SEriOus seo

[soaringeagle]

how serious are you about sucess? the key to success of a website or web community is seo you can build a better moustrap but if the mouse cant find the cheese you'll never catch the mouse

to have a site grow and succeed you need to be found to be found you need to rank high

lets look at some stricktly hypothetical numbers  lets say  your site ranks number 1 for a keyword that gets 100k searches a day your going to get at least 98k clicks  position 2 maybe 1.4k position 3 600

now lets say your at position 13 on page 2 of results yoir only getting 5 or 6 clicks a day possition 30+ and your lucky to get 1 or 2 a week

so how do you improve this?

today im going to  discuss a multi spectrum approach to seo  as well as a constsant seo you can put into action

 

1st  you have long tail and short tail keywords long tail gets a few hundred searches a month  and is easy to rank number 1 say your sites about wine wine might get 10k searches a day while whats the best wine to serve with fish gets 10

use interior pages  (pages discussions blogs whatever..pages seem to rank more easily for some reason) to target these long tail keywords..this is the easy part that will get some broad spectrum trafic flowing once your getting a thousand 2 thousand 3 thousand hits a day from searches then you can start to try to target the hard to get main keywords wine in this case

some argue that splash pages are not a help in this i disagree completely splash pages give you exact control of the content no user generated content to throw off the keyword density ..no daily changing total word counts etc  u have exact control of exactly whats on the page so for on page seo its essential to have a splash page when targetting hard to target keywords

 

seomoz has a great on page seo tool but ill be geting into a tool later that maybe even more benificial

note  once your  ranking on page 1  in top say 5 or 6 possitions  changes you make on page may have very lil affect because the competitions are so close your only affecting a fragment of your seo score like i reduced the number of times my main keywords appeared by 1/2 ..and had virtualy no affect on my ranking

but then again on page seo is only 1/2 the formula off page is the other 1/2

seo tools

ive worked  with 1 seo software company for many years now cause their software works best..and the supports the best ive ever come accross (in fact 1/2 the features of the new version i suggested they added  and i tested  and every issue i ever had they fixed within hours)

1st ill introduce the newest tool im working with:

InSite 4

insite searches your entire site..every single page (do not grant it login rights using a admin login lol in fact i gave it no login rights cause it kept joining groups)  when it searches the site it finds every typo (my sites got more typos then words) it finds every broken link (very helpful to fix those 500 and 404 errors) it identifies seo issues gives you keyword densities on every page..its just a overload of useful information

i just got insite yesterday (they gave it to me free for all the help ive given them over the years) and already im amazed at how much info ive gotten..its too much to even try to perfect every page so id  tweak 1 page at a time

 

next tool and a couple services i use with it

Backlink Monitor 4

what this does is  you import a list of backlinks it scans those pages and pages linking to those pages to identify a milti tear link heirarchy tells u page rank and outgoing linkis  wether its no or do follow anchor text or "nude"  wether its indexed or not and alows you to submit them to an indexing service

along with this i use several services both free and paid seo majestic (free if u can verufy yoiur site paid if u cant) seomoz pro i use these to collect my link lists seomoz u can import by api seo majestic download then paste from clipboard

then on the other side of things i use linkliscouse.me to submit unindexed links backlink booster to "power up" links

high pr society  to create more links the best spinner to create unique article submitions with links

links build your sites authority  thousands of links are needed irecently added a link exchange script here http://links.dreadlockssite.com

ill attach the script and u can add it to your site too

next tool

Sitemap Creator 4

most seo sites recognize sitemaps as 1 of the most esential seo elements title  domain h1 tag and sitemap are the only elements considered essential others highly important but not esential

ni9ngs sitemap is 100% useless to  be useful a sitemap must be up to date and list every page in a site! every page my sitemap after last crawl lists 1,476,890 pages yea nearly 1 1/2 million nings sitemap for the same site lists...10

just the features thats like trying to find an address in new york with a map that only lists the interstates

