Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone Part 2

[rogerd]

...continued from part one [webmasterworld.com]

Great advice, Brett... and what it boils down to, for the most part, is "create a good site with lots of stuff that people can find and use." The fact that Google's algorithm rewards sites with these characteristics is no doubt one reason for Google's success.

I set up a site following many of these points six months ago, and it has crept up in Google to some very respectable rankings against players with 5 and 6 figure link totals. It's interesting to note that the objective was to create a content-rich site that would be very easy to use, and Google appeal was a secondary factor - but there were no big compromises required to satisfy both objectives. One big factor in this site's success to date: a couple of the site owners are authors, who had plenty of content to begin with and continue to add it. I just installed a blog-based system (got the idea here :) ) to let them easily add more articles without technical assistance.

[makemetop]

Great post (as always) Brett. First time I have seen in writing what I have had a gut feeling about for a few months - 3rd level domains. The keyword.domain.com strategy was one I used quite successfully for some time on larger sites but stopped about a year ago for the very reasons you stated. It struck me as too easy to get cleaned out when SEs started cracking down on possible spam. I've just spent quite a hard time convincing a client NOT to go this route when so many others out there are saying it is still a good strategy - your post gives me additional ammunition. Thanks :)

[JonB]

excellent post that goes straight to printer :)

I will rebuild one of my sites, include press releases.
makeclean new start,new domain etc!

I am still worried about PR 0 glitch/penalty though.I have used almsot all techniques on my primary domain, which is now hit with PR 0! I must have done somethign wrong, somethign SO SMALL,so obvious! the only problem is i need to figure it our WHAT.

Again, this is excellent post and google is still my favourite engine to study.

jon

[kapow]

> the dangers are just as great when linking between mydomain.com and myotherdomain.com

Would someone explain the dangers please? :(
I have different clients in similar businesses so I sometimes link them (the sites are on the same server but have different c-class IPs).

[paynt]

Sub-domains - in my experience no problem, especially with Google. If there are specific engines that have shown specific bans for the use of them I have not personally seen it. Could we have more detail, perhaps under another discussion so we don't mess this one up with it?

Otherwise, another great post by Brett. We now have an additional guide for our strategies in building sites Google Loves .

[Go60Guy]

Thanks so much Brett. Somehow, intuitively, I've done a lot of what you suggest and you've given me much more to ponder.

One thing that I think needs to be said is that by focussing on Google, good results will come about on Inktomi driven SEs, ppc notwithstanding. At least that's been my experience. AltaVista, who knows? Lately, there does seem to be some return to relevancy with AV, so your 26 Google steps might help there in the future.

[jeremy goodrich]

Wow. I've seen hints, etc. but never had it spelled out for me like that. Sometimes, I feel I'm too addicted to the 'quick fix' mentality of a few years ago, and if there was ever the perfect example of how to do it, today, this is it.

Well done. Now, if I only had a year, time, and energy to do all this...he hehehe. Back to work.

[celerityfm]

All I can say is another quality piece of work Brett, I loved your history lesson / post over on the "google as a black box" subject.

This site trained me to be able to promote sites succesfully. We are all believers over here.

Thank you for your efforts and wisdom.

[FreeBee]

Been off SEO for a while, thanks for this quick "refresher"!

[volatilegx]

regarding subdomains, I believe Inktomi penalizes sites using subdomains for crosslinking. They also penalize for having sites that crosslink from the same Class C IP address.

[Juzzi]

"regarding subdomains, I believe Inktomi penalizes sites using subdomains for crosslinking. They also penalize for having sites that crosslink from the same Class C IP address."

I have about one hundred subdomains in Inktomi and they all rank VERY WELL - most are on the first page.

Brett you have REALLY MADE ME NERVOUS ABOUT subdomains and crosslinking. All my cross linking is on theme and all subdomains are rich in content.

To date - it has proven to be a VERY VERY sucesesful strategy.

I have done a lot of research on the above and have also kept my eye on several other sites doing the same.

So far I have not seen or heard anything negative about this until NOW!

If anything I have read very positive threads at webmasterworld

Is this a hunch about crosslinking and Subdomains?

