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Good results? Same-old same-old?
Let us know, please.
How did you de-optimize?
are we talking about the theme of a site or the theme of a page?
All speculation of course but I would think a link from a page sharing a similar theme would be important. I haven't seen anything to convince me Google really assigns a "theme" to an entire web site. A theme on a page on the other hand can easily be identified by the same algorithm they already use for ranking purposes.
I'm not a programmer but if I were I would take into account ALL aspects and assign a value to each. So in the case of PC Magazine including my doughnuts site in their food category I would weigh the universal PR just as I would do it for don-loves-doughnuts.org and factor it in. To be more precise about things I would look at the PR and "themes" of the sites linking to the PC Magazine page and don-loves-doughnuts page and factor in those sites' PR and "theme credits" if you will when considering where to rank my site.
Given that the G isn't going to reveal its ranking system the closest we can get to scientific deduction here is by making small changes and waiting patiently to see the results.
Maybe if we ask GoogleGuy "pretty please with a cherry on top" he will explain to us the weight the title tag carries, its relationship to kw density, PR and themes value etc., and of course the name of that one individual at the plex who says "I think this site should go right about......here"
You mean you used them incorrectly to try and boost your rankings? Spamming.
Not necessarily. I added the header tag for the benefit of SEO, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a legitimate header. I did not use Headers before trying to optimize my site and from what I had learned, I was under the impression they were a necessity.
I am not saying I did not intentionally optimize my site, because I did as everybody on this site has done. That doesn't mean that everybody has overdone it.
I see this new algo change taking these highly competative areas and really giving the optimizers a spanking. pre florida you could see scores of realtors trying to rank for a version of the term "real estate" example: "some city real estate" or "some state real estate". Now you don't see as many and people are yelling, "filtered, filtered".
I think that has to do with theme. How many realtors have real estate on their site?
If they do is it static or an offsite MLS type of listing with dynamic query strings a foot long?
Basically what I'm getting at is that realtor and realty is way different to google then real estate.
I have a few realtors that dropped and I've made some changes and they're back up.
Not only that people don't search for realtors they search for real estate and if you put some static real esate listing with some good descriptions you will see a world of difference in the SERPs
I've aslo seen on the same datacentres a site come from #200+ to #6 today, strange thing is though when I looked at the cache there was nothing there at all.
He's probably still mesmorized by looking at the number of zeros on his calculator after calculating how much he will make off of his stock options.
Yes.
>still appears like "G" has a penalty on ALL agents, etc. for geographic/real estate searches
Nope. Lots of agent sites doing well.
Filter main keyword phrase and leave all other non-popular phrases doing ok, I saw PR0 page higher than one of my PR5 pages. This PR0 was not a page from a higher PR site, just a new site starting out, and the results I have seen above me prove something is not right in the serps.
For the last few months we were seeing trickles of traffic from other les important keywords, today our traffic just stops dead. We only have a few keywords in the top 10 now, not sure if we are being penelized or more people have entered with more links but im now going to de-optimise my site, but keep building links to see what happens.
For broad terms you get broad results with descriptive/general terms I see my clients ranking better.
It's not hard to see what ranks and match it so why are we still discussion how to dupe your way to the top? See what is there and then structure accordingly.
It dropped from 1500 to 700 unique daily visitors Mid November and got steadily worse through Dec. Today I have got all the old positions back. Part of the strategy has been "de-optimization" including dropping the Florida impacted phrase from the site title. I am using WPG2 to keep all my keyphrase densities apart from title within acceptable ranges. No H1 tags anywhere. Link text densities and word counts at top of acceptable ranges.
We were absolutely destroyed by Florida but are now healthier and fitter than before it happened.
A few days later me dropped to page FIVE. :p
So we reoptimised the site only very slightly and I checked today and we are back at page 2! So what worked? Did the anchor text do it or did the site reoptimisation do it. I'm not sure but I might add a few more keywords to see if it moves up or hits a filter and moves down. Small and tentative steps now......
I am also curious as to whether some sites have got caught up in a filter on the newest links.
There was also some talk very early in the Florida fiasco about a rollback. Google only now counting mature links e.g. at least two/three months old to avoid weblog and guestbook effects. That would mean that rapidly advancing sites would drop and bounce back two months later.
