Google just doesnt care about Content anymore?

52 replies
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I have several sites which i have been adding regular content to for about a month now, and there is very little in the way of traffic to show for it. Before you go and ask whether or not i do keyword research, believe me I do. I make sure the keywords get searched a few thousand times a month, I put the keyword in the url, I use a wordpress blog, I even do some backlinking and social bookmarking... And yes my pages have been indexed by google.

I should probably add that i do competition analysis as well, and make sure there are less than 40K or 50K competitors for that keyword.

But it really seems like googles algo does not seem to put that much emphasis on unique content and regular updates.

Is it me? Am I retarded? Should I spend more time using black hat techniques to try to trick the crawlers? JK about that one, but it seems like regular updating is not enough.

Any ideas?

Robert
#anymore #care #content #google
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  • Profile picture of the author Srikanth D
    Unfortunately in medium to tough niches, content is not enough. Backlinks play too much of a role for content alone to be king. That being said, writing content generic to your niche would mean that you rank for keywords that you can't get by keyword research. That happens when you write for the niche as such without too much emphasis on keyword planting.That is how forums get Search engine traffic, obscure keywords that people are searching for.
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    • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
      Yeah I hear you...I noticed I do get some random traffic from almost meaningless search engine queries. I just don't get how google proclaims so much about building sites around the user, and how content is king, yet I look at some of the sites that are on the first page of the keyword I'm targeting, and their content is complete junk. But because they have 200 back links, all of a sudden they are an authority site.

      I can see why so many people try to tool the system and do all of these black hat techniques. Its like you do so much work to try and engage the user and produce a content rich site, and google says "Eh, not enough back links, lets put him on page 12". No wonder people get frustrated, give up, and never produce anything of substance.
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      • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        Yeah I hear you...I noticed I do get some random traffic from almost meaningless search engine queries. I just don't get how google proclaims so much about building sites around the user, and how content is king, yet I look at some of the sites that are on the first page of the keyword I'm targeting, and their content is complete junk. But because they have 200 back links, all of a sudden they are an authority site.

        I can see why so many people try to tool the system and do all of these black hat techniques. Its like you do so much work to try and engage the user and produce a content rich site, and google says "Eh, not enough back links, lets put him on page 12". No wonder people get frustrated, give up, and never produce anything of substance.
        OK so the solution would be just to build more back links....

        Nothing to complain about there IMO.

        I also suspect that if you have superior quality content and a decent amount of back links, you will start to out rank those junkier sites you are referring to.
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    • Profile picture of the author Faded_again
      Originally Posted by Srikanth D View Post

      Unfortunately in medium to tough niches, content is not enough. Backlinks play too much of a role for content alone to be king. That being said, writing content generic to your niche would mean that you rank for keywords that you can't get by keyword research. That happens when you write for the niche as such without too much emphasis on keyword planting.That is how forums get Search engine traffic, obscure keywords that people are searching for.
      Totally agree with this. A couple of my niche sites literally get 0 hits for my main keyphrase due it to being tough to rank, however I still get lots of random search engine traffic from some weird search phrases people are using which are related to the niche. It just happens that I have enough broad-ish content to rank for those.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    When you say you did the keyword research and there are a few thousand searches a month. Is that broad match or exact match? If it's broad match that's not much at all. Switch to exact match and see how much smaller the search volume goes.

    I have a content site, and almost all my pages have gone up in PageRank since Google came out with their caffeine algorithm, so I'm positive Google values content. My home page went from PR5 to PR6, almost all the pages I checked went up a level, and several pages that had no PageRank went to PR2 or PR3, a few even jumped from PR0 to PR4.

    Can't say much more without more information. Where's your site? What are a few of the keywords are you targeting?
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    If the site you're talking about is Curadebt Reviews, it looks like it exists only for the purpose of gaining affiliate commissions. Google calls sites like that "thin affiliate" sites, and they do not like them much.

    You need content that doesn't point to affiliate sites. Content that is helpful without people leaving the site. Content that is helpful without people making a purchase. I didn't look at all your "content" but what I did look at appears to exist for the sole purpose of getting affiliate commissions. It will take a lot of backlinking to get a thin affiliate site to rank.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Brock
      Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill View Post

      If the site you're talking about is Curadebt Reviews, it looks like it exists only for the purpose of gaining affiliate commissions. Google calls sites like that "thin affiliate" sites, and they do not like them much.

