Back to Number One

How I got back to the top

[BallochBD]

Yesterday, after a few weeks of serious effort, I got back to the top of the listings for my keyword (a four letter acronym). How did I do it? Let's just say that stemming appeared to be important as was removal of unnecessary Header tags, reducing the instances of the keyword and careful study of the site that was already there. (In actual fact I am number three but the top two results are not relevant so they do not concern me.)

[superscript]

So now we're onto the 'Grandma's Secret Sauce' theory of SEO are we ;)

It's commonsense to ensure the code meets the multiple demands of the User, SE spider and SE.

This is standard SEO - what's the revelation?

[BallochBD]

> referred to my acronym as PQR S-word
I didn't understand that part

What I meant was that my acronym was something like Professional Quality Result Search (or PQRS) I just changed it to PQR Search. In other words I omitted the last letter from the acronym and used the full word.

[SlyOldDog]

Superscript quote 1

Concur - it's nonsense. One of my 'hobby' sites is a thesis I wrote some time back and I simply used good old MS Word one afternoon to convert it to HTML. The coding is a total mess - but it's way up in the rankings.

Suprescript quote 2

It's commonsense to ensure the code meets the multiple demands of the User, SE spider and SE.

[superscript]

But there's a big difference my furry friend ;)

One is a commerce site, one is a science site. The commerce site's code is well presented, the science site's code is a mess. Guess which one suffered after Florida?

:)

[frup]

I've never seen any evidence that "clean" code has any benefit whatsoever. There are a lot of truisms that float around that amount to nothing but urban legend.

[yonnermark]

I didn't want to start a new thread with this because it might be old news but here's what was just posted to the search engine newsgroup:

It's interesting and suggests that the pagerank technology is under thread and that is why florida is hitting people hard.

[edited by: heini at 1:03 am (utc) on Dec. 24, 2003]
[edit reason] lets not drop links, thanks! [/edit]

[claus]

Nice to see someone coming back from the shadows :) I don't believe i have any competitors here - a few seems to be colleagues, but there's plenty of room, so i'll just post a few thoughts for Christmas..

The stemming thing is about the only new thing about the "Update Florida" that we know about for sure, so removing the S when it's not intended to be a plural is... well, it's absolutely brilliant.... it's these kinds of things you should be looking out for in anchor text, titles, headers, metas, body text etc.

Also, there's the real estate [webmasterworld.com] business as a brilliant case... well, what do they sell, actually? What's the focus of this industry? Don't look so much at the highlighted words in the google cache, try looking at some of the other ones on the top ranking pages also... Two keywords are rarely enough to adequately describe any product or business. Or, to quote Brett in a relevant article: I find it helpful to meditate with "I'm not CNN" as a mantra [searchengineworld.com]

As to the W3C thing... well, as i've said before (and i will gladly repeat that anytime), it's fairly easy to make a perfectly validating site that is of absolutely no value to a search engine... It's just more important to do the right things than it is to do things right - and with respect to the W3C doing things right may actually help you do the right things as well - that thesis example should have been a great clue; what is a thesis if not a well-structured on-topic document?

Try thinking about your whole website as a document. It's more like a book than it's a collection of assorted post-it notes; or rather, it should be. Cover, TOC, sections, chapters, pages, paragraphs, etc.

Please don't take this post as being arrogant or anything, it's not intended that way. I honestly believe this is helpful information, but i can't go into greater detail, as this really has to be dealt with on an individual basis. The right things for a used car dealer is probably not the right things for a banker.

/claus

---

Added: The patent article was interesting and some of the comments also - it was also interesting to look at the patent itself and the other patents it was linked to and who were behind those and so on. Where's Redmond btw?... Anyway, it seems there are only a few innovators in search, and G must pay well. Still patents and ipo's are....uhm, what's that term now... topic drift [webmasterworld.com]?

[edited by: claus at 1:27 am (utc) on Dec. 24, 2003]

[mrwhy2k]

I read that at Jim's World yesterday and found it to be a very interesting therory. It's a long post, but well worth the read.

I think there is some truth to the fact that Google has certain changes it must make in order to become a publicly held company. Everyone should read that article to understand the patent issues with PageRank Technology and the effect it could have (or is having) on SERPs.

