Ask the SEO Guy Anything!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Hey guys,

I've been a longtime lurker here browsing around (we're talking YEARS of this stuff) and I've decided to give something back. If you've got a SEO related question or need some advice, ask here and I'll answer!

About me:

I've been doing SEO professionally for clients for about 9 years now, have several of my own sites (read: more than 60) top 3 in Google and am a ridiculously intense data hound. All of my campaign efforts are recorded, analyzed and tweaked, thus: I'm not just rehashing information found elsewhere. The majority of my knowledge comes from the data produced by setting up several test sites in several niches.

Most importantly, I'm not selling anything here. Just offering some free advice from someone that's been around a while and has consistently produced top rankings.

Let's go!

[yuyuan]

Hi,

Yahoo and Bing recently just reached a deal to merge their search algorithms... How do you think it will affect optimization effort on both Yahoo and Bing? Will like to hear your opinions in this.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

From what I understand they're not merging per se, they're getting rid of Y! search altogether and allowing Y! to maintain it's ad sales, the portal, etc.

So, if that's true then I see it staying essentially the same in terms of optimization efforts. My advice, and what I'll continue to do until further developments arise (Bing makes their algorithms, etc..) is to do what you've always done... optimize for Google and you'll rank in Bing as a result. It's just more efficient that way considering G is capable of sending A LOT more traffic than Bing as of late.

Now for some specific tips for Bing, if you find that you're ranking where you want in Google and not in Bing, I'd focus on some directory submissions and optimize your onsite content. (title tags, semantics, bold keywords, etc). They believe a bit more in these types of links and they're fairly easy, albeit time consuming. Overall, I find Bing is relatively easy to dominate if your site has a well rounded link campaign.

[yuyuan]

Agreed with you. I also find that Bing is relatively easy to rank, and their search results is quite similar to Google. Surprisingly, Yahoo has become harder to rank. (Although some warriors have a lot of success on Yahoo but not Bing).

Thanks for your input. As long as we create quality content and focus our optimization on the big G, ranking for BingYahoo! should not be a problem.

[andrewaff]

I have a website based on Amazon like a white label. How to promote this site for organic search , any idea..

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by andrewaff

I have a website based on Amazon like a white label. How to promote this site for organic search , any idea..

As long as you plan correctly you'd promote this the same way you promote all sites. The most important things here IMO would be to choose a good niche with branded products as by its very nature you'll be dealing with more longtail searches and "brand + product + variation" (if applicable) type queries.

Something specific to this that I've seen people do wrong in the past would be just simply pulling in a feed or autogenerating the listings. You SHOULD write your own product descriptions and optimize each page title etc, individually.

[jamespatterson]

MY QUESTION:

Haha here goes... How do I get my site ranked number one for the google term: "be your own boss"?

-James Patterson

P.S. Just being silly. I realize there is quite a lot of competition for that keyword. My real question is how can I get on the first page of google for a broader keyword? And how do I figure out which broad keywords to go for? (And how do I find them in the first place?)

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by jamespatterson

MY QUESTION:

Haha here goes... How do I get my site ranked number one for the google term: "be your own boss"?

-James Patterson

P.S. Just being silly. I realize there is quite a lot of competition for that keyword. My real question is how can I get on the first page of google for a broader keyword? And how do I figure out which broad keywords to go for? (And how do I find them in the first place?)

I'm a big fan of the Google Adwords External tool for finding related keywords and such. Wordtracker (what most people like) is really becoming unreliable as of late (for me anyway..).

I can't post links yet, but google this "adwords external" and you'll find what I'm talking about. In about 30 seconds I found a few terms that may help you:

be your own boss ideas
how to be your own boss

Now it should be noted that the traffic for these secondary phrases is a fraction of the searches for the main term "be your own boss", but I think it'd be smart to focus on keywords like these for 2 reasons:

1. When you optimize for these, I think you'll find that you'll begin ranking for your main term "be your own boss" anyway.
2. A term like "how to be your own boss" appears to be more targetted and could possibly have higher commercial intent, thus lending revenue and traffic earlier in the project.

[jamespatterson]

Very good points but then again how do I go about finding these keywords through google external keywords? Should I be looking for low traffic? How do I know if the keyword is broad enough to be a winner?

-James Patterson

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by jamespatterson

Very good points but then again how do I go about finding these keywords through google external keywords? Should I be looking for low traffic? How do I know if the keyword is broad enough to be a winner?

