EzSEO Newsletter # 104
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EzSEO Newsletter # 104
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. VEO set to replace SEO?
2. Building Affiliate Sites - Miniseries Part XVI
3. Perfect SEO of rubbish wont help it rank well
4. Other Stuff
Hi again.
Another week of colds and flu. Thanks to everyone who sent me cold and flu remedies, we are working our way through them ;o)
A long newsletter today, so let’s get on with it..
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1. VEO set to replace SEO?
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I mentioned last week that Colin McDougall had been working on a new eBook. This eBook is probably going to raise a few eyebrows amongst the SEO community, because it describes a new model of site building that Colin is using both for new sites, and to fix old sites that lost their rankings. Why will that raise eyebrows? Well, because Colin has moved away from SEO, and uses something he called VEO.
Colin found that his older site rankings had started to slide, and with it, his income. He decided to move away from the James Martell method he had been using, and instead, forget keywords focused web pages. It is a radical idea, but one that was conceived during a search engine conference where Colin had cornered Google engineer Matt Cutts. If I remember correctly, Matt’s job at Google is to get rid of spam from the index, and he certainly opened Colin’s eyes to a few facts. Colin replays some of these conversations in the eBook to highlight the points he is making.
Colin told me that during his conversations with Matt, a light bulb went on in his head. It all started to make sense. He devised his VEO method, and started building his sites to this model.
One site Colin was telling me about this week was about three weeks old, and it was getting 150 visitors a day already. Not bad for a new 40 page website. Sandbox? What sandbox? Since talking to Colin, I have begun to doubt that it exists at all. More raised eyebrows I think ;o)
I think that the VEO Report is one of the most exciting developments for webmasters for a long time. Not only does it make sense, but it also goes hand-in-hand with my own strategies for site building. I highly recommend you get this eBook. It will open your eyes to some insider information gleaned from the horses mouth - one of Google’s engineers.
In addition, those of you who bought Colin’s last book will undoubtedly know that Colin provides great support for his products and is very approachable if you have a question.
You can buy the VEO Report here:
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2. Building Affiliate Sites - Miniseries Part XVI
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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.
n) Seen how Page Rank can be passed onto other pages, and also that the Google toolbar is not accurate.
o) Seen that links in to a page are a vote for that page, and that the link text used on incoming links, gives your page some reputation for that term. The more incoming links with that term, the higher the reputation.
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.
Last week we had a brief look at Link Reputation and how that can help your ranking for a keyword. Today, I want to briefly cover one of the most important parts of creating a successful website - tracking your visitors.
It is vital that you know statistics about your visitors.
The more information you have on your visitors behaviour, the better equipped you will be to make your site better, and ultimately more profitable.
Most web hosts provide a standard statistical package pre-installed that will give you most of the information you require. Often, this is AWStats, which is very good.
It your host does not supply this, there are some great scripts available that will provide tracking for you.
One fr.ee popular stat counter is Stat Counter.
The only problem with some of the fr.ee solutions is that the code you insert onto your page displays a graphic on your page. This does look unprofessional, so you should look for a script that you can install that does not require this.
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You can find a lot more fr.ee and cheap solutions by searching Google for “web stats script”, or by visiting one of many script sites like this one.
The script I use on my sites is called Advance Logger.
It is not fr.ee, but it is one of the best (if not the best) available.
Let’s look at the kinds of information these stats programs provide, and see how that information is valuable to us as webmasters. I am going to show you the information provided by Advance Logger, but most stats packages provide similar information .
Here is a list of information provided by Advance Logger.
Hourly, Daily, monthly stats which provide you with summaries of how many visitors your site got in those time periods. e.g. it is often interesting to look at the monthly summary for a site to see how traffic has grown, or see seasonal trends in your traffic.
