Rand Fishkin vs Aviva

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Dude, don't spam my forum.

By the way I'm going to check them books out you had on your blog the other day, I was reading a few marketing book, and happen to see them seem like cool books, excellent marketing advise they are selling them at barnesandnoble for like 10 dollars.

Thats my hobby though reading marketing books as odd as it sounds.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by tdd1984

I apologize John I didn't think you'd consider that spam, since I am part of the community and offer to help people out *a lot* around here, but thats my opinion its your forum, so I understand.

Thanks man for notifying me.

You help people out a lot or you self promote a lot? There is a difference.

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by John Scott

You help people out a lot or you self promote a lot? There is a difference.

I help out a lot by offering free advise, and giving my opinions on things because I know that a lot of people that come to forums are here to learn, I don't even attend any other forum like I do here, but I do understand it is your forum and that can be a conflict of interest towards v7n.com.

But I understand self promotion is not aloud by any means.

[bobmutch]

Bernard:
<<<The reason I say pick a key phrase that doesn't have topic authority is so you are not getting your rankings from off-page SEO.

>>>I fail to see how that is a useful measure of a page's relevance (or desirability for a backlink) for the topic at hand.

Well we are dealing with more than one subject on this thread. The subject I was dealing with was the best way to check the level of your site authority.

I the above statement of mind had noting to do with a "useful measure of a page's relevance". It has to do with getting a feel for the level of a sites authority so you can know what level of keywords you can target and rank on first SERP.

The reason I suggest test targeting key phrases you have no topical authority for is because you can get a better feel for a sites authority if you know how well it can rank for key phrases that are not getting help from current off-page SEO.

[bobmutch]

Rand:
>>>Bob - although I can see that you're struggling to convince other here

Well it hard enough in the SEO forum world to convince people of concepts as I have found many professing SEO experts love to blindly argue for their view where it is right or wrong (yet another reason I spend little time in the SEO forum world).

And then it is double hard to try to convince people to accept concepts that devalue the products they are offering.

>>>It's a very, very difficult sort of test or subject to explain, and really requires almost a sixth sense about "this SHOULD be ranking here" and then trying to determine whether it does or not.

To me it is pretty black and white and an easy subject to explain to the willing.

[bobmutch]

jhnrang:
>>>Bob - are you sure your tool is reliable?

As we speak all the PHP files are being converted over to a MVC framework and the JS to JQuery and we are rebuilding our proxy system.

So at this time there are some things that are not working. We will fix these things when the new code is released.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by randfish

Bob - although I can see that you're struggling to convince other here, I'm with you on all counts. It's a very, very difficult sort of test or subject to explain, and really requires almost a sixth sense about "this SHOULD be ranking here" and then trying to determine whether it does or not. Maybe it's another good subject for the blog in the near future

Originally Posted by bobmutch

Well it hard enough in the SEO forum world to convince people of concepts as I have found many professing SEO experts love to blindly argue for their view where it is right or wrong (yet another reason I spend little time in the SEO forum world).

And then it is double hard to try to convince people to accept concepts that devalue the products they are offering.

It's definitely easier to assign nefarious ulterior motives to the unconvinced than it is to provide solid guidelines, but it's also pretty transparent.

Why not post serious guidelines, that define what kind of words should rank where in what type of SERPs? So far neither of you have, and neither of you have answered all the questions posted.

It's hard to evaluate the theory when it isn't defined.

[maldives]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Why not post serious guidelines, that define what kind of words should rank where in what type of SERPs? So far neither of you have, and neither of you have answered all the questions posted.

John the main aim of such baseless articles are to get some traffic to the website. It is another trick of link baiting. With such article seomoz is againing more traffic + backlinks.

[rankland]

Originally Posted by bobmutch

Bernard:
<<<The reason I say pick a key phrase that doesn't have topic authority is so you are not getting your rankings from off-page SEO.

