Ask the SEO Guy Anything!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by sbbenchmarke

Hi,
Haven't posted much on here yet...just kind of getting started in the whole IM game and trying to figure things out.

Anyway here's my question: I'm thinking about putting together a bunch of minisites based around products and monetizing them with adsense. However I'm trying to keep the costs down so I'm wondering if I use .info domain names which are about a dollar; will it affect my rankings? Assuming SEO is the same, will I likely see a difference from having .com domains which cost about ten times as much?

Thanks in advance.

Well, they say that .info will rank as well as .com .. but I've seen several keyword match domains keyword.com or buykeyword.com rank on a standard wordpress site without any content... can't say I've ever seen this for a .info.

However, the only issue could possibly be a lower trust for a .info, in which case a careful, well thought out link campaign focused on trust building should offset whatever negative factors that are tied to the domain.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Chuck Avants

Thanks for your advice---it's a bit over my head but I see value in it.

I am trying to get going in the IM biz.
My technical skills are minimal at best.

What is a plan of action that would use minimal cash and provide an ongoing income of say $10 -$50 a week?

Thanks, Chuck

This is a really broad question. I mean, this can be easily accomplished with Adsense or affiliate marketing. You'd probably have to do less work with the affiliate side of things, as less traffic would be needed to make $50 than with adsense.

I'd suggest doing some article based marketing (for affiliate stuff) or a blogspot blog for adsense. SEO for this project will be the critical element and probably the deciding factor whether or not the project is a success.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by LookItsMeTerryG

Well, they say that .info will rank as well as .com .. but I've seen several keyword match domains keyword.com or buykeyword.com rank on a standard wordpress site without any content... can't say I've ever seen this for a .info.

I have seen this with keyword match .info domains.

The problem .info's have more often is that the .com is already been used and has an active site that's been around for years and has old links and authority links. If the keyword is a popular one, there will be other authority sites sitting between you and a slot on page 1. Lastly, human approval of links to a .info is harder to get because of the spammy perception of them.

[frozen74]

I have found a dropped domain about hotels let it cheaphotels.net and when i check google keyword tool with exact phrase
it gives 49,500 for cheap hotel and 27,100 results for cheap hotels (plural one) I checked competion by allinurl and sites like blogspot or ezine article so cheap hotel has more competion and cpc for cheap hotels is higher than cheap hotel. So my question is when i buy the domain cheaphotels.net which keyword shall i target cheap hotels or cheap hotel and how many article and how much time is neceserry to rank in page 1
thanks


PS:allintitle results for cheap hotel is 37,000 and for cheap hotels is 18, 000
*for cheap hotel blogspot.com, Position: 13 youtube.com, Position: 19 youtube.com, Position: 20
* for cheap hotels ezinearticles.com at Position: 20
intitle:"cheap hotel" 13,400
intitle:"cheap hotels"2,770

[nicas_87]

I need to know, how many links we need to create to uplift our page rank pr0 to pr1 ?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by frozen74

I have found a dropped domain about hotels let it cheaphotels.net and when i check google keyword tool with exact phrase
it gives 49,500 for cheap hotel and 27,100 results for cheap hotels (plural one) I checked competion by allinurl and sites like blogspot or ezine article so cheap hotel has more competion and cpc for cheap hotels is higher than cheap hotel. So my question is when i buy the domain cheaphotels.net which keyword shall i target cheap hotels or cheap hotel and how many article and how much time is neceserry to rank in page 1
thanks

Target both of them in the same articles etc. It should be easy enough to work them into your content.

As far as how long, some people can do it in 4-6 weeks, others in 10+. Really depends on how effective your link building efforts are.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by nicas_87

I need to know, how many links we need to create to uplift our page rank pr0 to pr1 ?

There's no definitive answer to this question. Here is some literature to help you understand the PR process a bit more:

United States Patent: 7058628

Here's the abstract from the patent application:

A method assigns importance ranks to nodes in a linked database, such as any database of documents containing citations, the world wide web or any other hypermedia database. The rank assigned to a document is calculated from the ranks of documents citing it. In addition, the rank of a document is calculated from a constant representing the probability that a browser through the database will randomly jump to the document. The method is particularly useful in enhancing the performance of search engine results for hypermedia databases, such as the world wide web, whose documents have a large variation in quality.

