Sitewide links, Deep links, Sponsored links, Carefully crafted anchor texts, Blogroll link lists - Well, they are not probably worth tying together, but I’m beginning to think that they have some similarity of sorts and are more junk than anything else these days, that Google might be discounting them no matter how valuable they might seem. And I have the reasons.

With the September Page Rank toolbar stats update, we’ve seen more “downgrades” than “upgrades” right ? Many popular blogs have dropped by one point, some of them even further down.

ad_friend

Reasons are diverse, but let’s see if we can find a pattern.

I think with the new changes being implemented, there is clearly an indication that Google is once again sealing the concept that links are not any more just links. But a lot more factors goes into deciding whether a link is actually a “vote” or not.

Age old concept I know, but I think this is becoming more prominent.

Here are some factors I can think of to help Google decide if a link is actually a “vote” or not.

  1. Content and nature of the site linking you
    More than the page and the content on the page linking to you, it matters more about, what is the content on the website that’s linking to you. Ex:- It might be wiser to consider a news site which has more authority and “value” link to you than a fellow blogger on hisname.com
  2. Does the link come from your social network?
    Just like Digg, I cannot think of a good reason why Google should not discount the incoming links from a “friend” of yours.  A friend might be a common commentator on your blog, or a guest blogger, if he is related to you in some way, I think it’s fair for Google to consider that it’s a “favor link”. Even worse, what if Google knows who your friends are (it has the friend feed data remember?) and discounts all those links from the network ?
  3. Are you guys too similar ?
    If your links are originating from same domains, which are too similar, won’t they be “favor” links ? Ex:- If you are a part of any Feedburner networks (like the feedburner technology bloggers network), why shouldn’t Google stop from discounting the links from all the blogs in that network?

Well, these points my sound lame, but I think there is a possibility to this concept, getting stronger as we go ahead and Google acquiring more “networks”.

If we look from Google’s perspective, it all makes sense, it only would want to take into consideration the genuine links and recommendations and not the “scratch me, I scratch you” networks that might be gaming the system.

It is also a fact that the networks and the user interactions will grow stronger, and the “favor” links will keep coming in. I can only guess, that they might only carry less value than earlier.

(7) Comments    Read More   
Oct
05
Filed Under (News) by Mani Karthik on 05-10-2008

Search Engine Land reports Google testing image banner ads on Google Image search. Aaron Wall has a confession to make and a question for you  - Is buying links stupid ? If you’ve been thinking if Google ever forgives a penalized site, you better read this. Bill Slawski has a list of suggestions for blogging beginners – good read !#

Stephan Spencer spoke at the Startonomics on SEO, and he has a good video for you. (It was not that all good quality for me, see if you get a good full session, but insightful talk there)

Brett Lane has a very interesting post on the five things to consider while hiring a Social Media Consultant, seriously interesting one that.
And here is my favorite. Eric writes about why and how he thinks that Google weighs the anchor text less and the content of the linking page more. I cannot disagree with him.

(2) Comments    Read More   
Oct
04
Filed Under (Tools) by Mani Karthik on 04-10-2008

Some of you have been asking me if I use any “secret SEO tools” to gain that edge over others.

Good question, but there aren’t any that are “secretive”. For those of you reading this blog for some time now, knows that I make it a point to reveal as much as possible, and keep no “secrets” to myself.

On a different note, tools and wizards only help you do the basic stuff which I think is only the tip of the ice berg. I always like human algorithm and wouldn’t want to trust the tools.

Having said that, tools are the best way to get the information dug out.

And I’ve been mentioning them here(Free site stats checkers), here(Free link checkers), here(keyword density checkers), here(SEO friendliness), here(Rank Checkers) and here(Site validation tools).

And if you are looking for more from the SEO experts, check this story. It has a list of all the SEO experts reveal out their secret SEO tools !

(8) Comments    Read More   
Oct
01
Filed Under (Search Engine Optimization) by Mani Karthik on 01-10-2008

Back to basics now. Article submission might be one of those oldest methods webmasters still rely on for link building methods - unfortunately. But are they really working? Do they give you backlinks, and if at all they do, how much of that time and energy you spent actually get converted to “authority”? That would raise more questions than answers.

