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Now that article was like a prize winning thing
I now expect Brett to Give some more tips and Check his article again to see if some rules and tips have changed.
With time everything changes and i think there might be some new points which Brett could possible share with us.
Would wait for your time and if you could start compiling some new strategies.
regards and thanks for such a great place
dhaliwal
I would like to know if the time that has elapsed since the article was written has changed anything. In particular:
1-Size. Is this still as important now? And do the recommendations include graphics or just html?
2-CSS. Have spiders evolved enough to make usage of CSS and 4.0 okay?
Size is still important and it will continue to be until a huge majority of people have high speed internet at home. Even with high speed internet, the smaller the page, the better the response time. Response time is what your visitors will notice first, even before they actually see anything.
Thanks for the welcome, glad to be here. I hope to be able to contribute some day.
well my aim was to ask if breet is gonna give us some more tips.
TIA, Tom.
The article stands true, and pretty much is the antithesis of Good SEO practice for all search engines, if you take out the G-centric parts and replace with which ever SE you are targetting!
BTW, welcome to the Forums Corky! - nice to have you on board.
You still don't know about those 26 steps.
Well you are in some other world then, actually they are conrete help and it has given me the right directions and i spend a lot of time improving my site and always look at those points in case i need any help.
But i think there could be some changes that Brett would suggest as everyone can see lot of improvements and lot of changes to algorithms have taken place.
And in any case, there should be some changes in the rules
Do not use Virtual hosting- There are not enough IP's to go around and give one to each site. This debate has raged many times and there is still no evidence that a shared IP is any less succesful.
Submit to Looksmart & Yahoo - does this need any explaining?
What points could be added?
- Forget about PR
- Forget about guestbooks & link exchange programs
Others?
Brett likely was thinking about the theoretical scenario where your site could end up on a shared server where a lot of sites on it were pure spam. In that case Google may ding all sites on the server. Considering a static IP run a few bucks a month, if you have an e-commerce site which makes good money, I say a few bucks extra a month is worth it for insurance.
>What points could be added?
- Forget about PR
PR *definitely* counts with Google. PR today definitely is worth less than ever for the algo. However, only a fool of a webmaster would hesitate to jump at getting a high PR link dirt cheap.
The one part of that which always was totally wrong:
"Domain name: Easily brandable. You want "google.com" and not "mykeyword.com". Keyword domains are out - branding and name recognition are in - big time in."
Pure baloney. At least in the context of a document about succeeding in *Google*. VERY clearly with Google, if you want to come up high in the SERPs for "purple widgets", then the domain name purple-widgets.com is the best. There may be some validity to the argument that in terms of consumer reaction brandname.com may be better than purple-widgets.com. However, this doesn't alter the fact that on Google keyword domain names clearly have the edge. And, as far as marketing goes, in meatspace many have done well with keywords in the company name. Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc.
On the PR point, I think I am recommending to forget about it not because it isn't part of the algo but really it becomes an addiction that as we all agree is becoming less and less worthwhile pursuing.
Hey rfgdxm1, I gotta differ with you on this.
I have a domain that has 0 keywords in it. It is a brandname I created (way before Brett's advice). My site ranks #3 out of 9.6M results on Google for a very competitive 2 keyword phrase, and has been at that rank for months.
This site is at and stays at #3 because the page has well optimized in terms of keywords in the title tags and H tags, body text, etc. Also keywords in the incoming anchor text from relevant pages with good source PR.
Personally I don't think Google gives any weight to keywords in the domain.
That said, I do have 2 other domains with keywords in them that are ranked #1 for similarly competitive keywords. I believe they are ranked #1 because of other on page factors and incoming links.
One very good thing about having keywords in your domain is that when people link to you using only your url, e.g. [keyword1-keyword2.com...] you still get keywords in the anchor text pointing at your page.
Also, keywords in the anchor text *could* help the searcher to believe that your page is more relevant to his search. But too many keywords in the domain just looks like its a crappy site.
As always, these are just my opinions based on my own experience.