There was also some talk very early in the Florida fiasco about a rollback. Google only now counting mature links e.g. at least two/three months old to avoid weblog and guestbook effects. That would mean that rapidly advancing sites would drop and bounce back two months later.I am seeing websites rocking high at the serps by sheer power of the link text coming from guestbooks and blogs. Most of them are stable there because while some spend their time in getting good links or writing good content, these sites keep spamming the guestbooks. So, when one link goes into the archive, another one is placed there. It's working for them.
Another thing that I have noticed is that for certain Florida keywords, some sites getting the exact link text as the keyword, especially from links pages, are 'punished' or don't do well enough. While for the same keyword, the other sites that get links with the same link text but from the guestbooks are doing pretty well in the serps. I read somebody's opinion about how G treats backlinks, who maintained that G would be giving more weight to the links within the p tag,(within a paragraph) since they seem a part of the content on the page, and thus more natural, while the links on links.htm or similar pages seem to be very artifical from visitors point of view. I get a feeling that this very much is the reason why guestbboks links are proving so valuable. Any thoughts?
As of deoptimization and ranking, I did fall of the map for a very competitive kw1-kw2 phrase, but I did nothing but waited. I first saw the index page climbing up for kw2, and then I reverted back (exactly where it was pre-florida) within a few days for kw1-kw2 as well.
It's equally possible to have a page of nice looking natural text using tables and breaks with some very naturally placed links without a <p> tag anywhere in sight.
I'm not sure what the background to this theory is, possibly there's some truth in it but wouldn't it be better to count the number of external links on a page and if there is above a certain number of external links in close proximity all pointing to different domains then discount or reduce the weight of those.
It's probably not worth trying unless you know that your backlinks are heavy with your keyphrase at the start of them.
Backlinks heavy with the topic/keyphrase of a page is a good thing.
H1 tags with your appropriate title/topic/keyphrase are a good thing.
Backlinks heavy with the topic/keyphrase of a page is a good thing.Yes, I agree this would appear to be the case, but...H1 tags with your appropriate title/topic/keyphrase are a good thing.
"Backlinks heavy with the topic/keyphrase of a page is a good thing.
AND
H1 tags with your appropriate title/topic/keyphrase are a good thing. "
For commercial searches, having these two qualities without having a very significant amount of 'one level up' anchor means you won't rank well for this topic, but only for sub topics of it. The sites that rank well for the topic will be the ones that are one level up in taxonomy.
Of course, some of this changed today with an apparent relaxation of the chokehold, but it still exists.
very significant amount of 'one level up' anchor means you won't
Powdork, what do you mean by this?
Coordinated page content, page titles, inbound anchor text, and H1 tags are what rule the serps, anecdotal exceptions notwithstanding. *AND* most importantly, these things are all pure white hat seo that Google appreciates and that is 100% user friendly.
If you have a page about the history of red widgets, title the page History of Red Widgets, have anchor text that says History of Red Widgets, and have an H1 that says History of Red Widgets. That is good webmastering, good seo'ing and good googling.
The thread didn't start out for spreading myths or as a how-to engage in poor webmastering.
You De-optimized Your Website
Are You Happy Now?
That is the topic for this debate. SteveB is saying there is no debate, de-optimization sucks, you just have to max out in title tags H1 and anchor text within recognized limits and that is all there is to it.
I have been doing that for two years, Florida came along and we started to see if it is worthwhile re-writing the rule book. That is why this topic is here, for like minded people who are prepared to think outside the box to talk about whether de-optimization works or not.
The subject of this set of posts is whether de-optimization works/worked. The only contribution that Steveb has made is No, it doesn't, old school optimization is white hat and must rule the roost.
I have re-written my own book, thought outside the box and have had success. I am trying to contribute to the discussion that this set of posts has as its topic.
The topic discussion should be more than yes it works- no it doesn't -you're rubbish cos you tried it everyone knows it doesn't blah blah flame flame.
I am presenting anecdotal evidence, yes. That is precisely what the post at the start of this topic suggests is appropriate for it.
I like being a fish out of water this morning. I am at number four for a single commercial term that is getting me 600 daily visitors today and $600USD in gross margin on that phrase ++++ on all the other related niche phrases. The keyphrase is nowhere in site in my home page title and H1 tags and the Home page appears to have had a boost.
I followed the recommendations of marketposition.com who can hardly be described as fish out of water.
I was looking for evidence to see whether what I did worked or are there other old school optimized sites that took a boost this morning?