Well, just to make sure all of us on the same level of understanding, let’s see what article submission really is.

Article submission is the process where an article on a targeted category/topic with crafted text and embedded links is distributed to channels that distribute them.

That’s a very crude definition I know. Well, two things here.

1 - The Article    and   2 - Where is it submitted to

Ideally, and article should be unique, well written and original with meaningful, contextual links and references. (Now, that’s an article I haven’t seen at all anywhere on the channels.) And the channel which receives the article is ideally one that is again exclusive, and original (yea alright..).

Now, article submission can really work if the above two factors are as close to the ideal one. Original source and original channels. But today (at least in my exp) both of them are heavily skewed. There are no original articles. All of them are either copied, or written to serve many. Let’s not talk about the relevancy of links here, that’s a different chapter, book altogether. And the channels that distribute the content is so original that they take articles from everyone, copied/scraped whatever, all they want is a few chunk of text to fill in, to show AdSense ads. Now, that’s when the whole process goes junk. Lack of original articles, and lack of original channels.

How can article submission be done right?

Can it be done? Yea, why not?

First off, article submission has to be seen as a method to increase the reach and length of your “tentacles” and not as backlink source.
When it is seen only as a backlink source, it is quite natural that it gets spammed.

- Write lot of articles and make them unique.
Submit each to only one source, and not multiple sources.

This will ensure that the same article does not appear on multiple sites, and thus avoiding duplicate content. So, whatever you grab from it, remains unique.

- Rotate the anchor texts.
Don’t use the same keyword as anchor text, use your creativity and make different versions of it, include them on each article.

- Do no submit to automated sources.
Yea, they’ll promise you a thousand backlinks in a week, but I can guarantee that all of them would be scrap. Because, all the articles on all those sites would probably be the same as they all got it automated.

- Submit only to reliable sources.
Like websites, that’s been there for some time, and not super scrapers that sprout out yesterday.

- If at all you want it automated, limit the number of pubishing to bare minimum. At least, you’ll save al those scrap websites from linking to you.

So essentially, article submision works or not, they’ll collect some backlinks for sure. To make the best out of them, don’t automate things, handpick sites and channels and spent some time writing stuff. The more the merrier !

(3) Comments    Read More   
Sep
22
Filed Under (SEO Quicktips) by Mani Karthik on 22-09-2008

Link building is a tough task I’ve to admit. No, it’s not difficult to do, but doing it the “right way” demands more time and energy or else, you end up being a nobody at it.

Personally, I go for natural link building developing content that’s “linkable”. Use it in combination with the social media and things can get very interesting ! Now, the problem arises when not all of your content is really potential link bait stuff.

I mean, how successful can one be trying to link bait for “101 Home Loan Services” ? Lyndoman may have an idea here, but I’m of the opinion that you better don’t do it rather find other channels where you can develop potentially viral content, that closely resembles the original idea/product and find a bridge between the two.

Drifting away from the topic, I wanted to talk about blog commenting - a very popular tool used these days to gather links. (And I think it’s more popular these days for it’s quick turn around time compared to other methods.)

How do you do blog commenting?

- By finding out blogs that allow “do follow” comment links related to your content, and actively commenting on them to source links.

If not for the time required to deliver real comments, this could’ve been the next best weapon for spammers (it already is).

How to find blogs that pass link juice?

1.
Find out from Google using search queries, blogs that have the “Top Commentators” plugin installed.
Ex:- Google for “allintitle:top commentators” and you could find them. (the query may be blocked by Google if too many people are searching, so try alternate ones.)

2. Find out using Google, blogs that use the “Comment luv” plugin.
There may be both “nofollow” and “dofollow” comments here, you may have to sieve them out.

3. Find out resource lists on the web like this one.

Believe me, there are lot of blogs out there that offer dofollow comments and links, it’s only a matter of finding them. But once you have them make sure you only use the best ones, that are -

- High PR (Preferable 4 and above)
- Related to your domain and content
- Not penalized by Google
- Not in bad neighborhood

And, don’t get carried away with all the links you are gathering, make sure you don’t do it the “bad way” and stick to these guidelines while commenting.

To some wholesome, quality backlinks !!

