Interesting, but Good, Google Result. Have You Had Similar Results?
- SEO |
Google's on-going changes really do have IM'ers in a twist lately 
There's been so much talk (well, mostly rumours and assumptions) about this being dead and that being dead, people could be excused for wondering whether they've landed in an obituary forum or the web's premier online marketing forum.
Well the changes are worthy of discussion, that's for sure. I'm very interested to see how things play out over the next few months, as it seems to me the changes are going to be positive (for the legitimate, unspammy marketers anyway).
One of the interesting changes I've seen is the sudden jump in the search results for one of my old, forgotten websites which I made about 2 years ago as a site for testing different things. Its in the weight loss niche, and I haven't done anything to it for about a year. It was sitting in position 8 on Google for the main keyword and never moved up or down.
Something reminded me of the site a few days ago so I checked to see what was up. I was shocked to see it has jumped to #1 in Google and judging by the traffic stats, has been there for about a month. I'm checking the ranking with traffic travis and rank checker, so its not just my personal settings talking.
As I said, I haven't changed anything on the site for over a year, so this has something to do with Google's algo changes.
Here are some facts about the site:
1) It has no external backlinks. OK it has 3. But they're not even from high PR or authority sites.
2) There are only 3 articles published on the blog, 400-500 words each
3) I have About, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and Contact me pages
4) The on site SEO is pretty solid, with good internal linking structures in place, H1 tags, alt tags on images, etc but its NOT overkill (no bold, italicized or underlined keywords, etc.) In other words, it doesn't look like I've gone out of my way to keyword optimize everything
5) The main keyword only gets 590 exact searches per month according to Google Keyword Tool (which is about right, cos I've been getting 20-40 organic visitors every day for the past 4 weeks or so) and is not very competitive, although my site is beating WebMD which is in position 3. The site in position 2 is a fairly authoritive site in the niche.
6) The site has an exact match .net domain
7) The articles are good quality (I wrote them myself :p), are informative rather than "salesy", and seem to have been well received (my visitors have shared them on Facebook and one of the articles has been "Google Plus Oned" 61 times.
Traditional SEO training says this site shouldn't be in the top 3. But it seems the rules are changing Of course, I may be wrong, and the site may drop out of the rankings altogether next week for all I know... But for now its up there and been there for about a month, so that's good news for me.
In my opinion, this change may have something to do with the article quality, the social sharing, the good but not overkill on-page SEO, and the fact that it doesn't appear to have been built solely for internet marketing purposes (no huge backlinking or anything like that).
What experiences have you guys had? Anything weird (but good) happen to your sites lately?
There's been so much talk (well, mostly rumours and assumptions) about this being dead and that being dead, people could be excused for wondering whether they've landed in an obituary forum or the web's premier online marketing forum.
Well the changes are worthy of discussion, that's for sure. I'm very interested to see how things play out over the next few months, as it seems to me the changes are going to be positive (for the legitimate, unspammy marketers anyway).
One of the interesting changes I've seen is the sudden jump in the search results for one of my old, forgotten websites which I made about 2 years ago as a site for testing different things. Its in the weight loss niche, and I haven't done anything to it for about a year. It was sitting in position 8 on Google for the main keyword and never moved up or down.
Something reminded me of the site a few days ago so I checked to see what was up. I was shocked to see it has jumped to #1 in Google and judging by the traffic stats, has been there for about a month. I'm checking the ranking with traffic travis and rank checker, so its not just my personal settings talking.
As I said, I haven't changed anything on the site for over a year, so this has something to do with Google's algo changes.
Here are some facts about the site:
1) It has no external backlinks. OK it has 3. But they're not even from high PR or authority sites.
2) There are only 3 articles published on the blog, 400-500 words each
3) I have About, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and Contact me pages
4) The on site SEO is pretty solid, with good internal linking structures in place, H1 tags, alt tags on images, etc but its NOT overkill (no bold, italicized or underlined keywords, etc.) In other words, it doesn't look like I've gone out of my way to keyword optimize everything
5) The main keyword only gets 590 exact searches per month according to Google Keyword Tool (which is about right, cos I've been getting 20-40 organic visitors every day for the past 4 weeks or so) and is not very competitive, although my site is beating WebMD which is in position 3. The site in position 2 is a fairly authoritive site in the niche.
6) The site has an exact match .net domain
7) The articles are good quality (I wrote them myself :p), are informative rather than "salesy", and seem to have been well received (my visitors have shared them on Facebook and one of the articles has been "Google Plus Oned" 61 times.
Traditional SEO training says this site shouldn't be in the top 3. But it seems the rules are changing
Of course, I may be wrong, and the site may drop out of the rankings altogether next week for all I know... But for now its up there and been there for about a month, so that's good news for me.In my opinion, this change may have something to do with the article quality, the social sharing, the good but not overkill on-page SEO, and the fact that it doesn't appear to have been built solely for internet marketing purposes (no huge backlinking or anything like that).
What experiences have you guys had? Anything weird (but good) happen to your sites lately?
William Butler Yeats
I can convert your Non-Responsive website to Responsive website ... How sweet is that? :)
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