Last pagerank update happened in December 31, 2009 – January 1, 2010, which means there should be another pagerank update this month, hopefully by mid-April. For those who believe that pagerank is irrelevant, here is a good recent article – Matt Cutts’ Comments on Crawling & Indexation. It certainly doesn’t mean as much as it used to, but it is still a big part of the algorithm.

I haven’t posted for a while, mostly because I’ve been pretty busy with a few new projects and SEO experiments. It is pretty cool what a keyword rich domain name, a dedicated server plus a few relevant links can do for ranking. I was even able to hit #1 position for a simple 1 page landing page.

I am thinking about getting my own colocated server soon and close four hosting accounts that I have now. It will be just a little more than what I pay right now for all four, I’ll probably end up picking something like quad xeon with 8-16gb of ram from ebay. It should be waaay faster than all servers that I have now put together. I believe fast and reliable server will help the rankings even more.

There are a ton of tools that can be used for keyword research. I believe the most used one is the free keyword tool provided by adwords. It is free and useful but I am not relying on it anymore. It used to be THE tool for me and I thought that the results were somewhat precise, but they are not.

Couple years ago I was running Netflix campaigns and they were converting very well. Adwords traffic was converting at XXX% with just a simple blog page that had Netflix banner on it. This is when I decided to build a full blown site around Netflix. I used their API to build a simple movie related site, but they removed me from the campaign before I had a chance to finish. I did a basic keyword research on google’s keyword tool, and it showed pretty good numbers for “online movies rent”, which made me buy onlinemoviesrent.com. As of today, I didn’t really finish the site, but have some content there. I rank decent for the keyword (6-8 on the page 1 for this month), however, out of 354 visitors from google this month, only 1 was for actual “online movies rent”. This is just an example, but make sure that you do as much keyword research as possible before investing time in the site. Don’t rely on 1 tool and if possible, use as many as possible, including 1-2 paid ones of your choice.  There are a few popular ones, such as keyword discovery, semrush, wordtracker, wordze, keyword spy, etc… You can find most of them on page 1 of google and they usually provide free trials or free top 10 results so you can evaluate and chose the one you like the best.

A lot of affiliates are moving to media buys these days, but I still like ppc traffic the most. Sure, google will suggest you some keywords that you need, but you can get 5 times more targeted traffic if you find a good tool and put more long tail keywords that have less competition. I used to test with google, then expand to yahoo and other ppc sources to get more traffic, but now I check for more keywords before exploring other traffic sources.

Anyway, do your keyword research! Let us know which one you love the most and why.

As you can see in the example image above, bing comes up as #1 result when searching for “search engine” on google. I checked the same keywords on bing and google doesn’t come up in the search results. Pretty interesting, seems that bing actually chooses highly targeted keywords that are not really cheap. I assume that being #1 in the search result for “search engine” costs couple bucks per click. It seems that the two competing companies chose different advertising methods to advertise on each other. I wonder if there is a way to measure the results and actually see who is getting a better deal. It is interesting to see if one google user who clicks on highly targeted ad is worth more to bing than forty bing users (assumptions) who click on less/non targeted ads to google? I would think that google got a better deal here, what about you? My assumptions are based on my cpc campaigns and I tend to like 0.05 cent keywords more than $1-$5 ones, I usually get better ROI this way.

Another interesting observation is that bing comes up as #3 result in organic search, as you can see on the same image above. While it is not #1, it probably still gets a quite few new users to bing. I also think that google has some explanations for this, #1 altavista is the oldest, #2 dogpile is older then bing too, etc… However, when searching for “search engine” on bing, google is not even on page 1. It is in position #14 on page 2 for me here. Hmm… That is odd. While bing may have it’s own algorithms that are somewhat confidential, it makes me wonder how searchenginehistory.com for instance comes before google? Obviously pagerank doesn’t have value here as google is 10 and this site is 5. Backlinks are not the main factor here either, google has waaaay more backlinks. Is it domain age? Doesn’t seem so… It shows 2005 for searchenginehistory and 1998 for google here. Traffic rank/bookmarks/sitemap stats are significantly better for google too. While bing is pretty new, it makes sense to see if there is some bigger factor here. To me it looks like google beats searchenginehistory in every way except that it doesn’t have “searchengine” in the url or the title. There is also no content (it must be the king, right?). Does bing pay that much attention to these?

Anyway, its time to make some sort of conclusion on how we can relate this info to our interest.

First, watch the competition and get as much details as possible. When I was writing previous post, I didn’t know that bing is using google for advertisement as well. I thought google was the only smart one. While I had some interesting observations, I did not have enough facts.
Second, always go into the details, think why things are the way they are when it doesn’t make sense. As a result of this observation I learned that domain name, content and title have more effect on the position in bing than I thought it had. I will probably do additional research on the subject and see if I can rank higher in bing for some sites.
Third, when you look at the competitor, think that a competitor may be looking back at you. If you have a valuable service, be protective, be smart, be sneaky… As long as it’s all legal…

At last, you probably have some interesting assumptions as well. Please post your comments, let us know your opinion on the subject.

