Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on June 16, 2010
Compete.com’s May data went live today and I noticed some major changes with the traffic stats and their website. First, is their new logo, which I don’t really have an opinion on. Second, are the external referral analytics for a site which you have to click to see the referring sites now. And third, is the huge drop in past and current traffic as shown by their graphs for certain websites.
For example, as you can see above the graph the unique visitor stats for SEOmoz.org and SEOBook.com were in the 350 – 450k range for April 2010. But, prior to this update the graphed showed them in the 850-950k range for April. Going back a year, it looks like both of their stats dropped roughly 400k each month from what Compete had previously reported. I also noticed the traffic stats dropped significantly on some of my websites too. Well below their true numbers. Also, apparently the biggest referrer to this blog was from some website I’ve never heard of or seen any traffic from before, so I’m very confused about where they got that information.
I have checked Compete’s blog and Twitter account, but didn’t find anything suggesting and issue with their data. However, they did release quite a few new features recently and made some major changes which I’m guessing that must have affected it.
I wonder if the data for SEObook and SEOmoz is closer to their real numbers now?? Anyone else concerned with the new data reported for your website?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on June 8, 2010
Don’t expect any more link love from BizJournals Business Directory. They’ve recently added the nofollow attribute to outbound website links.
That’s too bad because I used to think of them as one of the highest quality free business directories. They actually do a good job of verifying the company information being submitted and approving or denying appropriately. Not sure why they decided to ad nofollow?? Sad to lose another great resource. Every time we lose a quality business directory like this one it drives the cost of SEO up for local small businesses.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on June 7, 2010
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a huge master Excel document with most of the satisfactory to high-value backlink sources I can think of. A checklist if you will. Needless to say the list is extremely long and I’ve gotten a little burnt out now. I’m sure I’ve overlooked some very obvious ones and could really use your help identifying them. In no particular order, here is how I have the link sources categorized right now:
- Free General Directories
- Paid General Directories
- Location Specific Directories
- Industry Specific Directories
- Blog Directories
- Business Profiles
- Misc. Profile Pages
- Certifications
- Associations
- Donations
- Sponsorships
- Testimonials
- Case Studies
- Portfolios
- DoFollow Blog Comments
- Third-Party Blog
- Business Partnerships
- Relevant Link Exchanges
- Forums
- Social Bookmarking
- Third Party Web Stat Tools
- Article Submissions
- Press Releases
- Guest Posting
- Guest Books
- Client Websites
- Banner Ads
- Classified Ads
- Employee Profiles
This list doesn’t include getting back links from social media or link-baiting such as high-value blog posts, badges, widgets etc. Just backlinks that are acquired more manually. Link baiting and social media will be on my next list.
I’m sure this list of possible backlink sources is far from perfect, and would appreciate it if you shared some of your ideas here too. Would love to know what I’m forgetting, or haven’t even thought of yet.
Do you have any to add? Feel free to leave your comments below.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 24, 2010
A few months ago I wrote about backpage.com adding the nofollow attribute to outbound links. Well, shortly after writing that post I discovered sponsored ads still weren’t using NoFollow on outbound links. So I decided to look into sponsored ad links a little more.
I discovered that backpage actually offered some some really great advertising opportunities. Besides the free classified ads, they also offered of reasonable sponsored ads, and the ability to auto-repost your advertisements regularly.
Both of which I already knew about, but didn’t really pay that much attention to before.
Some great benefits of the sponsored advertisements are:
- Ads are shown to the right of regular ads, as well as within them too
- Ads are shown in multiple categories, and on every page of the selected category
- Allows you to post in multiple cities
- Outbound links are followed
- Ads are more likely to show up higher in the search engines
Sponsoring an ad is actually a lot cheaper than I expected. I can sponsor a listing for one month in Seattle, and have it auto-post to the top of the regular listings every 7 days for under $5. Seattle just happens to be one of the most expensive cities, so it is actually a bit cheaper to buy sponsored ads in other cities.
For that price It was a no-brainer when I decided to start purchasing these ads for all of my clients. At the same time, I wouldn’t pay for them if they cost much more. I think what they charge is just right for what you get.
