-
Popular Posts
- PIN’s: The Future of Private Link Building1116 CommentsWordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need528 CommentsUnmasking the Biggest Tyrant in Blogging445 Comments
204 Comments 
5 minutes
Would you believe there’s a top ranking site in a niche with over 300,000 searches per month which only has 4 pages and spams forums for links? In this study which both shocked and surprised me, I reveal this anomaly and many more. There is no industry where people make as many generalisations than they do with SEO. As with every other post on this site, I prefer to look at what is actually working and how to replicate it, rather than relying on guesswork.
This time I’ve looked into 5 sites, from 5 profitable affiliate industries, and analysed how they are ranking for their keyphrases. A lot of work went into this post, and I can tell you now there are no direct correlations, but I think you’ll learn a lot from what I’ve found.
I judged each site on the following criteria:
- Domain links: How many links point to the entire website
- Page links: How many links point to the page that is ranking (if not the homepage)
- Keyphrase links: How many backlinks they have with the keyphrase they’re ranking for as the anchor text
- Domain Age: How long ago the domain was registered, in months
- Pages: How many pages are on the site
- % of links with Keyphrase: This is self explanatory
There are said to be over 100 factors which make up Google’s ranking algorithm so there’s no way something like this would ever be a perfect study. After all, there’s only so far I can look into on-site SEO for each website. However, the data here does dismiss some common generalisations and helps you see what I would change on websites which aren’t ranking so well.
Keyphrase: Get a girlfriend
The dating industry is without a doubt one of the biggest online. Millions of men and women turn to the internet to find out how to attract a partner and spend money on eBook’s, videos, and seminars.
Surprisingly, the site in second place actually has a lot more links with the anchor text “get a girlfriend” over the no.1 site ranking Wikihow. Although factors other than links apply, I will say that Google are very favourable towards Wikihow for a large number of terms. I’m competing against them in one industry and all factors would suggest I should outrank them, but I simply don’t.
I couldn’t find one link with the phrase for girlfriendstealer.com but the age of the site and the relevance of their other links (along with on-page SEO) are keeping them on the first page. Attractionhowto.com is a really terrible website and doesn’t even have the six pages I counted unless you include their RSS feed. They’re simply registering on tons of forums and profile websites, placing their link in their bio’s, and then ranking well for their keyphrase.
Keyphrase: Forex trading software
I’ve found that people are more likely to spend money on things which could potentially help them make more money. Forex (foreign exchange) trading is one of the most profitable industries online. From eBook’s, training accounts and trading “robots”, there are numerous ways to make money.
Buzzle.com really dominate the rankings for this term, with better stats than any other site. Even though they don’t have the phrase ‘forex trading software’ in their title tag – the most important on-site SEO element – the links they have and the authority of the domain push them above the competition.
On paper, it appears that Forexrobot-review.info should be ranking at least in the top three results. However, their on-site SEO needs some work. If I owned the site, I would do basic things such as:
- Reverse the order of the phrases in the title tag
- Remove the site name from the heading on the site
- Show more of their blog posts on the homepage
- Remove the default WordPress links from the sidebar
These changes, with a few quality links, would help push them up the rankings.
Once again I’ve noticed another website which is simply spamming forums (and writing articles) in order to rank for their phrase. Forexreviewlink.com is right up there on hundreds of profile sites with their URL post on all of them.
Keyphrase: Dog obedience training
There are a few “rockstar” affiliate marketers who have made millions of dollars in the dog-training niche. Just think about the number of people who own dogs and would like to train them. The market is insanely huge.
Interestingly, the site dogobedienceshortcuts.com is relying heavily on article directories and Squidoo to give it the links it needs in order to rank highly for this profitable phrase. Despite having less links than the other sites, it has a lot with the necessary anchor text it needs in order to rank.
As far as site age and links go, D-O-T-R (abbreviated version) is dominating the competition. Despite Dogtrainingclassroom.com having less exact match links than the three sites below it, it has a lot more links to its site as a whole. Dogobedienceadvice.com should place the phrase they’re trying to rank for somewhere in the copy of the site, and not just in the title. A lot of their links also seem to be coming from fat loss and make money websites. Basically, a lot of links they have just aren’t relevant.
Keyphrase: Learn to play guitar
The industries of learning just about anything can be popular topics. Just think of all the games, languages, instruments and skills that people want to conquer.
Guitarplayworld is not only the youngest site out of the five, but also has the second least overall links. However, it has the second highest number of keyphrase links, which shows how important they are. Their links mostly come from resource and links pages on other guitar websites which is great. However, they link back to all of the websites that link to them, which surprisingly hasn’t affected their rankings.
The tools I use were unable to determine how many keyphrase links were pointing to 2guys.com, sadly.
I’m surprised to see Buzzle on the list once again. It seems like they build very strong pages around different industries and rely on their domain authority to help them rank. Of course, the team behind the site also seem to be great link builders, with more links than anyone else in both industries covered here.
Keyphrase: Registry cleaner software
Not an industry I would personally want to be involved with, registry cleaners, anti-virus tools and other computer software tends to be very popular online. The products probably convert well with their free trial offers which later lead to you needing to purchase the product in order to continue using it.
The first thing that struck me about the results here is how well the 5th site was ranking when it was so young compared to the other competing sites. Besides the obvious keyphrase boost, it makes good use of the phrase it’s trying to rank for, in reverse order. Even though most links are for the phrase software registry cleaner, they still help ranking for registry cleaner software.
The number one ranking site, despite having less links than the others, makes great use of on-site SEO. The top two sites especially are being regularly linked to on forums – where people tend to discuss computer problems – because they already rank, which is helping to strengthen their position.
My Big Takeaways
Hopefully you’ve taken some great knowledge from this post on your own, but there are a few things that came to my attention while putting together this data. Before I say what they are exactly, I do want to mention that you shouldn’t take these figures as exact numbers. It’s literally impossible to know the exact amount of links each site has and where they’re coming from, so I used the same tools on each site to generate the figures I did.
1. Spammy Forum Links Work — Some people laughed at me when I said that low-quality directory submissions and tools like Bookmarking demon still help me rank very highly in Google. However, the only reason I say that is because they really work. As proven here, spamming forums and membership sites are helping people rank in very profitable industries.
I think this is a real shame because there are sites which deserve to rank above these, but the Google algorithm is still very easy to manipulate.
2. Anchor Text is Still Very Important – It’s crucial to build as many quality links to your site as you can in order to get Google to give your site enough credit to consider ranking it highly. If you can get links with the anchor text of the phrase you’re trying to rank for, this is going to help you massively. I’ve proven this time and time again on a personal level, currently on the first page of Google for terms like “viral marketing” and “wordpress seo”.
