Yup... Still Works

Dustin07 · 01-03-2007, 12:43 PM

I was starting to get burnt out on SEO. Making less and less progress... in fact seeing my ranking for certain terms drop. I've seen SEO work very well, and lately I've been seeing the opposite.

Then suddenly I found out that one of my corporate pages is ranked #1 in Google for my name... haha. It's because I blog on a few different sites and each post comes up with "Posted by my name" and it's linked to that page.... LOL.

OK, so SEO still works in Google. I just need to really focus. My competition is laying a whoopin' on me.

searchbliss · 01-03-2007, 01:32 PM

Unfortunatly blog links have a nofollow tag in them. Still interesting though. Maybe you could change your name in the blogs to a keyword and see what happens??? Of course there isn't any keyword compition using your name. Also, yes SEO still woks on Google...just differently now since BigDaddy.

Dustin07 · 01-03-2007, 01:40 PM

blog comment links have no follows, I'm an author.

vangogh · 01-03-2007, 03:39 PM

Dustin as soon as I added my name as an author credit on my blog I started ranking for it. I've even been found on occasion when someone types vangogh, which I find amazing.

Don't give up on the efforts. Sometimes fluctuations in rank are temporary. Search engines trying something new to see how it works. it could be a more permanent algorithm change or it could be less trust is seen in some of your backlinks or simply your competition putting in more effort.

How far have you dropped for the terms? If it's just a few places there isn't really anything to worry about. You can get that back with some more work. If you've disappeared completely for the terms then first give it a little time to see if you come back and if not it might be there's something wrong with the site that can be fixed.

As long as you haven't been practicing manipulative seo the drops are likely fixed. If you have been manipulating things you can still fix it, but it's probably going to take longer.

Dustin07 · 01-03-2007, 03:47 PM

Quote:

How far have you dropped for the terms?

LOL, depends on the term, but in many cases the answer is... a lot. I made some major changes back in October though, new site design, and forwarded all urls to www.domain.com rather than store.domain.com. So I'm rebuilding from that.

Funny thing is, I was hoping my conversion would increase with the new design... nope. Visitors are up about 10-20% though I believe. I feel like I got through the rough patch during October/November and things are starting to get steady again, so I'm refocusing on all the basics I started on one full year ago when I first got started.

On site SEO
Articles (I've bothed worshiped AND shunned this practice, LOL)
Exchanges
Outright purchases, mostly full posts though

there's more to be done, but I'm just trying to get back to the basics. It worked for a while, then I couldn't figure out why it stopped working... then I realized it was because I quit working it!

Dustin07 · 01-03-2007, 03:49 PM

One thing I'm having problems with, is picking new keywords to really focus on. Everything in my industry has a HORRIBLE KEI ratio. And I mean everything. I'm finding that I'm really reaching on some keywords, and they aren't great, ratios of 9 or less. There were a few that had 30-50, but still, I couldn't get myself to use them because I just couldn't make them relevant... and I can BS anything...haha.

WagerX · 01-04-2007, 12:08 AM

Dustin, I feel you..
I started 2 sites.. similar content on both. 1st one not SEO'd at ALL.. no changes, just a few links in the beginning.. my second site.. SEO'D to the max.. consumed my time, and marketting budget. all white hat.. now, a year later.. the 1st site is getting about 15% of the traffic of my optimized SEO site... 15% about 1/8th.. BUT I put in 1000's of times more time into 2nd site..

My conclusion in optimizing my time it to build more sites and do minimal SEO (link building etc.. ) to get the most traffic per time spent..

Like you said it's sad to see your rankingings fall as you helplessly sink into your chair..

Anyway.. the best of lulck to you. hang in there.

ninjashoes · 01-04-2007, 02:43 AM

What kind of backlinks do you get. Any you can get your hands on or just the good ones? Im just curious.

gannik · 01-04-2007, 03:05 AM

Where did you get these backlins from?

vangogh · 01-06-2007, 09:54 AM

Dustin some of the loss in ranking for specific keywords could be due to the changes you made. It can take a few months for all of that to get sorted out.

You say visitors are up. Is that visitors from search engines? Even if not it seems like you're doing something right.

I wouldn't focus too much on KEI. I think it's much less useful than it would seem. A lot of high KEI terms simply aren't going to convert.

