SEO News and Information - The Topositionseo Blog

The Google Sandbox and Old Sites

A recent thread over at SEO Chat provides some insight into the sandbox in discussing old sites:

Even if they arent sandboxed now, if you start doing major work on it the domain could get sandboxed again. It is not a once and your out for life type of deal. Just be aware of this as you proceed. I would hate for you to expect easy sailing and then run smack into the wall of Google’s friendly sandbox.

He’s right. People talk about the sandbox as if it were for new sites only. It helps to think of the sandbox as a filter that targets excessive SEO strategies, link building in particular. It just so happens that aggressive link building tends to look most unnatural upon the launch of new sites.

Flash and SEO

If you use flash on your site, you might be hurting your SEO efforts. A recent post over at TextLinkBrokers explains how to use flash in an SEO-friendly way.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

This article at Search Engine Watch does a good job summing up the basics of search engine optimization based on the advice of a panel of SEO industry experts:

• Do your keyword research.
• Select 3 - 5 phrases to optimize each page against.
• Write unique, compelling Titles for each page.
• Focus on unique content that adds value to users and incorporates sound SEO copywriting techniques.
• Ensure site architecture and design do not prohibit thorough search engine crawling.
• Build high-quality, in-bound links.
• Keep working on it. SEO is not a one-time project. Continual growth in content, links, and pages is required for long-term success.
• And finally, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

I agree. With all of it.

Natural Link Building Campaigns

So you want to make your link building campaign look natural? Well, the first step there is to hang up that link building hat. Impossible, you say? Then this latest thread at SEO Chat is for you.

In it, Rand from SEOmoz studies “internet phenomenon” link explosions, highs and lulls:

I was browsing this webpage at Wikipedia recently - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_phenomenon and looked at the lengthy list of recent “phenomenon”. Realizing that these were all sites or pages that had gained thousands, possibly millions of links over a short period of time, I started investigating some of the link information via Yahoo!.

What I found was somewhat surprising and may be of interest to those seeking to understand how search engines differentiate “organically” acquired links from more forced link-building “campaigns”. Several of the features I observed (or was able to make assumptions about) stood in marked contrast to how we as link buyers and builders acquire links - perhaps this information can help us to be smarter about our acquisitions in the future (and possibly even dodge filters like GG’s dread sandbox).

Here are his four pieces of advice, expanded upon by yours truly:

• Acceleration and Deceleration of Link Gain Speed - Be jerky. Getting a hard 100 new links a month is like sending a morse code signal to the search engines that you’re purchasing links.
• Anchor Text - The most popular link text phrases are not optimized at all. Think site names. Think “click here.” Think “read this.” Even us SEOs know that link text matters and we settle for the bland “here” every once in a while.
• On-Topic Pages - Here he argues that a few on topic links might help in making the campaign appear more natural. Indeed, Bob’s Fishing Shack might link to Larry’s Personal Injury Law page because Bob recently had a slip-and-fall accident. But I’d advise you to take a look at what Google says about on-topic links: Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
• Sitewides or Multiples on 1 Site - There’s two sides to this: Why would any site owner give another site a sitewide link voluntarily? Because of SEO, of course. Stay away from those. They’re easier to spot than a tractor in a haystack. But then again, the prevalence of blogrolls guarantees some natural sitewides. At best, though, multiple links from the same site counts as one.

And just in case you believe the engines ought to not care about link buying, read this, link pun intended. ;-)

Why “Updates” aren’t Updates

Matt Cutts talks about “updates” on his blog:

What is an update? Google updates its index data, including backlinks and PageRank, continually and continuously. We only export new backlinks, PageRank, or directory data every three months or so though. (We started doing that last year when too many SEOs were suffering from “B.O.”, short for backlink obsession.) When new backlinks/PageRank appear, we’ve already factored that into our rankings quite a while ago. So new backlinks/PageRank are fun to see, but it’s not an update; it’s just already-factored-in data being exported visibly for the first time in a while.

He continues:

Usually, what registers with an update to the webmaster community is when we update an algorithm (or its data), change our scoring algorithms, or switch over to a new piece of infrastructure. Technically Update Gilligan is just backlink/PageRank data becoming visible once more, not a real update. There haven’t been any substantial algorithmic changes in our scoring in the last few days. I’m happy to try to give weather reports when we do our update scoring/algo data though.

