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I just did some "on page" optimization, adjusted titles, H1-H4, bold, text changes, etc. and Bang - the site is now holding several number ones and all important keywords are holding top 5 positions.
The site has PR5 with 128 inbound links including dmoz and yahoo.
So old fashion SEO is not dead. For SERPS which returns millions of results, PR/inbound links is still the primary concern, but SERPS with less than 100.000 results are absolutely sensitive to on page optimization.
Yep inbound linking is important for attracting crawls, and natural traffic but I would not put as more important that correct keyword density or the nature of linking.
SEO is not a black and white affair, many people think that unless you have a high PR you are never going to rank highly. It is a damn site more complicated than that.
I only target links if I believe they will bring good quality traffic. There is nothing more boring than that spending all day getting links. It can ofent be more profitable to review your internal linking structure and keyword density etc.
I'm finding it quite hard to digest, and a bitter pill to swallow, that the folks who know where to buy high PR links can be considered the finest that the SEO community has to offer, and that that's all it's about and all it takes.
Shame, shame on Google if that's all it takes to rank on top - knowing where to buy high PR links. It's unthinkable that if that's the case they'd succomb to the depths of that level of crass vulnerability, considering the pool of talent that they have.
internal PR distribution and anchor text, which are nothing more than intuitive, architecturally sound, user-friendly sites.
Fwiw - a new site that we just put up has started beating many other older established sites for many key phrases and terms.
As the site as yet has no PR (tho this according to the white toolbar) I attribute this to on page factors. We did our best to design an 'architecturally sound, user-friendly site' and designed it in a way that the average text/markup ratio for the pages of the site is greater than 50%.
(examining the competition for this sites sector, it became obvious that they weren't going up against any seo'd sites - we're now waiting for an update so the site has PR and good link text, and the above assumes that Google doesn't factor this in until we see it in an update)
I don't think that off page and PR are everything, but when it's all added up, I think that off page is 'a bigger bat', but on page will win you the 'photo finish'.
Intuitive, user-friendly site building comes from experience, anyone with pockets deep enough can buy high PR links.
I think too much weight has been put on incomming links, and I think Google is aware of that (Inktomi certainly is). It's all a matter of balancing SEO techniques and sound SE algo. Still the goal of any SE is to deliver the best results to users.
When Google started the PR game, it was in place, too many on-page optimization techniques was blurring the SERPs, the PR system stopped that to a degree, now the PR game is getting out of hands and a switch back to on-page optimization is predictable and would be much appreciated.
Too much emphasis on getting high PR links, allso in WebmasterWorld, gives the impression that old school SEO is a waste of time, nice to know it's not.
Internal PR distribution, anchor text, user-friendly design, good, well arranged copy, titles, etc. is bound to get more attention, probably sooner than later. Even meta keywords and descriptions seems to come back as factors influencing the positions.
Even meta keywords and descriptions seems to come back as factors influencing the positions.
Wow..really? I better get cracking then.
turned the link text knob up to "Max", I'd be happy to see them turn it down a bit
- same for keyword domain name, which could be the same thing as link texts often has domain name in it.
Wow..really?
- At least meta description is sometimes displayed in serps, even with text on the page. Algo emphasis is problably absolute minimum, but still it's a possible parameter.
So yeah great, get your links with nice juicy anchor text but remember good seo is so much more than this for the simple reason that it has to be...
I posted a while ago about a certain parked domain that 'still' rank #1 on its old keyword out of over 2M return. Example olddomain.com parked to newdomain.com
Before: #1 for cool widget
Unrelated Title of Newdomain
more off-topic and unrelated description of Newdomain
[olddomain.com...]
Somewhere along the line there is an algo adjustment.
Current: #1 for cool widget
Unrelated Title of Newdomain
more off-topic and unrelated description of Newdomain
[newdomain.com...]
Note:Google removed the olddomain.com but instead of analyzing the content of newdomain.com, Google assume that it is still relevant to 'cool widget' when any human can see from the description that the site has nothing to do with 'cool widget'. Where's the on-page factor? :)
It's like searching for yahoo and the #1 site is microsoft :D Not even this close.
Even meta keywords and descriptions seems to come back as factors influencing the positions.
On another thread, we found out that some popular sites are now listed with their meta-description showing. However, It's not a blanket situation yet because on the same query, there are other popular sites that their meta-description are ignored.
On Page optimizaton still matters
I'm certain that offpage factors are now rather inconsequential - once you get more than a minimum amount, it's saturated.
