ezSEO Newsletter #102
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EzSEO Newsletter # 102
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. Wordtracker Count v 24 Hour
2. Building Affiliate Sites - Miniseries Part XIV
3. Orwell Again
4. Managing Adwords Campaigns getting you down?
5. Other Stuff
Hi again.
My 14 month old daughter started nursery school two weeks ago. As expected, she has been ill with colds ever since, and is now on antibiotics for a chest and ear infection. Still, she is a generous little girl ;o) - she is passing all of the bugs onto us. I have been laid up for a few days myself this week, so all the work I intended to do just got put on hold.
Christmas is almost upon us. This time next week we will have our Christmas tree up, and the house decorated. Elvis will be singing Blue Christmas, and continue to sing Blue Christmas for about 5 weeks. Has a year gone by already? It was almost a year ago that I made a prediction about the year 2005. You can re-read that in issue #63.
OK, let’s start.
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1. Wordtracker Count v 24 Hour
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I know I have covered this before, but I am getting more and more people asking me the same question. Here it is:
“What does the Count mean on Wordtracker? I thought it was the number of searches in the last 30 days, but I have a term with a count of 5, yet Wordtracker says that the phrase has been searched for 2 times a day at Google. Those numbers don’t add up - what’s up?”
Let’s clear this up.
Wordtracker uses meta crawler engines (primarily Metacrawler and Dogpile) to gather their keyword data.
The COUNT figure reported by Wordtracker is the number of times a particular keyword phrase was searched for in the previous 130 days (this use to be the previous 60 days if I remember correctly, but looking at Wordtracker, they seem to have updated this to include more data) at these Meta Crawlers.
Now, the Predict figure.
This is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories in one day.
The 24 Hour figure is a calculated number that you get after completing a competition search. The 24 hour figure is the predicted daily traffic for each keyword at the search engine you did the competition search for. If it says 5, then Wordtracker estimates that the phrase gets searched for 5 times a day from the engine you have been collecting data for.
OK, so how can a COUNT of 5, mean that there are 2 searches a day at Google?
Well, Metacrawler and Dogpile engines account for only about 0.86% of all search engine queries.
Google on the other hand currently gets around 35% of all search engine queries.
That means that to work out an estimate of COUNT for Google, we need to multiply up the Metacrawler Count figure.
Using the data above, Google gets 35 / 0.86 = 41 times more searches than the metacrawlers. If a word is found 5 times in the last 130 days at the metacrawlers, it would be expected to be found 5 x 41 times in a similar period at Google. That’s 205 times in 130 days. For a daily estimate, divide 205 / 130 = 1.6 times a day.
The above maths is not 100% accurate, but it does give you the basic idea.
To summarise:
Count - Is the number of times the phrase appears in Wordtracker’s database (collected over 130 days of searches from the metacrawlers).
Predict - is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories today.
24 hours - An estimate of the number of daily searches performed on a phrase for a single search engine you are collecting the data for.
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2. Building Affiliate Sites - Miniseries Part XIV
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If you have been following this course so far, you will have:
a) identified your niche and checked for profitability
b) carried out your keyword research at Wordtracker.
c) sent yourself your keyword research from Wordtracker.
d) selected several phrases to use as main page keywords.
e) selected suitable phrases to be used for article pages.
f) learnt how to theme pages. You should use this information to begin collecting themed keywords for your planned pages.
g) seen how main pages differ from article pages, and understood how these differences dictate how the pages are created.
h) seen how selling differs from pre-selling, and learnt one way to sketch out a blueprint of your pre-selling content.
i) looked at a top selling sales page, and dissected out the various pre-selling techniques highlighted by the “pre-selling blueprint questions”.
j) looked at two models for building main sales pages.
k) looked at how to write articles, and learnt a simple “Value Test” you can use to decide if your article is good enough.
l) Found a suitable web host, domain name and web editor.
m) Looked at links, and understand that some links will server you better than others.
If you missed any of these newsletters, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/
This mini course begins in issue #89 and continues to the latest post in the blog.
Today, we will continue to look at the subject of links, but focus on the Page Rank part of the jigsaw. This is a little technical, so I have simplified it considerably. You don’t need to know all the mathematics behind PR calculations, just the principles.
OK, so what is PageRank?
Simply put, Page Rank is a measure of how important a page is. While Google created the term Page Rank, all search engines have a similar measure of page importance.
As you will know, Google PageRank is displayed on the Google Toolbar. However, this display is only updated about every 3 months, so Page Ranks displayed are rarely accurate.
NOTE: just because the Google Toolbar does not show YOU the accurate PR, does not mean Google don’t have and use the correct PR. Google’s database is constantly updated to include the very latest PR values for pages. These are then used to help rank pages accordingly. Only once every 3 months or so do we actually get an update.