3. Links Don’t Equal Rankings – The graphs in this post really prove this point. A common myth many people follow is that the site with the most backlinks will rank the highest in Google. As shown here, and known by anyone who’s been studying SEO for more than a few weeks, that simply isn’t the case. If you can get links with good anchor text, from high quality resources, then you can outrank a site which has far more links than you.
4. Remember the Overall Picture – There are a few sites I analysed here who would be ranking much higher based on their link profile if they were to change some of their on-site SEO elements. Although links are the most crucial aspect when it comes to ranking, you can’t forget about optimising your site so that it is properly targeted to your keyphrase.
What did you get out of the post?
204 Comments
Enjoy this post? Please leave a comment below...
Comments are my number one indicator as to which posts people enjoyed the most, so your feedback really does help me. If you have any questions, feel free to ask those as well...
Copyright © 2016 ViperChill, a Marketing Inc. Company : Contact / Privacy Policy / Earnings Disclaimer / More: Gaps / Glen Allsopp.com
I’ve started an SEO experiment recently and I’m having some nice results. I’m using an automated tool for building links on various blogs. I have to provide the articles but I’ve automated even this step, and I now can rank for a lot of keywords very easily.
Nice techniques, I’ll probably try some of them as a part of my experiment!
Hi Oscar,
Automation can only take you so far. If the industry is very competitive, you have little chance without a strong brand or big links. Even though the sites here have some dirty links, they have some strong ones as well that you can’t get through tools.
Good luck though 🙂
The keywords I’m ranking for are not competitive like the ones you’re mentioning here. My strategy is to use automated tools AND guest posts with quality content (and anchor text links).
I think that is what is helping you the most then. Variety 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts Oscar!
Hey Glen, thanks for the study! I recently saw a huge drop in many of my rankings after I added VIDEOS to my product review pages… so google stripped out my title and description from the listings, moved all my rankings from #1 to #4/5 spots or 2nd page, and put them in the “video results”…. so I just got punished for adding more value and helpful information to my pages… Great… Any workarounds?
Wow, that’s surprising.
It has never happened to me so I wouldn’t know how to deal with that. If you host the videos yourself, perhaps put them on a folder which is blocked by robots.txt.
If by automated you mean one of those bots that spam blogs shame on you. If that isn’t what you mean my apologies. This message is for those who just don’t see the damage they’re doing (or simply do not care).
Spammers have resulted in real commentators being blocked by Akismet to the point that many of us have disabled Akismet. Spam costs us untold hours manually moderating all that junk to find real comments. Spamming steals our time and that is unconsciounable.
Anyone who uses that pingbacker thing or bots to spam blogs is behaving selfishly. Less egregious but equally ignorant is using Zemanta to add links to dozens of unrelated posts. It is NOT that diffucult to build links ethically.
Most people will take the easiest solution. Most bloggers are now deleting real comments that deserved links because they don’t want to trudge through all that spam. Worse, many are switching to nofollow, turning off comments on posts after a short period of time (which closes the door on useful discussions and eliminates the ability to get backlinks from posts with pagerank) or even turning off comments altogether.
Think of the big picture. If it isn’t sustainable don’t do it. If you want to do it right start collaborating with bloggers who are wise enough to support each other’s efforts and know how to properly use anchor text in the body of posts.
Spam has gotten so bad in some of my blogs that Phil from FeedBlitz encouraged Andy at CommentLuv to write an anti-spam plugin for me. We’re testing it now and if it keeps working it will be a cause for celebration across the blogosphere. Since it was installed in my primary blog I went from 1000+ spam a day (and I have a dozen other blogs to manage too!) to only real comments. What a blessing it is to log in and see 11 REAL comments and 0 spam!
Hey Gail,
I think Akismet is flawed in a few ways (if you accidently submit a duplicate comment, you’re flagged in their system) but you’re right that bots aren’t helping the situation.
The simple thing is though: If it works, people are going to continue to do it. People will do a lot of things they wouldn’t usually admit to if it results in making more money.
Thanks for the comment.
Glen,
Have you used Blog Comment Demon at all? If so, any thoughts on it?
Thanks,
Eric
I haven’t. I wouldn’t use anything that comments on blogs personally. It annoys me as a blog author so I wouldn’t want to annoy other people.
I am happy to see you taking such an aggressive position to manage your property and I am glad to see you have had such terrific results. Well done.
Hi Gail, for automated I mean I can post some articles each day for other authors from a single interface, and I have the articles written in advance. I’m not talking about blog comments or other weird things, and I don’t think they would help at all.
Glen,
This is one of the most thorough analyses of SEO that I’ve ever seen. The general rule i’ve found is that while on-site stuff can hurt you significantly, off-site stuff can’t be as detrimental because otherwise a whole new industry would emerge (people destroying other people’s rankings by “anti-optimizing” them.
Gail – as far as I know most blogs are nofollow so I’m not quite sure how this can help you with SEO for the most part.
Oscar, is it possible if you could tell us a bit more about your SEO experiment it sounds interesting and beneficial.
Also Glen Have you ever used YouTube to market your websites? And what is the best way to comment on a blog? Meaning what should you put in the Name field? Your Name, Your Keywords or Your Name then Keywords?
I have, but only as a way of actually making videos, not spamming their comments.
I don’t think you understood what I was saying. How should people comment on blogs? Should they just type in their Name + URL, Keyword + URL or Name | Keyword + URL?
Hi TubeTizer, I started by just reading Glen’s book, and trying out a few seo techniques later.
Whoa, all that can come out of my brain right now is: eye-opening! I’ve actually been involved in 2 of these industries with both SEO and PPC in the past. 🙂
“I think this is a real shame because there are sites which deserve to rank above these, but the Google algorithm is still very easy to manipulate.”
Yes, but one important thing to consider is that none of these sites are extremely young. And most are actually aged well.
Another thing to consider is that Google will, over time, figure more of this stuff out (especially with public case studies like this) and the crappier sites will get outranked.
Hey Karol,
Interesting that I picked up two of your industries. Hope I didn’t oust one of your sites 😉
Yes that’s true, but I’m still surprised to see what’s working.
hehe, nope … sold em. 😉
🙂
I think a very important piece of the picture is where does the back-links come from? Perhaps 1000 websites might be linking to something specific but if this websites have no PageRank at all then maybe (this is speculation) 2 links from PageRank 8 websites might be more valuable.
