B
Big Bill
Do none of you guys read each othetrs posts on the same subjects and
the responses? Oh no, you don't, I forgot, you all keep arguing then.
BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..
Do none of you guys read each othetrs posts on the same subjects and
the responses? Oh no, you don't, I forgot, you all keep arguing then.
BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..
C
Craig
Hi Stoma
I have two sites and I link every page of each site to the homepage of the
other site. The sites are related so I didn't think this could be bad? Are
you saying that I should not do this? If so what should I do, reduce by
25%, 50% or more? Should I link every other page for example?
I am now building an unrelated site and had planned to link all three
together. Should I just link the new one to half one site and then half the
other of my 2 older sites?
Any advice would be welcome. I would like to hear what Dave has to say as
well. It's nice to get a balanced view. Isn't that what this news group is
for?
Thanks in advance!
Craig
I have two sites and I link every page of each site to the homepage of the
other site. The sites are related so I didn't think this could be bad? Are
you saying that I should not do this? If so what should I do, reduce by
25%, 50% or more? Should I link every other page for example?
I am now building an unrelated site and had planned to link all three
together. Should I just link the new one to half one site and then half the
other of my 2 older sites?
Any advice would be welcome. I would like to hear what Dave has to say as
well. It's nice to get a balanced view. Isn't that what this news group is
for?
Thanks in advance!
Craig
K
Karl Core
Big Bill said:
So it sounds to me like you're in a race against time -
The time it takes clients to realize you're doing them no good vs. the time
that the general netizen to understand that "Google is broken".
Not a business model I'd want to be involved in.
-Karl
N
Neal
I think what Toby is getting at is that he feels many SEOs are against
Google because it's gotten difficult to manipulate through SEO techniques.
Yet more often than not (but by no means at all times) the top return for
search words yields a good resource.
We can argue this all day. But the bottom line is that while it may be
hard to get good placement in Google for new sites (which I agree is
true), Google still reports relevant results. Cries of Google being broken
aren't founded. It's only broken if you see it as a contest for who can
get the best SERP - which, unfortunately, is the paradigm with which too
many SEOs operate.
It's been said here (in a.i.s-e) many times: the best SEO technique is
excellent content people want. If your site (not you, the general "you")
isn't on the front page, it may not be that the search engine isn't
working - it just might be that your content isn't worth it.
Google's not perfect, but to call it "broken" is a bit of a stretch. I
think of it as "enigmatic".
B
Big Bill
If you had about ten gazillion pages on each site there might arguably
be a problem. Your average thirty or fourty shouldn't be so bad. Stoma
is obsessed for no descernable reason with Google penalties.
Nah, link'em all.
Nah, link'em all.
Er, no!
BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..
B
Big Bill
Happy you then, 'cause you won't be. Implications are deeper however,
and have to do with the spread of human knowledge. A while back you
might research stuff on Google and come away thinking you'd consulted
the primo resource that the planet had to offer. It was untrue then
(Google couldn't index loads of stuff - Flash springs to mind) and due
to the flaw in its algo is even more out of kilter now. So if your
little Johnny is doing his homework through Google, and his teacher is
using Google to set his homework, they're both way behind the times.
Joe Netizen don't know that. Which is you! And Toby! And you guys like
to pride yourselves on your knowledge, and you are indeed both
knowledgeable guys, and look how far out of the loop both of you are!
BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..
B
Big Bill
Are so. Can someone dig out that url for Mike Grehan's filthy linking
rich piece I gave someone the other day please? I don't want to have
to find it again.
It's more than that - see my post to Karl.
That's not the case with Google. People simply won't ever find the
most relevant content extant, just the stuff already extant when it
bought in the new algo.
You're weird, Sir!
BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..
S
SEO Dave
I'm afraid I don't respond to Stoma's posts since he is one of just
two people added to my kill file and responding to your post will only
encourage him to be troll like.
David
S
SEO Dave
I wouldn't go as far as the above. Google has changed from how it was
say a year ago where you could predict with good optimisation and
links a new site would start to obtain good SERPs (the hard ones) at
around the 3 month mark. Recall the second Lingerie site of mine that
was hitting 2500 unique visitors a day after about 10 weeks at the
beginning of this year.
Now it's taking over 6 months for big things to happen for new sites.
It's difficult to say why, but if you think in terms of those buying
links for PR what they will find now is their investment doesn't
result in any appreciable gain for 6+ months!
Could be argued Google is trying to stop site owners taking advantage
of flaws in their algo. It used to take about 3 months, which isn't
that long to wait and affordable for even small businesses to buy
enough high PR links to get more than enough traffic to make it
worthwhile.
Now you have to be much more patient and are not 'guaranteed' the same
sort of predictability as before even after the 6 months. Got a quote
request recently from someone who had purchased site wide links to
several of their sites. This was thousands of links ranging in PR up
to PR8 (so very good links). They had been waiting over 5 months for
their SERPs to improve with no sign of improvements.
I checked out the SERPs of the other advertisers on the sites where
the site wide links are and it was the same story for them all! Very
costly for no gain.
