EzSEO Newsletter # 276
February 21, 2010 by Andy
In this issue:
1. Google Authority Sets
Hi Again
I hope you had a better week than I did!
We had a big storm earlier in the week, but I think Tenerife had learnt from the previous storm in November 2009 where so much damage was done. You can see some videos of that November storm here:
This time round, there were no casualties, and flooding seemed to be a lot less severe, though wind damage was high. Whereas the storm in November moved onto the UK and wreaked havoc in November, I think the storm we just had moved North to Madeira, and they were not so lucky with a number of fatalities.
We had gone to the south of the island in search of better weather on Friday, but yesterday we were back on yellow alert for wind and rain, so we headed home up the winding mountain roads in the rain and fog. Unfortunately, a motor bike coming in the other direction lost control of his bike on a corner and plowed into the side of our car. Luckily he wasn’t hurt and neither were we.
Anyway, enough already. Let’s get on with the newsletter.
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1. Google Authority Sets
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If you missed last week’s newsletter, you really should go back and read the section entitled "1. Competition is not what it seems".
In it, I told you how the real competition for any phrase is not really what most keyword tools will tell you. Over the last couple of weeks I have been preparing a report for you that follows on from last weeks article.
You see, Google seems to be favouring a select group of pages for any keyword phrase typed in. This elite group is something I have called "Google Authority Sets".
In the report, I analyzed over 300 web pages from a range of "Google Authority Sets", and the conclusions, while probably controversial, are quite plain to see.
If you want to improve your ranking in Google, or even make sure your page ranks at all, you need to read the report.
Take the information I give you and make up your own mind. You should be able to download the report by right clicking the link and select save as? Alternatively, left click the link to read the PDF in your browser.
Once you have read the report, please consider leaving your thoughts on the web site as a comment after this newsletter.
Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to ask a question or have a comment about anything in this newsletter, please leave a comment at the end of this newsletter.
Have a great week!
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Related Articles
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Just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water…
Thanks Dr. Andy, something new to chew on.
Hi Andy,
thanks for the report.
I agree theming is important, but if you want to rank
for competitive terms even medium competition links will have to be built.
If the top 10 results show pages with pr of 4 or more
themed content is not all that is needed those pages all have links coming in which help make those pages relevant and authoritative.
question: let’s say you start a site with 50 pages,
and all the pages are themed…
what kind of link building do you do?
thanks
Jeremy
While I don’t disagree that links are important, I think what I am trying to get across in this report is that even without links, you can compete much better simply by themeing your content. The example in the report on page 19 highlights this. Look at the PR of the sites I am competing with, and my page is #2. That’s without getting any external links to my site to this page. The only links I “created” to this page are created by WordPress & its plugins.
Excellent article Andy, thank you so much for sharing it and at such a low price too!
This clarifies a lot of thinking I’ve been doing lately along these lines. It shows Google to be acting in a very consistent way over the years – an idea that would be scorned by people making a fuss over “Google Slaps” and it perhaps explains the many reports about Google doing a lot of “human reviews” of websites.
This looks like a result coming from their work on TrustRank
I’ve got to through it again because I was really interested in your discussion of long tails and themeing.
More please!
Alex
Andy,
Not so much controversial as good (not so)commonsense! Although as I have been following you for a while I must disclose possible bias…
I always found the phenomenon you name “Authority Sets” a bit of a puzzle, but your hypothesis seems very persuasive to me, and therefore a good pointer to content strategy.
Looking at your stats, what really strikes me is the marked difference between the top group and all the others. The secondary groups don’t really show a very consistent or distinctive hierarchy, but there’s no doubt that the top group is out on its own.
This reminds me of the clickthrough rate on a first page of search results, before Google adopted image, video, maps and personal search weighting etc.,(which is still in the experimental stage). The first result was reckoned to get 50% of the clicks, with it going sharply downhill after that.
It’s late on Sunday night here in Sydney, so these are just some initial reactions rather than deeply considered comments, but you’ve certainly given me some things to think about, and I’ll be seeing how I can incorporate your ideas into my workflow tomorrow!
Best wishes to you and the family,
Tony Page
Tony
The top group are expected to do much better since the theme words are actually taken from those pages. What is interesting though is that all of the pages that GOogle rates all contain a good proportion of the same theme words.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking and detailed report Andy. I don’t see how anyone can escape coming to the same conclusions you have about the importance of theming – the evidence is there and it’s very clear.