      You need content that doesn't point to affiliate sites. Content that is helpful without people leaving the site. Content that is helpful without people making a purchase. I didn't look at all your "content" but what I did look at appears to exist for the sole purpose of getting affiliate commissions. It will take a lot of backlinking to get a thin affiliate site to rank.
      That's a really good point.

      The solution to that would be to write a product review and channel your article traffic to that instead of right to your vendor page.

      This way your entire site will only consist of one page with affiliate links.
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      • Profile picture of the author IMStudentforlife
        Originally Posted by Daniel Brock View Post

        That's a really good point.

        The solution to that would be to write a product review and channel your article traffic to that instead of right to your vendor page.

        This way your entire site will only consist of one page with affiliate links.
        This is what I am doing lately, gave up on loading up with the content for awhile to create even more back links. It's getting results now, but it seems that Google changes its mind every few seconds lately...
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        • Profile picture of the author Mountainmotorman
          Originally Posted by IMStudentforlife View Post

          This is what I am doing lately, gave up on loading up with the content for awhile to create even more back links. It's getting results now, but it seems that Google changes its mind every few seconds lately...
          Probably the smartest answer on this thread! It is and will ALWAYS be about backlinks and how many you have to the site with WHAT ANCHOR TEXT!!!! Do you and lots of others forget this IMPORT fact???
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  • Profile picture of the author adamv
    Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post


    I should probably add that i do competition analysis as well, and make sure there are less than 40K or 50K competitors for that keyword.

    Robert
    "Competition analysis" is not simply checking the number of pages that come up when you search for a term in quotes. In fact that is a very poor and unreliable way to measure the strength of competition.

    To determine the strength of competition you'll want to use something like seoquake plugin for firefox. Check the first page of results and look at the PR of the pages that come up, the number of backlinks these pages have, the age of the domains, weather the keywords are in the url or at least in the sites title.

    Those are some of the factors to consider. The number of sites in quotes is almost meaningless.
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  • Profile picture of the author kalios
    Google always cares about content. It is the excessive Internet Marketing that makes most of us think that content isn't King anymore...
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    I think Google cares more about backlinks than it does content. In fact, I don't really think Google cares at all that you have unique content.

    It's your visitors that are going to care more about the content.

    At least that's what I have seen in my observations of my own sites.

    Lee
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    • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
      Originally Posted by cashcow View Post

      I think Google cares more about backlinks than it does content. In fact, I don't really think Google cares at all that you have unique content.

      It's your visitors that are going to care more about the content.

      At least that's what I have seen in my observations of my own sites.

      Lee
      I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. If Google didn't care about content then thin affiliate sites would rank well and Google wouldn't single them out as an example of what NOT to do.

      If Google didn't care about content they would be participating in their own demise, because as you say, visitors care about content, and if people aren't finding quality content through Google, they'll find it through another search engine. I hardly think Google believes they can serve up garbage results and maintain their search dominance.

      Their new algorithm re-emphasizes content, so maybe your observations will change.
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  • Profile picture of the author Igor Kheifets
    Robert,

    for Google, "regular" means at least once a month.

    I too used to post a blog entry every day, coming up
    with unique content and helpful advice for my readers.

    But then I noticed that my traffic stats didn't really
    change even if I'd post twice a week instead of 7 times.

    Google cares about content, only they have a different
    perspective on the meaning of the term "regular".

    Igor
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. If Google didn't care about content then thin affiliate sites would rank well and Google wouldn't single them out as an example of what NOT to do.

    If Google didn't care about content they would be participating in their own demise, because as you say, visitors care about content, and if people aren't finding quality content through Google, they'll find it through another search engine. I hardly think Google believes they can serve up garbage results and maintain their search dominance.

    Their new algorithm re-emphasizes content, so maybe your observations will change.
    Yeah, what I meant was google doesn't care about unique content (or even good content - whatever that is). I agree that a site that is just affiliate links with no value to the user is easy for them to spot and, thus, not rank.

    The sites I speak of in my observations do have a lot of content, just not unique and not updated regularly.

    Glad I had a chance to clarify that.

    But I still think they care way more about backlinks than content.

    Lee
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Robert, it's time for a reality check.

      I have a blog in the make money online niche that has over 1,400 articles,
      over 14,000 backlinks and an Alexa rank of about 68,000.

      You couldn't find me for any of the main keywords in my niche in the first
      20 pages if you tried.

      If you rely on search engine placement alone for your business...

      YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP RIGHT NOW.

      You need to do more...a lot more...if you want to get an advantage.

      I get my traffic from leveraging other sites.

      Article Directories
      Forums
      Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites
      Other Marketer's Blogs
      Other Free Forms Of Advertising

      I suck every drop of traffic out of every medium I can find in order to
      get traffic to my sites.

      The result?

      In one of the most competitive niches, where I am nowhere to be found
      in the SERPs, I am making 6 figures a year.

      Don't rely on the SERPs or you're looking for trouble.
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      • Profile picture of the author Lloyd Buchinski
        Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

        But it really seems like googles algo does not seem to put that much emphasis on unique content and regular updates.
        It took awhile for me to get quality content out of my system. In come cases it actually does seem like a handicap. It's almost a standard strategy for adsense sites to rank high for every other reason but content. The content is trash and the visitor has to click on something that looks a little promising to get the info they came to the site for.

        Originally Posted by ProductCreator View Post

        It's ironic. Like you I wanted to stay white hat. I didn't want to go BH. I ignore other forums where that stuff is being discussed.

        But guess what? Due to the amount of Warriors now doing these activities and getting amazing rankings, I'm forced to use the same tactics. If you can't beat em, join em. From now on I'll be using forum profile spamming on all my new sites.
        That's a bit of a surprise to hear. I've appreciated reading enough of your posts to have quite a bit of respect for your opinions, and will certainly be thinking about this one.

        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        I get my traffic from leveraging other sites.

        Article Directories
        Forums
        Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites
        Other Marketer's Blogs
        Other Free Forms Of Advertising

        I suck every drop of traffic out of every medium I can find in order to
        get traffic to my sites.

        The result?

        In one of the most competitive niches, where I am nowhere to be found
        in the SERPs, I am making 6 figures a year.
        What an enthusiastic guy (!)

        By 'forums' you mean sig links?

        And also wondering about 'other free forms of advertising.' What are the most useful there?

        Thanks for the experience and the info shared so far.

        best wishes,
        ../lloyd
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      • Profile picture of the author Obelisk
        Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

        Robert, it's time for a reality check.

        I have a blog in the make money online niche that has over 1,400 articles,
        over 14,000 backlinks and an Alexa rank of about 68,000.

        You couldn't find me for any of the main keywords in my niche in the first
        20 pages if you tried.

        If you rely on search engine placement alone for your business...

        YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP RIGHT NOW.

        You need to do more...a lot more...if you want to get an advantage.

        I get my traffic from leveraging other sites.

        Article Directories
        Forums
        Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites
        Other Marketer's Blogs
        Other Free Forms Of Advertising

        I suck every drop of traffic out of every medium I can find in order to
        get traffic to my sites.

        The result?

        In one of the most competitive niches, where I am nowhere to be found
        in the SERPs, I am making 6 figures a year.

        Don't rely on the SERPs or you're looking for trouble.
        Steve,

        Funny you mentioned this approach. A while back I changed focus from the traditional SEO approach to what you have described and guess what?

        It works...especially for markets that are perceived to have too much competition.

        I learned a long time ago that relying on google alone was a lost cause for my niches. So I simply changed my perspective a bit, and voila!

        Now, I still do backlinking and your typical google rankings stuff, but it has moved to the 20% of my 80/20 efforts....

        Good Luck,

        Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post


    Any ideas?

    Robert
    Robert, if you are talking about the sites in your sig, I do have a couple of ideas...

    First, add some real content. Right now, the home page looks like a flog and a long-form sales letter had an illegitimate offspring.

    Second, you are playing in one of the single most competitive niches online right now. It's going to take a lot more than a handful of pitches, I mean posts, to beat out sites with thousands of pages of real content, advertisers with very deep pockets and other affiliate marketers.

    If you want to play in this game, you're going to have to niche it down a lot further than just people looking for debt consolidation or settlement. If you want to tackle this one with just blogging, you need to get deep and targeted. I haven't done the research on the sub niche, but an example would be "widowed seniors who own their own homes with high medical bills and no savings left." You might be able to reach a niche this precise with a blog, but you will probably still have to do some back linking...
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  • Profile picture of the author Troy_Phillips
    I have had a site that has been on google one for over a year . Nothing to do with IM .

    From the time the site was two weeks old it never dropped below google one ... slot 4 .

    I got the bright idea to put several links to cpa offers on one of the pages and the site now sits in the middle of page 9 .