In that sense I think that’s what lacked in this mini study. Although something it’s clear: Getting back-links from “authority” websites like Forums its very valuable to Google’s bot.
Hi Ka, I did say that, of course, higher quality links are more valuable than just a few links.
I inspected the backlinks of each site, you can put their URL’s into siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com if you want to see them specifically.
For example, here are the first two guitar sites:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A//www.guitarplayerworld.com/&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A//guitar.about.com/library/blguitarlessonarchive.htm&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u
(I didn’t use Yahoo for backlink counts).
This is a pretty disappointing revelation that back links from spam forums can still contribute to improved page ranking. This only means that at the expense of quality blogs/sites, some other less deserving sites would make it to the top of the google search results. I guess google would be aware of the same and working on this shortcoming.
No wonder, these limitations of google page ranking algorithm have created a new business niche for few online sites who now offer link building/back-link services.
I would be curious to see if this works out for the sites that you mentioned in the long term. Thanks for sharing.
PS – As per the post, you mentioned that you analyzed five sites only. I am just wondering if your observations can be generalized on a larger basis. Any feedback from your side would be useful.
Hi Shivam,
Due to a few people who have emailed me, this has been happening for a few years. I know of sites that use this as well as other tactics, but I hadn’t seen it as a sole way to build links. I agree that it’s disappointing.
I don’t like to generalize anything when it comes to SEO. There are too many factors that affect rankings in different industries. This sample alone took me about 8 hours, so it would be a lot of work to do on a larger scale.
Hi, great work there. Just wondering if Google becoming more ‘social’ will affect how sites will rank. What is appearing on your Google search results may be very different from what is appearing on my Google search results. Will SEO become obsolete?
Hey YL,
There’s a good chance it will be different, but I don’t think that it deviates massively right now. Do you see the same sites ranking for the learn to play guitar phrase?
Try Google.com but from your country.
No, I don’t think SEO will ever become obsolete, even if it just means designers implement better practices into their code.
Its a bloody shame that this technique still works, and is being abused so openly 🙁
Agreed. People like us try to be as ethical as possible, but these tactics are still working well
How do you think the new Google instant search box will affect SEO? With the search results now being displayed as you type the search term being in the top half of the first page of results seems to be even more important now.
I’ve read a lot about instant search in the last few days but to be honest, I haven’t really looked into what I think the implications of it will be.
Top rankings will always get the most clicks; perhaps even more so now.
I guess we’re used to moving goal posts with Google anyway 🙂 I also noticed as Google refreshes the search page as you type a lot of adword impressions will only have been shown for milliseconds – luckily they only charge for clicks!
I think Google Instant won’t have as big as an effect on SEO as people think. Some people call it the “death of SEO” which is ludicrous. My take is that it will drive a little extra traffic to certain short tail keyphrases and the suggested keyhrases will be much more valuable since the keyword suggest feature is more prominent.
No, Google Instant is definitely not gonna kill SEO. The fundamental principles haven’t changed. In a recent post/video (see “Thoughts on Google Instant” at mattcutts.com/blog) Matt Cutts has pointed out with “over time” Google Instant “might” change search engine optimization, but not because any of the basics have changed. It just that “it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time”.
Unless it’s different in USA to the UK, the position is this – you have to be logged into your gmail account for the INSTANT SEARCH RESULTS to show.
How many people have gmail accounts compared to aol, yahoo & hotmail accounts? Not many, that’s how many. Say 10% of the online world if that?
And of that comparatively small percentage, how many will actually bother to log into their gmail accounts just so’s they can have an ‘instant search’?
Not very many at all.
Really great post Glen,
This is a rwally great and self explanatory analysis (I love how you used the images).
You are absolutely right, many people say spammy forum links and directory submissions don’t work and I have been able to get my sites on page one (even for some competitive keywords) using them, in fract, that is the only way I build my backlinks before I discovered guest posting.
I also agree with you that links don’t equal rankings, I once tried to rank for a keyword, even with me building backlinks using that and many other related anchor text all to no avail.
Thanks so much for the great insight,
-Onibalusi
Hey Oni,
Nice to see you guest posting around the web (and on Tamar’s site). I hope it’s going well for you 🙂
Great post!
I am constantly performing the analysis similar to the one you described above. And it seems like there is a big number of myths pertaining to the SEO. For example, recently I have found that the 5 SERPs leaders in my niche ‘Google SERPs Checker’ actually belong to the same person who managed somehow to make them be circular.
Such approach allows him to be at first 5 positions. In case a Google user does not fell that the page matches his/her exceptions – they click other SERPs and still come to the same site. According to the traditional SEO theory – the guy has to be banned by Google, but in fact he is not.
Small ad: please note that you can use my tool http://easyseotracking.com/niche-analysis-tool.php to generate the table similar to the ones above.
Thank you and keep up good job!
Hey Dmitry,
Yeah, I sometimes find things like that too. People really dominating a market.
Thanks for the comment 🙂
Heh just tried Dmitry’s niche analysis tool and I rather like it. The results are similar to Market Samurai’s SEO competition module.
I’ll have to check it out 🙂
Thanks for the analysis Glen! I speak for us all when I say we appreciate your hard work. Interesting that the forum signatures still work really well. How’s the passport situation coming along?
Still no sign of my passport. Should hopefully be in the post this week 🙂
Thanks for asking!
Thanks for this very insightful look at the importance of anchor text.
Just a minor thing on point 3). Should that not be “then you can outrank a site which has far MORE links than you” instead of “then you can outrank a site which has far less links than you.”?
Looking forward to reading more of your SEO research.
I changed this just after the post went live so you shouldn’t be seeing this (I had spotted it).
Let me check again 🙂
Thanks Glen. I probably loaded up the page to read as soon as you tweeted. Then commented after you made the change 😉
Ah, that makes sense.
Thanks for pointing it out anyways 🙂
Hello Glen!
Great post!
I’m only in doubt, to study the backlinks from unique domains would not be better than site wide together.
Possibly one to look at in the future.
Glad you liked the post!
Once again your hard work has produced solid insights that are just so useful. I followed one long forum thread on warriorforum about a 60 day challenge and I wish that it had a beautiful conclusion like yours. My biggest insight was this point of yours: “If you can get links with good anchor text, from high quality resources, then you can outrank a site which has far more links than you.” I somehow thought that all links were created equal, but of course a link from a high PR site is worth a lot more than a host of links from low PR sites. Thanks Glen.
Hey Gary,
Warriorforum is a great resource for things like that. Glad you found some value here!
Thanks for the comment 🙂
This is really what sets you apart. Your knowledge in this area is unsurpassed.