I performed a few bing searches for a few cheap keywords today and found a pretty interesting ad. I have a search screen above and in case you want to see the ad text, here it is:

What was interesting to me is that the keywords for this ad were cheap – I assume around .05 since google was not even in the first position for the term. The page actually went to google’s site (http://www.google.com/services/hp/#utm_source=en-ha-na-us-hge-google&utm_medium=ha&utm_campaign=en) with a button to make google a home page. If I were to assume that their conversion rate is under 10%, which is the average on my campaigns, it means that they get a visitor for over $0.50, which is probably worth every penny. Here are a few reasons behind my assumptions:

1) People who click on the ad actually click on sponsored listings. $.05 will pay off the first time user would click on the ad on google since it is the lowest bid on adwords for search network. A converting user may be clicking on sponsored ads throughout the rest of his/her life.

2) People who use bing convert better since they are usually less computer savvy and many don’t pay attention to the difference between sponsored and regular links.

3) Seems that bing is gaining some market share, would google be able to slow down the growth with $.05 bid for lower end keywords? Google has a lot of adwords data and it doesn’t take them much to figure out high volume lower paying keywords.

However, there are a few things that I find odd:

1) Google is all for “Positive user experience”, no unrelated landing pages, right? Well, what is this page then – http://www.google.com/services/hp/#utm_source=en-ha-na-us-hge-google&utm_medium=ha&utm_campaign=en? One button? On “Create avatar” keyword? I find it interesting when a company does the same thing it tries to fight, kind of doesn’t make sense to me. I know Microsoft adCenter has some sort of “quality score” system as well. I find no solution to “create avatar” on this landing page. How did google manage to get unrelated traffic to low quality one page site?

2) Google assumes that the user who clicked on the ad did not find what he was looking for on bing and therefore may want to check out google for results. Having some knowledge in affiliate marketing, their landing page seems awful to me. Nothing to compare the results, nothing to say why I should make google my home page, nothing to convince me to switch.

Oh well, it’s google. They can do whatever they want I guess. I can just take it as a lesson. The lesson #1 here is – study your competition, pay close attention to what you can do to decrease competitor’s market share and gain yours! A lot of time I notice that the competition is running adsense. I then can use adwords to run my ads on their sites. I can make unique landing pages to take over customers from 0ther companies, write unique ad text for each of the sources that I find. It is possible to make a bank this way and seems that google just illustrated this perfectly.

As for lesson #2 - work on gaining authority! Then you can do what you feel like doing, even if it contadicts your own policy.

So, what’s the big deal? The big deal is it can be an easy way to get traffic to your site. For instance, the term “easysubmits” generates around 20 visitors every day for us. Even if half of the searchers will click on the link mentioned in your twitter post, you would get around 10 visitors. This is just an example, but don’t go for unrelated traffic. Look for something in your niche. Go to twitter and search for something niche specific to see the latest tweets and search for the key terms mentioned in those tweets. Spend half an hour and you may find a gem that may generate a good targeted traffic to your website. Make sure that you have shortened link to your site in the tweet.

It was pretty hard to get to #1 position on google before, but not anymore.  Tweet about the brands of your competitors,  industry resources, something interesting yet relevant, add your URLs, get traffic. At least while it is still there, after all, I heard its only a beta.

P.S. I wonder how much more traffic twitter receives due to this change. Please share if you know a good statistical resource.

What exactly is website authority, how do you check if you have one and how to gain it? I started to notice that people talk more and more about site authority. Is PageRank slowly getting replaced? I read quite a bit on the topic lately, and it seems that the methods of gaining authority are not too much different than increasing a pagerank. However, source quality seems to be the focus.

I remember a couple of years ago I would just register a keyword rich domain name, put a landing page, get a few links from directories and enjoy the organic traffic. Doesn’t work this way any more. I created a landing page, got some pagerank, built a few links but still on 15th page for my target key phrase. Seems that search engines are getting smarter, pagerank lost it’s power and website authority has more effect now.

So, how do you check if you have a website authority? Here is how I look at it:

1) Go to google and type something like “cnn” in the search bar. See 8 sitelinks below it? As far as I can see, those only show up for the websites that have authority. Well, it’s a well known news site you may say. Sure, type in “Shoemoney” or “Nicky Cakes”, same story. 8 here as well, I don’t think google goes beyond 8 at this point. You can see less however, see “Jonathan Volk” as an example, his blog has 6. Still shows authority. My blog is relatively new, but there are a ton of older blogs that don’t have even 1 sitelink. Even if you type hackcorp.com, you are not going to see one. (yet)

2) Check google news. That’s right, go to news.google.com and type “site:techcrunch.com”. If you see the results, the site must have a lot of authority as well. It takes a lot of effort to get listed on google news.

