These are the most Important Factors for Keyword ranking

1. Choose Good domain name.

• If you want to dominate the rankings for a keyword such as “cycling”. It is helpful to have cycling in the domain name. e.g. cyclinginfo.com, cyclingtips.com
• However, it is not essential; people can still have high rankings for “computers” without having computers in the title. (Googling cycling in the UK gives only 3 results out of top 10 with cycling in domain name)
• The advantage of choosing a domain name “cycling info” is that when you get someone linking to your site, the anchor text will invariably have “cycling info” in it.
• If you wanted to have multiple domains to try and dominate a key search phrase like “mortgage quotes”. I would suggest choosing 50% of domains with mortgages in and 50% of domains without mortgages.

2. In Bound Links

Links from Other Websites to your Site is, in my opinion, the single most important factor. However, it is not the number, but, the quality and variety of links that is important
The importance of Links increases if

• They are from sites on related themes
• If the site is trusted by Google. i.e well established, high PR, lots of links to that site, has been around for a long time.
• The link contains a high % the anchor text of the keyword.
• They are naturally generated over time. – Google will try to spot link manipulation schemes.
• The links are from a variety of sources and different IP addresses.

Don’t bother with:

• Buying links
• Links from Link farms
• Reciprocal links from unrelated sites.
• Links from a page with 100s of links, unless the site is very good.

See more Tips on getting inbound links

• It depends on the keyword niche. If the keyword is not particularly competitive, you may need only a small number of links, so don’t be put off by worrying how to get loads of links.

3. Unique Content

Generating unique content should be viewed as the highest priority for any new site. It is the backbone of the site; without the content there is not much you can do. A high % of your site should be unique to your site; if necessary employ some writers. If the content is really good it will attract people to link to it later. However, don’t be put off if you don’t consider yourself a sophisticated writer, the best writing is often simple.

4. Keywords in Titles

If you want to rank highly for “cycling” it is important to have “cycling” in your titles. The more pages you have related to your keyword the better. Choosing the right keywords in titles can also be a good way to get related traffic. The more traffic you get the higher chance you have of getting links.

See: Changing titles to get more traffic

Good Subtitles Also Help

For example, if you wanted to get related keywords, use good subtitles.  This enables you to rank for more than just the titles.

5. Keyword Density

I don’t think this is specifically significant. The optimum keyword density is maybe between 2-5%. But, I think it is better to concentrate on writing naturally, rather than trying to work out optimum keyword density. I never give keyword density a second thought.

6. External Links

The ranking of your page can be increased if you link to authoritative sites related to the page. External links are like references, if you provide these external links, you increase the usefulness of your page, and google will give the page a higher value. It may seem strange, but linking to your other sites can be helpful, even if they don’t link back. E.g. on a page about cycling, try to link out to a variety of the key authorities on cycling. But, this is not essential.

8. Patience

A certain amount of patience is needed. Don’t expect results overnight. It takes time to improve get links and improve rankings. Also some keywords are very difficult to break into. It is said it is virtually impossible to break into the top 30 for “gambling”

9. Multiple Sites

This is an option if you are really keen to do well for a keyword. This strategy is obviously more time consuming but it can definitely be helpful for very competitive keywords. This strategy will be more successful if:

• The sites are on different IP addresses and hosted on different servers.
• Each site needs to be a genuine site. I.e. don’t fill it up with duplicated content.
• Don’t link every site to each other like a link factory. For example, you could have all 5 linking at a target site. But, the target site doesn’t have to link back to the others.
• Keep a variety in content, links, e.t.c. between the site.
• It is difficult to fool google, but if you can create several genuine websites on related themes, then it can help you do well for your target keyword.

10. Blogs

A blog can be a powerful way to boost your keyword search.

• For example, suppose you have a domain “exercisetoday.com” and you wanted to rank highly for the term “cycling clothes”
• What I would suggest is adding a blog to your domain exercisetoday.com/blog
• Call this blog something like “cycling tips”. Then write lots of articles about cycling, cycling clothes and cycling related products. Promote your articles and blog to get links to your blog with the anchor text “cycling tips”. This will definitely help improve your rankings for “cycling clothes”

11. Meta Tags

There was a time when inserting meta tags into a page was all the rage. I don’t think Google even look at keywords. I never bother.

Conclusion

If you can create good content related to your keyword themes, you will have a good chance of developing improved search engine rankings.

Work on creating good content and inbound links. Bother require hard work, but overtime it becomes easier to optimise the site.

Also: Getting more Traffic to Your Site

The problem is that Google say that webmasters shouldn’t do it.

You can understand why Google are against buying text links.

