This one is from experience. Sometimes, when I come across that blog I never saw, I tend to dig up it’s metrics. You know when you are on a successful blog right? Within just a few seconds of your visit, you can identify if this is an MFA, a passion blog or a high value traffic one. And believe me digging into the metrics can really help and appearances can be deceptive too. I think one problem we all (I’m guessing) have is that we have these “Pre conceived ideas”.

So what are the factors common to high traffic blogs?

Please break out of the idea that I’m going to talk about quality blogs. No. I’m going to talk about blogs, good or bad, but are generating hell lot of traffic and of course revenue meanwhile.

Hell lot of content - food for spiders

Yea, more or less every high traffic blog I come across, which has good Alexa stats, can boast of at least a thousand good articles. Thousand is probably the least I’ve found. Forget SEO, forget usability, you provide whole lot of food for the spiders to chew on in text format and I’m sure there’s going to be massive long tail traffic. You may not rank number one consistently for a term but the amount of traffic you get from the many keyword combinations is awesome. Good enough to keep you at XXXX mark on AdSense revenues each month.

Simple Design with a focus on textual content

This is yet another fact. While most of us spend hundreds of thousands of dollars designing themes that are ranked high for usability and creativity, there are a bunch of websites that scores just average but does well with the traffic. I can’t even possibly say that they are doing good because they have a screwed up design, but there is a hidden truth that they focus heavily on the textual content. I believe so long as the textual content is searchable/indexable more than anything else with the standards in place, then that gives you that edge others miss.

Frequency of posting

I can bet on this one. Pick any favorite blog of yours, or any high traffic blog you know and find out their posting frequency. They sure will fall into the “at least one, if possible 5 per day” category. With a regular posting frequency, I think there’s a lot of credibility attached with. Regular readers can look up to you for at least a post daily and I think that’s a commendable effort. But the best blogs are the ones that has at least a few couple of articles published daily – no doubt on that.

The “awe” factor USP

So I stumble on this blog on Mac freeware applications and on my first visit I’m excited ! The sheer number of applications reviewed there delights me. “Why the hell didn’t I come across this blog earlier?” is what goes through my mind. I think this is a characteristic feature of a successful blog. So, even if these blogs don’t have a PR, or a Social Media campaign or even the author is not into any of the social medias, still we tend to link to them, talk about them and subscribe to them. It’s all because of that one awe factor that could be one’s USP.

The value. Let me call it “Information as Service”

I would love to subscribe to any blog that will give me free valuable information. You see, information is everywhere, but only the ones who gives you that extra bit of “un told tip” would be the one you remember. And I don’t think anyone will disagree. This is more or less like the open source project , where the mass tend to stick to ONLY valuable and free information. All the high traffic blogs stick to this agenda of delivering free information in their domains, constantly with the same quality time and again – and that’s something one can resist.

Essentially, if you’ve been wondering why your AdSense revenue is not improving try the above points, just ape them and see if makes any positive impact on your blog. I’m sure it will.

Just logged off from the Google Webmasters Tricks and Treats event and it was fun and tiring !

The session started off with presentations from Googlers on various topics such as “Myths in SEO” and ended with a vibrant question answer session on the Google Moderator tool. The panel was awesome with Matt Cutts and Adam Lasnik in the lead, and some 400 plus SEO’s and Webmasters in the chat !

It was exciting to be a part of the discussion because this time around, we got to listen the “real stuff” from the horse’s mouth. And what more can we get ?

Here are some of the interesting questions and their answers.

Keyword density is not something you should be keen on

Adam reinforced this once again that there is NO particular percentage keyword density that webmasters need to follow on their pages to “artificially” highlight keywords. The focus is more on relevancy of the page as a whole and just by increasing the keyword density and using variations of it, one cannot force search engines to get “ideas” off a page.

Shared IPs and Penalizations

There is no such thing as “ill effects” of being on a shared IP. Google understands that exclusive IPs are not within everyone’s reach and it is not a webmasters fault that he is on a shared IP. In fact,what’s more important is the content of your website and who links to you, than who shares your IP. It is very possible that you are the only non-porn guy on a shared IP, which is shared with 99 of the porn/poker/pharma guys. That does not mean that you are going to be penalized. But as usual, if you don’t have any valuable backlinks or popularity, you should not blame it on the ip for not enjoying the positions on SERPs, It’s probably a problem with your content.