    What your content points to has a lot to do with your ranking with google
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    • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
      Originally Posted by Troy_Phillips View Post

      I have had a site that has been on google one for over a year . Nothing to do with IM .

      From the time the site was two weeks old it never dropped below google one ... slot 4 .

      I got the bright idea to put several links to cpa offers on one of the pages and the site now sits in the middle of page 9 .

      What your content points to has a lot to do with your ranking with google
      You are right as rain, my friend. Incoming links won't hurt you, but your outgoing links sure can. That's why all my actual affiliate links are on separate pages in a folder that Google is prohibited from indexing.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    It's ironic. Like you I wanted to stay white hat. I didn't want to go BH. I ignore other forums where that stuff is being discussed.

    But guess what? Due to the amount of Warriors now doing these activities and getting amazing rankings, I'm forced to use the same tactics. If you can't beat em, join em. From now on I'll be using forum profile spamming on all my new sites.
    This quote is priceless.

    You avoid other forums because they discuss tactics that you or others here disagree with but when people here start using the same tactics they are suddenly acceptable.

    Or in other words... you're way behind the curve and now playing catch-up.

    The problem is... those kids have moved on. Profile backlinks are old news. Automated tools are finally catching on here and those too are old news.

    Yesterdays black hat is tomorrows white hat?

    You might as well pick up a copy of scrapebox and xrummer now because you're going to do it eventually.
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  • Profile picture of the author lexilexi
    Love this post. People are getting it. There's no more way to create an algorithm that can tell "quality" than to create an algorithm that can discern the smell of a rose. Junk has certain common charcteristics - but Google essentially appears to reward popularity more than it does quality.

    I do advise to stick to quality content though. It's a far better strategy for long-term profitability. You just need to combine it with effective promotion for the 1-2 knockout.

    OP - how is your keyword targeting on your pages? Take a tip out of wikipedia's book - each page is strongly keyword themed around one KW only, also other pages on the site have in-content links to those pages with the keyword as anchor text. Wikipedia pages consistently top the rankings.

    It's hard to reply to this post without promoting the heck out of my own link building book - because it's exactly what you need. It sounds like you are doing all the initial research right to find profitable niches for SEO. But you need steady, consistent link building, and patience. And there are a ton of ways to get good links that most people don't consider......

    Steve W.... 1,400 articles, 14,000 links is only about 10 links per page. That's probably not enough to put any of your pages over the top for any given term. How's your onsite SEO? Why do Wikipedia pages consistently top the rankings? It isn't rocket science you just need to do it right. Whoever you hired for SEO, fire them!

    Agreed that relying on search engines always has an element of chance - but if you build quality links you'll get organic traffic too.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by lexilexi View Post

      Steve W.... 1,400 articles, 14,000 links is only about 10 links per page. That's probably not enough to put any of your pages over the top for any given term. How's your onsite SEO? Why do Wikipedia pages consistently top the rankings? It isn't rocket science you just need to do it right. Whoever you hired for SEO, fire them!

      Agreed that relying on search engines always has an element of chance - but if you build quality links you'll get organic traffic too.
      That's the beauty of what I do. I don't have to concern myself too much
      with SEO. Whatever juice I get, I look at it as a bonus.

      You concentrate your efforts on what you do best and leave the other
      stuff for everybody else.

      A lot of marketers could take a valuable lesson from that philosophy.
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      • Profile picture of the author charlieangles
        Back Links Play an important role in getting the Page indexed by Google. If an irrelevant content or duplicate content had been written by you then Google will have less points as compared to the Quality Back Links. So it is more obvious that If we are having the Quality Backlinks, then the page must be indexed by Google.
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        • Profile picture of the author TelegramSam
          Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post


          If you rely on search engine placement alone for your business...

          YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP RIGHT NOW.

          I understand what you are trying to say. But it is misleading.

          If you do a decent job of seo in most niches, apart from the mega competitive ones, then you can rank very highly.

          95% of all the sites I visit that relate to competitors in our niches do a poor job seo-wise.

          A month or two later and we outrank them and eat their lunch. It usually doesn't take too much work.

          From what you have said, it seems you make no deliberate seo efforts.

          So how can you be the judge of whether good seo efforts are worth it or not?

          Done properly it is still VERY effective in MANY niches.

          Sam
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          • Profile picture of the author condra
            I think it is naive to assume Googles algorithm is so simple that it "prefers" either content or backlinks.