Doesn't seem so bad for older sites (created January or earlier) they
can still get into the top few pages within a few months.
I'm having the same problem with some of my newer sites, I've added
over 60,000 new pages since mid February this year, only over the last
couple of months are the oldest of the new sites (if you get my
meaning) are beginning to climb the SERPs. So now seeing the sites in
the top 50 for the harder SERPs after 6 months, where before it was 3
months.
It wasn't bad the last 6 months, it's not like there were no visitors
since the easier SERPs gave visitors, but progress was like walking
through treacle!
This one http://william-shakespeare.classic-literature.co.uk/ is
created Feb 28th is just over 7 months old. Average daily visitors-
Oct 2004 - ~570
Sep 2004 - 483
Aug 2004 - 346
Jul 2004 - 300
Jun 2004 - 367
May 2004 - 214
Apr 2004 - 49
Mar 2004 - 38
Feb 2004 - 4
Total visits in 7 months 61680.
First 3 to 4 months was terrible!
This one http://www.charles-dickens.org is 4 months old yesterday.
Average daily visitors-
Oct 2004 - ~160
Sep 2004 - 135
Aug 2004 - 111
Jul 2004 - 112
Jun 2004 - 54
Total visits in 4 months 1 day 13922.
Not very impressive considering the links to the sites, but the older
one is doing OK and as long as the upward trend continues I'll be
happy with it since the SERPs available for Literature sites tend to
be low traffic. Looks like the newer site is starting the slow climb
to the top as well, to early to be sure though.
If I can get any of these sites to 3000 unique visitors a day I'll be
doing well. Though I know there are people reading this who are
running successful sites on less than 500 visitors a day, so I suppose
it's what you consider a success.
I'd be interested to see the average daily visitor numbers for others
sites created this year?
David
K
Karl Core
Big Bill said:
"Which search engine is best" is out of my realm of 'give a shit', really.
My focus is on user experience - specifically the user experience which I
have influence over.
Regardless of an external search engine's failings, I have to recognize the
fact that the one the users prefer to use is Google. Google is the new
Kleenex. Here in America, people often refer to a generic facial tissue as
Kleenex. The product had become so popular that its name has come to replace
the generic term.
Related to the user experience is the fact that the website owner must also
come to realize the importance of Google. Whether or not an external search
engine is "broken" is completely inconsequential to the company's bottom
line. It is vital that they recognize and respect Google's importance to
their users. We can type messages on usenet until our fingertips wear off
about whether Google is the best search engine. The real-world bottom line
is the fact that it is *the* search engine as far as the common user (read
as: consumer) is concerned. Everything else is proselytizing.
-Karl
C
Craig
That's a shame Dave. I would respect your thoughts on my question. Just
pretend I didn't ask him if you like
Craig
pretend I didn't ask him if you like
Craig
C
Craig
Thanks Bill! Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
Thanks!
Craig
Thanks!
Craig
S
stoma
It really depends on how many pages you have. If you have more than
about 100 then you're playing with fire. You might get away with it,
you might not. I'm not comfortable with more than 50 links from the
same site. Google seems to have a formula to calculate what's a
natural linking pattern and what's not, and if you trigger it then
WHAM! you're in oblivion. I've done this myself, Dave's still doing
it, both with Ebook sites, so it doesn't matter about the theme of the
site, just the number of links matters.
But you certainly should use your own sites to promote each other.
Just be a bit more subtle about it, ie. to promote site B from site A:
1) The link from the home page of site A is the most important, so
give it as much prominence as possible, ie. at the top of the page
just underneath the heading.
2) Do link on every page of site A, but spread the links between
different sites B,C,D etc. so you don't have more than ~50 links to
any one site from site A.
3) Create a page on site A all about site B, and designed to rank for
the same terms as site B. Link to site B (plus a couple of your other
sites) a few times on it.
4) Don't just link to the home page of site B. Link to internal pages
as well.
5) Always use the anchor text you want the target page on site B to
rank for, ie. for the shiny widgets page use <a
href="http://siteB/shiny-widgets.htm">shiny widgets</a>.
6) Wrap all anchor text up in a genuine sentence. This works much
better than a standard footer/sidebar link.
This is quite a bit more work, but if you can organise a system then
you'll see the benefits. I use these methods to promote useless
affiliate sites, and it works really well. Dave just asked about
visitor numbers, so I'll give a sample for him (and BB) for a site
created about seven weeks ago (even though he's determined not to read
it). These are genuine unique visitors (not Googlebot or similar,
which is what Dave seems to be counting) for a site about window
blinds and indoor lighting:
01 Oct, Fri 62
02 Oct, Sat 105
03 Oct, Sun 144
04 Oct, Mon 233
05 Oct, Tue 306
06 Oct, Wed 318
07 Oct, Thu 272
08 Oct, Fri 248
09 Oct, Sat 239
10 Oct, Sun 274
11 Oct, Mon 322
12 Oct, Tue 371
-stoma
C
Craig
Hi Dave
I think it's interesting how you have your sites set up as sub domain mini
sites. Would you suggest this is better than using directories? For
example is http://www.domain.com/brand-name/product-name.html better or
worse than http://brand-name.domain.com/product-name.html? What are the
pluses and minuses of each. If I am using absolute linking anyway then the
design and testing element would be equally as difficult with both. Do
search engines see all sub domains as different websites? Even though they
use the same host?