Good quality servers are preferred to cheap ones

Google also suggested that quality servers are better than cheap ones as cheap ones prefer to accommodate a lot more websites than the normal rate and tend to give more down times and glitches. This may not help the user and in turn the search engines. Try to stick to a reliable host with decent uptimes and less crashes.

Does W3C validation score affect the ranks?

Apparently, no. W3C validation is again more a technical thing that not all would be aware of. Imagine a yoga teacher designing a page himself with valuable information. If his page does not validate, that does not mean that his information is bad. So google gives more importance to the relevancy factors of a site than the W3C validation issues.

A lot more SEO stuff was discussed at the event, that it was overwhelming. There were as usual lot of questions on penalizations and “I lost my PR F*&%^ you Google” kind of questions on chat, but I think the folks at Google made it clear again that those are the things you should ignore, and focus more on the user experience.

Make a site for the users, give them access to more valuable information, and let your SEO side take the backseat. If you are good stuff, the crowd will vote you up and we trust the crowd – was the ideology Matt Cutts and his team was trying to propagate. And I think that makes sense.

That’s an often repeated question, is it not ? Soon after the Google Page Rank updates, probably this is what most bloggers talk about. Why did my Google Page Rank drop?

Well, the seo’s have their own algorithm to explain, but for the rest of us, there are the usual answers, which is far from satisfactory –Link value drain, Bad neighborhood and all that.

But here is a better explanation from the folks at Rankedhard. I’m sure you’ll node in agreement.

Alright, this is for all those who are complaining of low traffic and bleak revenues from their websites and will do anything to get the top three ranks for their keywords. Read on…

Well, somehow most of us have the “notion” that SEO is all about getting top ranks for the first three/five keywords for their websites. And we all know about – a) Keyword Research Tools b) Keyword Analysis c) Keyword Competition d) Keyword profiling and all that ! Also, we’ve done all that we can to get that numero uno position for “the keyword”.

Well, things looks okay for now, but there is a problem we cleverly ignore here.
And that’s the obsessive compulsive disorder of doing everything around your primary keyword.

Yes – one glaring mistake many of us do is to focus too much on the primary keywords and waste your time in trying to rank number one for them.

Why waste – you ask. Good question.

In fact, trying to rank number one for a particular phrase is not the problem. The problem lies in the fact that you are ONLY optimizing towards that keyword/keywords.

The fact is that if it’s search traffic from the search engines that you are targeting, then it’s the long tail keywords that will help you more than the top primary keywords.

For instance, if you are targeting the keyword “free softwares”, you would’ve definitely used one of those keyword research tools for the keyword “softwares” and they threw up “free softwares” with 1 million search – so you picked it !

Technically, this is the right decision. But when it comes to reality, you’ll find that the 1 million search traffic has already been ploughed upon by other big giants and you don’t stand a chance to rank number one for it, in the near future. (In SEO, future means three months or next Google PR update.)

So the problem here is that,

• Even though that traffic generated for top keywords is huge, it’s not easy to tap all of that immediately.
• You can tap into that traffic volume only with a number one or two ranks, nothing below it.

So basically, you waste your time optimizing the content for a keyword that won’t give you any traffic.

Now, a wiser strategy.

In the same example, you find that “free softwares” is worth 1 million searches, but there is immense competition for it already, so let’s drill down to even precise data. You find that there are 50,000 searches for the keyword “free software downloads with reviews”, and there are only 20 guys really  working towards it. So, wouldn’t it be better idea to rank for a couple of lower traffic volume keywords (long tail keywords)  that are easy to break into rather than trying to rank against download.com for the keyword “free download”?

The goods about SEOing for longer keywords is that,

• Easier to break into the league of first pagers.
• Shorter time frame to rise up in ranks
• Possibility of getting more traffic from numerous longer keywords.

So basically, the long tail keywords are the ones that give you little traffic for each keyword, but on the whole give you a huge chunk. Optimizing pages towards long tail keywords (longer keywords/phrases) are easier and quicker that trying to rank for “the top keyword”.

If you’ve been mad about your primary keywords and have been stuffing it around everywhere possible on the blog, think again. you might want to give some space for the long tail ones too.

So who said keyword research tools are always right ? someone ?

I mean it. Really.

Vanessa Fox (ex-googler) explains why there are two Page Ranks, and why the real page rank is not what you see on the toolbar, and why the toolbar PR is irrelevant at least when calculating your SERPs positions.