I suspect you are right that it isn't that Google favors directly domains with keywords, but keyword domains have the edge because of people tending to link in the form of [keyword1-keyword2.com...] My point is simply if the focus is ranking as high as possible on Google, all things being equal having keyword in domain name has an edge.
Are there any academic or info sites out there about the benefits of protein powder?
Some people who are new to this could incorrectly IMO conclude that Google gives a big boost to keywords in the domain when I don't think that is true.
The old Yahoo used to do give a big boost to keyword loaded domains, so back then it really helped to choose keyword loaded domains.
Today, it does help to balance keywords domains and branding. Too many keywords in the domain are [U-G-L-Y.com...] :)
The old Yahoo? Keyword in domain is still quite relevant to Yahoo.
>Today, it does help to balance keywords domains and branding. Too many keywords in the domain are [U-G-L-Y.com...]
The trick here is not to overdo it. IOW, use blue-widgets.com, and not buy-discount-high-quality-blue-widgets.com. As a consumer, I would find the former just the sort of site I am looking for. Seems like they specialize in just this product. The latter to me looks like little more than a spammer.
>Are there any academic or info sites out there about the benefits of protein powder?
Great suggestion. I guess my other question would be: Why would an *outbound* link be important? I thought it was all about incoming links.
If you do need an outbound link or want to put an outbound link, I'm sure there are some resources within .gov or .edu sites (i.e. non competitive authorities) that you could link to, which tell you about the benefits of protiens. You can also put a target=_blank to make sure that your page is still open.
I'm still not sold on the link to an authority theory. hmmm.. dunno.
Pure baloney. At least in the context of a document about succeeding in *Google*. VERY clearly with Google, if you want to come up high in the SERPs for "purple widgets", then the domain name purple-widgets.com is the best
Absolutely not true. Google has dropped more sites with keyword stuffed domains than any other search engine. Google pays more attention now to on page content than anything else. IMHO
But do you all agree to one thing?
PR is not a very strong sign for a page to be shown on the top in the search results?
I was amazed to see that my site with around 500 pages, all of them were upgraded recently from pr 0 to pr 4 and pr 3,
but i have seen no big jump in traffic even with increase in the PR.
So is Pr worthless now?
would seek answers
Depends if people are searching for those terms.
1) Have your serps changed? They usually change a couple of weeks before the TPR update.
2) Are people even searching for what you think they should be?
3) Have you factored in the fact that summer has set? This weekend particularly is brutal, with July 4th holidays in play.
PR is not worthless, it is a very important part of the Google algo.
The problem is an indvidual page's toolbar PR doesn't tell you much about how that page will rank when a given keyword phrase is searched upon.
For example, just because a page has a Toolbar PR of 7, doesn't mean it will outrank every other page of a PR of less than 7 for *every* search.
What matters is how much PR that page has flowing into it through links with target keyword phrase in their anchor text. That is how PR is relevant.
I have a particular page that I have been doing extensive testing on in regards to outbound links.
First, I had no outbound links from this page.
Then, I added a link to the number 2 result in the serps using the URL as the anchor text. Not even in the top 100.
Then I changed the anchor text to the keyword that I was trying to do the testing on. Which happens to be the title of my page and the title of the page I was linking to. A couple of weeks went by and then I was number 10 out of over 2 million.
Now I added a link to the number one result with the keyword as the anchor text, which is also the title of the page I am linking to.
So, I expect that in a few weeks I should move up to between 3 and 5.
I will post again to let everyone know how it goes.
I think it would be wise, as in other marketing ventures outside SEO, to Brand your site and build it with content about the terms you wish to rank for. Buying a domain for the intent of high search results doesn't benefit your reader or help promote your site.
Would you rather have people say "Hey! go check out brand.com" or "keyword1keyword2.com but i cant remember the name of whats on it?"
If your page is on target and has loads of information, your readers and Google will take notice. Word will spread and traffic will increase.
I.E.
red widgets
blue widgets
yellow widgets
or
adj adj widgets 1
adj adj widgets 2
adj adj widgets 3
adj adj widgets 4
or
adj adj widgets Texas
adj adj widgets New York
adj adj widgets Russia