[yonnermark]

The stemming thing is about the only new thing about the "Update Florida" that we know about for sure, so removing the S when it's not intended to be a plural is... well, it's absolutely brilliant

I have a fairly small site and I'd be willing to experiment with removing the "s" from someone of my keywords. But is this discovery literally "brilliant"? I mean has it been shown to bring back serps from +999?

[mrwhy2k]

About three weeks I did the exact opposite.
I lost "widget" in the update so I added "s" to make "widgets" in the H1, title, internal hyperlinks, and added a bunch of related keywords. About 48 hours later I showed up for the plural, and about 7 days later I am back in the top 10 of Google for "widget".

From what i have found... If I over optimize for a related keyword (widgets), when I really want widget - Then I get the word back.... IF I already have lots of incoming links with "widget" in the anchor text. I think the anchor text helps a lot if the entire page is not optimized for the same keyword.

Also related...
If you want the word "duplication", then optimize for the word "duplicator". Google thinks these words are two in the same because of stemming.
How do I know this? Can I prove it? How do I find related words in my field?

I don't want to break forum posting rules, but if you want proof and more info just send me a sticky.

[Cabinmastertn]

Maybe someone has brought this up already:

Follwoing things have to look at individually Post-Florida:
- Commercial value of keyword (not only in Adword)
- number of directories offering listings for the exact keyword
- Stemming (for all the same)
- Backlinks according to Google (algo for PR has changed)
- size of website (# of pages, directories etc.)

I have only scratched the surface, but the more valuable (money AND traffic wise) a keyword is, the harder it is to get #1 rank.

One thing is clear for me: Google is still adjusting the algorythm and until they think it's good I am not going to change a thing. (Except one site that has lost all it's traffic, where i have nothing to loose, but to win experience).

[Miop]

How actually would stemming affect sites where the keyword is merely widgetry, i.e. whether singular or plural?

[yonnermark]

for widgetry other words to be included would be widget, widgets, widgeting, widgetation, widgery.

it's just any variation on a theme really I think

[MS_Excel]

I just hope this thread is not read by the uninformed Webmasters out there :o) Unfortunately it most likey will be :o(

[yonnermark]

I just hope this thread is not read by the uninformed Webmasters out there :o) Unfortunately it most likey will be :o(

feel free to intervene to prevent all those poor uninformed webmasters who are surely doomed if they read this thread

[Jakpot]

I don't know if I'm informed, uninformed or what at this
point

[allanp73]

I don't think stemming plays any part in the ranking issue. For example the term "any city real estate" would not have this problem. Real Estate is real estate, there is no plural. However, 90% of top real estate agent and broker sites no longer appear in the top 1000 serps. Still the entire field is dominated by irrelevant results. A few sites managed to return, but they are the lucky few. My site returned to the top50 after being out of top 1000, but this is still poor. The top ten contains which have zero relevance to my city real estate. I looked at the site which appears in the #8 spot.
It does not use the words "my city" or "real estate" any where on its index page text or even in it's source code. It is a hosting company. Its backlinks are mainly sites which it hosts. However, it has one link from a non-related real estate site. This site links to them but doesn't use the keyword in the link, but the keywords appear elsewhere on the page. This link happens to be from the Canadian MLS.
So the question remains what does this site have to do with the keyword phrase and why does it dominate over thousands of relevant sites.
Here is one theory that could explain it's high ranking. If sites with very high relevance link to another site (with or without relevance) than that site will rank well. This is standard for pr. However, if sites link with anchor text that appears overly keywordy then these sites will be penalized. Google is looking for natural relevance rather than superfically inflated relevance.
Just a thought, I really would like to hear some solid evidence about what Google is really doing.

[Miop]

Re: words like 'Real Estate' - perhaps Google hasn't got got around to defining that yet.
The US spelling of my niche brings good results, the British spelling brings mostly rubbish, except for sites with ethe US spelling in either a link or on the page.

[mrwhy2k]

Allanp73,

I don't think you quite understand stemming yet. But that's ok, because I don't think Google has a perfect grasp on it either.

HOWEVER, for the "real estate" market Google is not looking for words like "real estate" as much as they are looking for related words that can be associated with "real estate". If you wanted to go after just "real estate" you should include the phrases: homes for sale, land for sale, commercial real estate, county real estate, new homes, home value, ect. These are the words that Google associates most with "real estate" and the list changes every month.