>>>I fail to see how that is a useful measure of a page's relevance (or desirability for a backlink) for the topic at hand.

Well we are dealing with more than one subject on this thread. The subject I was dealing with was the best way to check the level of your site authority.

I the above statement of mind had noting to do with a "useful measure of a page's relevance". It has to do with getting a feel for the level of a sites authority so you can know what level of keywords you can target and rank on first SERP.

The reason I suggest test targeting key phrases you have no topical authority for is because you can get a better feel for a sites authority if you know how well it can rank for key phrases that are not getting help from current off-page SEO.

Bob ive got a various amout of key words in the searches that are #1 serp, how i got them who knows. Ive never lost positioning in anyone of my key words, and at this point i dont think i will.
I quess the question i have is by sharing some of the knowledge you have about how this works would be very helpful to alot of sites on the board. I did it by accident, and every spider or bot im gaining higher position, but if you were to ask me my secret on how im doing it i wouldn,t know what to tell you.

[sitetutor]

Personally, I couldn't care less about any terms that have "web directory" in them. That is the term every single directory seems to target. The traffic coming from those terms is also totally worthless when it comes to receiving quality traffic from the end user. And who says that the directory traffic needs to come from Google directly? I know from my directory that most of my traffic comes from my blog and a variety of random terms not related to directories. Looking at the Aviva blog I can imagine a nice amount of Google traffic coming into it and floating right into the directory.

I do get traffic from my Aviva listing and it's valuable.
Whether it comes from Google, the blog or some other source does not matter to me one bit. I recommend Aviva for many reasons not related to gaining rankings.

[Manish Pandey]

Originally Posted by bobmutch

Er your site does rank in the top 500 for "Information Web Directory".

#232
http://www.google.com/search?num=100...+Web+Directory

Also John I think that is a valid way to measure how well a page rankings by taking the title or part of the title.

Now common sense tells us you don't take one word and see how a site ranks for it but I think taking your title "Information - Avivia Web Directory" and removing the Aviva out of it and seeing how you rank is very fair.

Look at Rands site title.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization | Read SEOmoz, Rank Better

Here is how he rankings:

SEO #25
Search Engine Optimization #19
Read SEOmoz #1
Rank Better #1

The title tag is one of the optimization items that Search Engines give the most weight to. In Rands survey of 37 SEO experts the title tag was ranked the highest with a rating for 4.9 out of 5.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f3

Seeing how a site rankings for their title tags tells you a lot about the authority a site has -- if the title tag is completive.

Also that doesn't mean looking to see the number of results as blue and pink dogs has a page results of 2.9 million.
http://www.google.com/search?q=blue+and+pink+dogs

But put the title into quotes and you will see there only 9 pages.
http://www.google.com/search?q="blue+and+pink+dogs"

Putting a key phrase in quotes or searching using the allintitle:keyword will show give you a better idea how competitive the key phrase is.

For example title optimization has the following results
61 million no quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=title+optimization
40k in quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...+optimization"

And blog titles has the following results
47 million no quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=blog+titles
110k in quotes
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="blog+titles"

My blog http://seo.seocompany.ca/ rankings on the first page for both these terms just based on on-page optimization.

That tells you my blog has good authority.

I think this was Rands point. To show that not very many directories have high ranking authority by showing that they don't rank well for competitive phrases they have in their title tags.

So while it smarts to have him name your site out on his point making, it is a valid point in my opinion.

While I think this is a valid point it is not my experience that having high ranking authority is needed to give value to inbound links from a site. ~40% to 60% of my $415k income last year was from link building with directories so I can say that I have experience in this area. I find that getting links from directories are not only "Google blessed" links but they are the best bang for the buck links out there.

Directories that give multiple deep links where you can put the key phrase you are targeting with out having to add your domain or company name in the anchor text works the best.