I have a question about Page Rank: in the section about “blood sugar spikes” you mention the PR of your page compared with that of the #1 site and also the PR of the home pages of each of the top 10 sites.
Are you saying that the PR of the home page adds “weight” to inside pages, even if their individual PR is much less? So a page from a site with a high PR home page will, all things being equal, outrank a page from a site with a lower PR home page, even if the PR of the actual comparison page is higher for the second-place site?
As you say, the search term “blood sugar spikes” doesn’t even appear on the page of the top-ranked site but does appear in links TO that page. Can you be sure that its position is due to PR rather than the authority provided by the inbound links?
I realise that this is an isolated example and your evidence overall points to the undoubted importance of themeing, alongside link authority and PR (of the whole site, it seems). Certainly that combination of factors would be difficult to spam.
Could you provide a little more information about how “Theme Score” and “Quality Theme Score” is calculated please?
Many thanks
Isobel
Isobel
I site homepage with a high PR has accumulated that PR through hard work and good quality links. Google knows that. Show me a spam site with a PR5 or 6. Because of this, Google TRUSTS the sites with high PR more than low PR sites. I am convinced this is one of the factors in ranking.
As for the can I be sure its that and not inbound links, no, I havent checked for inbound links on that page, but I have seen it time and time again where a high AUTHORITY site ranks well despite not having the best content. Google just trusts them more. SOme people call this Trust Rank.
The calculations for Theme Score and Quality theme score are a secret based on years of looking at themeing. I cannot tell you how they are calculated, though I can tell you that Quality theme score looks at potential over-otpimization – something that you can configure within Web Content Studio.
I appreciate the report and it certainly lends much credibility to themeing. Thank you also for the awesome power of KRA Pro.
One question does arise, however. I first came to know of your newsletter through a demo video of KRA Pro put out by Colin McDougle.
In it he themes an article and shows how quickly it ranks within the top ten of Google.
Now that’s great, but I wonder if his result is typical. For one thing, he is posting to a blog, which may get ranked quickly just for the fact of it being fresh content. It may lose ranking just as quickly in a matter of days.
I guess my question is, is it reasonable to believe a well themed article would rank quickly in Google if it were not associated with a blog?
I guess I am skeptical whether a blog is a good control for testing the short term ranking of a themed web page unless its long term staying power is also considered.
Its a difficult question for me to answer since 99% of my sites are now blogs. However, Google does like sites that are updated frequently, so that certainly helps (blog or not), and a site with a good “Trust Rank” that is updated with Quality content cannot go wrong.
I’d be curious to see a case study of themed web pages/articles and what staying power they retained after rising quickly within the SERPs.
Are “alt” tags part of the equation here, Dr. Andy?
Thanks loads! Your report and software will help greatly. I’ve been dissecting this kind of information for quite a while, and your report filled in all the key “gaps” — which will cause me to pursue a much more focused method at writing my content.
Well done.
Bill T.
Alt tags are just another tag that is abused. As the report says, anything that can be abused is not going to be trusted. In my own calcualations, I do not use ALT tag, I simply use the text that “cannot be manipulated” – the visible text.
Dr. Andy,
Thanks for a very well thought out and persuasive report. It answered many of my questions about LSI. And it was free! I read very few newsletters devoted to Internet Marketing but yours is one that I do read – and every word.
Thanks again.
Ever since my purchase of KRA Pro a year or so ago I have been intending on exploring its themeing capabilities. This report has convinced me to take this off the back burner and to learn how to use themeing when I write my articles – it is clear from your report that this is the way to go if you want to rank high for your content.
Theming forces you to stay focused on the topic at hand. It only makes sense to use it.
I want Web Content Studio, but was not in a financial position to buy it when you offered it here to your subscribers at a reduced price. Now that you have priced it at $167.00 I cannot buy it at all. Rats.
Will you ever offer a discount in the future on Web Content Studio?
Thank you for the great report which I got a lot out of.
Julie
Hi Andy
As a WCS owner and user I can confirm your testing is valid as it is one of the things I tried out when I first got WCS. I’ve also found that article writing with WCS using the themeing method, along with your training that goes with it, also got my articles read and used pretty quickly. Great for article marketing.