You should note also that the PR value given in the toolbar is a simplified PR compared to the values held at Google. Also note that the following discussion is a simplification of how PR is calculated and passed. Exact details are not required to understand how PR can be an effective PR tool.
Toolbar PR v the Value held at Google
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A toolbar PR of 0 would actually represent a PR value at Google of between 0 - 10.
A toolbar PR of 1 would actually represent a PR value at Google of between 100 - 1000.
A toolbar PR of 2 would actually represent a PR value at Google of between 1000 - 10,000.
A toolbar PR of 3 would actually represent a PR value at Google of between 10,000 - 100,000.
and so on…
In mathematical terms, this is called a logarithmic scale, and it complicate matters.
Simply put, the PR of your page is actually a measure of support for your page. Every page that links to your page is a vote, and the total count of all votes makes up the PR.
If you think about this for a minute, it should be clear that not all votes are equal.
A vote from an important page, is going to be worth more than a vote from an unimportant page. i.e. Links from high PR pages benefit your pages far more than links from low PR pages.
A link to a new site from a PR 5 page, could give that site a PR 4, with just one link.
However, there are a couple of snags.
1. The number of outbound links on a page, affects the PR boost your page receives.
and
2. The log scale.
See the log scale above?
A PR 3 page might have an actual PR of between 10,000 and 100,000.
That means that a link from a PR 3 page could give your page a PR boost of anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 (although there is a dampening factor involved, so you never actually get the full PR). A high PR 3 link would be much more valuable than a low PR 3 link.
Let’s pretend (to help simplify this) that when one page links to another, all of the PR value is passed onto the page that is being linked to.
Lets take a PR 3 page that has an actual PR value of 10,000.
a) If that page had 1 outbound link, then all 10,000 of the PR would be passed to the new page.
b) What about if there were 2 outbound links? Each page would get a 5000 boost to their PR.
c) What if there were 10 links on the page? Each page would only get a 1000 boost to its PR.
These three examples would provide a PR boost of 10000, 5000, and 1000 respectively.
What does this mean in real terms?
Well, if your page had an actual PR of 30,000 and it was linked to from a page as in example (a) above, your new PR would be 30,000 + 10,000 = 40,000. You would still appear to be a PR 3 in Google Toolbar. To move up to a PR 4, you would need to go above 100,000. That would take an additional 6 PR 3 links of category (a) above.
If your page had a PR of 30,000, how many links would it require to move it to a PR 4 if all links were of type (b) above? And type (c)?
As you can see, it is not that easy to move from a PR 3 to a PR 4, when you are getting links from low PR sites.
If we looked at the same example, but our page is PR 2 and a real Google PR of 5000, how many PR 3 links would be required to move your page to a PR 3?
Well, type (a) link above would require just one, since one of these links adds 10,000 to our PR.
If we considered example (b) above, again just one link would be required, since 5000 + 5000 = 10,000 and we get a low PR 3.
If we considered the (c) type link above, we would need 5 links to get to a PR 3.
So, why the long example?
Simply to show you that it is easy to go from a PR0 to PR1.
It is a little more difficult to go from a PR1 to a PR2, and more difficult still to go from a PR2 to a PR3, and so on.
As your PR increases, it takes more and more links to further increase your PR. The easiest way to quickly boost your PR is to get links from high PR pages with few outbound links on the page.
Hopefully this has started you thinking about link exchanges. How does this affect your link exchange process?
Finally before we leave this PR primer, there is one more thing I want you to think about.
If Google sees a PR 3 as being between actual PR 10,000 and 100,000, then clearly not all PR 3 pages are of the same importance. This range increases as you move up the PR scale.
A link from a high PR 3 page, could be almost as valuable as a link from a low PR 4 page.
OK, to summarize.
* PR is a number that represents the support your page has. The more support, the higher your PR.
* Support is built out of votes from other pages, with some votes counting far more than others.
* The PR value in the Google toolbar is not the real PR value stored by Google, but a much simplified indicator, that does not take into account the logarithmic nature of the real scale.
* It is easy to move from PR 0 to PR 1, but it then gets progressively more difficult to move up the scale.
* Links from other pages pass PR to your page. However, the amount of PR passed depends on the PR of the original page, plus the number of outbound links on the page. The more links on a page, the less PR each link gets.
* Not all pages of a given toolbar PR are equal. A good PR 4 page can pass you almost as much PR as a low PR 5 page. A low PR 4 page will only pass on as much as a good PR 3 page.
Hopefully you have followed this. It is not vital that you understand how PR is calculated, but the basic principles of how it is accumulated and used, is important.
You should be able to see the value of links to your pages, as well as see how some links are more valuable than others.
Next week we will consider link reputation. This works hand in hand with PR. Whereas the PR tells the search engines how important a page it, Link reputation tells the search engine what topic your page is important for.