            There are so many other factors to be considered, like the quality of the backlinks, the age of the backlinks, the age of the site itself, the relevance of anchor tags, keywords and links, etc etc etc

            There is a bigger, (speculative) list here:
            Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist

            There are probably many more factors we don't know about! I've long suspected for example, that google doesn't like sites with PHRASES IN CAPS, every few sentences, and I suspect it doesn't much like sporadic red text either.

            Googles algo most likely uses very complex maths with a dynamic scoring system, using ratios, multiplication, division, and all sorts of wizardy pokery, and I think it usually does a good job and bringing the cream to the top.

            I think in Google world, it pays to offer genuinely useful, unique content, and not to try to over optimise, but to create a site/service that is genuinely worthy of high rank.
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  • One month? It takes 3-6 months of steady content creation and regular backlinking to rank for anything remotely competitive. Patience is a virtue -- and a profitable one.

    I mean, you're saying Google doesn't care about content. Is your one month's worth of content really that much better than your competitors', who may have been at it for years? Please take this as constructive criticism.
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    • Profile picture of the author John S. Rhodes
      For most of my small niche sites I do ONE THING
      that drives traffic. I don't bother doing anything
      else at all...

      Sounds insane. I know.

      But listen to this. This one simple traffic generation
      system gives me everything:

      * Backlinks
      * Direct traffic
      * Wide distribution
      * Free promotion
      * Authority positioning
      * Easy cloaking and stealth

      I could go on and on. But even that list isn't very
      important. Here's what REALLY matters...

      I tested and tested and tested again. I found
      something that works. Then, I gave it 110% of
      my effort and I built a full system around it. Now,
      I outsource 95% of my traffic generation in most
      of my niches. It's easy, cheap and simple. I can
      replace my outsourcers at any time because I
      have a system as simple as flippin' burgers and
      making fries at McDonalds.

      And, there's one more little, tiny, very special
      piece of this puzzle...

      I know the value of my traffic!

      How?

      * I know the value of my customers...

      * I know my conversion rates...

      * I know which prices work best...

      * I know how to build a list from traffic...

      And so on and so forth.

      If you wanna chase the dream, if you wanna
      use 38 traffic methods, if you wanna try every
      single method to drive traffic... good for you!
      Go for it. But, what I do is easy, simple, and
      it works. It's all due to testing and knowing
      how to exploit the crap out of everything
      that comes my way.

      ~ John

      p.s. Every single person reading this little rant
      knows about the traffic method I am talking
      about it. It's so obvious that I'm not even going
      to talk about it.
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      • Profile picture of the author condra
        Originally Posted by John S. Rhodes View Post


        p.s. Every single person reading this little rant
        knows about the traffic method I am talking
        about it. It's so obvious that I'm not even going
        to talk about it.
        Sorry, but I don't. Intrigued though.
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      • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
        Originally Posted by John S. Rhodes View Post

        For most of my small niche sites I do ONE THING
        that drives traffic. I don't bother doing anything
        else at all...

        Sounds insane. I know.

        But listen to this. This one simple traffic generation
        system gives me everything:

        * Backlinks
        * Direct traffic
        * Wide distribution
        * Free promotion
        * Authority positioning
        * Easy cloaking and stealth

        I could go on and on. But even that list isn't very
        important. Here's what REALLY matters...

        I tested and tested and tested again. I found
        something that works. Then, I gave it 110% of
        my effort and I built a full system around it. Now,
        I outsource 95% of my traffic generation in most
        of my niches. It's easy, cheap and simple. I can
        replace my outsourcers at any time because I
        have a system as simple as flippin' burgers and
        making fries at McDonalds.

        And, there's one more little, tiny, very special
        piece of this puzzle...

        I know the value of my traffic!

        How?

        * I know the value of my customers...

        * I know my conversion rates...

        * I know which prices work best...

        * I know how to build a list from traffic...

        And so on and so forth.

        If you wanna chase the dream, if you wanna
        use 38 traffic methods, if you wanna try every
        single method to drive traffic... good for you!
        Go for it. But, what I do is easy, simple, and
        it works. It's all due to testing and knowing
        how to exploit the crap out of everything
        that comes my way.

        ~ John

        p.s. Every single person reading this little rant
        knows about the traffic method I am talking
        about it. It's so obvious that I'm not even going
        to talk about it.