Thanks Annabel,
Though, there are lots of people more knowledgeable than me on this subject 🙂
Hey Glen
Nice post. Can you throw some light on how to do 301 redirect from .asp file to drupal platform? Drupal don’t allow .asp files so I’m bit confused.
V man – if your old page was mypage.asp and you new page is in Drupal you need to edit mypage.asp and get it to give Google a 301 response pointing to the Drupal page that’s replaced it. This is because Google will still be looking for mypage.asp until you redirect it.
So your mypage.asp would need to contain something like:
Sorry – code tags must have been stripped out!
here goes without the tags:
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader(“http://www.mydomain.com/whatever_drupal_page_url/”)
Thanks for helping out 🙂
I’m guessing it’s a windows server?
No, it’s linux server.
It’s nice to see these stats in so much depth, yet still Google keeps us guessing. Great post Glen.
Thanks 🙂
Awesome post, Glen. This one’s going straight into the bookmarks folder…
Glad that you liked it Eric!
Great post Glen.. this must’ve taken you quite a while. Thanks for sharing the results with us.. I’m definitely sharing this on Tw & FB..
talk soon
Hector
Hey Hector,
Yep — it took me about 6-7 hours.
Thanks!
Glen,
Awesome analysis. Your insight is always invaluable. Thanks for sharing your findings. BTW, what tool do you use to determine all the stats? The reason I ask is because Market Samurai give me entirely different numbers for the domain age you provided in your examples.
For example:
girlfriendstealer.com
attractionhowto.com
Both show a domain age of less than 12 months in market samurai where you stated 147 and 6 months respectively.
Thanks,
Mark
I used a tool by SEOlogs.com
Glad you liked the post. It may have been when the domains were first ever registered.
Hey Glen, this is a lot of amazing information and thank you for the hard work you did on this one,
Marios
You’re welcome Marios
Thanks for the comment!
Hi Glen,
Interesting that spammy forum links seem to work.
Checking out one of the forex sites proved to me that successful affiliate SEO is about working the system, as the site looked horrendous. I never would have guessed it ranked that high.
Thanks for sharing your insight.
Ryan Biddulph
Hey Ryan,
Yeah some of the guitar sites and registry sites look awful to me as well.
Thanks for the comment.
One thing you don’t mention, that also works very well for getting you site ranking is spam blog comments. For instance this morning I was checking out schoolgrantsnow dot com, ranking 3 for ‘school grants’, and every link is a total spam blog comment. Just how stupid is Google that it’s taking notice of blog comments like ‘Nice post. My sister loves it’, with the same anchor text (as the Name) repeated over and over again, on totally unrelated blogs, in loads upon loads of comments?
Aren’t most of them nofollow?
I think blog comments are really powerful for SEO. I’ve even seen sites sold of Flippa for high 5 figures and all backlinks they had were ones from blog comments.
That blog Jeremy’s talking about, a lot of backlinks have ‘external ‘ tag only, which means they’re good. But most of them are ‘external nofollow’ …
If every 15th backlinks is follow and he’s using some tool to post these comments I think it’s possible to rank very high.
With Google’s plans to fill the page with ads do we even need to woory about this being an issue for a lot longer. I agree with Rishi, it is a shame these techniques still work 🙁
Not only are sites winning from this type of linking, paid links still blight Google’s index.
Thanks for sharing your findings – and for doing such a thorough job on research! I agree with some of your other commenters that spamming forums and membership sites, while it may still work, just seems wrong. And anything that feels sleazy and wrong I just have to believe will ultimately catch up with you in a bad way. Karma. I’m more on the fence, though, about directory submissions and article submissions – especially with automated submissions tools. What are your thoughts on automated article submission techniques and have you done any research on their effectiveness?
Hey Cindy,
I’ve never automated article submissions but I know a few people who do. I don’t think it’s necessary to be honest.
Great analysis work! Research like this takes a lot of time, but gives valuable insights.
The surprising thing for me is that forum posts are so valuable. I was on forums years ago, but hadn’t thought much about them until I read this. Thanks for sharing!
I was surprised as well Cliff,
Thanks for the kind words 🙂
that’s so true, i think there are some hidden factors that we aren’t aware of that contribute to the ranking, and as for the forum tip, that was one hell of good tip because you provided the proof
Although it works, I personally would advocate that people do it. Each to their own though.
Thank you for this. I have a site in an industry that gets a ton of traffic for a bunch of keywords that is really not that competivitve. It’s really amazing you can create an average site and promote the hell out of it and watch if take off and make money, but blogging requires so much effort to get anywhere.
Very true. I always say that if people want to make money online, blogging is not the place to start. There are much easier ways to make $$$.
I think one other factor Google places importance on is “click through” – meaning if I have a site that has a better name (domain) and or better phrasing in the SERPS, and people click on my site more than the others – I will rank higher. Even if you have more links than me.
Yes! we needs links and on-site SEO, etc but Google also looks at “do people click on this site/link? as a factor.
In my humble opinion anyway.
p.s. I didn’t know that placing links on forums to our sites was considered spammy? Why do you say this.
Hey Missy,
As I mentioned, there are many more factors to ranking than just the ones I covered. Google have already admitted they use CTR as a ranking factor.
Registering on hundreds of irrelevant forums just to drop a link is spammy. You can use them ethically.
nice post mate
Thanks Y8 🙂
Perhaps the spammy links from forums are a temporary thing that will help these sites rank highly now, but how about in the future as the algorithms change, which they always do? If I look at my webmaster analysis, I find a really strange result that sometimes I’m getting more traffic when my site is in the second page of the SERPS than if I’m no.1
I’m still scratching my head about that 🙂
Perhaps, but judging by the age of some of the sites, it has probably been working well for a few years.
This is a great article. Really insightful, as usual. Thanks, DJ.
Oh, and by the way, I just found a great new website that will help you with all your problems, whatever they may be, and help you to make millions of dollars on the web in just days!!
It’s http://www... oh, wait. Hmm…. Maybe this isn’t the most appropriate time and place to spam a forum, I guess…
OK, never mind.
(Seriously, though—great article 😉 Thanks as usual, DJ!)
Dave
Haha, thanks Dave!
Just when I think I understand this SEO thing, ugh, more to learn. This is excellent information, thank you for sharing, you write in a manner that is so easy to understand and I’m learning so much, thanks Glen!
You’re welcome Lisa,
Remember that the basics work 90% of the time, I just like to look at things in more detail 🙂
Hey Glen,
Thanks for another SEO post, keep them coming. I just wanted to let you know that your ” Conquering Big Industries” post is really helping me out with a niche that I had previously not done so well at.