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3. Orwell Again
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Last week I mentioned a report put out by Jason Potash. The report highlights a problem that a lot of webmasters face (and is related to that 2005 prediction I made in issue 63).
You need to make your own opinion on the report (I have mine), but it is well worth reading. The report gives you a piece of software called Orwell which is genuinely useful.
The reason I am mentioning this again is that Orwell has undergone its first upgrade in the last week. You can still get it from the report:
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4. Managing Adwords Campaigns getting you down?
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This section of the newsletter is only for those of you who use Google Adwords to get traffic. Everyone else can skip this section and move onto section 5.
Have you had one of those days when you just could not be bothered to log into your AdWords account because of all the hassle of the slow loading pages and the unintuitive interface? Let’s face it, Google have not made it easy for the serious Adwords user to get at the information they need quickly and easily.
A few months back, Google gave programmers the tools they needed when they released the Google API. This is code that programmers can use to access the Google Adwords data.
Goran Nagy & Chris Lee of Keyword Analyser fame jumped on the opportunity, and created an Adwords desktop management tool. They wanted to create a software tool that gives you complete access to your Adwords campaigns from the luxury of your computer desktop. No more logging into the clumsy Google Interface.
That is the idea behind Adwords Dominator. It’s a pretty tall order, so how does the software live up to the expectation?
This software rocks!
To watch a demo video of Adwords Dominator in action, go here. There is a link to the video at the top of the page.
Adwords Dominator has an intuitive interface, and believe it or not, all of the information from all of your Google ad campaigns is displayed on a single multiwindow screen. The software has built-in graphing capabilities to show you at a glance the trends for any of your data.
You can download all of your data from Google without ever having to log in, and Adwords dominator will show you the complete history of all the ads you’ve ever created.
Goran and Chris have developed their own Adwords efficiency indicator that shows you at a glance which ads are doing okay and which ones need some work. Linked in with this is a superb feature that tracks all of the changes you make to your ads. When you make a change it is marked on your graph so that in the next few days you can see what effect those changes had on the performance of your ads. Testing and tracking visually like this is a stroke of genius. You can see at a glance whether an ad change had a positive effect or a negative effect.
Adwords dominator does so much more. It is a complete toolbox for Adwords users. Besides all of the innovative features, it also provides the tools you require for standard procedures.
Basic features include: Add Campaigns , Edit Campaigns, Delete Campaigns, Add Adgroups, Edit Adgroups, Delete Adgroups, Add keywords, Edit keywords, Delete keywords, Direct import of keyword lists from keyword research tools, Add new Ads, Edit Ads, Rotate Ads, Campaign reporting data, Adgroup reporting data, Keyword reporting data, Ad history, Graphs, Fast download and upload .
Adwords dominator uses Google’s own API so there is no worry about Google blocking the software.
Adwords dominator unleashes power. No more slow and unintuitive ad management in your web browser. This software takes the hassle out of Adwords management. Do your work, and then let Adwords Dominator upload your changes.
This really is Adwords the way it should have been from the start.
Adwords dominator contains over 40 filters querying your data. You can find out everything and anything about your Adgroups and campaigns, so you can make good business decisions.
Adwords dominator is a huge time saver. These guys have a great insight into what Adwords users need and have put together a flawless solution.
As if the software is an enough, there are two great bonuses.
The first is a 90 minute “Keyword Master’s Course” video, and the second is a report entitled “winning at the Adwords game”.
If you use Adwords, then I highly recommend you buy Adwords dominator. I give it my highest recommendation and a maximum 10 out of 10.
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5. Other Stuff
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++ My New Home Study Course ++
I mentioned last week that I was putting the finishing touches to a new Home Study Course. However, because of illness this week, I have not had time to work on it. I have however received considerable interest from some subscribers asking for more details, release date, price etc. I will be setting up an advanced notification list soon, so that those who are interested can get priority notification about the course and its release.
At the moment, I cannot give you more details as I am keeping the project a secret until just before release, but I can answer a few questions that I have received this week.
The course is not going to be a physical product (where you get the course in the mail). We see a lot of them about these days, and while I am not knocking them, the authors sometimes use it as an excuse to raise the price 2-3x above what the equivalent downloadable course would sell for. My entire course will be downloadable and directly accessible from the web.
I have not decided yet, but I may well limit the number of these courses sold. I want those people who buy the course to put it into action, and use it. I think this can be helped along by limiting sales, and creating a community of “students” who are all starting at a similar point, and growing together.
++ Niche Blueprints ++
Finally, there are still a few copies of the November Niche Blueprint available. This is the first time (and probably the last) that I have given the second Blueprint as a fr.ee. bonus to those who purchased the first one.
You can still purchase remaining copies from November’s Niche Blueprint and get the second one for free.
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old ezSEO archives.
Have a great week!
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