EzSEO Newsletter # 103
December 4, 2005 by Andy
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EzSEO Newsletter # 103
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. PR passed from Article Directories?
2. Building Affiliate Sites – Miniseries Part XV
3. My site does not rank well.
Hi again.
It has been a tough week here in the Canary Islands. Earlier this week, a tropical storm that was supposed to be heading for Miami, turned and hit the islands with full force. We do get these storms once or twice a year, so are generally well prepared, however, this one was a biggy. Trees uprooted, roofs blown off, and a few people killed. The capital of Santa Cruz is just getting back to normal after being pretty much closed for a few days as there was no electricity or water.
While the local news did warn us about the storm, we had not been watching any TV. The first we knew of the storm was a quick temperature change when it went from about 15C to 30C in a couple of hours (a “sign” we recognised). The sea turned white as far as the eye could see – something I have never seen, and then the winds hit us.
We also seem to be on a continuous cold & flu cycle. Get rid of one, and come down with another. I guess it’s that time of year.
Since most of the week has been spent curled up on the sofa with a blanket, a bowl of chicken soup and a box of tissues, I am going to make today’s newsletter a short one.
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1. PR passed from Article Directories?
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I know this article is going to cause a backlash from some readers, but it has been on my mind recently, and I like to speculate, so here goes.
Google is leading the way in combating spam. One of the things that seems to happen a lot in this business is this:
* A technique becomes popular
* Everyone starts using and abusing the technique
* This draws the technique to the attention of the search engines
* The search engines find ways to combat the effectiveness of the technique.
Examples?
Blog & Ping are a recent casualty. Low quality blogs set up at blogger.com to help sites rank well, are now being deleted. Ping technique was so over-used it quickly became ineffective in getting sites into Yahoo.
Another example? Those tools that scraped search engine results and churned out thousands of pages of spam, based on keyword lists plugged in by the user. These types of sites are quickly banned as they are found by filters, or human editors.
Did you know that there are sites out there that sell links on their high PR sites? I have no doubt Google are aware of a lot of these link brokers, and just ignore any link on those pages. That means those buying links are wasting money if they bought the link from a site on Google’s Blacklist.
What’s next?
Well, I think it is possible Google will start to ignore links on Article Directory sites, since it is very easy to get more links this way, even if your site adds no value to the internet. The idea of article sites is sound, but the problem arises when these site start accepting the 100s and 1000s of crappy articles submitted by webmasters desperate to get good rankings. The system is being abused.
Low quality articles submitted to lots of article sites is a new kind of spam in my opinion.
High quality, unique content articles submitted to article sites in my opinion is not.
Suppose for a minute that the search engines did block, or ignore the links from article submission sites.
Where would this leave article submitters?
Well, bad articles would sink, and give you no benefit whatsoever, as no one would read them, or follow the links in the resource box.
Quality articles would not get the PR from the article site either, BUT, they would get picked up by other webmasters and published on other sites where PR was passed. In addition, quality articles are more likely to get your site direct traffic from the article submission site by way of your resource box.
By blocking PR from article sites, the search engines could make article spamming a waste of time and effort. Low quality content would not be a benefit, as it would not get read, nor would it get republished.
On the other hand, there are still a lot of benefits to publishing high quality content on these sites. OK, you might not get the PR benefit from the article site itself, but you would get the other benefits of more traffic, and more inbound links as others pick up and publish your articles.
What are your thoughts on this? Let me know.
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2. Building Affiliate Sites – Miniseries Part XV
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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.
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 looked at Google’s Page Rank (PR). Today, we are going to look at something that goes hand-in-hand with PR to help your rankings – Link Reputation.
A good PR can help a webpage rank well, not because it has a high PR, but because of how it achieved that high PR.
Read that sentence again. It explains in one sentence how PR and link reputation work together.
e.g. http://infertility.about.com/ has a PR7.