Did you check your site? Any results? If not, don’t get discouraged. Those factors show the sites with big authority levels but you may have some too. How long does it take to get indexed for a new page/post on your site/blog? Does it instantly rank relatively high? If yes than you have some level of authority too.

Now a few tips to increase the authority of a website:

1) Quality Backlinks. Do you have unique newsworthy content? Write it from a slightly different perspective, try to make it as interesting as possible, do some research, spend a couple of hours to add and edit more interesting information on the subject. Keep on trying to get to page 1 on digg, reddit, mixx and other social networking sites, there are a ton of good ones. This would give you a lot of traffic and authority.

What is there besides social networking? Other sites! Try to get backlinks from other sites, just make sure that they are established and have some authority. Following a blog in your niche? Ask if the owner would want a guest post from you, work hard on it and send it for review. Don’t forget to reference yourself.

What else? Directories… Any? No. While low quality directories may bring some benefit, you should focus on getting indexed in the quality ones – dmoz, botw and yahoo if you have some budget. There are a ton more, you know how to check for authority now, get a list and start checking. Type “Botw” in google, you’ll see sitelinks.

Anything else? Yes! Press Releases and established article directories. Same trick here. It is hard to get approved in many press release places like prweb.com, but this is what you need. As a matter of fact, if you get approved in those a few times, you may end up in google news and get a TON of visitors as well. Try to have a few authors on the articles and work hard on them. Write quality content and be consistent.

2) Content on your site. Make sure that it is unique! Duplicate content gets penalized, don’t steal. Be consistent and write on a regular basis. Don’t write for search engines, write for people, even if you don’t have them yet. Content is the king, or at least a throne for the king.

3) Other important factors. Make sure that your site looks professional. Don’t keep the default wordpress theme, make it look like you care! Make sure you site-load speed is good. Optimize or change hosting if needed. Don’t host on a crappy host, I heard stories how rankings go up instantly when people switch from crappy shared hosting. If you have a shared host, check the sites that are on the same ip, make sure there are not banned or spammy sites. Use tools like sitesonmyip.com to check all the sites on your ip, if you see a few spammy sites on your ip, perhaps you should look for a different host or ask your provider if there is a way to move to a better server. I would even recommend lower level dedicated or vps hosting if you know how to set one up. You can find some that are slightly more expensive than shared.

Renew your domain name for the next few years. Take a look at authoritative sites, most of them are registered for the next 10 years or even more. It shows that you are serious about your site and it doesn’t cost much. (I use name.com, see if you can find a promo online).

Make sure that your URL is search engine friendly. Learn how to use .htaccess for URL rewrite if needed.

Don’t spam! Not in forums, not in newsgroups, not anywhere else. Don’t submit to directories with the same title and description, don’t use automated traffic exchanges, be wise when doing any link exchanges.

Keep on creating great content!

Please let me know if this post helped you or if you have any additional information on the topic.

Why would somebody buy featured links on a directory if they can get a regular one for free? There are a few important factors. Many tend to think that it is approval time. I think that the average approval time for a featured link is 1-2 days, however, it is not the main criteria.

As you may know, we run a few directories for several years already. We sold quite a few featured links for $5/year (I think that this is an average what they go for).  Usually the bigger the PR the more links directory sells. If you take the average price of $5 that gets you a featured link for a year, it only costs you a little less than 0.42c a month.

Well, here is something interesting behind featured links.  To illustrate the point, we will start explaining how regular links on most of the directories work. When you submit a regular link to the directory, it takes some time to get approved. Upon approval – it becomes the first link in the top of the category. As soon as another link gets added to the same category, yours becomes second and moves down the line from first to tenth, from page one to page two, three, and so on. So your link does not stay on the same page all the time. Therefore it may be indexed in one day and disappear from search engine’s list of incoming links the next day. Featured directories do not move from page to page – in the most directories they are on every single page of the category.

Where am I going with this? Lets look at a random category on a random directory – I chose “Business” on Onpaco Free Web Directory. At this point there are 154 pages in “Business” section. So, whenever you buy a link – you are buying a link on 154 relevant pages! Plus you get a chance to get a link to your site from the pr1 index page since they show random featured links on the index page as well. If you are familiar with SEO – you know that the top part of the content generally is more important then the bottom. That is where featured links usually go as well, which gives us another point that shows the value of 42 cents a month. We also noticed that featured links get more clicks as well.

Does it make sense now? Well, how do you find the right directories? You may think like the most of the crowd and go after the pagerank, but it may not be the best idea. A lot of times webmasters buy expired domain names with a pagerank and put a directory there. They run it for a few months, collect the money, pagerank drops with the next update and the directory goes down. Look at the age of the directory, amount of pages in your category and quality of approved links rather than the pagerank. Also, check if the directory is active and adds links on a constant basis. While administering Free Directory Submission Site – EasySubmits we noticed that about half of the new directories disappear within first 6 months or so. There are a ton of the ones that been out for over a year or two, target those instead.

Run an experiment, see what a featured link can do for you, but I just thought that I’d share our observation.