It’s reassuring that smaller sites can rank well for competitive keywords like you have shown here in this post.
Hey Sonny,
I will try my best. That’s awesome, thanks for letting me know!
Hi Glen,
Thanks for this interesting article, as usual. 😉
Nevertheless I’ve read a post about Google changing anchortext politics drastically by Tim Grice from seowizz. This could be good news for us and bad for link spammers.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/36v5khs
What do you think?
Keep up the good work,
Pieter
Hey Pieter,
Based on my own results here, it definitely doesn’t look like anchor text links were as powerful as they once were. However, I think there are just too many factors in this for Tim or myself to be totally accurate about this.
This is fascinating and disappointing at the same time. I’ve long struggled to move up to the front page of google for a product I sell on my e-commerce store. It’s taken 2 years, and I’m now up to #8 on Google! But then I look at the top 7 and see that two of them are less than 6 months old and have 5000+ crappy links and sell knock off versions of what I’m selling. The sites look terrible, have only a few pages, and use broken english. But at least now I know why they’re ranking above me.
Still, I can’t make myself go spam forums, so I’ll just keep trudging along and see if I can get in the top 5. Top 3 and I’m raking in the money for sure.
Hey TJ,
Sorry to hear about that. I think this is what annoys me the most about the whole ranking process — when you know you’ve put the hard work in to make a great site and have it rank.
This is a great post, showing that even though publishers are trying really hard to please Google, it’s just not possible to do everything ‘right’. You could use lots of other aspects of a site and compare them and it also wouldn’t make sense. Like age of a website for example, or the first keyword phrases ever chosen for a site.
Google has to constantly reconcile it’s attempt to serve the best results for users, with it’s goal to make money.
I’m glad you liked the post Marita 🙂
Thanks for the comment
Nice article Glen. I’ve noticed Angela’s links working for a while, but there have been a few blog posts from big SEO’s that prove that Google is up to something big that will change the way we do SEO.
1). Dave Naylor proved that the Google Adwords Keyword Tool is completely bogus. Here he says how Google is trying to clean up their act This just proves that you can’t trust Google. And even though those sites rank high for keywords that are popular, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re making much money.
2). If you Google “laptop computers”, the #3 (used to be #1) result is http://www.laptopcomputers.org. That guy was pretty smart about his SEO and link building strategy. Even still, Compete.com shows he only gets 5,000 visits per month. At one point the Google Adwords Keyword Tool said this phrase gets 1.2 million monthly searches.
3). Tim from SEOWizz.net has a bunch of great posts showing that you can no longer “brute force” your way to the top of Google with exact match anchor text. Anchor text is still very important, but you need to have variations of anchor text and it needs to come from diverse domains.
Here he says anchor text links aren’t as powerful as they used to be and here he says how Google is rewarding more natural link profiles
Hi Raza,
1) Four of them are sites where I know people in the space (slightly different keywords) making a lot of money.
2) Compete.com is US based only and wildly inaccurate. At one point it said I was getting 100k unique visitors per month. That’s nowhere near true.
3). Yep, I’ve read those posts.
Thanks for the comment
There you go , That was what I was talking about. One excellent SEO post. Yes its kind of terrible to see forum links work so well. May be google gives them weight thinking forums are place where people discuss and when they are discussing about your site its probably good for something.
😉
There are a lot of myths about SEO that people buy into and parrot to others as the word of God just because they read it from someone “expert” with perceived authority. Most common are that spammy links on trashy forums or forum profiles are useless. Another is that nofollow links don’t count. And the most recent one I’ve heard from a few people who get paid thousands to speak at SEO industry events is that blog comment links don’t count.
But the fact is, all I’ve mentioned DO count. They’ve counted more than the “experts” give credit for for years and they ain’t going to stop counting any time soon.
I mean no disrespect to the author here or any of the commentors or readers who see those links and their resulting effects on SERPS as polluting the web, but the facts are – massive amounts of any types of links on any type of page that search engine bots can crawl, count.
Yes, in an ideal situation, slashdot.org will place a dofollow link to your site with perfect anchor text right on their PR8 main page, but let’s face it, that’s probably not going to happen. So get links from wherever you can as soon as possible, even if the experts say those links do nothing. The thing is, the age of a link counts as well, so turning your nose up that nofollow link on a PR0 page of that low traffic ugly blog is shooting yourself in the foot. In a year, that blog’s main page could be PR6 and the post you commented on could be PR4 with commenting turned off.
The world and the internet, and competition whether fair or slimy is not ideal. Make the best of it.
Glen,
Really awesome Post dude. You’ve done awesome job.
Thanks for sharing this excellent stuff.
As always, good info Glen!
I only recently found your site, however, since I have been browsing it (over the last few days), I have learned more than in the previous month. Keep up the good work, and thank you for sharing!
That’s awesome to hear
Thanks Wes!
Interesting Analysis, I like your observations and study. THanks for sharing your insights on this.
You’re welcome Eddie
More posts like this please! Really learned a lot in this…from real live case studies.
Thanks Tipjard, I’ll see what I can do 🙂
It’s funny when you’ve done SEO in one of the above mentioned spaces.
I read a great article today pointing out how Google is rewarding certain sites for brand strength, not necessarily keyword anchor text. Something to pay attention to as Google continues to adapt, rewarding some and punishing others: http://www.seowizz.net/2010/09/anchortext-not-as-powerful-new-techniques-2010.html
Another great article with a similar analysis http://searchenginewatch.com/3641002
I love when you do posts like these since it’s been my main focus lately. Great job!
I’m constantly evaluating similar stats myself. From what I see, it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s a good idea to have some link diversity. It’s similar to diversifying your stocks. Spammy forum posts, blog commenting, directory submissions, article marketing, quality guest posts, and even reciprocal linking (as shown above) all still work to improve your site’s ranking. Use a variety of different methods. Once (if) Google gets smart, and devalues all your spammy forum backlinks, you’ll still have other quality links to hold up your rankings.
I’ve been using your Bulletproof SEO Strategy for one of my ecommerce sites in a very competitive niche. Still too early to see results, but I’m really excited to see how it works out. I’ll keep you posted.
Glen,
I just recently found your site, and I have been blown away by how much research and effort you put into your posts. This one is a perfect example.
In addition to my main blogs, I have considered doing some micro-sites. I bought CloudLiving and have been doing a lot of research looking for, and in some cases finding, some niches that have potential. Looking at link profiles for existing sites have been part of my research.
Today’s post really helps give my analysis more depth, and I think I have a better overall understanding.
Thanks!
