Over the years I have had an entourage of Spies who really aren’t that subtle about watching what I do (Statcounter is great for spying on the spies) In truth I have always encouraged people to pay attention to what I do rather than just what I say and a large group of friends have done just that. In part I can’t always speak about everything openly (G gets persnickety about some things) and in part because I really don’t want to give the malicious saboteurs any ideas or ammo. Having said that I want to clear up a few things now that I have re-entered the MMO sewer as my old friend Splork likes to call it. (Quite an apt description I think.)

Before going any further I’d like you to read a couple of comments that Lorecee and Red left on my last post and then I’ll throw in my reply to them.

RED

Grizz, or anyone else that may know…I’m going to test this out soon, but what does everyone think about getting a strong link to be indexed with from the beginning. Is there a better effect or no effect at all by getting a few links and then a strong one, or having your strong one be your first link to get indexed? Anyone test weather G throws more weight in one way or another? My plan was to build “normal links” and then a month later or so then throw in one that will have considerable weight. I was just curious if anyone knew anything about that. I think I remember reading somewhere(possible MMFB) that its good to get a strong link first, but now that things are changing I might want to go as natural as possible. I think I answered my own question, but if anyone else has any input, it would be greatly appreciated. I love theories on this stuff. They are addicting in their own right.

Lorecee

I think I can help Red with his question:

“I’m going to test this out soon, but what does everyone think about getting a strong link to be indexed with from the beginning.”

I’ve been watching the construction process of Griz’s other two MMO blogs. The cardinal rule of bear watching is “watch what he does more than what he says.” Of course you need to remember that that some things he does may be tests, as in don’t try this at home or you might blow something up.

I’ve been wrong before (or so my BF tells me), but it would be just like Griz to model the construction of a new site from the ground up for those who care to pay attention. True or not, he’s sure got mine.

Glad to see you back, Griz. –Lorecee

RED

I’ve actually been watching what Griz has been doing with internetmarketinglessons.ca. It appears to be heavily bookmarked(scuttle plus) on individual posts. I don’t know if this is Grizz’s doing, or if someone just decided to help him out. I also noticed they are on bookmarking sites that are indexed in G and some have pr2′s or higher on their index page. The anchor text looks to be a mixture of heavily targeted and general related terms. I also noticed not just anyone can register on these bookmarking sites. So either, Grizz owns them or a buddy of his does. Or the third option. I once came across a “service” that allowed you access to a number of scuttle plus sites(with PR) for a fee. I’m not trying to blow the lid off anything your doing Grizz, so if you want to edit my post I understand. That being said I think all of the above is common knowledge with the folks that do this IM stuff. It also looks like he is trying to relate the words “Grizzly” and “Brears” with having to do with Internet Marketing and SEO. I’m not an expert on G, but I assume if it finds Grizzly and Brears on pages related to that stuff, it will start to equate those words with having to do with the niche. How many other people will choose those words for their IM or SEO site? Most likely only Grizzly. I guess it helps with branding. Just a theory, though. It may not work like that at all. By the way Grizz, which site should we watch most. Internetmarketinglessons.ca, Grizzlybrears.com, or this one? I’ve already picked the .ca to closely watch. Am I in the right ballpark er.. golf course?

Red,

Believe it or not – I haven’t built a single link anywhere for any of the three sites you mentioned. In fact, this may surprise most of you – I don’t link build anymore and haven’t in ages – yes I do acquire relevant links from appropriate sites but not for G’s benefit and not in any way that falls afoul of G’s guidelines. (I will talk about this in due course on the IM Lessons site.)  The IM.ca site has ranked page 1, position 3 on the Canadian data center for over a month now and page 7 on the US DC. If you are finding links to them then others have been bookmarking – would you believe I have never bookmarked any site – ever.

I have simply created what I consider properly SEO’d on site pages and then wait as the SE’s sort them out. So far they have been indexed quickly (without links) and ranked where they are without experiencing the G dance.

