EzSEO Newsletter # 70
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EzSEO Newsletter # 70
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. Creating a theme
2. Google’s Autolink Feature and how to turn it off.
3. What over-optimization penalty?
4. What SEO Website Builder is, and is not.
5. Content Publisher - coming very soon.
Hi again,
this week I bought some new software (Camtasia) for creating video presentations, so don’t be surprised to see my first attempt at a video in todays newsletter. I am hoping that later this year, I will be pairing up with my good friend the Jungle Marketer (Guido Stiehle) after he gets back from, well the Brazilian Jungle actually, to work on a project that will make good use of Camtasia.
In addition, a surprise phone call from Colin McDougall yesterday got me thinking about Latent Semantic Indexing. Read what it is all about in the first part of this newsletter, and how you can be ready when this technology takes over the web.
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1. Creating a theme
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Type in Latent Semantic Indexing at Google, and click the search button. Do you see a Google Adwords ad on the right? Here is what I am seeing:
Work at Google
Google is hiring expert computer scientists and software developers!
labs.google.com/why-google.html
Seems Google is advertising on Adwords!
This Latent Semantic Indexing sure is going to be important if Google are looking to hire people in that area. So what is it? Don’t be put off by its complicated name, you need to learn this ;o) stuff, so repeat after me….
“Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn’t understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.”
Quote taken from:
javelina.cet.middlebury.edu/lsa/out/lsa_definition.htm
Put simply, LSI is a way of finding out what a page or site is really about. It looks at the combinations of words found on the page or site, and tries to recognise a theme. This is very important to Google already, because LSI is responsible for supplying related Adsense ads on your pages, by looking at the theme of your page, and showing relevant ads to your visitors.
LSI is becoming much more important, as search engines adopt this technology to help return relevant pages in their results pages. When your pages get indexed, Google will look for a theme, and if that theme is a good match for a searchers query, you have a chance at a top listing in the results pages. Not rocket sience, is it? More like common sense.
An example of LSI at work might be a web page that contains the words “Tiger” & “Woods”. What adsense ads should Google serve up? It could serve up “Save the Nepalese Tiger from extinction” type conservation ads, or it could decide that Golf ads are the order of the day. By examining the other word combinations on your page (and possibly your site), Google can be quite accurate in the ads it displays. That is what LSI is all about.
So what can you do about this in your own websites? The simplest approach is one that I and many others have been advocating for years - build web pages, and web sites around a theme. Each page you build should have a primary keyword, and several secondary keywords which are highly related to the primary. That way, you don’t leave Google guessing as to the theme of your pages.
If you have pages showing Adsense ads already up, go and check what ads Google displays for your pages. Are the ads highly relevant to your web pages? If so, you have done a good job of themeing your page. If not, either the LSI technology is up the spout, or your page is just too confusing. This is actually a very common mistake affiliate marketing newbies make. They try to add as many banners and products on a page as possible thinking that it will increase sales. Well, having a page about male pattern baldness, which also tries to sell virility potions as an after thought, may only confuse the search engines, and cause your page to be buried under thousands of others for your main keyword phrases.
There are tools that can be used to help theme your pages. Thememaster is one that I am hearing more and more about, but have never personally tried, so cannot recommend it.
Alternatively, if you own KRA-WT, you can do your own themeing research quite easily.
Instead of analyzing the top ranking pages to find themes like Thememaster, KRA-WT can be used to find themes in the actual search phrases people are using at the search engines. My logic tells me that if people are regularly searching for combinations of words, then those words making up the combinations will usually be related to the main theme of their search.
e.g. if someone searches for “golf clubs”, “golf” must be related to “clubs”. If someone searches for “golf bags”, “golf” must also be related to “bags”. Therefore the three words “golf”, “clubs” and “bags” must fit into a theme. The more often these words are searched for in combinations, the stronger the theme. Makes sense? Let’s look at a real example using some keywords I researched at Wordtracker.
You can view the video here, though be warned it is a little rough as I am still trying to learn the ins and outs of Camtasia.
For more information on KRA-WT website.
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2. Google’s Autolink Feature and how to turn it off.
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It seems that the Google toolbar has a new sinister feature.
How would you like it if users of the new toolbar visited your site, and found links on your pages that you did not put there? Links that took your hard earned visitors away from your site even before they had a chance to read your sales message or click on your Google Adsense Ad? Imagine how angry you would be if you had used pay-per-click advertising to bring that visitor to your site, only to lose them before you had your chance to sell them your product?
The Autolink feature of the toolbar has webmasters up in arms, furious that Google could be doing this. I am sure there will be law suites against the big G for defacing the intellectual property of webmasters in this way. This is unethical, and many wont wait for Karma to come round and bite them on the a**e!