I have recently revised my robots.txt and started using Google Webmaster Tools. My traffic has increased by 25% over 2 months.
Glen, very impressive post and quite in-depth. I can imagine the time it took you to gather the various stats for each site. Thanks for sharing the info and I don’t know how I got to this post so late 🙁
Great article Glen, I like the in depth analysis. What tools did you use for the analysis?
Great research, Glen! Very useful post. SEO is complicated yet interesting subject to learn about. Just what I was looking for. Thanks a lot!
Spammy forum links work? That’s pretty dispiriting. So much for “quality backlinks carry most weight!”
i agree that forum and directory links still count. Also i would love to add a point that links from “pligg powered sites” also play some role and easy to get.
@Steve..@ Glen…no, it’s not window server, it’s linux and I’m unable to do .asp redirects in linux. Is there any solution?
Fascinating! What an awful amount of work you must have put into this study. I benefitted from your comments on your results. The fact that you used the same standards to test each website makes your figures viable for this study.
Great post as always Glen. All of your findings confirm what I’ve found during the past few weeks of intense market research using Market Samurai’s excellent tools.
Newbies especially should take note of your “grain of salt” warning – there are no absolutes in SEO!
“Anchor Phrases Still Work” – is a great recognition of underground link market which most SEOs still use and Google can’t help it. Many have made the automated Google bot a SuperHero — but your experiments suggest otherwise.
Good work.
Glen, thank you for sharing 8 hours of your work with us. It’s also great to see how many comments you get for your analysis. I did similar time-intensive studies in my industry (online gambling), but only very few comments (I have also much less traffic than you 😉
You mentioned click-through rate as a potential ranking factor. This is directly influence by the Google snippet – often the meta description – of a site. So optimizing meta descriptions should lead to better rankings?
And what do you think about bounce rates? Should Google penalize pages with high bounce rates (because they are crappy) or should Google increase their rankings (because users found the answer they were looking for and left that page)?
Anyway, thank you for your blog articles, and btw: I’ve enjoyed your guest post on problogger and in particular the “drive” video!
Hey,
Great analysis. I found your blog a few weeks ago. I’ve dabbled in internet marketing since 07. I rarely read or subscribe to MMO type blogs, but yours is exceptional. Awesome content.
How are you using Bookmarking Demon; what are the strategies with these days? Its been a couple of years since I’ve used it. I’ve been thinking of experimenting w/ it–I’d probably only bookmark my inbound links: article directories and such.
Anyway, thanks 🙂
Great post as always. Just thought it was funny that someone above spoke of “Dmitry’s niche analysis tool” so I immediately Googled it and this page was #2 in the results. Somebody is doing something right eh. Keep up the great work, always a good read.
Very interesting case-study. I have been breaking down some websites like this and finding out that many of these top niche sites do a lot more black-hat than is probably recommended for long-term stability and growth. It seems like Xrumer is an SEO’s best friend in recent years.
Thanks for the insights Glen. I think in terms of doing this analysis, it’s hard to read too much into it. There is no indication of how each links is valued. Some may be sitewide, forums, editorial etc etc. Google no doubts gives extra weight to certain links, so just looking at a blanked number, does give you some general insights and let’s you know what kind of market you are in, but probably not how many links etc it will take to topple certain sites.
You may be interested in a post over at SEOWizz on the value of anchor text:
http://www.seowizz.net/2010/09/anchortext-not-as-powerful-new-techniques-2010.html
This is really great, this post is saying alot. I guess I need to analyze my blog some more
Hey Glen,
great post and insights. You know, I agree with the number of links ideas. I’ve even seen that just by getting a couple High PR backlinks, you can do much better than a lot of low PR sites. Also, linking out to relevant High PR sites (wiki and youtube, etc) helps.
Brandon
Glen – Great article, as usual! We are working on a few affiliate sites and our Gifzer Facebook application. This type of information is always helpful and helps to confirm some of the things we have seen and tried.
Glen
Thanks for doing some enlightening research.
I think Google will have to make some adjustments to how it is now that crappy sites are ranking for spam links if they lower the quality of the results enough to potentially lose some of the user base. Even though this has been working for a while I remember when droves of adsense sites with crappy spun content were closed out of their positions.
I have done pretty well in some niches using content on sites like Squidoo and Article sites and similar then rss directories and bookmarking, and yes a few profile links in the mix. I think since those are mostly relevant content they should hold up adjustments in response to spam linking.
I read of one of the forum software companies switching to nofollow in all profiles and see more forums creating policies like users have to have some number of posts before they can have a signature file or even not even providing signature files.
What tool did u use to analyze those sites?
Hey Glen!
Awesome post (and site).
I got 3 questions for you:
1 – Do you think is a good idea to do article flipping (for different article directories)? Not exactly using a software but just rewriting the same article over and over again, like, different versions of the article? Doing that I could go from my 20 original articles to at least 80, but is it ok? From a White Hat SEO perspective?
2 – It is stupid to place all your keywords (or variations) in all the titles of all the articles?
3 – Does it make sense to keep working on building backlinks for a mini-site on a keyword that really doesn’t have much competition (they have like 0-5 not that great backlinks only, really) when you could start another project? My mini-site still doesn’t rank well in google (5th page now, 15th 1 week ago) but I wonder, if google didn’t “catch” those backlinks yet, shouldn’t I start another mini-site? I know that sounds lazy but my competition have sooooo feeeeew backlinks that I feel like I’m overkilling this :S
4 – What about a F.A.Q? 😀
TIA,
Hugo
Hey Glenn – I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions as well! Particularly #1 and #2,
dinesh
Very nicely done. This totally gels with what I’ve been seeing myself in the SERPs. Thanks for sharing! Look forward to more of your insights.
Glen,
You show that Google is not perfect, so low quality links can help a page rank.
The big question this raises for me is: Do you find that, although Google is not perfect, you can out rank pages with spam links by getting a handful of quality links, or is Google so bad that even this will often not work?
Greg
I am not a fan of posting of comments on other sites (even if it works). I would say rather short term thinking. It also doesn’t offer that other webmaster any value at all. I would think everyone would get far better results doing this manually. Offering up thoughtful comments — just like everyone is doing here. It is more professional. It let’s you discover cool sites on your on because you actually visit the site. If your comments are thoughtful and interesting people will check out your site. This is a great conversation. Kudos to Glen.
Hi Glen,
With the keyword “get a girlfriend” with 300,000 searches is that really correct?