So now I’m writing a new themed blog. To get links and drive traffic I’m using themed articles and themed Squidoo and Hub Pages. All Social bookmarked and RSS aggregated. I’ll leave you to work out how I’m doing. Let’s just say it’s made life a little easier. Except I have to do all the writing work myself of course. Most outsources would rather get quantity out than quality of the type that WCS can get you. Good job I like writing.
I noticed that the frequency of theme words was higher (lower number) in the top sites because there were more of them used. At the same time because there were more different words used they didn’t appear to be keyword stuffed and there were more words and phrases for the search engines to find. This was bourne out by your site examples having been found on so many different keywords.
Did I miss something or did you only mention the price of WCS when on the final order page?
Thanks for a brilliant product.
Best wishes
Tony
I am enjoying the excellent report Andy, and started playing with some sites as I was reading……
the ‘spanner in the works’ was the video sites…….
How does Google process them?
Regards
marcus
Hi Andy, great report.
I have tried getting writers to use “themes” when they write,but most services are keyword based, they just don’t do a good job at it.
Andy, i see you finally launched Web Content Studio, i really wish you would give your customers more than a 24hr upgrade price, sometimes that 24hrs just doesn’t work.
Whats the harm in keeping it forever? have it only show in our members area. I know you did this for KRA pro a while ago. Im sure more of us would appreciate the deal.
Jason
Andy,
Thanks for another great free report. Please tell me, how is Web Content Studio different than Creating Fat Content Course and KRA Pro, I own both of those already : )
Thanks,
-Brett
Hello Andy:
It appears that with KRA Pro I have the basic engine, so I will try it.
I am with the others. Will you offer this to you customers of KRA Pro for a discount?
Thanks,CT
Sorry Charles but I did offer a discount to regular readers of this newsletter. You can read about it in issue 266:
http://ezseonews.com/internet-marketing-tips/ezseo-newsletter-266/
Andy,
> Sorry Charles but I did offer a discount to regular readers of this >newsletter. You can read about it in issue 266:
I’m sorry to say I feel a little cheated. You see I purchased both KRA Pro and Fat Content Creator. I feel that as a past purchaser you should offer a discount for those who have purchased previously, not just because someone reads your newsletter.
Also, I missed that issue, so you penalize me? I’m already a customer, it doesn’t make sense. Yes, I do ecommerce online myself, I always offer additional discounts to previous purchasers, they deserve it, and greater discounts than to everyone else that reads my newsletter.
Just my 2 cents… I’m not feeling good about purchasing Web Content Studio, maybe you can setup a couponing system and consider it.
Thanks for listening,
-Brett
Two things Brett
Firstly it wasnt just that issue. You could have missed that issue but would have seen the same info in a lot of issues since. As I said, I was rewarding Newsletter readers, and those who read my newsletter would have seen the offer in plenty of time.
Secondly, if you bought Fat Content Creator or the course, you have been sent an email with Web Content Studio LITE. Did you download it? If not, do it…
Andy,
> Secondly, if you bought Fat Content Creator or the course, you have
> been sent an email with Web Content Studio LITE. Did you download it? > If not, do it?
Ahhh, yes, email was blocked by filters… I logged in and grabbed WCS Lite, great, thank you… The Notes/Todo tabs are something I would really like to see in KRA Pro as well.
Also, see a nice option to purchase WCS full version. Thank you!
-Brett
I’ve been aware of on page themeing for some time but always felt that doing it in the deliberate fashion that you recommend added too much extra time to writing content. If you are right about fewer back links being needed for well themed content then this actually saves time since getting back links is even more time intensive.
Hi Andy,
Thank you for a very interesting report.
I think the conclusion is that backlinks still reign supreme. Having said that, among several on-page factors helping to determine the relevance of a given page, including the words Google thinks are important to that phrase will likely give you a boost in the rankings. Which is actually a little surprising when you think about it, because themed content is not always equal to quality content. Only a human can determine the CONTEXT in which theme words are included and I think it’s pretty obvious that Google’s technology is still very crude when it comes to evaluating content (although I don’t doubt they are ahead of everyone else in this field). I’m willing to bet that if you took a set of theme words for a particular topic and used them in a great article and a completely non-sensical article respectively (as seen from a humans perspective), all other things being equal, they would rank identically. So, it’s not so much about quality content as it is making sure you include the words Google thinks are related. I theme my content anyway for the purpose of getting long tail traffic and everyone should, unless, of course, they have something against free, easy traffic. Most of the time, themed content will be quality though and that is probably why Google decided to factor it into their ranking calculation.
