I’m happy to report that my Google page rankings for my problem site have now been holding steady at number 2 for the last couple of weeks.

Page ranking number 2 for keyword

This is very cool and I will keep adding content and blog posts until I take out the number 1 ranked site.  I think I will be doing some short videos of the techniques I use and try video link building as part of this as well.

Once again, stay tuned for the next update…. SEO rankings are a journey, not a destination!

Jim

I Have an SEO Problem… Apparently I Don’t! is a post from: Enduring SEO

Woke up and checked my rankings in SEO Elite, and to my delight found that my site had vaulted out of the gurgler for three of my main key phrases.  I attribute this, hopefully not fleeting, improvement to my adjusting anchor text on some of the incoming links and to adding some content to the site… although not as much as I had originally planned.  (Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way…)

If this circumstance maintains, I will be happy and more importantly MAY be able to conclude that incoming links from nasty pages aren’t necessarily that bad and that the main reason my site dropped in the rankings was my taking my eye off the ball and modifying anchor text and on page optimization for a juicier keyword prior to achieving a consistent position 1 performance with my original keyword.  On the other hand, the Googster might just be f**king with me because they are evil and have a hate on for SEO practitioners and therefore my site will be back in the sewer in a week’s time.

Time will tell fearless readers, stay tuned…

Oh yeah, on the Goog is evil theme… I ran across a plumbing site up here that has 4 pages of minimalistic content, a small number of low page rank links with non optimized anchor text and is outranking sites with 10 x the content and links. When asked to explain the mystery I theorized that the Gnomes at Google might artificially bump the rankings of random sites to throw off the algo propeller heads and keep SEOs guessing about whether what they think works is actually the best way of optimizing. It’s certainly got me thinking…..

Light at the End of the Tunnel… Er Maybe .. is a post from: Enduring SEO

I’m at the stage of slinging mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. I just noticed that I haven’t put many outgoing links on my site which may look weird to a search engine. So I am in the process of adding a few relevant links to useful spots on the web, the first of which is to the Google Keyword tool. I figure that if any of my visitors want to do their own SEO they might as well start at the right spot, which is figuring out if there is any search traffic for the keywords they would be optimizing for.

No traffic, no point in optimizing the site for those keywords AND if they are counting on search revenues as a significant part of their income, they may want to find a different niche.

Where wuz I? Oh yeah, slingin sh..  stuff at the wall…  So I’ll try the outbound links thing on some of the pages and see what happens.  Still haven’t added any content beyond this blog post, gotta get to that today or tomorrow.  My new best friend (link indexing tool) told me that my inbound link map grew by 200 links in January, too bad they seem to be mostly gray barred pages.

While I am not yet ready to abandon the flaming wreckage of my site as plunges into the deep abyss of 50th page rankings, I have scored a couple of new domain names to begin building anew.  One will be a WordPress blog only, the other will be a traditional site that I will eschew automated link building services on. The focus will be on good content and high page rank links that I retain control of. Be interesting to see how many it will take to start ranking where I want it to rank.

Stay tuned, the saga continues!  (anyone else remember Njarl and HIS saga?)

I Have an SEO Problem, Stumbling Thru the Wilderness is a post from: Enduring SEO

I’m tending to discount the Caffeine update issue because I have used the same optimization techniques on other sites that are no worse for wear.  I’m also not ready to declare the bad incoming links scenario the victor at this point either.  Perhaps a third scenario is that I have not really spent any time generating new content on the site, focusing pretty much exclusively on link building, which can be pretty exhausting.  So I think I’ll add some new hand crafted pages on a fairly regular schedule, perhaps 1 every week or two, as an attempt to see if that makes any difference.

I’ll probably also set up a blog and free associate a bit to bring up the page count.

While I am tearing what little hair I have left out over this issue, it’s not all bad.  I have found a new tool that allows me to REALLY get a good handle on the link architecture of any site I am interested in. This tool uses a proprietary search engine to provide ALL the backlink results to the domain, not the hamstrung details provided by Google or Yahoo.  I’m finding it very handy in gauging how hard it might be to move a client site past the incumbents on page 1 of the SERPs.