furthermore in a site of only 1000 pages like a wordpress blog u have a calander feature  with thousands of dates listing posts on those dayes but say yoiur sites 2 days old with 10 posts on 2 days googlebot can get lost in the calander  fir days searching completely empty pages for content  and never find the few legit posts ning has a share page for every page on the site  these share pages might get indexed but not the page you want to share with no direction

so a proper sitemap has  a change frequency (pay attention ti new stuff first) a priority that directs them to more important pages  1st etx so it shows where everything is and how to get to the most important places 1st

ive posted other posts on how to use a proper sitemap on ning cause ning not only has a useless sitemap but makes it dificult to use a proper 1

i wont repost that info but u can find it in my discussions

 

next you want to know how everythings performing

Rank Reporter 3

does what the name says finds your pages ranking on  multiple search engines and compares it to your competitors tracking changes over time

daily routine:

update sitemap (eventualy when your sites big this well be a weekly routine as it takes a week to crawl)

download fresh backlinks reposrts import into backlink monitor (700 new links found just today yay)

run  backlink monitor submit the un indexed pages

run rank reporter  daily check for any major changes in my main keywords weekly i scan the full range  for issues or improvements (i run a report on  every single keyword ive been found by this year but only on google i can do smaller runs on fewer keywords on every engine too)

monthly routine:0

submit new articles througyh high pr society (only started last month) submit url heirarchy list to backlink booster

run a partial sitemap scan save as a csv submit to backlink booster too (boosting my own links to me)

my sites trafic increase was slow and steady  roughly 1000 visit increase every 9 months about

this past month its increased that much in a single month just by getting seriouse and using these steps

i havent even begun to impliment any of the tips from insight nor fixed broken links  it will be a couple weeks till i get that started  its scanned 42k pages  found 10k link errors  170k seo issues..and to be expected 1.5 million typos..lol

odviosly going to fix link errors then seo then if im not dead typos

[soaringeagle]

i do  have to admit i have a slight problem fully understanding you but i think i get a general idea what your getting at

i just finnished a post that actualy touched on some of these subjects

domain age

its a big ranking factor

a domain thats been on the scene 10 years will be very hard to beat by a domain thats only 3 years old

a 1 year old domains going to struggle to rank at all

why

well a million  sites go up every year many are scams get rich quick sites that dont last a year

these sites need to prove theuy have value 1st

1 thing that yiu can do

if you register a domain name

dont register it for only 1 year register it for a minumum of 2 byt

if you register for the maximum of 10 years it shows you are committed to your site long term

you still wont beat an established site thats been live 10 years but u can compete it shows you are legitimate and committed

on the subject of updating content

a page that isnt changed frequently can still do pretty well

but a p[age that changes all the time will get a little bit of an edge

changing your home page often even just a few words  makes it look like its always updated and fresh..active

[soaringeagle]

also im not sure if this is what u meant but ..visability does matter

hings that make text more visible gi9ve it more seo power

now you cdan use this..but you cannot exploit it

exploiting it will possibly get u blacklisted

now heres what i mean

h1 tags..highly visible ..most powerful on page tag..but you only want 1! and dont want to over stuff it with keywords  make it too long etc

1 that has 100% relevance prominance and keyword weight (only possin=ble if its only the keyword/phrase) wont outperform one thats 80% prominance relevant and weighted

now h2 -h6 tags also increase visability and help power up other relavent but less important keywords but if you use then-=m to try to target 20 keywords your screwing yourself

3-6 and your probly ok

bold or strong text as well as list text is ..slightly more visible so  gives u a slight edge but again..one or 2  recurances only not  going overboard bolding every occurance of the word

density  now your saying spread out as much as possible well in a way yea u dont want them too bunched up but  they have a lil more power in the 1st 1/2 of the text but its a good idea to hae 1 or 2 closer to the end ..u want enough text to allow the bots to figure out what its all about pretty much 300+ words

u dont want the keywords to make up less then 2% or more then 4% (generaly  ) or be repeated more then abvout 15 times in the whole text (including h1 h2 bold etc)

google bot recognises that  text thats meant to draw the eye to it  is more important so adds a lil extra value to that text

text hidden with same color background as text it recognized is keyword spamming and  will get u blacklisted

so making your important text more visible helps with its importance just be careful to not over use it at all

[Elshara Silverheart]

Would it be possible to configure Ning in such a way that we could use the language editor to increase SEO in our networks?