-James Patterson

My method for adwords external is something like this:

1. Type in your main keyword, make sure the "synonyms" box is checked and once the results are populated, select "exact" from the drop down on the right.
2. Look at the traffic... something that has "insufficient" data - I'd normally ignore this.
3. A lot of it is just using your head to determine whether or not you think someone is actually typing these things in... and how frequently. One that looked good to me, but didn't make much sense was "be your own boss make money online". I just don't think many people are actually typing that in.

I'll take the list of potential keyword phrases I found and simply search them in Google. I'll look at the total amount of results (be it 1,000,000 or 100,000), then look at the types of pages showing in the top 10 organic listings. If you see a lot of sub-pages or some social media sites (scribd, article directories, squidoo, etc) then chances are it's not very difficult. If there's mainly root domains and trusted sources (cnn.com etc) then the term is probably more competitive.

Something that's always important to me is commercial intent.. so I'll take into consideration the amount of ppc ads appearing next to the results and what types of advertisers are there as well to figure out if people are actually making money from this keyword.

[jamespatterson]

Wow yeah I've never looked into it that deeply. I really appreciate this advice. Hopefully I can start some decent SEO work on my website. I'm giving you a thanks for that last post because it was quite helpful.

-James Patterson

[textbox]

Welcome back. When it comes to using subdomains vs. individual domains, what is your preference? In what ways have you used each technique and what were the results?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by textbox

Welcome back. When it comes to using subdomains vs. individual domains, what is your preference? In what ways have you used each technique and what were the results?

Ooh, this is a good one!

I really only use subdomains when I'm doing local stuff as it's part of my strategy to completely and utterly dominate the local listings... what I do here has often removed all of the other local competitors and left my site next to the map all alone!

My preference is individual domains, but for several reasons:

1. I prefer to "own" at least 4-5 of the top 10 results with my own properties, all with links pointing towards my main "hub" site.

2. I'm a big fan of the "linkwheel" type setup, but I take it a step further. I'll build my own industry resources (to get those good links that aren't really available to commercial websites and to establish my company or myself as an expert on the subject).

However, in terms of ranking for a specific keyword, I don't think either method really has an advantage over another, just different ways to do the same thing. I'm always testing and collecting data so it's just easier for me to use separate domains.

[billionareHuman]

have you seen this pattern of traffic from google: 10 visitors a day, 30 visitors a day, 100 visitors a day. It seems to happen for many of my sites? Once they are 100 a day I tend to think I've earned a little bit of trust.

How long does it approximately take you to earn trust for a website where the traffic tap is turned on?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by billionareHuman

have you seen this pattern of traffic from google: 10 visitors a day, 30 visitors a day, 100 visitors a day. It seems to happen for many of my sites? Once they are 100 a day I tend to think I've earned a little bit of trust.

How long does it approximately take you to earn trust for a website where the traffic tap is turned on?

This gets into that whole "does google collect visitor data?" category. I've thought about this a lot and basically came to the conclusion that Google PROBABLY isn't really collecting bounce rate data or anything else of the sort, so if true, what is actually happening here?

I think that the normalization of rankings process is to blame for this effect. When you perform a search in Google, they're actually doing a "wet finger in the air" type of thing to figure out where sites are ranked, pulling from your local datacenters and collecting a sort of "average". This happens all over, producing different rankings in different cities, especially early in a sites promotion.

10 people a day probably means you're beginning to be higher in the rankings in certain geographic areas, 30 people = it's spreading and becoming "normalized" over a larger amount of datacenters, etc. Now I've got no doubt that the rate of normalization can be affected by trust.

With the link building that I do, and advocate for others, trust isn't really an issue. The key is creating a natural, well balanced link profile.

[billionareHuman]

great advise thanks Terry

How important is it to add content on a regular basis? How often do you recommend adding fresh content especially for new sites. I have seen a site gain Trust on links alone with no content updates but I have seen other sites gain no Trust from just link building an needing fresh content to have a change in rankings. I guess it's a combination of the 2?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by billionareHuman

great advise thanks Terry

How important is it to add content on a regular basis? How often do you recommend adding fresh content especially for new sites. I have seen a site gain Trust on links alone with no content updates but I have seen other sites gain no Trust from just link building an needing fresh content to have a change in rankings. I guess it's a combination of the 2?