In smaller cities or niches these ads perform fairly well in the search engines too. Just choose an appropriate title and add plenty of unique content, then you should be expect to grab search traffic with your ad too.
Right now backpage is offering 10% discount when using promo code: 2010THANKS. That works locally, nationally, and for sponsor upgrades. Try a Sponsored Ad for Yourself!
And let me know what you think.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 17, 2010
A few weeks ago when Google changed the name of the Local Business Center to Google Places they also introduced a few new features. One of those features was the ability to enhance your local Google maps listing with a sponsored advertisement which they call tags.
These yellow tags and corresponding links cost $25 and are a great way to make your business listing stand out. Depending on the type and completeness of your business listing, you will have some of these tags available to you:
- Website for your business.
- Photos of your business.
- Videos of your business.
- Coupons for your listing.
- Menu for your restaurant.
- Reservations page for your business.
- Driving directions to your business.
Google says that sponsored tags won’t increase your business’s search engine rankings in Google Maps. However, I’ve worked with one client who paid for a sponsored listing so far and his rankings did indeed increase about 5 pages within just a few day. But, it’s tough to tell whether that had anything to do with paying for the sponsored ad or not. We have been working on improving his Google Maps listing potion for a couple of months, which appears to have a penalty applied to it. Shortly after we paid for his tag in Google Places, his company listing went from middle of page 11 to the top of page 6 in Google maps. But, he’s the only client I’ve worked with so far that has paid for a sponsored link.
We started his sponsorship on May 11th, 2010, and I notified him on May 14th that his listing had jumped five pages. It could have even sooner, but I can’t remember if I checked it between then. His listing had been sitting on page eleven for over a month.
Tracking Tag Activity
Google also allows you to track the performance of your tag separately and experiment with it as well. You can find tag settings by clicking the “View Reports” link under the specific listing on your business listings page.
Overall, these sponsor tags seem like a great way to make your local business stand out right now, but how’s a sponsor listing going to remain distinctive when more and more businesses start using them?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 10, 2010
Some of you may recall a few months ago I told you about the $100 free pay-per-click promotion Business.com was offering if you submitted through my promotional link. Well I signed up for the promotion as well, through someone else’s link and received my $100 in free clicks.
I received plenty of leads through there, and now I have more business than I can handle. I’m not implying all of that business was from them, but in general, I’m very busy right now. So paying for PPC ads hasn’t been high on my priority list for awhile. And, so far I still haven’t purchased a single click. Now, all of the sudden I receive an email from them telling me that if I start back up I’ll receive another $100 in free clicks!
Reactivate by 5/31/10 and get a $100 credit towards a new PPC campaign!
So far that would be $200 in free PPC advertising from them total. You just can’t beat that deal. With no obligation whatsoever. OMG!
Surprisingly, my PPC campaign with Business.com was much better than expected. I definitely got more bang for my buck – or for free I guess I should say – than from a similar campaign in Google AdWords.
If you didn’t get your $100 in free pay-per-click ads from Business.com last time I told you about the offer, you can also sign up here.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on May 3, 2010
A few month ago I purchased the Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies by Bruce Clay and Susan Esparza. I have found this to be a fantastic reference guide for beginners and experienced SEOs alike.
One of the things I like about this book is it does a great job of laying out the best practices for building solid, user-friendly, search engine optimized websites. As well as the importance of branding and effectively using PPC and other strategies to generate the most traffic to your website using the search engines, and not just how to obtain a few top rankings. This book also covers what not to do.
Even though you can read about SEO in forums and on blogs all day long, some times it is very difficult to know which recommendations to trust. Especially when you’re new. When I was first learning SEO I read so much mis-information on the web it cost me a lot of time and money I wish I could get back. And, while there is no replacement for experience, this book will definitely set you on the right path.
The key components of this book are:
- How Search Engines Work
- Keyword Strategy
- SEO Web Design
- Creating Content
- Linking
- Optimizing the Foundations
- Analyzing Results
- International SEO
- Search Marketing
Even though I’ve already been doing SEO for a few years, I still reference this book regularly because I find it insightful to know what Bruce Clay has to say regarding certain aspects of SEO. And, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve learned from it too. Search Engine Optimization for Dummies can be read cover to cover and used as a reference guide.