Your Aviva Directory is one of the directories I put my clients in and while it may or may not have high ranking authority and its categories pages may or may not rank high for the title tag phrase -- it still provides value for the price.

So what I would do is look at category titles on your directory and see how they rank. Best to look for 2 or 3 word phrases that have 30k plus results when they are in quotes. This will tell you a lot about the authority your directory has.

The following will help you to rank better for your titles.

1. Put only the key phrase you are targeting in your title tag only.
2. Put the same key phrase in the URL, meta description/keywords, h1/h2 tags, bold in the first paragraph.
3. Do internal linking to the page with the same key phrase in the anchor text.

Hey ya bob!

Well to what you referred above is that if a website has an authority it must rank for atleast for the title term!

Well just going a step further doing a search for allintitle:information web directory there were 79K results and doing a search for allinanchor:information web directory it had 321K sites! Now you could see with that many sites competing for the term "information web directory" (well i guess everybody knows what allinanchor shows, it shows the sites that uses that term in the anchor) it wouldn't normally mean that you would rank to the top!! Or would you?? If Aviva had those terms in there anchor text then definitely they would have outranked any website. Now, as we go to the next step Aviva uses the term "Aviva Web Directory" or "Aviva Directory", as anchor mostly! And you would see them number 1, thats for sure!

Now, coming back to you with the SEOMoz site...they are good source of information but there has been some issues lately about them giving wrong information as found by Mike. Well they have the term SEO in the title but they also have the keyword in there anchor text links! Which is the most most important factor in SEO, and well everybody knows that. They are on page three for the term allinanchor:seo for the term allinanchor:search engine optimization they are on page 9 for the term allinanchor:read seomoz they are #1 and for the term allinanchor:rank better they are again #1. So does this makes sense. The more the anchor text you get from quality related sites the better you rank!

One could not judge the search engine rankings of any website merely with their titles.

You could rank for certain terms that are not even in your title coolest guy on planet its totally the power of anchor text links, that brad uses to out rank all his competitors who are using the key words in their titles!

I guess what rand did was just a small test and he didn't go in to the details of it otherwise a SEO of his class might have done the above things up hand!

[bobmutch]

Manish Pandey:
>>>Well just going a step further doing a search for allintitle:information web directory there were 79K results and doing a search for allinanchor:information web directory it had 321K sites!

Ya and "blue and pink dogs" has 4 million results in the index to.
http://www.google.com/search?q=blue+and+pink+dogs

Opps forgot the quotes. Looks like only 6 now : )
http://www.google.com/search?q="blue+and+pink+dogs"

I think you need to use your " key there.

I only see 37 sites with that term in the title.
http://www.google.com/search?q=allin...web+directory"

Only 40 for all in anchor.
http://www.google.com/search?q=allin...web+directory"

>>>Well to what you referred above is that if a website has an authority it must rank for atleast for the title term!

Er where did you see that. I never said that!

>>>One could not judge the search engine rankings of any website merely with their titles.

Sure you can. You can show what kind of site authority a site has by the key phrases it can rank for just using on-page SEO.

I have a consulting service where I look at a site and tell clients there ability to rank based on ~29 items about their site.
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/w...s=12#product12

>>>I guess what rand did was just a small test and he didn't go in to the details of it otherwise a SEO of his class might have done the above things up hand!

Na Rand has a clue he knows that the number of results with out adding quotes means nothing.

rankland:
>>>I quess the question i have is by sharing some of the knowledge you have about how this works would be very helpful to alot of sites on the board.

I think I have done that but its not been well received by all and it appears to me that is because some people are busy standing up for their directories.

John:
>>>It's definitely easier to assign nefarious ulterior motives to the unconvinced than it is to provide solid guidelines, but it's also pretty transparent.

Nefarious ulterior motives --- LOL. Come on John, how many directories you got that customers might just not buy as many listings if they realize that the typical general directory has little or no site authority. I don't think it to much of a nefarious ulterior stretch to think that you have a craft to protect and that might just make you a bit bias.