Oh, and did I tell you that there was not way to turn off this feature? Surely webmasters should be allowed to opt-out of this insanity. Well, rest easy. Some clever programmers have come up with a javascript you can add to your pages that disable the autolinking feature. Read more about it here.
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3. What over-optimization penalty?
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I received this email:
Hi Andy,
Could you possibly answer a question for me before I create my first mini-site, it being I remember you saying somewhere that you shouldn’t include one of your keywords in your domain name. You never went into the reason, and I wonder if you could elaborate on your reasons for this.
Many thanks
Mark”
Well, Mark, this may be my fault for not going into more details earlier, but you have misunderstood what I intended to get across.
My intended message was I don’t recommend using the main keyword phrase (in its entirety) of your site as your domain name. I believe that for Google, this could take a big step towards triggering an over-optimization penalty. This penalty is something that many webmasters don’t believe exists, but from my own research, it is plain to see that it does.
Let’s take a quick example and then I will explain how I think the penalty may work (and you will then understand that it is possible to use the keyword phrase in your domain name, but you have to be much more careful with other aspects of the optimization of your site).
Do a search on Google for generic viagra (without quotes).
How many sites do you see in the top 30 with the words generic viagra in the domain name?
OK, now do the same search on Yahoo.
How many of the top 10 have generic viagra in the domain name?
The results I am seeing is:
Google: 0 sites
Yahoo: 2 sites
In fact, you have to look well down the results at Google to find a domain name that contains this phrase. I believe that these sites have triggered an over-optimization penalty at Google. This type of keyword stuffing use to work at Google, but now it does not appear to. Yahoo’s algorithm is much the same as Google’s use to be - they still seem to tolerate this keyword stuffing in the domain name, but for how much longer? They usually play catch up to Google, and eventually use a similar algorithm.
How the penalty may work:
Imagine that points are awarded to a page, for the number and positions of keywords on the page. These points may not be equally awarded for each occurrence, it may depend on where on the page the keyword is found.
OK, let’s play with this theory.
Keyword found Points awarded to page
Domain name 10
Title of page 2
Headline of page 2
Body of page 1
Alt Tags 3
Meta Keywords 5
Meta description 5
The above table awards points depending on where the keyword is found. Obviously someone trying to optimize a page may well try to include the keyword in all of these positions. Let’s do the maths.
A web page with the keywords found as follows:
HTML Tag Number of keywords found
Domain name 1
Title of page 2
Headline of page 3
Body of page 10
Alt Tags 4
Meta Keywords 4
Meta description 2
Would score 72 “optimization points”
Now imagine the same page without the keyword in the domain name:
HTML Tag Number of keywords found
Domain name 0
Title of page 2
Headline of page 3
Body of page 10
Alt Tags 4
Meta Keywords 4
Meta description 2
This site would score 62 optimization points.
However, both pages are stuffing the keyword into the meta tags and Alt tags in the belief this will help rankings. Lets remove all but one occurrence in each of these tags:
HTML Tag Number of keywords found
Domain name 0
Title of page 2
Headline of page 3
Body of page 10
Alt Tags 1
Meta Keywords 1
Meta description 1
This page now scores “33 optimization points”
The more “optimized” a page is, the higher the optimization score. I actually do think there is a threshold, over which a site gets penalised. In the above example, that may be 40 points. If that were true, all but the last page would be penalised. I think you will agree that looking at the page profiles, all but the last are “over-optimized” in an attempt to rank well. Therefore, I believe they deserve to be penalised.
Now, I may be wrong in my theory, but I do build my own sites by carefully looking at where keywords appear on the page, and I make a big effort not to over-do things.
Now, I told you that I thought it was possible to rank well even if your keyword was in the domain. I don’t have an example in a highly competitive area, but I do have an example. I created a directory called the ezseo directory where people could submit their sites, and find other webmasters to link to.
Do a search of Google for ezseo directory, and you will find http://ezseo-directory.com at #1. Even though there is little competition for top spot, if this site was penalised for using the keyword phrase in the domain, it would not rank #1 even if there were only two competing pages.
Let’s look at the profile of this site:
HTML Tag Number of keywords found
Domain name 1
Title of page 1
Headline of page 0
Body of page 0
Alt Tags 0
Meta Keywords 0
Meta description 0
Total score is 12 “optimization points”
Oh, and before anyone emails me saying “..but no one searches for ezseo directory as a keyword”, please don’t. If you think that this is a problem with my logic, you are completely missing the point.
As a final thought on this theory, can you see why keyword stuffing into meta tags could take you over the top. Meta tags are not used for ranking your page, but if Google used them to count optimization points, they could hurt you.
Even if this theory is all baloney, I really do recommend caution when building your pages. With LSI becoming more important, use related words in the various tags, instead of the same one over and over again.