• Links are an important factor in determining page rank and search engine positions. Therefore selling links will distort search engine results. It will benefit sites who can afford to pay for text links and not those who deserve to be higher.
• If getting search engine results requires webmasters to buy links, it will cause a bidding war, where the people willing to pay the most will get the best search results.

Because Google say don’t do it, I am reluctant to ignore their advice. Why?

• Google are the biggest traffic providers
• Google are the biggest source of income and most reliable advertiser.
• There is a kind of duty to listen to Google, because a Google penalty would be bad for both me and the other site trying to buy a link.
• I also appreciate the fact that Google is trying to avoid manipulation of search results.

Is It Possible To avoid Detection with Selling Text Links?

If you are going to sell text links, then it is important that they are relevant to the website. Also it is probably better to go for individual posts, rather than site wide links. If the site is relevant google may have difficult in distinguishing between a real link and a paid link. But, Is it worth the hassle? Google may be able to work out which sites are paying for links. In the long run, I think sites who sell text links will suffer some kind of penalty from Google.

Rather than searching through wordpress, I found it easier to do a google search ‘Google and SEO netwriting’ would bring up the post I was looking for quicker than an internal search.

Since I stopped using wordpress my search, I assumed it would be better for reader to replace it with a custom Google search button.

• If you are a Google adsense publisher, you can easily create a google search button. As an added bonus you can get revenue if people click on the sponsored search results.
• Note: I use Google search button on several websites. I find it provides about 10% of Google adsense earnings. – Not a huge amount, but, it does add up over several months.
• If you are not a Google adsense publisher, Google allow you to create a custom Search Engine
  

Any Disdvantages of Google Search?

Sometimes new pages are not indexed. Occassionaly, not even, old pages are not indexed by Google. If you have many pages which are not indexed, you want to try and get them indexed through removing duplicate pages, and getting more links. However, sometimes I feel it is just a glitch of Google that they cannot index all pages.

Does anyone prefer WordPress Search to Google Search?

Recently, I posted why I had decided to remove Google adsense from Netwriting. Interestingly many top bloggers are also saying that they are giving up on google adsense. Problogger’s new design is adsense free. Kevin from Blogging Tips writes a post – Adsense good for the lazy blogger. John Chow is also selling his google spot.  Numerous other top bloggers recommend maintaining an adsense free blog. Yet, of course there are top bloggers doing very well out of Google adsense

Michael from Problog design asks a good question does not adsense still have some value, especially for beginners ? I think it always will. However, the crucial thing is that it’s usefulness depends very much on the blog niche.

It seems Adsense doesn’t work particularly well on blogs about blogging.

• There are so many blogs in this niche using adsense that this reduces the value of per click.
• People reading about blogging tend to have a low click through rate.
  Adsense are targetted but maybe not targetted enough. Quite often the ads google provide on blogs about blogging are not particularly interesting or relevant.
• Because many top bloggers are advising against the use of adsense, I think there is an increasing credibility issue of using adsense on a blog about blogging / seo. To my viewpoint, a site free of adsense creates an impression of being a more developed and successful blog. (whether deserved or not.) As Kevin says, maybe adsense really is for the lazy blogger. Gaining other forms of revenue shows resourcefulness and a wider expertise.

Does this mean the end of Adsense?

Absolutely not, I think adsense will continue to be the most popular form of advertising for bloggers. It remains a good revenue maker for many bloggers. It is also easy to implement.

Adsense performs better on different niche blogs, especially blogs about certain products e.g. finance or mortgages.

I have used google adsense referrals on my mortgage blog; initial returns have been very promising, but it still requires more testing.

I will continue to use adsense on several of my blogs, because it gives a reasonable return. Also at the moment, I want to concentrate on creating content rather than spend hours looking for best form of advertising.

Related

• Advertising vs Reader – one or the other at Problog design
• Critique your design – A well designed blog, with thoughtful and informative articles. Take a look at your blog. For example, how much do your ads take away from the looks of your blog?

1. Low Click through rate and little money earned
2. Absence of google ads looks a little more professional.
3. They can always be added later, if the blog generates very high traffic levels.

True, I didn’t place them in the best place. But, even in the best place, I think the small income doesn’t justify the nuisance factor. It is good to see a blog as an investment. When you are waiting to build up subscribers and get the first page rank, there is little to be gained by over monetizing your blog.

This is also one of the 23 things Nate Whitehill mentioned in his blog post about how he built up his first 500 RSS subscribers ( I would imagine it won’t be too long before he makes 1,000)

Now, the main problem with this blog is the header. Either I need to modify existing template, with new logo (I wish php was as easy as Html) or find a new wordpress theme.