These summaries can be drilled down into more specific information. For example, I can pull up a report to look at my last few visitors. This shows me all visitors that have been at my site in the last few months, with the most recent visitors appearing first in the list. For each visitor I am given the following information:
How they found the site. Did they come in via a bookmark, or a search engine. If they came via a search engine, what phrase did they type to find my page. I can even click on a link here to visit the search engine results to see where my page is for that term.
This is very interesting information, as it helps identify what terms my pages are ranking well for.
I also get the IP address of the visitor (which Advance Logger uses to create a report showing where in the world my visitor came from), a date and time of the visit, and how many pages the visitor viewed before leaving. I can even get a list of the pages visited, and in which order they were visited and at what time each page was visited. This information is very valuable to me. It shows me the sequence of my visitors visit, and gives me a little more information on what exactly my visitor was interested in.
Other information provided by Advance Logger is the Operating system of my user, and the screen resolution they were using.
Top make things easier, Advance Logger gives me several “Top…” reports.
Top Referrer tells me who has referred the most traffic. This is very useful to quickly see where your traffic is and isn’t coming from.
A quick look at one of my sites shows that 18.27% of traffic is from MSN, 13.54% from Google, 7.84% from Yahoo, 2.2% from AOL search (UK) and 0.17% from Altavista. I can click a link for each of these sources to show me what keywords my pages are found for at each of the engines. What phrase is your site found for most often? This report will tell you.
All this is great information to know as it can show you referrers that you were not aware of (link partners or directories), as well as tell you which engines you need to work on a little more.
Another great report is the Top Pages report. This shows me instantly which pages get the most traffic. I can quickly see which pages require more inbound links to help them rank better. That is invaluable information.
I can get reports for:
Top Browsers (great for making sure your site is compatible)
Top operating systems
Top IP addresses
Top screen resolutions
Top country info (i.e. which countries provide my site with the most traffic?).
Finally, the software can provide me two very important reports:
Top entry page, and top exit pages.
These reports show which pages visitors enter and leave my site.
Is there one page where most people leave the site? If so why? If it is the order page, then that’s great, but if it is another page, I know that I need to look at that page and fix whatever it is that is sending my visitors packing.
As you can see, the types of information that this type of software can provide is very valuable. A site without this data is a site that cannot ever achieve its full potential.
If you are not yet using a stats program on your site, now is the time to find one that suites your needs. I suggest that if money is tight, you pick a fre-e script, and then switch to a better script when money allows.
Most of these scripts are easy to use. Often, all it takes is to install the script on your server, and then paste some code into each of your web pages. If you are using a template based web editor like SEO WSB, you can add the tracking code directly to the templates, so that all pages are compiled with the tracking code.
If you are using an editor like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, a search and replace function will get the code into all pages. e.g. if your tracking code needs to be placed at the end of your web page, before the closing tag, do a search and replace:
Search for and replace it with:
**The Tracking code**
This is easy in Dreamweaver. I don’t use Frontpage, but assume it must have a similar search and replace feature.
OK, so hopefully I have convinced you to get a stats package installed on your site. That is the first step. Once installed, the hard work begins. You then need to look at these stats on a daily or weekly basis (at least early on), so that you can make informed decisions on how best to improve the site.
Don’t work blind, work smart!
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3. Perfect SEO of rubbish wont help it rank well
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There are a lot of people who think that a well optimized page and lots of keyword rich incoming links is all that is required to rank well in Google.
While this is partially correct, there is one huge piece of the jigsaw missing. Quality content.
Let me put this bluntly.
No amount of on-page and off-page optimization will help a low quality page rank well for any length of time.
A lot of webmasters miss this. They put together web sites with very little original or useful content on the pages (see the guidelines earlier in this miniseries on how to make sure your content is useful). They then go after links to their site, with article submissions, link exchanges and directory submissions.
After a few months, they start to wonder why their site is not ranking well. They have a PR equal to, or higher, than their direct competitors and lots of keyword rich incoming links.
The problem is their content. With human “editors” (and I am not just referring to people Google employ, but also the webmasters of competing sites who can report you for spam), you can get a bad site to rank well initially, but it will get caught sooner rather than later.