I got a little carried away when I read the report and here are the rest of my comments (probably making this altogether one of the longest comments in the history of man
:
In the introduction Michael said: But if you don’t get your on-page factors right, all the links in the world won’t help with your rankings.
Comment: This is factually incorrect. To prove my point let me just say that Google bombs are alive and well. You probably all remember the ‘miserable failure’ one where George Bush’s profile on the White House site would come up at number one in Google’s result if you typed in ‘miserable failure’. It has since been removed from the results by Google on account of the publicity it got, but I actually think you need to reverse Michael’s statement 180 degrees and say that: you can rank for any phrase you want if you just get enough links with that particular phrase as the anchor pointing to the page. You don’t even need to have the particular word on the page let alone any themeing around the ‘bomb-phrase’. Any one interested in learning more about Google bombs can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb. There are plenty of examples of how Google bombs have been used for political purposes. The only reason Google bombs aren’t used for commercial purposes is that no one wants to give out links for free just so someone can make more money. The conclusion is that, unless the Google algorithm has become self-aware, and actually agrees that Bush was a miserable failure, backlinks still reign supreme and I highly doubt that is going to change any time soon.
Andy, on page 7 you say: Haven?t you ever wondered how Google know the most relevant Adsense ads to show on your pages? If they can do that, then wouldn?t it be a waste if they did not use a similar technology in their ranking algorithm?
I believe they do try and factor the use of theme words into their ranking calculation, but the fact of the matter is that no matter what search phrase you consider, Google’s results are almost always poluted with poor sites that bring little to no new information to light. That’s why I think they so favor Wikipedia because that way they always have at least one result in their top 10 that offers some good information. Question is how heavily they value themeing compared to other factors?
Andy, on page 8 you say: If Google is not determining the theme from the words on the page, where is it getting the theme from?
Comment: I think the straight forward answer is that Google is getting the theme from their relational database, which has become increasingly larger over time based on search behavior. So, it’s getting the theme words from us humans, the users of Google. We trained the beast!
In my oppinion, what that means currently is that for any given phrase, Google has in its database a list of words and phrases that it believes relates to any given phrase.
On page 12 you say: You could think of this as a duplicate content penalty, since if your content does not add I anything new to the ?chosen few pages?, it will be relegated to a lower division ? a division that rarely gets to play with the big boys.
Comment: you could also think of this as simply a practical measure made by Google to ensure results are returned quickly. That, and making sure the electricity bills won’t spiral out of control (seriously). Interestingly, and I know this from personal experience, you can take any article from Ezinearticles (without too many links pointing to it, thogh), do some tricks with the formatting of your html code (it doesn’t the actual text), post it on your site, and once indexed, it will outrank the original article from Ezinearticles and more often than not will push the original out of the “authority set”! Almost cruel, isn’t it?
. I find it mind boggling and makes you wonder if Google is really that advanced when it comes to evaluating content after all. As such, getting into the “authority set” for a phrase does not necessarily require new, fresh, interesting, quality, themed content. It can be done with duplicate content of questionable informational value.
On page 13 you say: Hopefully search engines are better than 10 years ago at discerning the correct theme of a page, but I did find my own ezseonews.com site (about search engines and affiliate marketing) being found for a few curry related phrases after I used Balti food as an example in one section of a particular newsletter (despite not having any inbound links pointing to the page with link text related to Indian cuisine). It is clear that the words on the page are very important.
Comment: Excellent example showing, in my oppinion, that, no, Google isn’t any better at determining the theme of a page than it was 10 years ago. You can not draw the conclusion that your page was removed from the “Balti authority set” because of the words on your page. It is equally likely that the page was simply dropped from the “Balty authority set” because no one was clicking the page in the Google results when searching for Balty and curry related phrases. Who in their right mind would as, obviously, the title and description of the page had to do with search engines and affiliate marketing.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Martin
Hi Martin, thanks for your detailed comments. While I don’t agree with everything you have written, you do make some interesting points. I would like to know what part of the report convinced you that “..the conclusion is that backlinks still reign supreme”?