Would that figure include longer tail keyword such as ‘how to get a girlfriend’ or ‘tips to get a girlfriend’?
attractionhowto.com doesnt rank on front page for ‘tips to get a girlfriend’
Just wondering how you worked out the numbers. Im pretty new to this so not sure if im doing things correctly…
Ian,
Regarding your comment above, one solution is to switch your videos from YouTube to another service, such as Vimeo. If you add a YouTube video, Google can remove the #1 listing for your page, and instead you get a #5 listing for the YouTube video. If you use Vimeo or a similar service, and set it up right, there is no alternate link for the stand alone video. Google has nothing else to list except the URL of your page. Then adding the video can be helpful to rankings and traffic. If anyone here has opinions about this strategy, positive or negative, I hope you post them.
– Greg
Unlike a lot of articles on this subject you have actually provided some (no, plenty of) evidence to support what you are saying. I’m going to go back and read it again now and see what I can implement myself. Nice one.
Wow, this was a very interesting article. Whilst i am always willing to take articles with a grain of salt, I can see how your data correlates with your summary. You have to be careful with your work, keep in mind what you are striving for an ensure that you get as much as you can.
Glen, I have done similar studies to this one. I have come to the conclusion that age is HUGE! I have sites with less than 100 links ranking above site with 1000 links (with anchor text) and the only big difference is age. One of them is almost all images with very only a couple of sentences of text.
Thanks Glen, the spammy directories was also highlighted on SEOMOZ I find it kind of crazy that these would help you rank.
This my first time posting here after buying your book.
and i’m looking for a way to contact you because i have a few question about testing backlinks of the site (testing competition).
i love every of ur article, especially seo article.
Hi Glen,
Thanks for this wonderful post.I am still have confusion in my mind regarding pages on my blog .You pointed out that pages also make impact on search engine ranking.Now let come in to my case ,In my blog I am adding custom tags for all my blog posts.Google counting my tags and indexing it as page on my blog. whether in future search engines count these pages are spam or duplicate entry ?
Regards |Madav
Hi Glen!
I got really stuck with the Testing Competition. So Here the problem:
-i do what you do in Cloud Living: (no quote) “link:http://www.testsite.com -site:testsite.com”
the result i get is about 7 backlinks which is awesome
-Then due to curiosity i try at [Space] before [http] and BANG about 500 backlink pop up. 🙁
-After That, i keep testing, [Space] before [testsite.com] , 5 backlink, Yeaaah….
-Last but not least, [Space] before both [http],[testsite.com], 250 backlink *crying like alittle girl*
So the question is what is going on?? I’m totally confused.
Help me Glen
This is an excellent analytical post. Thanks for putting in so much effort to come up with this data analysis. You are in my RSS list now 🙂 thanks
Hi Glen,
Really great post – as always. The buzzle stats particularly interest me. I’m curious what your opinion is of actually making a buzzle article or say a hubpage article/squiddo page your ‘home page’ in a sense where you write an affiliate review and then go about adding more links to these pages and so on – rather than using your own WordPress site with a registered domain.
Would you stand a better chance of ranking since these sites are generally bigger themselves? Or would it be better to create your own site, then put articles on these places linking back to your own site?
Any thoughts would be great.
Nice article. It’s given me some new SEO ideas.
On another note with this Bookmarking Demon do you have to be running it and submitting things all the time for it to work and what are the quality of incoming visitors, are they related to what you’ve added?
Thanks for the great post. I’m reading up on link building now for my newly relaunched blog on linux. The most helpful post yet!
You got 153 comments on the post !!!! man… Teach me all your techniques buddy…. Is there is any news when Google page rank update will done ??
The directory link/profiles are typically the Paul and Angela link packets you can have the freelancers knock out.
Hi Glen,
It means that black hat seo is important in some when competition would be high.
Wow, what an amazing article, a massive help! given me some rgeat ideas about article submissions and forum use.
lovin ya work!
Reading this article and the resulting feedback has made me realize how little I know about blogging, SEO, financial benefits, ranking, spam, etc. I have a number of websites, however I have never blogged (or maybe I have), so I would be interested in chatting with someone for a few minutes to explain how to optimize a website’s exposure via blogging and other avenues.
Tks.
Glen,
What amazes me most is the differing opinions about how to rank well in the search engines. It seems like everybody is yelling to go in a different direction, but they can’t back it up with any solid facts.
Thank you for digging in and compiling some remarkable research to formulate your conclusions.
Seems like, i never knew what actually SEO was and how the websites get ranked. Learn a lot that a thanks can’t express my feelings.
Really nice post…I’m still learning (seems to be a regular phase) and this helps because I noticed these types of differences while at Keyword Phases and niche sites. As always, excellent content. I guess my thoughts on SEO optimization is on point. “Really Important” quality of links..Important..
THank your for sharing your inputs!
-Phnoy
I saw you writing somewhere that you keep your websites on different hosts. I’m just starting ans I don’t have money to buy 2-3 hosts from the beginning, is there a way to hide from that reverse dns lookup? Or the only way is to have every website on a different host?
Also, can you give some titles of books that you read and really helped you in personal development and/or SEO too?
thanks,
wow this is an impressive article… i wonder how i could get myself to rank for some niches i’m having in mind. Anyways, thanks for the tips!
Just had my new website indexed by google today. Showed up on page 13 for main key words. More or less an experiment to see if I can make page one with less that 25 links and using SEO. So I scour sites like this looking for advice, help, things I don’ know or understand yet.
Great insights thanks.
Thanks for the stats. Google is getting unpredictable and exceptional everyday.
Very interesting. I think the most common misconception is that the morel back links a website has the higher it will rank. I think you did a great job explainin simple seo things in this article. 🙂
Great stuff Glen :)…
I wish all SEO experts could support their advice with solid testing like this which would provide tangible evidence which the others can replicate and use. Keep up the good work !
Jim
I just don’t see how the forum profile link thing will keep working forever. I have too seen many niche sites that rank primarily on profile links. Or that’s at least what I see from investigating them on Yahoo site explorer. I think it’s really only a matter of time before the Big “G” changes something to discount these links and then the rankings will shuffle again. Just building rank based on these spammy links is short sighted at best in my opinion.
Hi Glen,
Thank for this helpful information. I have really liked that phrase “..Google algorithm is still very easy to manipulate.” lmao :-).
So I also have a question: what site, can you use for anchor text?
What site could you advise for anchor text?
Cheer.
Very interesting study. There definitely are a lot of assumptions about SEO. The results you found are really surprising!
[…] Affiliate SEO: How Websites Are Ranking in The Most Profitable Industries Online […]
I am daily playing with SEO and just love it. I was able to get on Top 3 for 5 keywords with 10000+ monthly searched. I am still learning new things. Soon starting SEO related services on my website on small scale. Hope you keep giving new seo tips in future also.