Me I am honest to my own hurt, I have 2 directories and make about half my living off my paid directory submission service but I can't deny the obvious.

You know this one kind of reminds me of the PR dealers that still claim Pagerank has lots of ranking weight. When people have a vested interest to protect you will find crowding around the alter of the almighty dollar quicker than the alter of reason -- and I think that is to be expected.

>>>Why not post serious guidelines, that define what kind of words should rank where in what type of SERPs?

Done that.

>>>So far neither of you have, and neither of you have answered all the questions posted.

Come on John. I have offered full guidelines and have answer ever question posted. I think any one with an advanced SEO clue should be able to see this one : )

[bobmutch]

Rand:
>>>John the main aim of such baseless articles are to get some traffic to the website. It is another trick of link baiting. With such article seomoz is againing more traffic + backlinks.

Hey Rand why don't you put up 10 directories on 10 different hosts (different IP so a link from all 10 counts as 10 different links), keep the categories low so the PR doesn't bleed to bad and the PR hounds can still smell at least a PR2/3 on all categories, get a bunch of high PR links pointed at them -- get new sites that don't know any better and where Matt hasn't turned there PR off yet, add them to 1000 free directories for $39 -- number of backlinks are important you know, get some filler sites so your categories don't get a duplicate filter, add them to my list of ~70 directory lists, and wait for a PR export and price them at $30 a sub. Then you will be part of the directory club : )

You should be able to make 10k a month doing that.

This way you won't have to waste your time writing these baseless articles about how most general directory have little or no site authority and a link from them is useless -- just so you can link bait more traffic and backlinks : )

[Manish Pandey]

>>>Well to what you referred above is that if a website has an authority it must rank for atleast for the title term!

Er where did you see that. I never said that!

Well thats what the discussion is all about!! Rand says Aviva directory is not an authority on the basis of it not showing up for its title terms!

>>>One could not judge the search engine rankings of any website merely with their titles.

Sure you can. You can show what kind of site authority a site has by the key phrases it can rank for just using on-page SEO.

Forgot to mention only if the competition is small!!! Otherwise you may rank but not to the top... And top rankings is the thing we are worried about... Aviva is not ranked to the top for Information Web Directory because they haven't got the anchor text links needed to make over for a competition that huge!

Well to what you are pointing your website blog to have got ranked for "quality business cards" is due to the fact that it is low competitive and your site is high in authority. Your site has been there for some time (age) plus has got some unique links which itself are authority those sites of open source projects to name a few. Check allintitle:quality business cards which shows only 694 competing websites and allinanchor:quality business cards which give 15K results and what we had for Aviva 321K!!! See the difference...

Well your criteria to check the competitiveness of a keyword should be allinanchor:keyword phrase which tells exactly how many sites are competing for that keyword phrase sorted in descending order i.e top to bottom. And your site comes for allinanchor:quality business cards on the 3rd page this means that your one link from the domain itself has put so much power in it that rest all the sites are unable to obtain. Now if we search for allinanchor:"quality business cards" this shows how many sites are competing for the exact the same keyword i.e. "quality business cards" and your site comes on page 2.

The searches you are doing is with the keyword phrase shows how many sites contain these terms in their title,description,body and they may be in any order (permutation and combinations)...like for example take quality business cards...quality business cards may come as a whole...business cards that are quality...and so on and so forth!

Now, the "keyword phrase" shows you how many site contain exactly these terms as a whole! i.e. "quality business cards" at the same time...

So, a better competitive analysis could be done by allinanchor:quality business cards where we are asking google how many sites have quality business cards in their anchor .... again it may be in any order!

If we do allinanchor:"quality business cards" they show only the sites that have exact "quality business cards" as their anchor text links!

You could go and check with this analysis how the sites rank for their keywords.

Getting the point!!

I firmly believe that if Jeff (fr