[soaringeagle]

you  can i posted some language editor seo tipsthat add keywords to h1 tags like

dreadlocks forums

all dreadlocks photos

featured dreadlocks photos

etc

ps about the title change

i had a title like

dreadlocks site methods and maintenance forums or something

i simplified to

dreadlocks natural dreads

all 3 words keywords

no extra words nothing du[ilute[ing the weight of the words

made a huge diference

[soaringeagle]

simple language editor seo

http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/simple-seo-using-language-editor

more language editor seo

http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/more-language-editor-seo

[soaringeagle]

ok another lil mini tip for seo

other data sources

1st ill post some screenshots then discuss them

now you may think i have alotta toolbars clutering up my browser..and true i do but each is useful and you may notice theres added data to the search results a s well

now in a search for dreads  1 of my (scumbag) competitors comes up above me the only ranking criteria they really beat me with is domain age being 10 years old compared to my 3

heres a ss of thier listing

1st below the link you see a graphical bar this is a visual clue to alexa trafic rank wich is a estimate of global reach and trafic polularity (575000 in this case, note this number has dropped significantly, when my site was brand new with an alexa rank in the millions they had  about 150k when mine reached 500k thiers dropped to 300k when mine reached 100k they dropped to 575 k my other main competitor dropped from 200k to 700k this is a clear indication that thier former trafic has now funneled to my site and i get twice the trafic of both combined) below that the light blue backgrounded area has 2 other graphical bars with numbers  these represent the page authority and domain authority based on seomoz ranking system (simular to google page rank but not exactly the same) (i dont have pr cause i dont think theres a compatable google toolbar anymore ..at least there wasnt for awhile)

this shows the number of links to the page as well as to the domain as a whole and represents a value based on trust and authority

this site affectively uses what i call scumbag marketting basicly giving discounts if you create a site linking to and praising them (and your under contract to never say anything bad against the products) so the web was flooded with copycat sites ..notice the relativly low number of domains linking to them and they are 10 years old and have dominated the nische

now my links just below

you notice on both a decent page authority as well as a much higher domain authority many more links 3 times =the refering domains (incidently the 2nd link..about wax the competition push the use of wax wich destroys dreads..its a scam)

so you see by many seo criteria we should have knocked them off the front page but domain age is a big ranking factor that keeps older established domains in the top positions with newer domains having a struggle to compete.. the reasoning is  scammy sites typicaly are only around a year so  young sites need to prove their worth to get trafic

just for fun

since were on a rant haha (sorry i am making points too)

searching the competition by name  our review page of them..with only 3 links from 1 domain  comes up right below (thats all the domain authority in action)

ok more for fun (maybe lil briagging im not sure its intentional haha)

search reviews of the comptition and

1st comes us

(all bad reviews)

then 2 video reviews (bad reviews)

then their review on thier own site (haha scumbags)

then our group of former victims of thier site

then a blog review ..by 1 of thier employees

(who had to include a "if you dont like wax keep yoir mouth shut and dont leave comments" disclamoer on her review

anywho the review page again has very few links to it (betsys blog has zero but blogspot has a very high domain authority)

ps mynetwork.ning.com names have a authority boost by using the ning version of the name..the upside easier ranking from the get go  the down side less brand recognition in yoir own right..in other words your riding on the ning coatail to sucess instead of creating your own authority

this may be helpful in a general way ..as in just a boost in rankings period  but its not niche specific  if u want authority within yoir niche you want to be recognized as the place to go for ___  the master of your field..thats where having your own domain authority helps more

nings a master of social networking not babysitting or auto repair

ok getting back on track

3 toolbars 2 are redundant but ill explain in a sec

1 seomoz toolbar easily lets u see any site any page on any sites authority  link count and refering domains clicking the links will give you a complete breakdown of their linking structure now below i clicked the domain links to addictapic wich ill critique in a momment after finnishing the toolbars

the other 2 toolbars are both alexa for checking the alexa rank of a page but the others my sites branded toolbar