Tip: when removing things from your sidebar, it’s a short cut just to comment them out. This means if you want to change your mind the code remains where it is.
<!– – - > code for commenting out note there are 2 dashes –
/* */ for php

What did I do to get the penalty removed?

Well, to be honest – nothing.

But, to be fair, I can’t think what I did to get it in the first place. Here is a screen shot from StatCounter

What I would advise for Getting Rid Or Avoiding Google Penalties

• The addition of fresh, unique content
• Avoiding reciprocol link trading schemes.
• Avoid getting too many links all at once.
• If you do get alot of links make sure there is variety: different anchor text, different pages (not just home page)
• Be especially careful of linking to sites like “link farms”
• Look at ways to get new natural inbound links: Link building
• File a reinclusion request at Google

To file a reinclusion Request at Google

1. Go here Google feedback
2. Admit to some spam / dodgy SEO techniques.
3. Tell Google what you have done to remove them
4. Promise never to do it again e.t.c
5. See also: reinclusion request at Google – Matt Cutts

If www.biographyonline hadn’t had it’s penalty removed, I would have:

• Found some links to remove,
• deleted some content that was duplicated from wikipedia (only small % of site)
• I would have added a lot of fresh content.
• But, it would have been difficult to remove genuine spam, because there isn’t any.

Remember: Google may be evil, but Google is the boss.

Do what it takes to get back in Google.

What has this experience taught me?

• Don’t Rely solely on Google Traffic
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have a diversity of sites (unless your site is not reliant on Google traffic e.g. John Chow wasn’t too bothered by his google penalty because he has a very large RSS readership .
• There is also a saying “Any news is good news” – If google kill your site, at least try to get some publicity out of it.)
• Google can do strange things (this is being polite). However, don’t panic and despair. They can’t look foolish forever (like not ranking johnchow.com number1 for search “John Chow”
• Google is trying extra hard to stop splogs and SEO techniques. If a few sites get hit in the crossfire, Google see a bigger picture. I guess Google do things like this to scare webmaster’s and create uncertainty. When there is this uncertainty generated amongst webmasters, it makes us think twice about doing “SEO tricks”.

Related:

• How John Chow can get his ranking back at Blogstorm
• Flowchart out of google 950 penalty

• See also: google and over optimisation penalties

The Google 950 penalty is no joke. Overnight all your search engine rankings can fall by upto 950 places. Search terms where you used to rank number 1 or 2 will suddenly appear at the end of the search results, e.g. number 950.

Some webmasters report a slightly less severe penalty of 30-40. But a fall of 30-40 places is nearly as good as a fall of 900.

This seemed to happen to biographyonline.net on 27th June. Suddenly traffic from Google dried up. Bizarrely, rankings on MSN and Windows Live, have been booming in recent weeks.. On Yahoo and MSN rankings are quite high for some keywords. But, fortunately or unfortunately, it is Google’s search engines that matter. Google has at least 50% of search engine traffic, if you can’t rank on Google it is a real disaster.

There are several possible explanations for a penalty like this:

These are the potential causes of a 950 Penalty

1. Splog.

Your website is a splog. Nearly all your content is duplicated. Google have just realised this and so they want to stop giving you search engine traffic

2. Google are Incompetent.

To reduce a ranking 950 places overnight, is an admission of failure. Either they were wrong to have the site at number 1, or they are wrong to have it at number 950. Both can’t be right A good search engine would not be making such huge changes. Also the fact that it can apply to every page on the site, shows Google is not discriminating. Yes, some pages on a site maybe duplicated; but why penalise every page, even if it is not duplicated. If you search “John Chow” There is a good chance you would like to find johnchow.com. On 2nd July, www.johnchow.com is not there (because of a Google penalty), this means search engines users would be better off using another search engine.

However, Google may respond by saying these penalties make people talk about Good SEO practices, they are only temporary, and because they generate a lot of noise they act as a deterrent for other people to try SEO tricks. Therefore, a bit of short term pain leads to better search engines in the long run. For example, bloggers would be wary of repeating John Chow’s experiment to get more links.

3. Over optimisation

If you participate in dubious link exchanges. I.e. with link farms e.t.c this could give you a bad reputation. Google may wish to penalise you for engaging in SEO tricks. Also if you gain a high number of links overnight, this may cause overoptimisation signals to be triggered. See: google and over optimisation

4. Bad HTML.

On some webmaster forums I have heard people say broken html and CSS lead to penalties, but personally I seriously doubt this. Validation of HTML and CSS has never been a significant factor in search engine ranking, it doesn’t make sense.

5. Made for Adsense Site

It is argued that websites which heavily optimise for adsense and other affiliate programs are more liable to attract penalties. Google make no secret of their desire to hit “made for adsense sites”

6. Duplication of content on Site.

If you have the same article several times on a website, this can be viewed as an SEO trick to boost rankings.