Remember that “leaked” Google Report? Well that has told webmasters exactly what to look out for, and many will use that information to report your site if it fails the quality guidelines.
Imagine “Webmaster A” with a quality site ranking well for the term “blue widgets”. Then, out of nowhere, a new site rises in Googles rankings. This new site (created by Webmaster B) has no real content, but has lots of keyword phrases forced into its pages. This new site overtakes “Webmaster A’s” website in the rankings.
What happens next?
Simple. Webmaster A contacts Google on their fre.e.ly available spam report form, telling them that this other site contains keyword stuffing and low quality content. Google go and take a look, and penalise the site. Webmaster B loses all of his rankings (with or without a PR drop).
Months of hard work down the drain.
If you think this does not happen, think again, because it does.
Now, take this scenario.
“Webmaster A” has a quality site that ranks well for a lot of phrases. “Webmaster B” creates a quality site, spending time and effort ensuring that her content is useful, informative and adds value to the internet. Webmaster B spends time submitting her site to related directories, getting quality links from highly related authority sites, and submits a number of articles on her niche to high profile article directories.
Meanwhile the alarm bells start ringing for “Webmaster A”. He watches as this new site climbs the rankings over a period of weeks and months, until one day, he wakes to find that this competitor has taken all of his top rankings. Webmaster A goes to the Google complaint form, and submits a complaint about this new site. Google go and visit the new site, but find it offers great information and does not use any underhand tactics. Google ignores the spam complaint (or may even decide to penalise Webmaster A for a false complaint).
The result? Webmaster B keeps her rankings.
While many webmasters decide to take the easy route when building sites, it is not the best method, nor will it give that site any kind of future.
Personally, I would prefer to add one quality article per day, than 50 low quality articles per day. In the long run, my one article per day will get more traffic than those 50 articles, as my site will build slowly, offer value, and rank well. The 50 a day site will at best, just get buried under thousands of other pages, and never get any decent traffic.
While SEO is important, it cannot make a bad site rank well for any length of time. SEO will only work if it is used on a quality site where visitor experience is the uttmost importance.
Just in case you are thinking “Who cares about Google?”, think again. The history of search engines has shown that Google is the leader. What Google does today, other engines will do in the future. Watching Google is like watching the future of search engine algorithms. Get it right for Google today, and future proof your site for the other engines.
However, here is a warning. SEO is designed to make pages rank better in the search engines. This is something that the search engines don’t like, so perhaps the face of webmastering is changing, and instead of SEO, we should be thinking VEO.
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4. Other Stuff
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I get quite a bit of email asking me why I appear to treat Google with some sort of reverence or misplaced respect. You see, a lot of webmasters have given the big G a two finger salute and decided not to bother with the search giant. After all, there are other search engines who have been kinder to webmasters over the years, and are still relatively easy to rank well in.
I think my answer to these emails would make a good future article in this newsletter, but as a special treat for Google-haters, here is an interesting article that can give you a little more ammunition, and help reinforce your beliefs that Google is evil. Read it here.
Finally, a quick heads up. There are still a few places left in Kim Sanderline’s membership site. I know I said I would not be mentioning this site again, but I really think that if you miss it, you will be missing one of the best opportunities for building and diversifying your business.
Her site provides its members with Health related info products each month, that you can use for a variety of purposes. The very best way of using these products is to do a little editing, and release the eBooks as your own. At $29.97 a month, you would need to sell just one of your eBooks every month to break even. If you use your membership properly, you could have one or two new eBooks released every month. Not only is this potentially very lucrative, but it is also a great way of breaking out of the thin affiliate mould, and becoming a merchant.
Again though, a word of warning. If oyu are not prepared to work on the material this site provides, save your money. I would guess from speaking with others that 90% of subscribers to this site do nothing with the products.
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online here at my blog:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives.
Have a great week!
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