Or do you know something for sure?

[Air]

It's not a hunch Juzzi, a while back a "black list" left out in the open by Inktomi clearly showed that the use of subdomains was labelled as "dns spamming". Like most spam they go after the most serious abusers first, but if they decide to wave the wand and do a massive purge of dns spammed sites then you will fall victim to the baby being thrown out with the bathwater syndrome.

[mad_wax]

cheers:

I've been lurking for a while and have delurked to reply to the original post. The steps outlined are fantastic for a hobby site (as mentioned), or for someone with a lot of time on their hands, but for companies doing real world web design for corporations, we all pretty much know the drill:

"I want it to look cool, and flashy, and content be damned. AND I want results FAST"

fighting to get clients to cooporate and understand the importance of good search engine ethics and quality content has been the bane of my SEO existance thus far :)

looking forward to participating more in the forums.

cheers,

dj mad wax

[WebRookie]

Thanks for another fantastic post, Brett. The key is HARD WORK, no way around it. But the results are worth the effort. Your wealth of knowledge is pretty amazing.

[toolman]

>>>>Some spiders have historically had a hard time with http 1.1 and have not used "domain" http headers.

Are those engines still around today?

>>>There are also se's that run their own dns servers and are fraught with slow updates. eg: I don't trust them to get it right 100% of the time.

I've seen Inktomi request hits from old ip's but invariably they are already spidering the new ones.

>>>It's not worth the risk

I agree in a perfect world. But there's just too many opportunities right now with virtual hosting to not take advantage of it.

I hate name based hosting...but it's cheap....and it works just fine. At least for me it does.

[oilman]

gotta agree with the toolman on this. Granted, I'd prefer individual IPs for all my sites but I can't turn down hosting for under $100 a year :)

I've never experienced any problems either - sat in top 2 at google for months with a name based account.

[pgsbs]

Thanks Brett. Learned a lot from your article. But I guess patience is the most difficult part about your strategy.

[mivox]

I had one host explain their switch to virtual hosting because they were told they would not be assigned any new IP numbers until they switched to virtual hosting to make the most of the ones they already had.

Given an "official" proclamation like that, I can't imagine people would be getting penalized too awfully badly for it...

[EliteWeb]

Followed those steps for years, now I have it on paper and can hand it out to my friends who are thinking about doing it as a job.

[Juzzi]

I have seen many many examples of sucessful subdomain usage.
One site in particular that I have been watching for a while, ranks very high on many competitive search terms.
This site has thousands of ONE page interlinked subdomains(not ALL linked to each other but a good internal linking structure), each of these subdomains have several links to frames pagepages linking out to external affiliate pages.

This website has been around for a few years now, and it seems like they know what they're doing.

If they are getting away with it, then surely if one USES a similar approach BUT adds content to the subdomains -
it must be good?

I don't know??
It works for me, so far so good and I am ranking well on all SE'S.

I launched my website in June 2001,
I now have thousands of pages(about 75 subdomains) in google, Inktomi, wisenut and Teoma, etc.

I rank well because I deserve to rank well(CONTENT) and I come up on relevant search terms, so the engines are doing a good job and the users are happy because they find what they want.

My subdomains serve a purpose.
Each subdomain is independantly marketed (reciprocal linking and directories) and its easier to promote example.mydomain.com
rather than /example/example, etc.

If this is considered "dns
spamming" then I am shocked but VERY CONCERNED!!

[europeforvisitors]

>>My subdomains serve a purpose.
Each subdomain is independantly marketed (reciprocal linking and directories) and its easier to promote example.mydomain.com
rather than /example/example, etc.<<

One thing to think about (depending on your topic, product line, or whatever) is whether short-term SEO tactics contribute to long-term building of a brand.

Let's assume, for example, that Nestlé was a dot.com company starting up from scratch and marketing food products. Having separate (and apparently unrelated) sites for Crunch bars, Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chips, etc. might work well for promoting online sales in Google, but would it contribute to the building of a brand and successful launches of future products? In other words, if the chocolate chips were "Toll House Chocolate Chips" and not part of a greater "Nestlé" identity, and if Nestlé introduced a new instant hot-chocolate drink called "Quik," would Quik have the same opportunity for success as it would have if customers associated it with a popular and respected brand of chocolate?