[frozen74]

thanks for your reply

[sbbenchmarke]

Thanks alot TerryG, I could see how the trust thing could affect how individual users perceive the site. If I decide to go that route, I'll definitely take that into consideration.

[spada]

i have a question about outgoing links to other sites, is it harmful?
and another question about PR, is it count per page? i mean if the first result on google for specific keyword a page have PR3 or PR4
(for specific url not the domain ex: domain.com/store/1.php) and don't have any backlink to this specific page put have a ton of backlinks to the domain, is it hard to dominate this keyword?

[firewife]

disappointed
my question has not been answered
down!!!!!!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by firewife

disappointed
my question has not been answered
down!!!!!!

I already answered the question earlier and told you to scroll up and read it.. Do you really need me to repost it for you?

Also, I'm not quite sure what "down!!!!!!" means.

[Ehsan_am]

When you want to check a keyword's competition. Do you use "" or you just do a normal search. I'm asking this because i have been struggling with this for a long time. I have several long tail keywords that show over 33 000 000 or more pages when I search for the long tail keyword without quotes. Wen I search for them with quotes there are like 2000 pages and I generally rank first page for these when I check my rankings. How do you interpret these rankings considering that people never search with quotes.

[spada]

Originally Posted by Ehsan_am

When you want to check a keyword's competition. Do you use "" or you just do a normal search. I'm asking this because i have been struggling with this for a long time. I have several long tail keywords that show over 33 000 000 or more pages when I search for the long tail keyword without quotes. Wen I search for them with quotes there are like 2000 pages and I generally rank first page for these when I check my rankings. How do you interpret these rankings considering that people never search with quotes.

I have the same question

[Ehsan_am]

I actually know what the difference between "" searches and broad searches are. I'm more interested in the interpretation. When you rank well for the quoted keyword search, is that an indication that your are on your way to rank pretty well for the broad search since this should mean that you have optimized your page correctly and you just need more backlinks and link juice??

[abpanama]

Originally Posted by LookItsMeTerryG

Figure out what the sites share in common, could be something as simple as that popup you have that has been compromised.

The only thing all the sites have in common is
an aweber sign up form
all domains registered with godaddy

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Ehsan_am

When you want to check a keyword's competition. Do you use "" or you just do a normal search. I'm asking this because i have been struggling with this for a long time. I have several long tail keywords that show over 33 000 000 or more pages when I search for the long tail keyword without quotes. Wen I search for them with quotes there are like 2000 pages and I generally rank first page for these when I check my rankings. How do you interpret these rankings considering that people never search with quotes.

I don't use the quotes personally. I don't think it really helps anything because in the end you're really competing with the top 10 results anyway. A better measure of competition is to look at the domain age and their backlinks using MajesticSEO and Y! Site explorer.

And to answer your second question, yes, more links are likely needed. This basically verifies that Google realizes your site is related to these words.

[ThalesMM]

Build backlinks only for the main page (address.com) of the website with only one anchor text (one keyword) is bad?

I've read that you should link back to some random pages of your website and also change the anchor text so it doesn't look spammy.

Does it make difference at all or can I use the same www address and same anchor text for each keyword I want to rank for?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by serps

First of all I like to Thank Terry for huge contribution here and starting with this thread. This thread is really great and i got lots of knowledge so its really cool to be here.

I have some questions for you terry.
How to generate Leads?

I like to start Affiliate Marketing so what basic things i have to do on SEO part?

Leads are generated by driving targeted traffic to the sales mechanism. Most people will drive targeted traffic through PPC or SEO, email campaigns or article marketing.

As far as starting with SEO, do some initial keyword research, pick some terms with high commercial intent, low competition, snatch a domain name and get some quality, keyword focused content and a well optimized site structure.

After that you get to begin the FUN task of link building!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by ThalesMM

Build backlinks only for the main page (address.com) of the website with only one anchor text (one keyword) is bad?

I've read that you should link back to some random pages of your website and also change the anchor text so it doesn't look spammy.

Does it make difference at all or can I use the same www address and same anchor text for each keyword I want to rank for?

Not necessarily bad, but not as effective as a natural link campaign. I'd build links to several pages on the site and vary the anchor text a lot. However, you'll want a higher concentration of your desired keyword anchor text than the others.

[ThalesMM]

Thanks, I was just doubtful about it, but now you said it'd be better to build links to several pages as it looks more natural, I'm going to do it so.