(19) Comments    Read More   
Sep
18
Filed Under (SEO Quicktips) by Mani Karthik on 18-09-2008

So you know that footer text is a good real estate option in SEO. And you’ve been placing your sitemeter button and credit texts there. Some of you are clever I know, you have that “natural” looking two lines to text there with links to totally un related websites! Guess what, I have some better alternatives for ya.

  1. Place the “unreached” yet important categories at the footer
    All your categories are likely to be there somewhere on the sidebar or above the fold right? But not all of them gets the same focus and visibility. If there are cetegories that are not getting the right visibility as it should, try placing them in the footer. They are likely to get crawled more, and may be you can get some long tail keyword traffic from them.
  2. Place your pages at the footer
    Sometimes, pages take a lot of space above the fold, and you don’t really need to place them there (no thumb rule here). In some cases, it might be a better idea to place your pages at the footer. Especially when you want only the search engines to absorb the data from them. Ex:- A technical blog which has an “about us” page that has information on what the blog is about.
  3. Place your less-viewed posts at the footer
    It’s also possible that you have excellent articles that you thought will be the the “next viral article” when you wrote it, but unfortunately something went wrong and they didn’t get the focus you planned. Now it’s time to
  4. Place an “About me” article
    “About me” articles are a great way to squeeze in those crucial keywords and make a natural text rich space. So utilize it. Write about what you are doing and what you are blogging about (food for thought!)
  5. Place all your low page rank articles
    So you know that there are some articles that are low page rank compared to other articles. Of course that doesn’t ,mean that they are completely ignored, but if you think they have the potential to get some traffic from Google, why not pass some link juice to them by linking to them from the homepage?

Still don’t get the idea? Ah! Forget it.

(6) Comments    Read More   

Okay, let me not even dare to explain what “better indexing” means generally. From an SEO perspective, better indexing to me is getting all the important pages from your site getting indexed with the right importance and “weight” with the search engines. So, if I have ten pages on my website, I’d say success is to have all those ten pages with equal importance and page rank that searching for the primary keyword for each of those pages would result in a top ten listing. Makes sense right?

What goes wrong with the “normal” SEO efforts?

As a matter of fact, many of us work towards the “improvement” of our site’s metrics like page rank and ends up doing just that. All the link juice gathered, all the submissions made, all the onsite optimization done, all goes to the homepage and we do pretty much nothing except linking to the internal pages. As a result, not every page on the site gets the chance to show theur heads on the search engines front page.

What happens when your internal pages don’t get the right visibility?

Undispuedly, the major part of search engines traffic comes from the internal pages for an average website with lot of contents. In order to enjoy the traffic from long tail keywords (which form more than 80% fo the entire traffic chunk), you got to make sure that your internal pages gets the right importance on the search engines.

Problems that may cause unequal visibility problems on your site.

  1. Poor link structure
    That’s a general term am afraid. And it means different things to different people. You have to analyze your site requirements and find out what works best for you but generally it’s a good idea to link more frequently to more important pages while maintaining a single frame of links connecting all the pages equally. If there are lot of pages, connecting to each of them grouping them under categories might be a good idea, yet again it canot work for everyone.
    But problems arise when the lin structure is poor and not every “important” page is not connected well and gets the right visibility.
  2. Use of Paginators
    I’m all against paginators and would only recommend it when absolutely necessary. But as I see it, they give a very bloated link structure that can reduce and cut off the importance given to every page connected. It follows more of a lateral linking strucure that’s long, and I’ve seen that it doesn’t work at all times with search engines, but may be a good tool for friendly navigation structure.
  3. Extensive use of §Categories
    Categories, as we’ve discussed here and here, sometimes poses a threat to creating duplicate content, but sometimes they are the best strategy to group together lot of pages. When grouping together pages, extreme care has to be taken to handpick and manually ensuring equal visibility for each.
  4. Extensive use of Tags
    Another way to get more duplicate content on your blog is to use more tags. Same posts on different tags, more than one time (sometimes several time) - not cool !
  5. Robots.txt
    Most of the time it is not deliberate, but improper use of commands on the robots.txt file will create undetected accidents and issues that can be avoided.

How to get over the poor indexing problems ?