I think it really depends on the niche of the site. A news site should have regular updates, while a store... probably not so much. My rule here is to just focus on the reader.. are they looking for tons of fresh content? On an authority resource site it isn't necessary, as long as they're getting their questions answered by the available content. Just whatever makes sense.

[tamtu]

Would you please clear this for me...when I am done optimizing the home page and would like to optimize another page. Will obtaining back links from the same sites as for homepage reduce the value of the back link for the new page or do I have to get them from different set of sites?

[billionareHuman]

as long as they're getting their questions answered by the available content

your right about that and that's how I thought Google would think aswell, it makes sense. That's where Google should be collecting user behaviour data and ranking based on that however you said you think they are probably not?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by tamtu

Would you please clear this for me...when I am done optimizing the home page and would like to optimize another page. Will obtaining back links from the same sites as for homepage reduce the value of the back link for the new page or do I have to get them from different set of sites?

Get as many separate sites as possible to link to your domain, whether it be homepage, internal page.. whatever. I've often found that sites aren't ranked by the amount of total incoming links... they're actually ranked by the amount of separate sites linking to them. It's a must to build links to other pages as well, spread them out!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by billionareHuman

your right about that and that's how I thought Google would think aswell, it makes sense. That's where Google should be collecting user behaviour data and ranking based on that however you said you think they are probably not?

No, I don't believe they are. For an information resource like the one described above, assume the visitor searches for "term x" and lands on your page "term x information". If you're doing a good job providing a useful site with great usability, they wont' need to browse around the site and view tons of pages before satisfying their needs... meaning: the more effective and knowledgeable your articles, the higher the bounce rate. Theoretically speaking.

So if Google was collecting this data... I think bounce rate would be the most important metric to them.. and considering what I've said above, they'd be limiting the amount of truly useful content available through their engine.

[jtliewim]

Hi SEO Guru,

My questions will be

1) Does hyphenated Domains affect SEO ranking ?

2) Do we really need keyword related domain name or any domain name will also get high ranking in Google ?

Cheers,
jtliewim

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by jtliewim

Hi SEO Guru,

My questions will be

1) Does hyphenated Domains affect SEO ranking ?

2) Do we really need keyword related domain name or any domain name will also get high ranking in Google ?

Cheers,
jtliewim

1. Nope. The only thing this really effects would be brand building and recognition... you'll probably see a lower amount of type-ins, etc.

2. Nope. I've found that as long as you have the keywords somewhere in your url (can be a page name, etc) you'll get whatever benefits that can be had from this.

[russriedle]

You had mentioned dominating local listings. I'm strongly considering starting a business that helps offline local businesses create an online presence and for those who are already online to increase their rankings. Could you go into more detail about how you use SEO to dominate local listings?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by russriedle

You had mentioned dominating local listings. I'm strongly considering starting a business that helps offline local businesses create an online presence and for those who are already online to increase their rankings. Could you go into more detail about how you use SEO to dominate local listings?

I'm considering it... but I'm also considering doing an ebook on this. I don't know how I feel about giving away the golden egg so to speak though.. this is something I've only ran across 1 other person doing (and he's not even doing it to the max benefit...). It's literally the only thing I've ever found in SEO that has to be a loophole or something... it works THAT well.

However, for the time being I'll point you in the right direction:

* Expand the local profile as much as possible, video, images... reviews.

* Local SEO runs essentially on citations from major data providers. There's tons of lists around that list the important ones, thought it's some of the unmentioned ones that really put the icing on the cake as far as this method is concerned.

* Google Maps likes to rank businesses according to proximity to city centroid... any hyper-local information you can provide about your business helps.. phone numbers, physical addresses, associations...etc.

That should be enough to get your gears spinning

[russriedle]

LOL....I had a feeling you would say that but since the title does say, "Ask the SEO Guy Anything!", I thought I'd ask. Thanks for the pointers.

How about this....since I was the first to ask how 'bout I get a review copy of your ebook when it's complete?

I'm also adept at proofreading and could help there as well.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by russriedle

LOL....I had a feeling you would say that but since the title does say, "Ask the SEO Guy Anything!", I thought I'd ask. Thanks for the pointers.

How about this....since I was the first to ask how 'bout I get a review copy of your ebook when it's complete?

I'm also adept at proofreading and could help there as well.