[Dr.faizan]

Hello. My name is Faizan. I am a medical student from India. I have a blog of 1 year old with page rank 2. I need seo for my blog but being a student I cannot afford to pay the seo expert so I am willing to work on profit sharing basis. Can you tell me if there is anyone who can do good seo for my blog and get into onto top page. I will pay them 25% of my profit.

[Ehsan_am]

Originally Posted by Dr.faizan

Hello. My name is Faizan. I am a medical student from India. I have a blog of 1 year old with page rank 2. I need seo for my blog but being a student I cannot afford to pay the seo expert so I am willing to work on profit sharing basis. Can you tell me if there is anyone who can do good seo for my blog and get into onto top page. I will pay them 25% of my profit.

If someone wants to do that work he/she just puts up a site him/herself and cash in 100% profits.

[Andrea Brown]

I'm not sure if anyone already posted this question, but here it is anyway:

What all should I be doing after I make a blog post? I have a brand new blog and right now I'm just bookmarking each post with OnlyWire.

[futuremills]

Two weeks ago I decided I want to use IM as my main source of income. Now I do not know where to start. So far I have listened to Yaro Starak podcasts, adam short and xfactor. do you suggest anything for a n00b to read to get more of an understanding of the basics.

Also im not sure what i really want to do yet. Adam Short says create e books, and others say its easier to work as an affiliate. Others have told me i should just work on one soild site and one site only. Then I have also heard its easiest to start in PPC. What would recommend for a n00b that can probably put in 2-3 hours a day

[Rocketguy]

I am really interested in the Local search, but I can't pm you yet. Is there any possibility of an ebook coming out soon?

[dragonlordcs]

I just posted this thread and wondered what you thought...

Can you get the same SEO results for a niche market from either of these site designs or is one better than the other?

Website A: nicheproduct.com
Website B: nicheproduct.com/subnichepage

Website B would of course be a directory type site with links to all the subniche pages. Website A would be a one niche market site.

[AllThingsArePossible]

Terry, do you recommend to direct all our websites in one hosting account or spread sites around with multiple hosting accounts for security reasons.

Also, what's your experience with seo in regular html sites and wordpress. Do one perform better than the other or it really does not matter?

[VladWorks]

I have been working on a website and it does pretty well on the search engines for the keywords I have been optimizing for.

I run all sorts of analysis tools and I always get back that google has not indexed any pages.

Website runs on Wordpress with All in One SEO installed and configured.

I have a sitemap that has been successfully submitted to google with webmaster tools.

I have a manual sitemap with text link on the footer of the website that lists all the pages in a text based link format.

Running out of ideas on how to get the pages indexed.

Any ideas? Did I miss a step?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Andrea Brown

I'm not sure if anyone already posted this question, but here it is anyway:

What all should I be doing after I make a blog post? I have a brand new blog and right now I'm just bookmarking each post with OnlyWire.

I wouldn't be bookmarking each post on the same account across several services.. that's just not natural really. Besides, my thoughts on social bookmarking benefits are that they are generally just temporary (except the big few), but are fantastic at getting a new site indexed quickly. If your readers want to bookmark this on their own, even better!

Make sure you've got a big ping list and if the posts are of above average quality, shoot an email to other blogs related to your niche to see if they'll run the story as well. I've done very well with that last part and most people seem to ignore it altogether.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by futuremills

Two weeks ago I decided I want to use IM as my main source of income. Now I do not know where to start. So far I have listened to Yaro Starak podcasts, adam short and xfactor. do you suggest anything for a n00b to read to get more of an understanding of the basics.

Also im not sure what i really want to do yet. Adam Short says create e books, and others say its easier to work as an affiliate. Others have told me i should just work on one soild site and one site only. Then I have also heard its easiest to start in PPC. What would recommend for a n00b that can probably put in 2-3 hours a day

There are tons of schools of thought on this topic. Here's my own 2 cents:

I often recommend that beginners just get started on a blogger blog for a few reasons: it's free, you can't really screw anything up, you can still profit (from adsense or affiliate or even PPC... doesn't matter) and finally, IM is about knowledge and testing. I feel you can learn and hone your skills for basically free until you figure out exactly what it is that you're doing.