  1. Get quality, high frequency backlinks to internal pages - Always prefered.
  2. Use good use of sitemaps, with the right priority values and excluding the unimportant parts of your website.
  3. Content syndication on networks - Works everytime.
  4. Create a carefully crafted page/file structure - Difficult to create an maintain, but works.
  5. Use the nofollow meta tags to full use - Be careful when you do it.
  6. Use plugins for WP blogs - Easier stuff, do it if you really know how to.
  7. Use the social media to generate traffic - Put all your best posts on the social media and gather some traffic as well as links.
(8) Comments    Read More   

Gone are the days when SEO Tools was al about page rank checks and keword density checks. Today we have seo tools to analyze backlinks, wikipedia links, digg submissions, delicious bookmarks, neighborhood ip checks and all that external seo metrics.
Here’s a list of twelve such free tools that you can use to analyze the stats of your site.

  1. SEO Digger [ Keyword Research, Rank Checker ] - Checks your site for top keywords/keyword combination that your site is already ranking high for. Shows the corresponding position for those keywords on the search engines.
  2. Quark Base [ Complete site metrics ] - Gives all the information you would ever need on a website. Right from the hosted ip to page rank, wikipedia links and more. Compare with your competition to see where you lack.
  3. SEO Meter [ Google crawl rate checker ] - Checks for the frequency by which Google crawls your website.
  4. SiteYogi [ Site health check ] - Checks overall site stats on various engines and social media. Checks for all basic data like indexed pages on various search engines. Data is not accurate sometimes.
  5. Exact Factor [ Rank checks ] - Checks one or more domains for ranks and Google/Yahoo site index stats. Broken sometimes.
  6. Internal Pages PR checker [ Page Rank Checker ] - Checks all your internal pages for their Page Rank. Good to determine your internal link structure.
  7. Multiple keywords rank Check [ Site stats check ] - Check ranks for multiple keywords
  8. URL Metrix [ Site stats checker ] - Checks all the site stats like pages indexed on Google, backlinks and everything you coould think of on SEO basics.
  9. URL Trends [ SEO Site stats checker ] - Free SEO reports with details on social media inlinks, user demographics, keyword analysis, incoming links, traffic stats etc.
  10. Website Grader [ SEO Site stats checker ] - Checks and analyses all the site information right from inbound links to keyword stats.
  11. Site Rake [ Log files analyzer ] - Upload your site log files and this tool will help you analyse all your stats.
  12. Xinu Returns [ Site stats checker ] - Checks all your site stats including link backs, digg submissions, wikipedia links etc.
(27) Comments    Read More   
Sep
04

But, honestly, it’s fair to have one(or a few). Because there are lot of changes happening, and algorithm updates that it’s not possible for everyone to stay updated and tuned on SEO. Many of us bloggers have certain SEO misconceptions just because we haven’t updated ourselves, aligning to Google.
seo-misconceptions

Here are some SEO misconceptions that I found common with more than one person while engaging in conversations with them. Feel free to share your thoughts on them. I hope you will clear them and grow yourself up to SEO 2.0 and break out of the old-school SEO kid image.


  1. Meta tags and descriptions affect the SERPs


    Meta tags somehow is the most loved onsite “optimization” technique for bloggers, it’s one place that many use for stuffing in as many keywords as possible. As a matter of fact, meta tags (keywords and description) are no longer helping you impact your search engine rankings. If they are relevant to the content of the website, then it’s fine, but again it doesn’t help to add all sorts of possible keyword options into it.
    I’d say meta description is a good tool to increase your “clickability” from SERPs, so you might want to write a compelling and attractive copy there, but that’s about it.


  2. Keyword match on domain means a top rank


    In fact, while selecting domains, it’s a good idea to have a perfect keyword match, but that doesn’t mean that you have to go to the extent of selecting a domain like searchengineoptimizationservicesonlinefreeindia.com.
    It’s ugly and it doesn’t help you but may rather hurt you. Just go through any google SERPs and see if you can find a first page listing for any domain longer than max 20-ish characters. No, is it not? Therefore don’t over do this bit of selecting domains for perfect keyword match.
    Had keyword matching been only the metric for top ranks, flickr.com wouldn’t rank for “photo sharing” - would it?