Stay tuned for more anon,

Jim

I Have an SEO Problem, Quest for Answers…. is a post from: Enduring SEO

There are competing theories to explain this, one being that my site got caught up in the recent Google update and came out on the short end, ranking wise. The other is that I got less picky than I should have in my article marketing efforts and that some of the articles are located on “gray barred” (bad reputation) pages that are killing my rankings. The second theory flies in the face of conventional wisdom that incoming links can’t harm your SERP rankings, but it was expounded by someone who has enough data to be convinced that bad incoming links torpedo rankings all the time.

I’m still on the fence between these two scenarios and have not given up looking for a third or fourth potential cause of this pain in the butt situation.  I will be documenting my efforts to track down the cause and implement the fix right here in this blog, so stay tuned.

I Have an SEO Problem, Perhaps You Can Relate? is a post from: Enduring SEO

I call this approach “Enduring SEO” since I feel following these principles will get my client’s sites on to the first page of the Google SERPs and keep them there through any algorithm adjustments, etc.

The first principle is to establish a link building program, using keyword focused anchor text, that delivers inbound links to specific pages at a consistent rate, for as long as the client wants to achieve high rankings for those pages.

The second principle is to ensure each page targeted for a high SERP result, has well written, value added content related to the keyword (or words if low competition keywords). I don’t subscribe to the keyword density school of thought, I use the keywords were they make sense and read well.

I have found that following these principles consistently leads to success over the long term.

2 Principles to Follow for Enduring SEO is a post from: Enduring SEO

I mean really, how many “regular” (i.e. non digirati) folks will actually bother to drag a more relevant search result higher up a SERP? First of all, how will they even know this is possible; second of all, if by some miracle Google gets them to read an explanation of how to use the feature, any bets on the percentage of folks that will bother? Classic case of, sure I could spend 5 seconds to move a more relevant result onto the spam site above it, but What’s In It For Me?

Even for folks like you or I, who would supposedly be aware of and willing to use the feature, if I’m searching for something and come upon a crap site, I hit back and click on the next entry down. It would have to be REALLY bad to make me spend the time to drag the next result above it.

I’m just not feeling the love on that particular idea. And even if people jumped on the band wagon and started modifying organic search results, if a site is optimized using enduring SEO techniques it won’t be crap in the first place. Therefore no reason for the site to be penalized.

It also opens up the possibility of a new cottage industry, find a 1000 people on different IP addresses, pay them a buck or two to move a page to the top of the serps (probably need to space it out over time, however nothing a simple email auto responder couldn’t handle quite nicely) and voila! Your page is now #1.

Yeah, now that I think it through, Google should definitely implement this feature, but not right away. I need some time to build my list

Google User Ranked Search Results is a post from: Enduring SEO

As an SEO expert, I use strategies that are intended to deliver long term results to my clients.  None of the stuff I do is rocket science or SEO magic, it is simply applying common sense based on a large amount of research and on experience I’ve acquired in figuring out what helps and what doesn’t when it comes to search engine results.  It can be boiled down to giving Google what it wants, which is value added, readable, keyword focused content on a page. Google wants this because it wants searchers to find what they are searching for without wading through a ton of crap pages. If the searcher is happy, Google is happy and the pages that make the searcher happy move up in the SERPs.

So if it’s all common sense, why do SEO experts exist?  For the same reason a lawyer, an engineer, a car mechanic or an IT technician exists. Not every web site owner or web developer has the time or wants to learn the techniques required to move their pages onto the top of the SERPs. They’d rather focus on their core business and pay someone else to handle it.

If they pay someone and get the long term results they are looking for, who’s going to claim that they got a bad deal?  Sure it might have cost them some money, but think of the time and aggravation they saved by not having to reinvent the wheel…

As an ethical SEO practitioner, I make sure my clients understand what volume of traffic their chosen keywords can generate for their site, as well as how competitive their niche is and how long it will take to achieve their goals. I do this as part of a free site review that is the first step in any client engagement I undertake. If they decide they want to work with me, they know what they are paying for.

I’m an SEO and Proud of It! is a post from: Enduring SEO