Sure thing, if I decide to go that route. Or you could hit me up on MSN. My biggest concern is hordes of people using this and Google cracking down. I've gotten a lot of complaints from competitors, etc when using this for clients, it's not the most ethical thing in the world.. you're basically tricking Google into thinking that when a person searches for "los angeles web design" (this isn't a term that I've done this with, for all you sneaky back-engineering types) or whatever they're looking for your brand.

PM me for my MSN SN if you really want some help.

[Amenda Jessera]

I have a question: What is the best way to get FAST SERP?

[FreshMedia]

Hi, I just made a post before finding this one. I was wondering on the differences between wordtracker and google. I found a good keyword that had 6,600 global searches a month in google. This was with a "phrase" search. I'm assuming this calculates to around 200 searches a day. Why does wordtracker only show 15 searches a day. Who should I trust? Thanks.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Amenda Jessera

I have a question: What is the best way to get FAST SERP?

If you mean getting indexed quickly, social bookmarking will do that. In terms of getting ranked quickly... choose a low competition niche and get a direct match domain name. If you meant something else, let me know!

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by FreshMedia

Hi, I just made a post before finding this one. I was wondering on the differences between wordtracker and google. I found a good keyword that had 6,600 global searches a month in google. This was with a "phrase" search. I'm assuming this calculates to around 200 searches a day. Why does wordtracker only show 15 searches a day. Who should I trust? Thanks.

With the G adwords external tool it's important to select "exact" from the drop down box on the top right to get an accurate number.

I don't really recommend using wordtracker for anything except discovering possible keyword combinations etc... I've found that their traffic estimates are off by a LONG shot.

I normally base my predictions on the adwords external tool, but also take into consideration data that I get from google trends... by taking a keyword that I rank number 1 for and putting the new keyword against it. Since I rank number 1 I DO know the traffic for that term and I can compare if the 2nd is higher or lower on the graph to get an estimate.

[FreshMedia]

Thanks TerryG. I got some responses from my post and they also recommend not to trust wordtrakcer.

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by FreshMedia

Thanks TerryG. I got some responses from my post and they also recommend not to trust wordtrakcer.

NP I think you'll find that's the general consensus among the knowledgeable.

[Intrepreneur]

On line 666 of google's key alogrythm what is the line of code they are using?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by Intrepreneur

On line 666 of google's key alogrythm what is the line of code they are using?

Well, I'd put the code out but the big G would sue the pants off me. Here's a visualization:

Makes perfect sense, right?

[abpanama]

Thanks for the free help.

Until a few days ago my site (abpanama) was on the page 1 of google for several terms, including "panama real estate" and "panama real estate listings"
Now my site is nowhere to be found? It seems like it no longer appears in Googles index.
If I search google for "abpanama.com - I get this result as #1:

UK - Gas - Electricity - Electricity Supplier - Gas Supplier - Gas ...
Electric meter electric meters electric shaver electric skillet electric stove electric stoves electric supply electric utility electric violins electric ...
Panama Real Estate | Panama Property Listings | Investments - Cached - Similar -

I have no idea who or what this site is and how it is linking to my site.

Similarly, if I search "panama real estate listings" on page 3 or 4 this appears:

UK - Gas - Electricity - Electricity Supplier - Gas Supplier - Gas ...
Smart Meter Technology provides real business energy solutions, saving time and money, it can also improve the effect business has on the environment. more ...
utilities4u.co.uk/ - Cached - Similar -

Clearly the above site has nothing to do with 'panama real estate listings'
I have contacted my host and the other sites host (different companies) who say it is not their issue

Any ideas - is this a google glitch or virus, or ?? I have tested my site and don;t see any issues, nor does anything show in my google webmaster account
And more importantly, how can I fix it and restore my sites rankings?
I am losing a lot of business and traffic.

Any help would be much appreciated

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by abpanama

Thanks for the free help.

Until a few days ago my site (abpanama) was on the page 1 of google for several terms, including "panama real estate" and "panama real estate listings"
Now my site is nowhere to be found? It seems like it no longer appears in Googles index.
If I search google for "abpanama.com - I get this result as #1:

UK - Gas - Electricity - Electricity Supplier - Gas Supplier - Gas ...
Electric meter electric meters electric shaver electric skillet electric stove electric stoves electric supply electric utility electric violins electric ...
Panama Real Estate | Panama Property Listings | Investments - Cached - Similar -

I have no idea who or what this site is and how it is linking to my site.