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4. What SEO Website Builder is, and is not.
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I get all sorts of crazy emails asking for more information on my SEO Website Builder tool.
Here are a few of them:
“Will my site be banned if I use SEO WSB to create it?”
“Can you guarantee that my pages will rank well?”.
“Can I add Traffic Equaliser to my SEO WSB pages?”
“How long do SEO WSB sites stay around in the search engines for before they are dropped?”
These questions make me quite sad, because I realise that many of the people asking them, are only out to make quick money, and often use spam techniques to get there. There sites quickly get banned by Google, and they are left looking for the next quick solution.
When are these people going to realise that to build an online business, you must build good foundations, take your time, and do it right.
Using tools that churn out 1000s of pages of spam will not build a long term business, and will get your sites banned.
SEO WSB is not some magic formula for getting high rankings. Sure, those who use it properly and follow the training manual and advice on the forum do build quality sites that generate good income. However,
* SEO WSB is just a web editor that helps beginners.
* SEO WSB is a web editor that allows complete beginners to build web sites.
* SEO WSB is a web editor that requires no HTML knowledge or SEO skills.
* SEO WSB is a web editor that creates search engine friendly sites, allowing you to concentrate on the content, and leave the more technical aspects of site building, page linking etc, to the software.
* SEO WSB is just a tool.
In the same way that Dreamweaver or Frontpage can be used to spam the search engines with web page drivel, so can SEO WSB. SEO WSB IS JUST A TOOL! How you use it dictates what results you will get.
Let’s answer those questions now we have a better understanding of what SEO WSB is, and isn’t.
“Will my site be banned if I use SEO WSB to create it?”
Only if you create pages of spam.
“Can you guarantee that my pages will rank well?”.
Of course not. You only get good rankings by working hard at your site.
“Can I add Traffic Equaliser to my SEO WSB pages?”
Sure, but why would you want to? Web page generators are spamming tools that will get your site banned. Are you looking to build a long term business, or one month wonders that really don’t make you as much money as you thought they would.
“How long do SEO WSB sites stay around in the search engines for before they are dropped?”
Depends on the quality of your content and how hard you work at your site.
You know, there are far too many people out there looking for the Holy Grail of website building. I know from reading between the lines that many still think that SEO WSB has some secret SEO technique that guarantees search engine positions. Some loophole technique that the search engines have yet to find out about.
I get a number of refund requests, and as per my guarantee I don’t ask why, I just refund the money. However, some do offer a reason.
Do you know what the most common reason for getting a refund on SEO WSB is?
“I prefer to build my sites in Dreamweaver or Frontpage”.
This tells me that we have a Grail searcher.
Do they not believe the section on my sales page entitled “What this software cannot do”.
Do they not believe, or even read the section entitled “This software is not for you”.
If you are looking to build a website, but don’t know how, then SEO Website Builder may be the tool for you. There is one other I would also recommend, and that is SiteBuild It! Both tools can be used by complete beginners, without any HTML knowledge. To finish off this section, let me just offer a comparison of SEO Website Builder and Site Build It!
SBI - license allows you to build one site.
SEO WSB - license allows unlimited sites.
SBI - Annual renewal fee.
SEO WSB - One off cost with free upgrades for life.
SBI - Software exists online. Builds your page online at their server - slower.
SEO WSB - Software on your computer. Build your sites offline on your own PC - fast.
SBI - Contains a lot of tools for keyword research, tracking positions, building pages, web hosting included etc.
SEO WSB - Is a site builder that helps you build an optimized site. It does not contain the tools for keyword research, tracking etc and does not include hosting.
SBI - Hosting is supplied by Sitesell so is hosted on their servers.
SEO WSB - You can host your sites wherever you want.
SBI - support via e-mail and I believe they have a forum now too.
SEO WSB - e-mail support and dedicated support forum.
Both SBI and SEO WSB contain detailed tutorials on building web sites and using the software. Both do a great job so you need to decide which of the above factors are the most important in the solution you want.
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5. Content Publisher - coming very soon.
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Content Publisher is going to be released in the next week or two. As promised I will be offering it to subscribers of this newsletter first, at a big discount, but only for a short period of time.
Here is what one of my beta testers told me this morning about Content Publisher:
“It’s around midnight here and I just finished reading the manual of Content publisher. I have to tell you with all sincerity that your product has really blown me away. What an incredible well thought out product. The value of this kind of help is invaluable. I’m seldom a loss for words but this time I’m stymied.
I’m very excited about using it and the part of sending to the other webmasters is ingenious - I don’t know how you come up with all the fine things your doing but I again have to congratulate you - awesome - awesome - awesome.”
Stay tuned for more news very soon.
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online here.
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old newsletter archives.
Have a great week!
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