One good way to find keywords to target is by looking at your own server logs. If you find keyprhases that have led to conversions in your own stats you may want to optimize more for those phrases and phrases that are similar.

You can do the same thing bidding on phrases in AdWords, but with a faster feedback loop.

If you want feel free to email me more details and I'll be happy to take a look.

ninjashoes · 01-07-2007, 03:47 AM

I use googles webmaster tools to find out what people are using to find my site then I optimize around those keywords.

SVB · 01-08-2007, 08:20 AM

Must say I haven't seen any changes in the last 2 years for my rankings. And I've actually removed the inbound links. Still number one for popular search terms.
I never got this whole SEO business. It's all a sham. The amount of people I've done SEO for, thinking I waved a magic wand, when really I just got a ton of good inbound links. Although I guess it's like any art. Once you can do it, it becomes second nature with not much effort whatsoever. Think of a term, bombard site with relevant strong keyword links (none of this spamming your site all over the place business) and there you have it.

searchbliss · 01-08-2007, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen Bradley

Must say I haven't seen any changes in the last 2 years for my rankings. And I've actually removed the inbound links. Still number one for popular search terms.
I never got this whole SEO business. It's all a sham. The amount of people I've done SEO for, thinking I waved a magic wand, when really I just got a ton of good inbound links. Although I guess it's like any art. Once you can do it, it becomes second nature with not much effort whatsoever. Think of a term, bombard site with relevant strong keyword links (none of this spamming your site all over the place business) and there you have it.

Inbound links is a big part of SEO, which you think is a sham.

SVB · 01-08-2007, 08:31 AM

Yes, what I'm saying is, I've got my results, they haven't changed much at all in the last couple of year, and it's 100% due to inbound links.
Some business that is. And people have paid me to do "SEO", which simply consisted of gaining a lot of relevant keyword links, and onpage optimisation just to please them. None of this manipulating blogs and using all sorts of weird techniques. Just plain old links. For example, heres just one site. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=psp+forum
The number one site, that spot was easily achieved, no market research or anything at all went into it. Just a few links that aren't even there anymore. I believe in a hands on inbound link gainage style SEO, rather than a load of research bull and tweaking tiny things getting you nowhere. And I haven't seen an increase or decline in progress at all. Of course the SEO still works. It's always been the same. If you want to keep up to date with the latest line of code in the search engine algorithms, you're wasting your time, it works perfectly well doing what I do to stay number 1 - nothing.

Dustin07 · 01-08-2007, 09:47 AM

Quote:

You say visitors are up. Is that visitors from search engines? Even if not it seems like you're doing something right.

I wouldn't focus too much on KEI. I think it's much less useful than it would seem. A lot of high KEI terms simply aren't going to convert.

One good way to find keywords to target is by looking at your own server logs. If you find keyprhases that have led to conversions in your own stats you may want to optimize more for those phrases and phrases that are similar.

thanks for the suggestion Steve. I didn't really think to work on those terms more. I have so many different products that we offer I was focusing more on high-profit items that I thought I could invest in. Of course, 10,000 of my competitors have the same idea.

I just did a check on my past keyword searches that have been resulting in orders, and I'm seeing some similarities between MSN/Yahoo/Google. Not items I've been focusing on, but perhaps I should so I can shoot for that higher conversion.

thanks for the suggestion

vangogh · 01-09-2007, 02:15 PM

Glad to help Dustin.

Stephen no offense intended, but the keyword you're targeting in that search isn't nearly as competitive as you might think. That search is displaying results that contain either the term 'psp' or the term 'forum.' If we dig far enough in the results v7n will be there someplace, but given this forum isn't a psp forum it's really not competing with you.

Try searching with quotes around "psp forum" and you'll see the results drop significantly. Then try searches like:

intitle:"psp forum"
inanchor:"psp forum"

Any site that has done even the most basic of seo for your keyword will have 'psp forum' in the page title. And any that know what they are doing will have used it somewhere in anchor text. The inanchor: search shows 570 results at the moment, meaning there's a lot less sites than you think competing for the term.

You should also know that Google seems to place an added emphasis on exact match domain searches. Given your domain is psp-forum which would be seen as psp forum by search engines it's understandable it would rank #1.

What other phrases does the site rank well for?