WPGold

Is it a silver bullet?

[rmccabe]

Any feedback out there on how effective WPGold is in achieving success on AV? I am in a very competitive niche (keyword: IT jobs) so I slavishly tweaked my home page to meet their suggestions. Just submitted tonight, so too soon to tell. Just looking for general comments.

Rick

[tigger]

I've been using WPG for some time now and have always got very good results on AV, although make sure you don't upset them as banning come's as second mature to AV so tread carefully. It normally takes around 2/3 weeks to start picking up the doorways.

[seth_wilde]

You can be succesfull using WPG, just remember to NEVER use their gateway template. Other than that, AV uses exact matching for the keyphrase IT jobs, so make sure to check that box on. And when optimizing I would forget WP's "suggestions" and stick to what you see working on AV(remember to ignore possible cloaked sites).

[tigger]

seth

yeah, but don't forget about the great blue line ;)

[oilman]

I still have a couple blue line pages doing very nicely - ;)

[seth_wilde]

"the great blue line"
ahhh.....the memories.... :)

"I still have a couple blue line pages doing very nicely"

I'm guessing you're keeping scooter as far away from these as possible (robot.txt), (or you just like living the dangerous life *L*)

[oilman]

These pages haven't seen scooter since the last blue moon.

[kcbuckshot]

WPG seems to do ok for non to semi competitive areas. Go to a keyword that you know is highly competive, and can be 99% sure that the #1 page isn't cloaked. Run that WPG page critic on it and see what happens. You should find that WPG's opinion will be that the page shouldn't even be listed.

[chi]

Blue line pages? What are you talking about, if i'm not indiscreet?

[tigger]

Chi.

the blue line refers to the WPG generated pages which automatically puts a blue line image under the heading.

Which is a red flag now to most SE

[WebGuerrilla]

"WPG seems to do ok for non to semi competitive areas. Go to a keyword that you know is highly competive, and can be 99% sure that the #1 page isn't cloaked. Run that WPG page critic on it and see what happens. You should find that WPG's opinion will be that the page shouldn't even be listed."
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In order to obtain any kind of legitimate statistical analysis of only a portion of an algorithm (actual page criteria) I think you must only analyze non-competitive terms. That is the only way to be sure that the rankings you're looking at are based soley on what's on the page.

Another point to keep in mind is that in general, the more popular a page/site is, the less weight page criteria has.

We have several clients that have top listings in AV with pages that violate all currently known components of AV's algorithm. (Things like high KWD, overly repetitve meta tags, etc.)

These pages are re-spidered regularly, and they remain ranked at the top. This is due to the fact that they are all very popular.

We have also seen even more extreme examples of page criteria being thrown completely out the window at Excite.

With that being said, WPG is still a good tool if you are attempting to enter a well established, competitive niche with a new site. I wouldn't suggest that you try and use WPG to do any page by page analysis. Instead use it to build pages that conform to the general AV reccomendations.

This will usually allow you to enter the database at a point you can work with. (Top 50-100 depending on how competitive the phrase)

From that point focus your efforts on building popularity and submitting new links to AV and you will see your pages rise over time.

[tigger]

WebGuerrilla

I completely agree with you that some sites that are ranking highly with AV, after running these through WPG does not explain their position.

What is the definition of a "highly competative keyword"? Surly this applies any keyword for you client. So far we have had a good success with using WPG critic and most of the doorways we have produced are ranking in the top 20 and a high percentage in the top 5 first time in.

Tigger

[WebGuerrilla]

"What is the definition of a "highly competative keyword"?"

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We base our competitive analysis on the number of pages in a database that contain an exact match (using quotes) for the desired phrase.

In rmccabe's case, AV contains close to 60,000 pages that include the phrase "IT jobs." I would consider that a highly competitive phrase. By way of comparison, AV only has one page containing the phrase "PHP programming jobs."

(I would consider that to be a non-competitive term:)

The chances that WPG will have any imediate effect for a phrase like IT jobs is fairly slim. The #1 site uses a frameset with very little body text and the #2 site doesn't contain an exact phrase match (other than the title) anywhere on the page.

These are just a couple of examples of how pages can rank well "despite of" rather than "because of" proper page criteria.

Of course, that doesn't mean rmccabe's wasting his/her time analyzing pages with WPG. Down the road, when all other things are basically equal, having pages that conform to an Average AV analysis will more than likely allow the page to rank higher than ones that do not.