  3. 6% Keyword density means better Optimized pages


    One of the most popular formulas for SEO copywriting is the 6% keyword density on the keyword. Sadly, this isn’t very strong these days and is reduced to the level of one of thousands metrics available to Google to decide what the content on your website is all about. I’m not trying to say that you should completely forget about it. You certainly can follow a 6-7% keyword density if it makes sense to you and is normal but don’t go for it mathematically and if it makes a bad unreadable copy.
    Of course, Google has other methods (many of them) to find out what the content on your website is all about. So let’s say, it would work on a case to case basis.


  4. Don’t link to others or you’ll lose your page rank


    We’ve discussed this many a times already. Linking to other websites will not bring down your page rank, it only passes the link juice to them without reducing the original page rank. Your page rank is completely dependent on who links to you, and not whom you are linking to.


  5. Flash means bad SEO


    Initially, flash was a big monster SEOs had trouble with and we always recommended people to either avoid flash or go for HTML alternatives. But things have changed and fortunately now, search engines can spider links inside flash files embedded, and even crawl text in flash files. Just that you may have to guide them to it, if they don’t do it automatically, but clearly, flash is not a SEO spoiler anymore. We’ve learned to live with it.


  6. You have to wait weeks together to get indexed on Google


    Getting indexed on Google is not hard any more. Gone are the days when you had to submit your site to Google ad wait for weeks to see it appear on the SERPs. But now, all you need is 48 hours to get indexed on Google.


  7. Directory submissions will boost your ranks


    How I wish that directory submissions worked. No, no way! It’s an old school concept and does no impact whatsoever on Google SERPs. Yes, you can show the number of incoming links, but invalid, non authoritative links from directories are no good compared to relative, contextual links, fewer in number but from trusted sources on Google.


  8. Link building campaigns are cool


    Link building is good, real good. But I somehow can’t agree to the “campaign” part of it. It’s no exercise you ought to do, but something that should support the growth of your site. As a matter of fact, natural link building by “convincing” people to link to us using methods such as social media optimization and link baiting is the best way to do it. Short term link building and sudden backlinks should raise red flags on Google, so refrain from such “artificial” link based campaigns, rather focus more on conten development aiding to natural links.


  9. Two months quick fixes is all that you need


    One of the things that makes you lose your entire credibility on the search engines is trying to do something too quick and hastily. Even with all the metrics in place, it’s definitely not possible to gain consistent ranks on Google within a short span of time, so none of those quick fixes are going to work. Take your time, set your targets and work towards it in a healthy way.


  10. Traffic does not help in SEO


    Traffic is a great “catalyst” in gaining good reputation with Google. It may not directly help you with the SERPs but it sure helps you get into the good books of Google if you can consistently produce good traffic. Well, having good traffic just means that you have some potentially good content, is it not? And google knows it well, may be. So gaining traffic is great and an easy way to get some traction.

Essentially, it means that there is no formula for SEO available, that if applied will give you instant results. All the metrics have to be weighed and calculated to design the right strategy for each website.

(10) Comments    Read More   
Aug
28
Filed Under (News) by Mani Karthik on 28-08-2008

Today on, top commentators on DailySEOblog will be featured on the right hand sidebar, with a link to their websites. The list will be refreshed every day, and the readers who’ve commented most on the articles will get a free link back.

With great powers come responsibilities !

I realize that with the top commentators list, there would also be a lot of spam coming in. So I’m going to spent more hours filtering the list.

Please note that - Links will be selectively nofollowed to websites outside the “neighborhood” (unrelated websites), and user names, if found crafted to source link love.

This is to avoid strangers taking advantage of the opportunity, but I know my regular readers and sincere commenters, I may discount it if they “try” something as well.

Hope you’ll appreciate the jesture, and give me less time fighting spam.

Passive and silent readers and fans out there - if you haven’t commented yet on DailySEOblog, this is probably your opportunity to do so. You may just pick up some traffic and link juice from the blog, so move your lazy ass today!

(I’m reviewing the progress on this, will keep you updated if things go out of hand, which I prefer to believe is a distant possibility.)

(24) Comments    Read More