So it’s not an update, it’s an “update.” But should we really be arguing semantics here? You’d be hard-pressed to find a knowledgeable SEO argue the alternative. Personally, I think Google does the holiday update thing on purpose to release updated information while SEOs are on vacation. ;-)

AdSense and YPN Dynamic Delivery

If you’re considering showing YPN and AdSense ads on your site but haven’t quite figured out how to do cycle through them dynamically, Barry at SERoundtable has the answer for you:

(1) Download, Install & Configure PHPAdsNew.
(2) Login to the Admin Panel
(3) Click on “Inventory” section
(4) Ad a new advertiser (I named it “Contextual Ads”)
(5) Under that new advertiser, “Add new campaign” (I set up two, one for homepage and one for the inner pages)
(6) Create a new “Linked Zone” for this campaign
– a Zone type “Banner, Button or Rectangle”
– b Size (match your size that you set up for your AdSense and YPN ads)
– c Linked Banners should associated to the Contextual Campaign you set up earlier
(7) Go Back to the Campaign You Were Working on
(8) Click on “Banner overview” and “Add new banner”
– a Select “HTML banner” from “Banner properties”
– b Copy and Paste AdSense or YPN Code into the box
– c Uncheck “Alter HTML to enable tracking of AdClicks”
– d In the “Size” enter in the size of the ads
– e In the “Description” describe if its AdSense or YPN ads
– f Then make sure the proper “Linked zones” is checked off
(9) Go back to Banner overview and repeat step 8 for the other ad (if you set up Google AdSense first, then you will need to add the YPN banner Ad)
(10) Go back to the “Linked zones” for that campaign
(11) Click on the linked zone you set up
(12) Ensure the “Linked banners” in that zone are checked off
(13) Set the “Probability” to 50/50 or whatever you want for each banner
(14) Click on “Invocationcode” and Choose from the drop down, “Remote invocation for Javascript”
(15) Copy and paste that code into your Web pages, in place of the current contextual ads.

Online Marketing Conversion and ROI

What’s more important to you? Traffic and positioning or conversion and ROI? A recent JupiterResearch study suggests that most firms wrongly look at the former.

The iProspect Search Marketer Performance Study found that only four out of 10 search marketers are being evaluated based on business goals, such as ROI or total sales generated. Instead, most marketers are being measured against intermediate metrics, like Web site traffic volume or top search engine ranking.

More 301 - 302 SEO Discussion

Another great post from Todd over at Stuntdubl about redirecting domains. This one gives you some fantastic reading material if you are thinking about or are dealing with a 301 or 302 redirect issue, or if you just want to learn about the process.

Google and Synonyms: The Patent

Via Threadwatch comes news that Google has been awarded a patent for determining synonymous search queries. At the most basic levels, this means that tv = t.v. = television.

SEO Page Design vs. Linking - A Cosmic SEO War

I’ve been following this thread and quoted it twice now - it’s an excellent discussion of linking and SEO page design, as well as the rationale behind both. I don’t see the two as a mutually exclusive thing, but I do tend towards the content and on-page side of things. For me, the discussion ended here:

Perception is often a dim reflection of truth.

For example, the four fundamental forces are the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and gravity. The strong force is about 100 times more powerful than electromagnetism, while electromagnetism is 10 billion times stronger than the weak nuclear force. Bringing up a very distant rear is gravity. The electromagnetic force is ten thousand billion billion billion times stronger than gravity, which is so weak we’ve never even been able to find its interacting agent, the graviton.

And yet, the greatest concentration of energy in the universe is probably a black hole.

The nuclear forces both work across very short distances, subatomic distances, and can never be concentrated beyond those distances. Though strong, it is so limited that we rarely even perceive it in real life (and even more rarely survive it when it can be perceived). Electromagnetism, on the other hand, operates across infinite distances, but tends to cancel itself when concentrated because it comes in both positive and negative, attractive and repulsive, flavors. Only gravity, which also works across infinite distances and is seen only as an attracting force, can grow and grow and grow, ultimately resulting in collapsing universes and massive black holes so strong that even light, though billions of times stronger, can’t escape.

I think on-page content is like the electromagnet force. It is billions and billions of times stronger than links, but it cannot be effectively concentrated. You can’t just keep adding more and more keywords to rank better. Term vector analysis gives us a mathematical foundation for understanding why content, like electromagnetism, tends to cancel itself beyond a certain point. Relevancy has upper limits.

Links, on the other hand, are like gravity in that they can grow and grow and grow, with the only practical limitation being the size of the Internet. Each link, by itself, is too weak to even detect, but collectively their strength can be truly massive. Googlebombs, whether they are intentional like “miserable failure” or unintentional like “click here,” are the black holes of the search engine universe. Like the light that can’t escape a singularity, content is masked and made to seem superfluous.

In short, content and SEO page design is the secret sauce of optimization. But when you’ve got the necessary content, titles and code together to your satisfaction, the linking must commence for the simple fact that you’ve done all you can do for a certain keyword or keyword combination.