The two pageranks are -
1 – The toolbar PR (what you and me are allowed to see) and
2 – The internal Google PR (which seems to be more a mystery)

Okay, I know that both you and me knew about this, but let’s discuss this now.
Because as we get more explanations from googlers and ex-googlers on this, things are only getting more intriguing.

Image courtesy - Hongkiat

Question – If there are two page ranks and the toolbar page rank is not the real page rank, why is it there out in public, in the first place?

Possible answer from Google – Because we have a algorithm in place which calculates the authority and link value of a website purely based on the number of inlinks it has.

My reply (possibly) - Fine – But why don’t you simply put the “real pagerank” on the toolbar ? Wouldn’t that help the webmasters and public both equally in “grading” websites? And since the real pagerank isn’t completely based on links, there is no question of SEO’s becoming successful in manipulating it, even if they try.

I’m inclined to believe that the “real pagerank” is non-existent. Of course, we all know that Google has it’s n-number of factors that helps it in “grading” a website, but that isn’t anything close to page rank, it’s an algo more complex.

Google pagerank, if I’m not mistaken is best described as below.

PageRank reflects Google’s view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

So…..I don’t think there should be even be a case of internal/toolbar pagerank.

If there is at all a Page Rank, why can’t it be public ?

Note: I’m not implying that Google Page Rank is the sole reason for a websites SERPs rank, but trying to clear the ambiguity here between the different versions of Page Ranks and the reasons to why they exist.

High traffic keywords are always an addiction. Write a good, optimized copy targeting the high traffic keywords and sit back enjoy the traffic coming in.

But it’s also a fact that many of us don’t prefer to write content for the spiders, rather write for the users. I mean, how often can you write copies calculating the keyword density metrics (although they are irrelevant these days) ? It’s so boring.

But there is a work around to this. Write genuine articles for the users, but at the same time target the search engines and the high traffic keywords. Here’s how.

How to target high traffic keywords, without affecting the readers

Step 1 -  First off, using the Google Adwords keyword tool, find out the top traffic generating keywords related to your niche.

Step 2 – Go to your older posts, sorting them by the following criteria.
a) Page Rank – Find out the ones that have comparatively higher page rank, pick those first.
b) Text and Images – Select those articles that has lot of text and images used.

Step 3 – Go to the post and edit it either using “All in One SEO plugin” options OR the normal edit mode.(See screenshot)

Step 4 – Now replace all the image alt tags and title tags with relevant keywords related to that article and which are more inclined to the high traffic generating keywords.
Ex:- If “Tourist help” is the high traffic keyword related to tourism, you might want to select an article related to tourism and add the keywords in it.

Step 5 – Reformat the page title (Noted 1 in screenshot) and optimize it for the keyword.
Ex:- If your older title was “My traveling experiences”, you might want to change it to “Tourist help – tips and advice from a veteran traveler”

Step 6 – Additionally, you might want to change or add relevant keyword specific title tags to all the links in the article.

Step 7 – Also, it might be a good idea to add the relevant keywords and meta description. (Don’t spam, make it very relevant to the content you have)

I’ve found that if you do this to older posts that have gained some page rank and link juice already, they are likely to give you some search engine traffic.

And the advantages are that -

- Since your regular readers might have already read the article, the title change won’t really bother them.

- The older articles are probably getting traffic ONLY from referrals and search engines, so this is the best way to cash in on it.

While doing the editing just make sure that, you don’t edit the permalinks. Careful.

And it’s a guarantee. You have three months time (assumption), implement these and get ready to shed those green points.

(Caution: This is for the adventurous at heart, and the steps suggested are “implement-able” at your own risk.)

1. Copy paste content from other blogs and websites.
   Edit words like is, was and the, with suitable replacements and re publish the “refurbished” contents.
2. Buy links from text link brokers. Not many, a few will do.
3. Go to a public forum and advertise for “link spots” available on your blog.
4. Place a “links available for sale” note on your blog.
5. Buy a directory submission service from Digital Point
   Get 1000 link submissions for $10.
6. Add the text-link-ads widget on your blog.
7. Make all the outbound links on your blog “nofollow”
8. Sell the Russian guy a few ad spots on your blog.
9. Write reviews on Text link ads and TNX, if un successful, try again.

Any experienced guys out there, please share your thoughts and add in your valuable points. Please mask your identity while doing so.

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.

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.

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.

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.