[paynt]

In my humble opinion subdomains/canonicals have nothing to do with branding. It's all about structure and laying out a site, that's all. For me it helps me keep my themes straight. It also helps so I don't need as many sub directories and I can stay only a few clicks away from the main www of the domain.

It's really silly for a search engine to take time over an insignificant issue such as this, which should have no bearing on if a site is spamming or not. If anything the only reason I could understand not acepting them is for a technology issue and in this day and age that would be remarkable.

[Brett_Tabke]

Thrid level domains represent one of the greatest forms of seo spam the se's have to deal with. Millions upon millions of pages of auto generated spam, keyword stuff spam of the worst kind, have flowed from 3rd level domains. This has been building slowly over the last couple years. The #1 entry in the ol ink spam database was "dns spam" (aka: wild card third level domains). Everyone knew it would be a controversial subject to bring up, but it's exactly as volatilegx said above.

[SlyGuy]

Everybody else has said something, so....

Kudos, Brett. I'm printing out your post as I type this. I decided to revamp one of my sites, and will take into consideration everything you have mentioned. Thank you.

- SlyGuy

[agerhart]

I haven't said it yet, but Brett that was a fantastic post, one of the type that makes WmW the leader of it's class.

<added>

I also agree with you entirely that sub-domains are risky to use, except for within Google, but I have seen some sub-domains do well within Ink engines in some instances. Although this is true, I am wary of using them.

We have reformatted our site to eliminate the use of sub-domains and implement sub-directories instead.

Will post the results once they are seen.

</added>

[JonB]

jsut came into my head: I wonder what is googleguy thinking when reading this. He is from Google, he KNOWS this what we "speculate". Man, that msut be great feeling. Some are devoting their "lives" to undertand SEs, speculate, think,guess etc, but he KNOWS it,no need to spend countles days on "google learning" :) We are GUESSING about Google (some risking entire business on assumptions) but he KNOWS about Google!

I wonder if he is reading Brett's post and saying to himself" yes, this one is close,this one too,this one is not entirelly correct, LOL - this one is WAAAAAY off ,this one is correct etc.All in all, amazing this Brett guy,gotta keep an eye on him!" :):):)

[wasmith]

My important 3rd level sub domain has recently 12/2001 been dropped from alltheweb AKA fast. It has content, link popularity, and makes money. I have a weakness for cheap hosts. I am back in inktomi though :). Google has alway's been fair with the site, even though i am pushing my luck with multible crosslinking with other relevant sites.

I am not going to be dropping my 3rd level (VM) domains any time soon. But, I am not going to be getting any new ones. I like the ones i have and they work for me but they require more of my time for less returns from the search engines than www.domain.

So I agree 3rd level domains are has beens? Well OK they never were really that great to start with ... but they are cheap so i like them, but i have enough of them and hitting the sweet spot in search engines is better.

[kapow]

> Submit the root to: Google, Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, (write Teoma), DirectHit, and Hotbot.

For Google success I was aware about submitting to: Google, ODP and high PR sites.

How do these affect Google ?:
Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, Teoma, DirectHit, and Hotbot.

[Brett_Tabke]

They don't directly, but they do indirectly by boosting your exposure, probable inbound links, and ultimately your pagerank.

We had a couple of questions as to what is meant by cross links. Those are are links WITHIN the same site or domain. To clarify:
Links coming in are INBOUND links.
Links going out off site are OUTBOUND links.
Links that you exchange with other sites are RECIPROCAL links.
That leaves "cross links" for link across your content within site.

JonB, the catch 22? There is only 2 of the 26 that actually deal with seo in any way. Those, I have little doubt Google would be ok with. I don't see a thing in there that Google would not endorse with a good Google webmastering seal of approval.

[tankman]

Great post.

I can see how having

mysite.com/folder/folder/folder/page.html

will have less PR then

mysite.com/page.html

What about when you have a single folder with a big name?

mysite.com/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4/page.html

Do you forsee and problems there?