Black Hat SEO tricks. In Google guidelines they warn against the creation of gateway pages, hidden text e.t.c. I don’t know whether people still try to get away with things like this. However, everyone I know who has received a 950 penalty has always claimed they do not do this. I tend to believe them, it seems to be something new.

7. Manually picking up on sites.

Again, I doubt this. Google always say they prefer using algorithms to determine rankings. However, it is possible people may complain about Made for adsense sites and Google may respond individually

Case Study Biography Online

Biography online is a new site, about 1 year old. I have spent a lot of time writing long biographies. It was gaining a decent traffic of about 600 people per day. Not a huge amount, but not bad for a 1 year site, it has a lot of potential for future.

On 27th June, all google rankings disappeared and to be honest it is hard to know why.

Possible reasons

1. Duplication.
   I have used some duplication from wikipedia , but this is only about 25%. If they reduced rankings of these pages it would make sense. But to reduce the rankings of the other 75% of pages as well doesn’t make sense.
2. Blog entries too short.
   It is true some of my blog entries are a little short. But, a lot of articles are very long e.g. “50 women who changed the world”
3. Too many links?
   The site does have a lot of inbound links. Many of these are generated from Ezine articles. I have also linked the site quite a bit from my own site richardpettinger.com Could this be a cause?
   However, the site has attracted a lot of natural (i.e. not by me) links
4. Affiliate programs?
   Yes I have google adsense and a bit of amazon, but I can’t see why this would be a problem. Also some pages have no advertising at all (e.g) , and they have lost ranking just the same.
5. Black Hat techniques?
   Don’t know what they are.
6. Recipricol linking strategies.
   I don’t participate in reciprocol linking strategies.

It is a mystery, maybe I got too many links, I don’t know. It is also quite difficult to know, because I have done very little to the site in the past 2 months.

I am hopeful Google will sort itself out relatively soon. I definitely won’t give up on the site because I’ve invested alot of time into it. It’s also getting quite decent traffic from MSN.

I will try adding more unique content and get more natural links, but for the moment patience is best hope.

• Google 950 penalty at Webmaster world
• Google 950 penalty
• Google and overoptimisation penalties
• Fixing google 950 penalty

Definition of a splog.

A splog is a blog / website that does not offer original content, it only copies content from other sites. Often splogs are specifically designed to gain revenue from the google adsense program. They are often bracketed with Made for Adsense sites – MFA.

In the past ,Google was quite poor in distinguishing between websites that offered unique content and websites that just duplicated from others. Often Google would (and it still does) give a higher search engine position to sites that only copied the article from another site.

Case Study Blogcritics

Blogcritics is one of the top review blogs. It has many members who submit reviews of products, films and books. The problem is that many of the members submit the article to both blogcritics and their own blog. Because of this blogcritics has been penalised in Google rankings for having a lot of duplicated content. They now insist that content has to be submitted to Blogcritics first, before being put on their site. However, even this means that it still has a lot of duplicated content. The site may struggle to get good google rankings in the future.

Ezines

A popular way to get links is through writing articles and submitting them to sites who allow a link back to your site at the end or in the middle. Ezines can be a good way to get one way inbound links. Furthermore, articles tend to get copied by other websites, giving you an even bigger range of links.

The problem is that many of these sites who duplicate your content are splogs. Therefore, these links will have no benefit. However, they shouldn’t do any harm. Also, I have seen articles copied by good quality websites. I feel that these links could be of some benefit.

However, I feel that Google will try and devalue the benefits of links from article sites. In a sense they are just very advanced link farms.

Ezines and duplication of Content

In the past, articles I submitted to ezines were often put on my websites. However, I think a better strategy is to write some articles for ezines and then use the rest to put on your blog. Avoiding duplication is highly advisable in the new “anti splog climate”

Does this mean all Duplication is Out?

Splogs are 100% duplication. If you have a site which has 10% of its articles duplicated: e.g. Articles from wikipedia, articles submitted to other sites, there should be no problem. However, it is hard to say what is the % where Google penalties are triggered. Also this % fluctuates. What worked in the past may suddenly attract a huge penalty from Google.

For example, my site Biography Online, has at least 50% original content. About 25% pages are from wikipedia, about 25% of articles were also put on ezine type websites. Suddenly out of the blue on 27th June, Google hit every page with a 950 penalty. This means the ranking of every search term fell by approximately 900 places (to the bottom) I’m pretty mad with google, because it is not a splog. There is a lot of unique articles that took a long time to write and now, the whole site has been heavily penalised. I’m not quite sure why this has happened, but it is a real cause for concern.

See also: Google and over optimisation penalties