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Looking at my competetion, who are VERY active in the linking department, I can see that the most important factor for Google ranking is incoming links.
These guys are running affiliate sites with duplicate content DELUXE - not only are they on first pages for very competitive keywords, they also have dupicated sites in their networks also on page 1 - for HUNDREDS of search terms.
They swop links with every to Tom, dick and harry and the results are unbelievable.
All I want to do is build content and useful info for my visitors, but I am finding very little time to do this becasue I too have to spend enourmous amounts of time swapping links just to keep up.
I refuse to do what they are doing cos its blatant spam but my linking efforts to RELEVANT sites isnt paying off because I simply cant match the quantity of links they are getting.
Every month I slip a little further down the rankings and these SPAMMERS only move up. Even on the last update they STAYED on the first page, while my sites got dropped by several pages.
In conclusion I would just like to add that I think GOOGLE cares less and less about quality content, which is clearly reflected in their serps, and more about INCOMING LINKS - Quantity far outweighs quality.
GOOGLE - PR is an absolute JOKE these days - try something new and get rid of these affiliate spammers
>All I want to do is build content and useful info for my visitors,
That is exactly what I do, content, content, content! That way people will link to you of their own accord. I spend minimal time chasing links.
Keep Writing and you links will increase as a result. Your Site should be the focus of your attention.
But thenm that is only the way I do it, others work differently.
Onya
Woz
PR is an absolute JOKE these days
No, not really. Be patience on this point -- Google will give them their just rewards, You will see!
Tip - SEO is/has become a dirty acronym and with most people - their eyes glaze over when you talk terminology.
Look to more traditional "marketing" language or in other words -- what the average business person (large or small) can comprehend.
You will find that in a short period of time, you'll need to turn clients away.
"SEO" is "SEM" is "Intenet Marketing" is "web site marketing" is "web marketing" is "online marketing" is "marketing online" ... or just marketing.
Woz has some excellent point there too.
<Added>To clarify -- look away from the above terms in targeting online visitors. Most potential visitors do not comprehend the SEO concepts and don't search there.
If there was every an industry segment that has inflated numbers on search terms and phrases -- SEO is that segment. The bulk of searchers are SEO'ers themselves. They are the ones with the tools and the knowledge of SEOing</added>
Yes - I agree, but as I said "quantity incoming links far outweigh quality" - for every one incoming link I get they get 25!
I have been told to ignore my competitions spam tactics for over a year now, but all that has happened is that they have moved higher and higher and I have been literally BURIED.
Unfortunately CONTENT doesnt pay the bills (:
Woz wrote -
>That is exactly what I do, content, content, content! That >way people will link to you of their own accord. I spend >minimal time chasing links. Keep Writing and your links >will increase as a result. Your Site should be the focus >of your attention.
Many others say this also. I believed it. But now what is see is that many others will much much less content than mine has got more Pr and links than me and hence search engine ranks. I was proud of my sites content (you may check it out from my profile, though it is just 45 days old) I thought people will love to link me but till date I am the person who is chasing others for links but no one has asked me.
I am getting some response but not satisfactory. Can someone suggest something to help popularize my site.
The main focus of my site was my content (articles) but now i feel it is not of much help.
In the search engine optimization world this is great big sign that says:
"better not link here"!
<Added Later> As The Contractor has pointed out the site is not cache in Google, and a good reason why PR0...
Notwithstanding... most potential linkers (that have the Googlebar and looking for links) would take 1 look at the white and walk away.
This pretty much includes everyone that knows a little of SEO, at least enough to go looking for resources.</added Later>
[edited by: fathom at 1:55 pm (utc) on Oct. 19, 2002]
Can someone suggest something to help popularize my site.
Your site is esthetically pleasing, but being that it is built around english articles and content you absolutely must get a native speaking editor to proofread and edit everything on your site.
Getting links will be much easier if your site is free of spelling and grammatical errors.
If you can't afford to hire a professional outright, I'd suggest offering web design services in exchange for their time.
Lastly, your time will be better spent tackling a much less competitive area. You're currently pitting yourself against the very best search engine marketers in the world for those terms.
Choose a more humble goal and achieve some significant rankings yourself before attempting to market SEO services to others.
Still, as it's been defunct for at least two Google dances now, an algo that has to do with anything other than downlinks would have dropped it from its number two position.
The other thing is indiscriminate linking gets you PR0 - and that will kill your site in Google. If your competition is exchanging links with anyone then they will get PR0-ed out of the game
Fathom - Hi asomani, first things first -- Why PR0?
The site is not cached/indexed by Google ;)
[added: sorry toolbar was showing grey - now showing PR0]
The site is not cached/indexed by Google[added: sorry toolbar was showing grey - now showing PR0]
Still valid reasoning. The site is indexed almost fully... probably just lack of inbound external links with enough PR.
Links can be a tough game depending on your theme and your competators. Like others have stated working on creating great content that people "enjoy" reading and returning too is very important.
Once a site has reached a mass of content that can stand on it's own for some time link building stratagies. I used this tactic about three months ago and it is helping my site with incoming links and I am sure will work for any quality site:
Site owners are often looking for quality content to post to there sites. Let them know in several places on your site that any of your articles may be published to "their" sites as long as they attach your link at the bottom of each and every page that they include.