It is obviously an important page in the eyes of Google. If you search Google for infertility, you will find that page at #3 (at least it is here in Spain).
What makes this page important in the field of Infertility?
Is it the high Page Rank?
No, and yes…
The page is important because it has a high PR, but the reason it is important in the niche of Infertility, and not something else, is because a combination of on-page text, and the links pointing to this page. The links pointing to a page, tell the search engines what the page is about.
As we saw before, links contain “link text”. This is the text that is underlined. The search engines assume that if the link says “blue widgets”, then the page it links to is about “blue widgets”. If 10 pages point to the same page using the link text “blue widgets”, then the reputation for that page builds. As this reputation builds, so does the potential to rank well. If 100 pages point to the page using “blue widgets” in the link text, that page will have an even higher reputation for being about “blue widgets”, and so on. We are back to a voting system, where one page votes for another.
NOTE: On-page text is much less important than the information provided in the incoming link text. We saw this earlier in the series when we looked at the Niche Bot site (this site ranked well for lots of terms that were not found on the web page itself).
Now, before you start thinking that you should get all of your incoming links to your “blue widget” site to use the link text “blue widgets”, think again.
Imagine what a search engine would think if it saw a page with 100 incoming links, all with the exact same link text. This would almost certainly start the alarm bells ringing since 100 links with identical link text is unnatural.
If those links occurred naturally (ie webmasters linked to your site because of its value to their visitors), the link text in all of those incoming links would not be identical.
Identical link text says “link manipulation” (building links with link exchanges etc, which the search engines actually don’t like).
You need to make your incoming links look natural.
Now there is a very positive side to this. By varying your link text, you can start to rank well for a range of terms, without having to stuff keywords onto your pages.
Now, there are two types of incoming links to a page. Those that come from the same site, and those that come from other sites.
Let’s consider the links from the same site, i.e. where one page of your site links to another. An example of this would be where you have a menu on your pages that link to other pages. It is common to use the same link text in these menus, on all pages. For this reason, I don’t believe a search engine would consider it over-optimization, or spam, to have the same menu, and the same link text, on all of your pages of a site if you are using a menu.
So what about incoming links from other sites?
Well, here you do expect link text to be different unless you have manipulated your incoming links by telling your partners only to use a specific phrase. This will get you into trouble. When getting links from other webmasters, use a variety of link texts, targeting different phrases.
My Advice: For on site menus, simplify things by using the same menu on all pages (and same link text).
For incoming links from other sites: Choose 3 main phrases to begin with. Create the link text and a description around each of these 3 phrases, and alternate them. Get your partners to use one of the three. By the time you have 100 links to your site, you will have roughly 33 links using each of the three link texts.
When you find that your page is ranking well for one of these target phrases, start concentrating on the other 2 phrases, or select a new one to replace the one that is now ranking well. Keep alternating and swapping the link texts and descriptions pointing to your page.
Remember that the link text tells the search engines what your page is about, so use it wisely. As you build incoming links, your PR will increase and your link reputation will reinforce what your page is about. As the reputation and PR rise, so will your rankings.
A final note on incoming links (we will cover this in more detail later in the series when we look at getting incoming links): Only request incoming links from 100% related sites. By related, I mean sites that your visitors will find useful.
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3. Colin McDougall
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I was talking with Colin this morning before I started writing this newsletter. For those of you who don’t recognise the name, Colin, is the author of The Positive Mind.
He is also the only person who has ever had an article published in this newsletter. Back in issue #67, Colin wrote an article entitled “Six Lessons for Getting in the Right Mindset For Starting Your Own Business”.
Well, Colin has been busy. He has put together a training manual that is very exciting. I cannot say anything yet, as he had not launched his product, but I am very excited about it. He seems to be on the same wavelength as myself when it comes to creating a long-term internet business.
I will be talking with Colin later this week, so hopefully I can spill the beans next week.
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 archives.
Have a great week!
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