt to tackle the spam. Links containing this attribute do not have any effect on page rank.
I was never really a big fan of nofollow since it was introduced. I mean… 3 years later and did it reduce any spam? Do you see a reduction in comment spam? Not really… Not only the whole concept failed in terms of spam reduction, we are now told to stick nofollow on any link that we don’t quite trust. In the worst case you will get done for selling links and Google will take your precious page rank away. Whats really ironic is that in most cases your SERPs will continue to improve even though you clearly received a slap from Google for being naughty and your ever so green bar would now show blank. Yet, it’s not like PR matter anyway but that’s a different topic.
A while back i was fiddling with Google webmaster tools when i noticed that Google would still display nofollow backlinks. (Webmaster tools display most backlinks Google is aware off unlike link: queerie) So Google is definitely aware of these backlinks. We know they will not effect PR (According to Google) but do they have any effect of SERPs? Just a few weeks ago i would have said yes, they do help you slightly, simply making an educated guess. However something popped up recently that i found quite interesting. There was a little spammer application developed designed to spam nothing but a certain script. Whats strange is that even though every single backlink you would get from that script is nofollow, spammers were still able to achieve high SERP rank thanks to thousands of nofollow links. I don’t know how long their position will last but you can clearly see the benefits in the short run. I guess nofollow backlinks are not that bad after all. So the next time you get an opportunity to get a quality nofollow backlink… don’t just walk past it thinking that link is useless.
PS: Here is a good firefox addon that saves me a bit of time and can highlight nofollow links on the page you are visiting. Clicky
I had a few people who are new to seo contact me asking for a few basic seo tips. I understand that a new seo-er can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you can find when first getting into seo. I mean, there are 500 page books on seo that start from basics and then pretty much cover all the aspects. Not surprisingly some guy don’t quite understand some of the methods i cover on my blog. I have decided to make this quick blog post to just go through a few basics. If you are already familiar with seo you might find this boring. I’m sorry.
Ok, so lets say you want to rank better for a particular keyword. For example seo. You will need:
Stick your keyword in your sitename and use h1 html tags.
Stick your keyword in your subheadings and use h2 tag.
Stcik your keyword in the body of your site. Don’t go crazy. Just mention your keyword a few times in your blog posts for example. Just make it look normal to the eye.
Use strong tags for your keywords. This will tell search engines that these keywords are important.
It helps to have your keyword in your domain name.
Name the images you use on your site accordingly and use alt text.
This is pretty much it. Now when you have your site all set up it is time to get some backlinks. This is the hardest and most important bit in seo. You need to have your keyword in the anchor text. You need backlinks from quality, related sites. If you are trying to optimise “seo” for example, get links from sites about seo. You should aslo mix and match your anchor text. If you are optimising “seo” you need to vary your anchor a bit. For example one link can be “seo blog“, another “seo stuff“, another “learn about seo” and so on. Your success depends on the amount and quality of backlinks you get. And remember, it is quality over quantity. Hopefully this will get you started. Now you can read more about different ways in which you can get backlinks here on my blog.