        OK intrigue is established. Do tell?
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      • Profile picture of the author mrdomains
        Originally Posted by John S. Rhodes View Post

        For most of my small niche sites I do ONE THING
        that drives traffic. I don't bother doing anything
        else at all...

        Sounds insane. I know.

        But listen to this. This one simple traffic generation
        system gives me everything:
        Considering the large amount of WSO offers you have produced, that span over a wide range of subjects and traffic building techniques, perhaps it would be fair to those asking, if you would point them towards the "ONE THING" that drives your traffic.. or to the WSO they should pick up :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
          Originally Posted by mrdomains View Post

          Considering the large amount of WSO offers you have produced, that span over a wide range of subjects and traffic building techniques, perhaps it would be fair to those asking, if you would point them towards the "ONE THING" that drives your traffic.. or to the WSO they should pick up :rolleyes:
          That is VERY well said. Hopefully we get a reply.
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          • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
            Originally Posted by condra View Post

            Sorry, but I don't. Intrigued though.
            Originally Posted by Marhelper View Post

            OK intrigue is established. Do tell?
            Originally Posted by mrdomains View Post

            Considering the large amount of WSO offers you have produced, that span over a wide range of subjects and traffic building techniques, perhaps it would be fair to those asking, if you would point them towards the "ONE THING" that drives your traffic.. or to the WSO they should pick up :rolleyes:
            Originally Posted by Marhelper View Post

            That is VERY well said. Hopefully we get a reply.
            To all of the intrigued, I have a hunch the answer was in whatever this replaced...

            "Please read the sig file rules"

            :rolleyes:
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            • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
              Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

              To all of the intrigued, I have a hunch the answer was in whatever this replaced...

              "Please read the sig file rules"

              :rolleyes:
              Not sure I am following. Do you think the person that posted that was in violation of the rules? If so, how?
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  • Profile picture of the author HCLee
    Well Google has said through Matt Cutts in a video that getting more backlinks is more important than having lots of pages of good contents and that determines which sites Google Bots crawled first.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    Search Engines and not just google do care about quality content. Many SEO tricks do not work anymore. Although still used by some many search engines ignore meta tag keywords and meta tag descriptions.

    What matters more to the search engine these days ...

    * keywords
    * quality content
    * social references (validation)
    * and backlinks

    It's not the age of the domain (although some will argue that) and it certainly has nothing to do with PR...

    This is the age of social media and as such the search engines are looking to see if your site is social validated. Which in short means, is your site being bookmarked, is your site mentioned on twitter, is your site mentioned on facebook, are others in social media discussing your site and sharing your site with others.

    So if you are not apart of social media I would highly suggest you start being apart of it. Social references matter and this goes right along with backlinks and bookmarks on social media sites..

    James
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  • Profile picture of the author inijames
    When content is so cheap to buy nowadays, you have got to have more than just any old article. I think linkbait is the way to go, if you can get it publicised enough.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by inijames View Post

      When content is so cheap to buy nowadays, you have got to have more than just any old article. I think linkbait is the way to go, if you can get it publicised enough.
      Linkbait is the way to go but IM make money online people often do not want t hear about it. You can't use an automated tool to do linkbait. It won't make you $30,000 in 3 days (well it could but its hit and miss for a fast buck) and it requires too much work and you can't quantify it as in x links for so much dollars.

      However done right it will kick the pants off anything else you might start out with and its the only thing outside of buying links that is going to give you incontent link from high PR pages from all kinds of sites that will not breath in your direction for anything else.
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  • Profile picture of the author GossipCrunch
    Relevant content related with your keyword and with 3% - 5% keyword density in your content and also high PR backlinks can boost your Search Engine rankings. The idea is to get into the top page for the targeted keyword to receive maximum SE organic traffic.
    Traffic from Bing and Yahoo is better as they are the buying customers rather than Google traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author MATTYLLL
    Interesting theories out there. I've always found that a combination of regular content i.e. daily, video and building links has done the trick for me. It has to be a long term thing though.

    I've come across the following which are free backlinks packs, I thought may be appropriate for you guys! Web Affiliate Tools
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Google has never promised that content is king . What they have promised is that content that users like is king. How do they determine that people like it? By links to your site.

    Its like presidential politics. Many of the guys with the most content in their head never got enough votes for anyone to see it at work.
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  • Profile picture of the author ChrisBa
    Originally Posted by rvrabel2002 View Post

    I have several sites which i have been adding regular content to for about a month now, and there is very little in the way of traffic to show for it. Before you go and ask whether or not i do keyword research, believe me I do. I make sure the keywords get searched a few thousand times a month, I put the keyword in the url, I use a wordpress blog, I even do some backlinking and social bookmarking... And yes my pages have been indexed by google.