Overall, I am really impressed with how much information is covered in SEO for Dummies and highly recommend this book!
Check out more recommended SEO books.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on April 24, 2010
Hey everyone! I wanted to write a quick post to let you know that I just found quite a few valid comments that were automatically marked as SPAM by Akismet. In the past I haven’t really paid much attention to the SPAM folder because there were so many. I would just delete them all. If your valid comment never made it on here, then I apologize. I don’t filter the comments left here for anything other than SPAM. Meaning, if you strongly disagree with anything I write about, then I appreciate your feedback too. So don’t hesitate to sharing your thoughts either way.
Anyway, I just approved the valid comments that hadn’t been deleted from the SPAM folder yet, and apologize if I don’t get a chance to respond to all of those comments.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on April 23, 2010
I blogged about this nearly 3 years ago, but some people didn’t believe me back then, and I imagine there are still plenty of skeptics now.
From my experience, changing your home page title tags too often can temporarily result in a HUGE loss in rankings!
The title tag is one of the most heavily weighted on-page factors in Google’s algorithm. It is the one place where a few slight changes can result in huge ranking increases. So it makes perfect sense to me that Google would apply a temporary “penalty” to a website that changes them to frequently (or at least having that be one of the many triggers) – making it tougher to game the system.
If no such penalty were in place, we’d have a bunch of people always changing their title tags in an effort to out-optimize their competitors. And if everyone was doing it, it would be a lot like a dog trying to catch it’s tail. Which would just be a lot of wasted efforts, IMO.
You can almost always expect a slight drop in rankings after you initially change your title tags, but normally, depending on how active your site is, they will likely come back within a few days to a few weeks.
So how long can it take to recover if your website has actually been penalized?
From my experience it takes about 4 to 8 months to work you way out of the penalty box for this particular type of penalty. Other penalties may be longer or shorter.
I just had another one of my nearly abandoned web projects recently work its way back from this type of penalty.
I strongly suspect this also applys to Google maps as well, however, I believe the triggers and penalties are applied much differently. Either way, pick an appropriate title and stick with it.
For the organic search results I don’t recommend changing your home page title tag more than twice in a six month period, however, I don’t know what the exact number is. If you need to change them more often than that, then I suspect you doing a bunch of stuff wrong.
If your site has been penalized, then I recommend just doing what you normally do to properly increase your rankings (content, links, patience, etc.), just stop playing with the title and meta tags for awhile. A long while.
You could also try requesting re-inclusion or changing domain names entirely, but that really depends on your particular situation. I wouldn’t expect to get much help for Google if you’re not a major brand name.
I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on April 20, 2010
I’m probably just super-paranoid, but some times I feel like Google is watching my every move and removing opportunities that would be available to someone who didn’t publicly admit they were an SEO.
Prior to the last PageRank update I felt it was appropriate to submit this blog to a few quality web directories. Before submitting, I qualified these directories based on a number of factors. One factor of course was how much PageRank was displayed when viewing the category I was submitting too. In this case they had a PageRank 0, 3 and 4.
The first one was a newly discovered directory that allowed free blog submissions, and the following two were directories I regularly recommend and that have been around for a very long time.
After I submitted my blog to the first one for free, I noticed Matt Cutt’s blog was the very next approved submission. Now Google is no longer caching the page I’m listed on. The category I submitted to in second and third directories used to have visible PageRank, but as of the last PageRank update those categories now show a PageRank of zero too. However, the PageRank of their home pages went up.
During that time, another free resource I’m always able to squeeze out a PageRank three company profile for my client and personal websites is also now showing PageRank zero for all company profiles listed in the same PageRank 5 category my company is listed in. I’m certain they should all have a PageRank 3.
Also, I took on a new client during this time and submitted him to two of these quality directories. Beforehand, the categories I submitted him to had a PageRank 3, PageRank zero, and were cached by Google. Now neither one of them are cached, and both show a PageRank zero.
Coincidence or manual edit?
I’m probably just being paranoid because I haven’t done anything “wrong”, but it sure has me wondering if I should stop using so many of Google’s free tools.