Similarly, if I search "panama real estate listings" on page 3 or 4 this appears:

UK - Gas - Electricity - Electricity Supplier - Gas Supplier - Gas ...
Smart Meter Technology provides real business energy solutions, saving time and money, it can also improve the effect business has on the environment. more ...
utilities4u.co.uk/ - Cached - Similar -

Clearly the above site has nothing to do with 'panama real estate listings'
I have contacted my host and the other sites host (different companies) who say it is not their issue

Any ideas - is this a google glitch or virus, or ?? I have tested my site and don;t see any issues, nor does anything show in my google webmaster account
And more importantly, how can I fix it and restore my sites rankings?
I am losing a lot of business and traffic.

Any help would be much appreciated

PM me your URL and I'll take a peek.

[F27]

Here's my question:

My site is not listed in bing yet (though it's PR3 and ranks #1 in google for the keywords of it's niche) how do I get in bing, you mentioned "semantics, bold keywords, etc" but what do you mean by that ?

[abpanama]

Thanks - it is abpanama.com

[LookItsMeTerryG]

@abpanama - Your site has a lot of terrible incoming links. Footer links, sitewide rented links (which are easily detected now as most of them aren't showing any longer, but are still indexed in Y! site explorer). However, this doesn't seem to be causing the issue.

Google

A search for the title tags displaying in your G listing only pull up the original site, not yours. Very peculiar.

I checked for the regular culprits, meta refresh, etc... nothing. Can you take a look at your server logs and see if any of your site pages were edited recently? Is the site running off a DB (mysql..)? If you're using a script see if there are any updates to the script due to SQL injection or something of that nature.

Please, report back with your findings.

@F27 - Have you tried site:yourdomain.com to see if the pages are indexed?

[abpanama]

I can't see anything unusual in the server logs or files being edited.
The properties on the site are pulled from a mysql database, but the content is static. How would I test the sql injection - whatever that is??

I just noticed too that the page rankl has dropped from 3 to zero. It is the cross ranking with the utilities site that confuses me most.

Thanks again for your help

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Originally Posted by abpanama

I can't see anything unusual in the server logs or files being edited.
The properties on the site are pulled from a mysql database, but the content is static. How would I test the sql injection - whatever that is??

I just noticed too that the page rankl has dropped from 3 to zero. It is the cross ranking with the utilities site that confuses me most.

Thanks again for your help

Man this sounds an awful lot like Meta Refresh..

Google

I'm telling you this has something to do with that. Your own pages are linking to them.

[abpanama]

I have checked my site for external links and there are no links to that site!
Is there anyhitng else I can check or test?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

It's not going to be an external link if it's a meta refresh type exploit.

Read this: Stop 302 Redirects and Scrapers from Hijacking Web Page PR - Page Rank

[abpanama]

If you do the same search in other search engines it comes up with zero results - this only seems to be happening in google.

[Fernando Veloso]

Problem:

3 Year old site (more than 2 years top 5 for major keywords_) suddenly gets de-ranked to Google results page 5 for ALL keywords.

Nothing unusual in those sites: just unique content, relevant, and nothing weird. TO ME it looks a very personal (and handmade) penalization. Happened to more than 3 of my sites ALL in same day, October 28th 2008.

Question:

What do you advice?

[LookItsMeTerryG]

@abpanama - Google is faster, I'll bet you'll see this soon in the other engines as well. I spoofed my user agent as Googlebot, so it's not just targeted towards Google. Did you read the link I posted re: Meta Refresh?

@Fernando - PM me your urls.

[Fernando Veloso]

Terry, sorry but i won't reveal the url's.

Guess i was expecting some possible ideas to what (maybe) happened to the sites!! Don't know, i am tired of reading about so many stuff... The sites are now on a new server, all WP fresh installs, and they don't go higher than page 5.

It's just damn weird.

Well, thanks anyway mate

[LookItsMeTerryG]

Well for general advice then..

* Target trusted, authority sites: the closer you can get to bbc.co.uk, cnn.com, whitehouse.gov, etc... 1 link hop away is great, 2 is good, etc .

* Remove/Stop building spammy links

* If you've got mainly 1 type of links (say.. directories for instance) balance out a bit. A diverse link profile is an effective one.

[dandee0014]

Hi Terry, quick question.

I just recently changed the link structure on my domain from http://www.site.com to http://site.com

Will all of the existing backlinks that point to my site via http://www.site.com now be rendered useless by Google?

And going forward, will I only get value out of backlinks that point to http://site.com ?

Thanks!