Now that Google seems to be using CIRCA technology, the list of words that Google associates with each phrase grows and changes each month. It seems like CIRCA acts as an A.I. because it has a growing vocabulary.

If you add those real estate words, and de-optimize for your main phrase, and have a few incoming links with related anchor text, you'll be back on the top.

This new Google Algo is not that complicated once you apply it a few times and see the results. In the next 30 days everyone will understand the changes and be back on top of Google.

[claus]

>> Real Estate is real estate, there is no plural

Erm... Homes, Apartments, Condos, Rentals, Sales, Houses, Properties, Buyers, Sellers, Relocations, Mortgages, Agents, Brokers, Listings, Contractors, Lots, Interest rates, Realtors, Homebuilders, Lenders, Landlords, Classifieds, Flats, Agencies...

... eye-opener? ... i see a lot of plurals in Real Estate. Have a nice Christmas and all, i'm off for today.

/claus

[edited by: claus at 6:00 pm (utc) on Dec. 24, 2003]

[mrwhy2k]

Exactly Claus... GoogleBot will eat that up.

[allanp73]

mrwhy2k,

Yeah, you're probably right. I was simplifing the stemming concept. I realize now that stemming involves word associations as well. And Google has targeted related words with its new algo/filter.
However, I don't believe that stemming is the problem. It would be very difficult to design a page discussing real estate without mentioning homes, houses, condos etc. If this leads Google to believing that you are spamming (because of using the phrases overly) then basically there would be no reasonable way to have a good content page.

I might design a test for this and see but it seems something else is at work.

I would like to hear more about other people's experiments and what seems to work. Google has declared war and I believe that we should stick together and resolve this problem.

[BallochBD]

The question of whether or not Real Estate has a plural is neither here nor there. I don't think Google actually recognises the word it is checking in context. It is more likely that the algorithm looks at the word(s) and applies stemming check rules on them whether or not they are grammatically correct. I think the fact that it worked on my acronym points to this.

On a lighter note I notice that several people on this list mispell algorithm as algorythm. After Florida could that be Algorythm 'n Blues?

Merry Xmas to all (I am now heading towards the turkey & cranberry!)

[Bobby]

Google has declared war and I believe that we should stick together and resolve this problem.

Allanp73 let me hop on board, the only way we are going to get any real ideas of what Google is looking for is by each of us reporting on specific changes we've made and how those changes have fared in new Google updates.

I have imlemented some changes and am waiting for the next crawl to see if they influence the SERPs. I have removed small image links to pages which are opened by javascript. I put the image links there to make sure Google would index the pages because I don't like site maps. I want to see if this makes any significant change in the SERPs.

What we really need to do here is set out foot soldiers so to speak to test certain concepts and then put that collective knowledge together and debate it as a team.

[skipfactor]

>>Real Estate is real estate, there is no plural

>>The question of whether or not Real Estate has a plural

'real estate' and 'realty' are plural if you will in my eyes.

They're the broadest words in the business. They only reluctantly become singular with other words:

'nice piece of real estate'

'realty agent'

[SlyOldDog]

So Claus, what are you saying?

Some of my booted web sites have all permutations of/variations of all words/phrases related to my target keyword set.

On page/off page and on the site. Are you saying that it makes any difference to google if they see "fruit" twice or "fruit" once and related keyword "vegetable" once?

Or should we just reduce the total number of instances of keyword and related words?

I think I understand what you mean by stemming, but I don't see yet how the SEO can take advantage of it.

[synergy]

... eye-opener?

Absolutely. Just another reason to write more content, write more content, and when you are done.. write some more :)

[MS_Excel]

Yep, totally agree. Content has always been king and still is.

[Lovejoy]

Content may be king but how does ones own affiliates page of their own site get a higher ranking on Google? One of my affiliates is ranked at #2 while my original page with exact content is numbers four and seven, strange times indeed.

[Lovejoy]

Content may be king but how does ones own affiliates page of their own site get a higher ranking on Google? One of my affiliates is ranked at #2 while my original page with exact content is numbers four and seven, strange times indeed.