Thanks!
glen, what do you think of using the service provided by some permanent exchange link program? i join one of those sites receivelinks{dot}com and i see some improvement. is that kind of service will benefit in long terms?
thanks!!
I lked this thorough article… being rather new to IM I found it a nice change of pace. I also use directory submissions as a way of getting some links but really only find that it helps the most with quick indexing in google more than anything. I have a couple Incansoft products that do some automation but mostly for articles, directory and PR submissions. Havent notice a barn burning experience with this yet but good old fashioned blogging seems to be my bread and butter more than anything else.
But I must admit I will try anything once! Nice post and loved the information
That’s some great research Glen, thanks for sharing it, it’s good to see what anchor text variation and inbound links some site need to have to get into the top rankings!
Okay, well this post really stumped me. I know I’ve been reading your site for the past few days, but all these different links and stuff would be a lot easier to understand if there were a definition box or even a link to a definition index.
I can’t say I took much from this 🙁
this is very revealing….spammy links work?
i need to read this again and start aplying all the other lessons immediately. thanks Glen
higher authority websites obviously pass on better authority in terms of ranking in Google. However the forum marketing is still a shady business I would say (although results show it importance). Overall a very well explained experiment.
Interesting results – I would have thought that spamming the forums would not be effective as many today are nofollow – but the whole google ranking game is quite complex. Thank you for sharing the article though – it gives me much to ponder on as I’m assembling my new site and developing a backlink strategy.
well i am still surprised how Google has allowed such spammers to rank higher in google search results
Learning SEO is good and can be very rewarding sometimes. But it’s not a science
As Google is changing is algorithm all the time, you can’t predict any result really.
One thing is for sure is that Links matter.
Really nice review Glen. I’ve analyzed the top 5 for the search term we just launched a site for for “Milwaukee Condos” and I can’t for the life of me figure out why it’s on top. It’s just a simple landing page with like 3 links, but the competition is at least targeted and has a fair amount more pages and links. The only thing it has is a domain start date of 2002, but other than that the site’s complete crap. Anyways, just my 2 cents, seems like Google places a lot of value on age of site in the real estate niche which I can see always has played out in some of your examples.
The Links to Keyphrases are very important for ranking higher in search results
Glad to see this post back, I really liked it when it was up a while back and couldn’t find it again! Any reason for the hiding and re-emergence?
Thanks as always Glen!
VC,
You note: “Attractionhowto.com is a really terrible website and doesn’t even have the six pages I counted unless you include their RSS feed. They’re simply registering on tons of forums and profile websites, placing their link in their bio’s, and then ranking well for their keyphrase.”
As of today, Attractionhowto.com doesn’t even rank in the top 50 results on Google. Looks like their sucky strategy sucks.
Because I pointed it out 🙂
Thank you Glen, nice work. Would you be so king to let us know which tools did you use to check these things out.
Laurie
Another good quality article, i really like the examples you have used and it is crazy how one guy working from home can build a spammy website that beats big companies who spend a lot of money building a great website that has poor SEO.
What’s up Glen? 🙂
Thanks for the detailed research.
Some “old school” link-building techniques still work.
As time goes by though, the sites that provide real value will rise to the top. We may not be there 100% yet, but that’s definitively where the “internetz” is going – which is great news for those who think long term…
Thanks Glen! Awesome post here with great value. I think that if you want to rank for the one of the top 3 positions for a given keyword, one should mimmick those at the top and do what they are doing but only a little better. What tool would be helpful to see how long the same websites have stayed in those top positions? Some sites move to the top quickly and disappear. I want to see sites that are staying near the top. By the way, Where are the links to your products? Thanks for all the tips!
Todd
New to reading your blog Glen. I enjoy checking up on Viperchill. Keep it up man – from Ontario, Canada.
Thought I would share this bit of information about SEO, I have found works wonders for me.
As much as creditable links, comments and keywords help us climb the Google ranks,
I feel the most important part of ranking on the first page is to have excellent content. People don’t want to be fooled, and Google doesn’t want to be responsible for fooling anyone.
By this I mean, not only should your site includes anchor links and great headlines but the content has to be there.
Not only will Google scan your page for content, that matches your keywords. It will take into consideration, TIME.
How long did people stay on that page after clicking, Did they click, did they copy and paste. We can all flood our pages with words, images, keywords and anchor links but was it really worth while? Did people get what they were looking for from that site. If they did, the site will climb the ranks!
Ive seen a jump by simply getting friends, family, co-workers, online community to search for my pages in Google, Click on it, stay on the homepage for a good actual 60 seconds, then copy and paste something, add a back-link to their pages and boomb! page is up there! Google realizes the site must actually have legit info about that keyword. Lets keep this a secret!
From what I understand and from my recent SEO experiments, I think Google puts a key role not just to the back-links you have from other sites and their respective key terms, but also their quality as well as to your site/blog overall quality , relevancy and click-troughs.
If Google sees you’re getting clicks on your listings, then they’ll rank higher in their organic results; this is a principle that works on your internal linking on your pages.
what do you guys think?
The tip about forum rankings is very good. I like the data you have supplied as opposed to blank statements without the facts and figures to back it up.
I’ve heard social bookmarking is making a comeback post-Panda, have you found that to be the case as well?
Did it make any difference on low value links after the panda update? I frequently come across lots of affiliate sites without authority links post panda update ranking well in google.
Wow Brilliant post! its like a cherry picker. I learn several new thing.
Glen
Thanks for spending 8 hours doing this. This is what is dictionary meaning of “High quality content”. Why cant Google do the studies -with all the billion they have ?You seem to have have unearthed several important issues. However I think that Google will continue to improve their Algo for a long time ( re what they just did with private blog networks). So I think that whatever spammy stuff peopel are doing- 1 2 or 3 years later will become useless.
Thanks for great article.
Whao, another great post. I just wish i will be able to do something like this for my blog too. Many people will be using bookmarking demon now esp that pat flynn linked to this post on his latest post.
Sheyi
Thx for sharing this valuable research!
Frisør
Hi Glen,
Awesome post and great blog.
Just curious, I want to get into affiliate marketing. In your experience, can I make squeeze pages rank high on google for selected keywords or is it best for the website to be content rich?
Does it make a difference at all?
BTW your sep guide is real helpful.
Thanks,
Nathan
Glen, Thanks for your post. I notice this post has been for a while, i would like to know if this the technique still work because i learn that Google is constantly updating their algorithm…????