    I should probably add that i do competition analysis as well, and make sure there are less than 40K or 50K competitors for that keyword.

    But it really seems like googles algo does not seem to put that much emphasis on unique content and regular updates.

    Is it me? Am I retarded? Should I spend more time using black hat techniques to try to trick the crawlers? JK about that one, but it seems like regular updating is not enough.

    Any ideas?

    Robert
    It's about content and backlinks..
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  • Profile picture of the author rayray7
    If all you have is great content, goodluck! You need links and you need lots of them. I will take thousands of links over some content anyday. People forget google uses machines and they are not humans yet.

    I put great content on my site and then submit so--so content to any place available and it has worked great.
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  • Profile picture of the author ExRat
    Hi,

    I'm not going to offer my opinion on 'what Google currently cares about', as everyone else already has.

    But I would say to you - just read through the 49 or so posts before this one. One thing's for sure, Google are winning.

    Almost every aspect has been covered in these posts, and an outsider scanning through them, trying to learn something, could only summize that everyone has a different opinion and that half of the posts contradict what the other half is saying.

    Question - can anyone else read through this and draw any sort of conclusion, or answer to the OP's question, based on logic and the information provided by the responders?
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    Roger Davis

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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by adamv View Post

      "Competition analysis" is not simply checking the number of pages that come up when you search for a term in quotes. In fact that is a very poor and unreliable way to measure the strength of competition.

      To determine the strength of competition you'll want to use something like seoquake plugin for firefox. Check the first page of results and look at the PR of the pages that come up, the number of backlinks these pages have, the age of the domains, weather the keywords are in the url or at least in the sites title.

      Those are some of the factors to consider. The number of sites in quotes is almost meaningless.
      Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

      Robert, if you are talking about the sites in your sig, I do have a couple of ideas...

      First, add some real content. Right now, the home page looks like a flog and a long-form sales letter had an illegitimate offspring.

      Second, you are playing in one of the single most competitive niches online right now. It's going to take a lot more than a handful of pitches, I mean posts, to beat out sites with thousands of pages of real content, advertisers with very deep pockets and other affiliate marketers.

      If you want to play in this game, you're going to have to niche it down a lot further than just people looking for debt consolidation or settlement. If you want to tackle this one with just blogging, you need to get deep and targeted. I haven't done the research on the sub niche, but an example would be "widowed seniors who own their own homes with high medical bills and no savings left." You might be able to reach a niche this precise with a blog, but you will probably still have to do some back linking...
      Hi rvrabel2002,

      I think Adam & John nailed it.

      Like Adam wrote, researching the number of competing pages will only tell you how large the field of competition is, not the strength of competition. Most folks use that as a starting point because it is easy to retrieve. Just because it is easy to measure doesn't mean it's important. Strength of competition is what's important and you need to focus on the top ten competitors because that is where nearly all the traffic goes.

      John made an excellent point about your niche size, you are focusing on a very large niche with intense levels of competition. Even if you have thousands of pages, if they all rank on page 5 of the SERP you will never see much SE traffic. Find smaller sub-niches that you can dominate. You must drive those pages to a first page listing else they are mostly worthless for traffic.

      Steven made an excellent point about traffic. Don't focus strictly on pleasing the search engines, instead focus on techniques that both generate traffic and complement your SEO efforts. A good promotional campaign never relies strictly on search engines for traffic, search engines only account for about 25% to 35% of all website traffic.

      p.s. SurviveUnemployment made some useful comments about quality content and backlinks, I totally agree.
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  • Originally Posted by warrich View Post

    Well google says content is power, but my experiance say that its backlinks who can help you more than any other thing
    You're right. Backlinks are critical, but quality matters more than quantity. In my experience, one or two heavy links from high-PR sites are worth thousands of dinky little self-built links. So it comes back around to content -- you have to provide something that those sites feel is interesting enough to link to.

    Or you could pay a lot of money for those types of links, but if your visitors bounce due to crummy content, it will be a waste of money.

    Backlinks are very important, but the best ones are gained as a result of providing interesting or informative content.
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  • Profile picture of the author paytonlowe
    Googles ranking formula goes something like this:

    If content is relevant + backlinks relevant to keywords on site = decent ranking
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