Hi Andy,
Just briefly, it wasn’t your report, but rather my experience with the process of ranking pages that lead me to conclude that links reign supreme. You can link bomb your way to #1 in Google, but I have never heard of a way of theme bombing that will produce the same result.
In my portfolio of sites, certainly some have content that is completely unthemed and even rather dull. They are from before I started themeing my content (which as I mentioned makes perfect sense regardless of how it is factored into the ranking calculation because you get long tail traffic handed to you on a plate) and I just never got around to updating them. However, they still rank for my desired phrases and make me money because of my backlinks. You can rank without themeing, but you can’t rank without backlinks if you are targeting phrases phrases with even moderate competition. We are not talking long tail here, but phrases with a fair amount of traffic and moderate competition. Typically, your competitors will have backlinks and you need them, too, if you want to compete. At least, that is what my experience tells me.
Best wishes,
Martin
Hello again Andy,
The more I think about your report the more excited I get and the more it’s dawning on me that long tail traffic has actually always been your main source of traffic from day one. At least that’s the picture I see emerging – am I right? I always assumed that you combined going after the long tail (by way of themeing) with a strategy to target medium to highly competitive phrases for your pages by link building, giving each equal attention. However, it would seem your main concern has been the former. After reading your Fat Content course when it was released I decided to theme my pages, but I didn’t do it perfectly and I saw long tail traffic as more of an added benefit and went after the medium to highly competitive terms. This has definitely paid dividends for me and will work, but I just realized that I may actually be missing out on very SERIOUS, EASY traffic by getting the themeing exactly right. I always wondering why there was so relatively little advice on how to build backlinks in your course, but now it makes perfect sense.
I have a question for you: in percent, how much of the total traffic to your sites is coming from long tail phrases and how much is coming from medium to highly competitive terms? (meaning the base keyphrases of your pages). I’m very, very interested to know the answer to this question.
Very good stuff, and you actually did expand my mind the way you said you would
Brilliant!
Best regards,
Martin
Andy,
I really enjoyed your report and I think a light bulb went on when I saw your software in action after I read the report! I also read through the other posts that provided some excellent points.
I think that when we hear about posting quality content, we tend to think about it being well written and based upon low competition long tail keyword phrases for SEO purposes. The theme aspect was more “niche topic” specific, as opposed to “theme word” specific. I now see that if you use the exact theme words, following the parameters, that are common to the top 7 sites, for example, the content is excellent in Google’s opinion. We tend to forget that a search engine is a computer without an opinion that follows a set of rules.
Posting that level of quality content in a properly optimized site can require less one-way back links to obtain good ranking. Obviously, more anchor text links will be required in a highly competitive niche, however the quality content can provide an edge.
It is amazing how poorly optimized most sites are and I feel your method provides an answer as to how to define quality content. The point here is that well written content alone goes not constitute quality content to Google unless it contains the theme words that an expert would use…a.k.a my light bulb moment! Hope I got it right!
Just wish I purchased it before the price increase!
Great job and thank you,
Vito
Dr. Andy,
I own FCC and KRA Pro. Do either of these have the advanced ?theme word analysis? that WCS has, as discussed on the latter portion of the video, ?Tutorial 1: Using the Keyword Spider to Find the Most Important Theme Words? where you cleaned a list according to a word/phrase having to be on 7 of the top 10 sites?
Specifically what I want to do is create and clean keyword lists so that I can give them to ghost writers to create LSI articles for me. But I?ll need WCS to do this as discussed above, correct?
Thank you,
Doug
Andy
Great reports.Time now to take the articles from my own websites and run them through the system.
Lets see what the results are before I go and grab the missing keywords from a top 10 search.
Any chance you could show us how you make money with adsense. I know you have the same course as i do from John at Xfactor. What do you do that is different apart from wordpress.
That would be nice in a video..
Regards
Kevin
Andy
What plugin are you using at the bottom of the page. Is it just google friend connect or a wordpress plugin..
Kevin
Andy
Sufficiently impressed with the report that I have just purchased WCS (the greatest test of anything is whether people will actually put their hands in their pocket and BUY). Very interested in some of the other comments here. As a newbie to this – despite being in my seventies – I’d also be interested in more details of Martins comment that you can influence ranking simply by the formatting you use in html, without altering the text. I’ve never heard of this and would be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of more info.
Peter