having a branded toolbar gives u a way to see whats going on on your site whiloe working  but these toolbars both report your browsing to alexa so help alexa gather data on your use of t]your site as well as those who use yoiur branded toolbar

granted its less helpful then the seomoz

now addictapics linking

(ill do mine too why not)

many of these links are internal but most of tyhe extermnal links use addictapic as the anchor text too

addictapic is a unique brand  searching addictspic  addictapic would come up 1st no matter what just by the domain brand

as anchor text ..useless your powering up a term thats going to be number 1 no matter what

these anchors should be varied more but with alot targetting the major keywords

photography forums photographers blogs  those sort of anchors

not a real represejtative screenshot since most here are links from when i 1st started building links so not as much do[iversity

but many are

dreadlocks information

dreadlocks natural dreads

dreadlocks info dont get scammed

dreadlocks methods and maintenance

etc etc

you want diversity around a theme..

note on that site u can compare the domain and page authority  outbound links on each page  compare to your compatition see all the anchor text used so u can see whats over used what needs to be used more etc

pages linked to most etc

it may all seem like data overload but just skimming it for clues can help you alot

you caan see what your compatitions doing better then you what keywords link toi them that arent being used to link to you etc

final screenshot i mentioned in the origional post that i use backlink booster to power up my links to me

when on any page linking to my page  i click this button on my broswser

that :

pings the link to make sure its u[indexed

creates 75 high pr links to that link page

creates i forget how many rss feeds and social bookmarks

all basicly increasing the authority of the page linking to you..so in essence your doing seo i]on other sites that link to you ..it helps them help you

speaking of data overload damian i started a insite report

well i was doing the crawl slowly for a few days only 175 k pages then stopped it  to work with the data i got

i started the report creation...24 hours ago and its not done writing the report! its using 15 gigs of ram to write it ..so far on disk its just a gig..

but 24 hours to create a pdf file shows ya just how much data it gathers

and it only crawled 10% of the site

but its plenty enough to keep me busy for awhile lol

and help ning track down thousands of broken links that cause 500 errors

[Damien Hannah]

That is incredible!

10% you say? That's INTENSE!!

LOL

Oh, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't a mini tip! :) It was an AWESOME TIP!

No seriously, took a while to read, not mini. lol. :) I kid, I kid!

Great addition to your TIP here SoaringEagle! Life's had me busy today, haven't done massive SEO today, but tonight is a different story! :)

[soaringeagle]

seo is an ongoing progect u cant do it all at once and be done its something u do a lil here and there when u can but should pay attention to regularly and constantly

..not that it shouldbe all consumimg haha just that you should  tweak as needed

[Damien Hannah]

Another day of hard work! :)

I now have 7 links in the exchange, your link is the only one not photography related. :)

Was a great idea SoaringEagle!

[soaringeagle]

good

oh analitics is another good source of info  u can find more backlinks the5re too to add to backlink monitor but also  get an idea of what keywords are brining trafic to what pages then u check the rank of those page4s for that keyword and do some seo to improve u=it

now eventualy your going to get to a point where tweakig every page  is just overwhelmo=ing so then your  gonna concentrate on getting the splash page high in the heavy duty keywords while working on a couple more important pages  to get them ranking hoigh

pages that  target keywords that only get 50 hits a month arent wort h the effort to get from 3 to 1 they may get there on there own withoit yoir effort anyway (i have hundreds of pages ranked number 1 i never spent any time on with seo just cause they were easy  keywords to rank in and the overall domain authority caried enough weight to get them there)

[Damien Hannah]

So today I have added the ability for my members to add their own photography contests. I decided the best thing to do both for explanation/rules and also better internal page SEO, I have created an HTML "Contest Landing Page," so when you click "photo contests" from my menu, you're brought here first, and then have to click through to the contests. There are still quick links throughout the site to avoid this screen for those who have read it.

I've also included navigation and a slideshow at the bottom of the page, as well as an updating RSS, so there is always something fresh should Googlebot land there at any given moment.

Please have a look, view it HERE.

[soaringeagle]

looks good keep it up