However, if you've got a friend or someone that will coach you through the process, by all means: let them!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Rocketguy - There's a possibility of 2 things: an ebook, or a straight up service/membership site. Through this thread I've went from the new guy with no connections to having an inbox full of people wanting to JV on a product. Interesting to say the least!

dragonlordcs - That's more or less called siloing. The verdict is still out on that one for me, it really depends on what domain name you secure in the beginning. I'd recommend you read this: SEO Siloing

AllThingsArePossible - Here's what I do. Since I create about 5 sites a week (generally at least 3 of these are on the same topics, week after week), I'll buy a new hosting account every week. However, I do a good bit of interlinking and such.

As far as static HTML over Wordpress, I've got an interesting take on this. I used to (up until a few months ago) be kind of a go-to-guy for wordpress seo from colleagues and friends. I've since switched to static html sites using xsitepro and recommended several others to do so as well. I really like the program and for the amount of sites I manage and the drastically decreased time spent getting a SEO friendly site up off the ground, it's a no brainer. For me its essentially about volume and time spent on building the foundation. A well SEO'd wordpress site can rank just as well as a well SEO'd static page, no difference.

VladWorks - I dont' really understand the issue. If the site is doing well for your keywords in the engines it must be indexed. Do a site:domain.com query in Google to see if it's there. If it's not: Bookmark it on various social bookmarking sites or try to get a few blog posts posted on sites with great authority and trust.

[inovica]

Hi there!

I've only recently started on the SEO game but think things have been going ok. I've been following all of the advice in the book and been trying to cover every angle necessary. (in-bound linking, blogs, social media, articles, PR, on-site keyword optimisation etc)

The site that I have been working on has been jumping around in Google between the 3rd and 4th page for months now. It changes on almost a daily basis and no matter how consistent the SEO efforts the result seems to be no different.

Can you shed any light on why this may be?

Thanks!

Emma

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by inovica

Hi there!

I've only recently started on the SEO game but think things have been going ok. I've been following all of the advice in the book and been trying to cover every angle necessary. (in-bound linking, blogs, social media, articles, PR, on-site keyword optimisation etc)

The site that I have been working on has been jumping around in Google between the 3rd and 4th page for months now. It changes on almost a daily basis and no matter how consistent the SEO efforts the result seems to be no different.

Can you shed any light on why this may be?

Thanks!

Emma

I'd really have to see the results page to tell you, but are there a lot of "fast news" items being included from day to day in the index?

[chrisnyce]

Hello SEO Guy,

I submitted my site to Google and Yahoo. So naturally when I punch in my URL it shows up. How do I know if it's been indexed yet in regards to page rank? Also, how long does it take?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by chrisnyce

Hello SEO Guy,

I submitted my site to Google and Yahoo. So naturally when I punch in my URL it shows up. How do I know if it's been indexed yet in regards to page rank? Also, how long does it take?

If you're talking about PageRank, then install the google toolbar and you'll see a number there between 1-10 in a few months.

If you're talking about just ranking for your terms, watch your analytics program and you'll know when you start getting traffic from the SEs.

[Dr.faizan]

Originally Posted by Ehsan_am

If someone wants to do that work he/she just puts up a site him/herself and cash in 100% profits.

Hello.. You are right that they can put up a brand new blog and keep the full earnings but from where can they get the articles.. And myself being a medical student can get good informative health related articles.

[chrisnyce]

Thank you SEO guy! Is it possible to rank for terms right away or does this happen after some time has passed? Just wondering if I need to do more work to bring my quality score up.

[bzzyb]

Hi and thanks for posting all these answers

I have a few sites that were PR 3, dropped to greybar, then back to 1. Also drop in SERPs for some of these, not all, but from say 17 to 298. Some sites, the reverse, i.e. still at PR3 but SERP rank still drops by several hundred. The SERPs greatly affect my traffic (o' course) the PR does not. Should I care about PR?

None have been deindexed, but what exactly does that mean? I still have all my pages indexed when i check site:URL.

These sites have about 300 inbound links each, and growing as I build.

I have heard all of these referred to but how are they related, and does one cause the other, and what could cause this (I know that's kind of open ended, but some basics would help) - visual inspection by Google? Too many similar anchor text (I vary it quite a bit tho').

Thanks in advance

[Pnigro]

I have a Wordpress site dedicated to the "get your ex back" niche.

I'm writing articles for different keywords and I want these articles to rank well for their respective keywords.

My questions:

1) Since my whole site is dedicated to one specific topic, should I just have one category where I put all my articles?