With my cooking site I have had site owners post more than 2 dozen recipes and or articles from my site with no coaxing from me at all. I simply spell it out load and clear (both on my home page and my webmasters page) that any site owner can post ANYTHING from my site as long as they include my link. THis works well simply because it is passive. Once you add a bit to your website and posting your content you can forget it. While I do "chase" links I find myself spending less and less time with it. People are now linking to me on there own.
Of course the more links you get each month the more visitors you get and the more incoming links come in. Once it starts to build it is like the snow ball effect.
Another tactic that has worked very well for my site and pushed my site from a pr5 to a pr6 was this:
look for sites that are actively seeking content and go to them. After about 9 months of working on my site I started to notice that many sites in my theme WANTED recipes from visitors. I simply searched for keywords like:
add recipe
email recipe
add your recipe
and so on. I then sent in many recipes to other sites and my site went to a pagerank 6.
Try to think about getting other sites to link to YOU without having to link to them. This is where you will start to jump to the next level.
Chef Brian
First, it must be remembered that Google is only one way to promote a site. There are an infinite number of other ways to advertise, and you MUST pursue as many of these as you can. Ezines, links, viral marketing, off-line promotiomns come to mind immediately.
Content is critical to most of these promotional method. People visit sites to get information or entertainment. Rarely, in my experience, do they visit for products except for the big, recognized name sites and brick and mortar site like Sears. I think that one thing the dot com collapse illustrated clearing is people are not all that interested in shopping on the internet - they want data, then they might buy something.
If your competition is exchanging links with anyone then they will get PR0-ed out of the game
Just to be clear, exchanging links is NOT spam. Joining a link farm or doing something to fool the engines is spam. But link exchanges are a respected, well established technique for improving traffic.
They swop links with every to Tom, dick and harry and the results are unbelievable
I don't understand how this is spam. Swapping links with lots of sites is NOT spam. It might be silly (low PR sites don't gain you much) but it's not spamming.
I too have to spend enourmous amounts of time swapping links just to keep up.
If you are in a very competitive marketplace, one thing to do is to try less-often used keywords. It's far easier to get a high ranking on words that still apply but are off the beaten track.
Also, try other promotional methods. Google is just one of many games to play.
PR is an absolute JOKE these days
It's only a joke if it is not understood or mis-used. Remember that PR is created by robot software, not humans, so it's not intelligent at all. It's just a program with a complex algorithm. ALL algorithms can be fooled or can make mistakes.
Richard Lowe
Looking at my competetion, who are VERY active in the linking department, I can see that the most important factor for Google ranking is incoming links.
That may be true if you're talking about your home page, which will be competing with a lot of other home pages on the same topic. But your home page is only one page on your site, and--if you have enough content--most traffic will arrive on inside pages through searches on targeted keywords and phrases.
I get several thousand referrals from Google and "Yahoogle" on a typical day, but less than 10% of the referrals are to the home page. The bulk of my referrals are to 2,500+ other pages where relevance takes precedence over PageRank and where I have fewer competitors. And even though I rank in Google's top 10 for several key search phrases (we'll call those "Elbonia travel" or "travel Elbonia,") internal referrals to my home page outnumber Google referrals because so many people are arriving on my site through the back door.
For what it's worth, my Google referrals and traffic continue to grow even though we're getting into the slowest time of the year for Elbonian travel planning. Why? I think it's because content *does* matter, and more content (i.e., more pages) will create more opportunities for people to find your pages in Google and other search engines.
TIP:
If you're writing an article on a topic (let's call the topic "Elboniaville"), divide the article into pages on that deal with subtopics. For example, your Elboniaville article might consist of pages on:
- Elboniaville in general (the intro page)
- Elboniaville tourist resources
- Elboniaville hotels
- Elboniaville restaurants
- Elboniaville buses, subways, and taxis
- Elboniaville museums
- Elboniaville sightseeing tours
...and so on. When a user searches on "Elboniaville museums," there's a good chance that the reader will find your "Elboniaville museums" page in Google even if that page has a lower PageRank than a competing page with a more general Elboniaville focus. Why? Because PageRank is just a tiebreaker. You'll be defeated by another page's higher PageRank ONLY if that page is as relevant (according to Google's algorithm) as yours is.
(Side note: Dividing the article by subtopic isn't just good SEO; it's also logical and useful for the reader. In other words, what's good for the search engine is also good for the reader--and vice versa.)
The major reason i feel that the PR is zero is that my site is new. I launched it six weeks back. I started my link building campaign after 10th October and now I have 21 links.
Do you think the progress is slow? Or, is it natural for new sites? Please advise.
Count anything quicker as a bonus, but they should pick the links up this coming crawl, and those should reflect for the end of November update.
Since finding WebmasterWorld, I've practically rebuilt our website and now we're currently experiencing about 2,000 hits per week from all different flavours of Google (.com, .co.uk, .fr etc) just from having a well structured site and lots of juicy content. 3 months ago this figure was half that.
We also have a Page Rank of 7 on our homepage, 6 for other pages, and 5 for the other 450 shiney new pages picked up in the last update. :)
Real links are good and I'm glad it is that way!