All thoughts welcome.
Thanks in advance!
Craig
I think it's interesting how you have your sites set up as sub domain mini
sites. Would you suggest this is better than using directories? For
example is http://www.domain.com/brand-name/product-name.html better or
worse than http://brand-name.domain.com/product-name.html? What are the
pluses and minuses of each. If I am using absolute linking anyway then the
design and testing element would be equally as difficult with both. Do
search engines see all sub domains as different websites? Even though they
use the same host?
All thoughts welcome.
Thanks in advance!
Craig
C
Craig
Hi Stoma
If you take a look the top ranking site for t shirts on google
http://www.tshirthell.com/, you will see it has site wide links from a few
sites, including http://www.lyricsdomain.com/ which has over 50,000 pages.
It does not seem to be suffering as a result of these links? Do you have
proof that all sites with over 500 links from other sites get punished in
the google SERPS?
I don't mean to say that what you suggest doesn't work, but if Google
punishes sites with 1000's of site wide links then why has it not punished
that site?
The question is, do I play it safe and so as Stoma suggests, or go all out
and see what happens, then cut back at a later date? I'm trying to weigh up
the evidence, but when I see for myself site wide links working, like in the
above example, then I must admit the all out approach is tempting me.
Thanks
Craig
If you take a look the top ranking site for t shirts on google
http://www.tshirthell.com/, you will see it has site wide links from a few
sites, including http://www.lyricsdomain.com/ which has over 50,000 pages.
It does not seem to be suffering as a result of these links? Do you have
proof that all sites with over 500 links from other sites get punished in
the google SERPS?
I don't mean to say that what you suggest doesn't work, but if Google
punishes sites with 1000's of site wide links then why has it not punished
that site?
The question is, do I play it safe and so as Stoma suggests, or go all out
and see what happens, then cut back at a later date? I'm trying to weigh up
the evidence, but when I see for myself site wide links working, like in the
above example, then I must admit the all out approach is tempting me.
Thanks
Craig
B
Big Bill
I missed the bit where I said it wasn't. Maybe because I didn't.
BB
www.kruse.co.uk
SEO you could cuddle. Probably..
I
Inger Helene Falch-Jacobsen
Big said:
I too sensed some Danishness, but your name
(Michael's) is obviously a German name. Danish
also uses more commas than for instance Norwegian
and English. Sorry if this sounds a little...
Norwegian.
S
stoma
They certainly do not all get punished as you've seen, there's plenty
of sites that survive site-wide links. The penalty is something that
only seems to affect newer sites that have few links in place to start
with - hence all the talk about the Sandbox effect. It seems to be
calculated from the overall linking pattern - if most of hundreds of
links are coming from just one site then what does it tell Google
about attempts to manipulate the serps?
Take the TShirthell site. Google says there 26,800 links from
Lyricsdomain. But according to Yahoo there are at least 292,000 links
to TShirthell in total. Scroll through the list and you'll see there's
links from a huge number of different sites, which must have taken a
long time to accumulate. Set against all those links a site-wide
doesn't seem worth a penalty. But I bet it isn't doing much good
either. The reason for that site's rankings is the wide variety of
different linking sites - it would still be number one without the
site-wide.
But I've seen plenty of decent quality, well SEOed sites that are
nowhere in the serps, and the only thing in common is the use of
site-wide linking to launch them. A couple of examples are Dave's
new(ish) Jules Verne and Charles Dickens sites. They have appalling
rankings, but have the same format as the other sites in his network,
and many of those are doing fine. Saying the bad serps are because the
sites are new is simply wrong, as the newest Italian section of his
site is doing OK so far.
If you use the strategy I gave then you'll actually do BETTER than a
simple site-wide at the cost of a few hours more work, and there's
zero risk of a penalty. But if you use a site-wide and do suddenly
drop out of the serps, it'll take many weeks for the bad links to be
de-indexed, the linking pattern re-assessed and the penalty removed.
-stoma
C
Craig
Hi Stoma
So even from a site with 50,000 pages, you would still only add 50 links to
any one of your sites?
That does seem like a very low amount?
Thanks!
Craig
So even from a site with 50,000 pages, you would still only add 50 links to
any one of your sites?
That does seem like a very low amount?
Thanks!
Craig
S
stoma
Yes! If site A has 50K pages, and you want to link it to site B, then
you have to measure against how many links site B has pointing to it
already to judge whether your linking is going to be proportionate,
not against how many pages site A has. 50K links won't even do you any
good anyway - on a typical site the home page has more PR than all the
other pages put together. Only add as many links as you're prepared to
add by hand, and target them carefully to different pages of site B.
A certain member of this group actually did the 50K links thing to his
PR7 SEO site, and it hasn't ranked since. But anyone who calls
attention to the fact gets called a troll, and killfiled!
-stoma