2) Should I let Google index this category? Why or why not?

3) Should I worry about this stuff?

[EMGhb]

Is there monthly search volume for subcategories or derivatives of your chosen niche? If so, it might be beneficial to split your articles into a few different categories.

[Pnigro]

Originally Posted by EMGhb

Is there monthly search volume for subcategories or derivatives of your chosen niche? If so, it might be beneficial to split your articles into a few different categories.

This is what I don't understand.

Why would it be beneficial to split my articles into different categories? Is this going to help them rank better?

[Excursion]

hey There, Used to be a member here for a while, but couldnt remember my pass. And the email I used to sign up I no longer have access too..

But anyways.

I am starting a new MMA forum, What would be some good ways to get members and top of the SERP's for keywords like MMA forums and UFC forums?

Thanks in advance.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

chrisnyce - It really depends on the amount of established competition targeting the same keyword, but yes, it normally ALWAYS takes some time to start ranking.

bzzyb - PageRank doesn't really relate to ranking in Google. It's more of an overall health score and can be used to kind of "guess" your TrustRank. I talked about PageRank here: Ask the SEO Guy Anything! and I suggest you read that for a better understanding. Now as far as dropping for your keywords, several things might have happened.. without knowing the url it's nearly impossible to tell you what to do to come back. One catchall answer would be to build trust by getting backlinks from authority sites. This never seems to fail.

Pnigro - Read about SEO Siloing it's basically what you're talking about. Good categorization does seem to help the big G, but don't be doing domain/folder/folder/folder/keyword.html or anything, just do what makes sense. For a niche that is smaller I wouldn't do it at all. I'd say the biggest criteria for whether to do this or not would be: does it make sense from a usability standpoint?

[Pnigro]

Originally Posted by LookItsMeTerryG

Pnigro - Read about SEO Siloing it's basically what you're talking about. Good categorization does seem to help the big G, but don't be doing domain/folder/folder/folder/keyword.html or anything, just do what makes sense. For a niche that is smaller I wouldn't do it at all. I'd say the biggest criteria for whether to do this or not would be: does it make sense from a usability standpoint?

This is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Thanks brah.

[pixelcrafter]

Dear SEO Guy,

i've been studying and practicing the SEO for quite sometimes and got ZERO result.
The gurus seem never reveal the real back end of the SEO strategy.
They always say that I have to do the rss submission, social bookmarking, etc but none of them is specific enough to get the real SEO result.

I believe you are not that kind of Guru as you have spent your valuable time to open this thread and teach us about SEO.

Here is my case :

Question = What are the steps to get top ranking in Google ?

Overview =
* my site are wordpress-based sites
* competiton (for most keywords) = below 200.000
* search (for most keywords) = around 20.000 per month

I have done =

* Submitting the RSS feed using rss submit software
* Social bookmarked the homepage using BMD to 125+ bookmarking sites
* Building back links using UAW
* Submitting articles to Ezine
* using SEO pack plugin for wordpress
* creating SQ lenses
* creating Hub pages
* submitting the homepage to web directory

Why I can't get top ranking in G?
What is wrong with my steps?

Kindly guide me.

Bset Wishes,
-Pixel-
PS:
I've just stop using UAW as it is not worth the price.
Now, I doubt the BMD as my site drop from 10th page to nowhere.

[califmike2003]

Dear Seo Guy

Very simple question, im kinda new to this stuff, have wordpress site on sports cars, top 5 things i should do first to start the seo process ? thanks.

[rimam1]

Thanks for this informative post...

1). Does Google reward sites with fresh and new content?

2). If so, how do you take advantage of this if you have an ecommerce site? I'm sure you could add a blog, but if you sell granite countertops online, how do you optimize your site so it gets ranked high? Are links the only thing that really counts?

Best,

Raza

[3Darmory]

Hi Terry,

I have a question, could you please tell me how the adsense income generated? I mean how Google pays on the basis of per impression or per click?

Thanks in advance.

Bye

[NTN]

Hi Terry,

Thanks for all your input, really helps us newbies. I have a question, it probably seems stupid to you. Let's assume I have 200 Keywords or Phrases. I understand Title Tags, Meta, etc... but how do I utilize those Keywords? Where do they go? Keyword stuffing on page, hidden in the Footer of the site in same color background, etc...

Thanks so much.

NTN