For those watching – the IM.ca site has only two posts. The GB site has 40ish put up rather quickly and then I stopped completely. In both cases G and the other SE’s treated the sites exactly the same – quick indexing and ranking without the usual dancing around.

Why?

Because I don’t manipulate them in any way shape or form. Or to put it another way they mimic a natural progression because they are in fact natural.

Over the past year I have seen this happen over and over again with all the business sites I have built for my clients. No this will not get you to position 1 but that can wait.

My goal with every new site I build is to avoid penalties and gain trust. The easiest way to do this is not to do anything other than introduce optimized content – either slowly or rapidly – makes no difference, just don’t build links. Be patient. Concentrate on optimized long tail related Posts/Pages and the SE’s will send traffic. More content = more long tail traffic. More traffic and surprise, surprise – real links will start to appear on their own or by legit means instigated by you and acceptable by G – in fact G is more than happy to give you a link themselves. (Surely some of you have learned how this is done by now?) If this sounds like just what G is looking for… it is. And it works – at least for legit sites in business niches. I’m just seeing if it will work in the cesspool niche we call IM/MMO.

You know how G has always stated that we should just provide good content and the rest will take care of itself? Well the Algo is actually capable of doing that in the mostly uncompetitive niches these days – I’m interested in seeing the results in a competitive niche. Most (read “all”) of the competition manipulates their rankings and while they may achieve results for a while I believe they will all shoot themselves in the foot sooner or later through penalties. In the end the non manipulated sites should rise to the top for no reason other than they aren’t penalized – it may take a while but once there they will never falter. As I said this has worked well in the not so competitive business niches so I am testing it in this niche now. I have some reservations though – this niche attracts saboteurs and an endless stream of new competition which I don’t see in the Aviation SMS niche or the Shrink Wrap niche or the Timbuktu Equipment Rental niche etc.

So that’s about it for those watching and wondering what I’m doing with these MMO sites. I am simply allowing G to do what it says it can do – weed out quality from the morass of sewage in this niche. Btw – I have no designs on any particular keywords – not interested. I just want to see if these sites acquire trust as quite frankly none of the sites in MMO have it in any meaningful way.

On a side note I linked to a clients site above – shrink wrap – so you can see just how quickly a site can rank without any manipulation in a local niche with moderate competition. Keep in mind that the business is located in Winnipeg and the owners only need to rank well for people searching for their product in Winnipeg. The site was built near the end of Oct. 2010 and within days it was sitting in 3rd position with nothing more than a link from G and a link from a relevant business directory.

Click to Enlarge

And how will this help you make money online?

Well I intend to drag you all out of the sewage niches and put your knowledge to work providing services to people who could use your help and are willing to pay you for it. There is a huge market out there for people with the skills you’ve acquired and you will be surprised at how little competition there really is.

More to come…

Griz

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What are the value of exact match domain names (EMDN) given the rumors that Google is devaluing them as they show a high percentage of exact match keyword anchored back links?

There are a couple of factors that still give exact match domains an advantage over the competition.

The first thing you have to do is forget about G and the search engines when deciding on a domain name. In any business it’s a good idea to include your primary business in your name – people looking for a particular product or service tend to select those that use what they are looking for in the company name. (Ignore the highly branded names like Nike who don’t add “shoes”, “golf equipment” etc to their brand name).

I’m talking about Bob’s Electric – would it make sense for Bob to just call his company “Bobs”? Or “Bob’s Company”? No. People looking for an electrician while searching in a phone book or online are going to use the term electrician in their search. When a list of candidates appear they are going to pick the companies that have “electric” or “electrician” in their name over a vague entry named “Bobs”.

This is simple marketing common sense – online or off.

From G’s point of view they can hardly start penalizing people for choosing to use keywords in their domain names when it makes perfect sense from a marketing point of view. They are in the business of providing a “good user experience” and providing a list of sites that don’t use the users keyword in the name or url is not a “good user experience”. How long would you use Google if you typed in “dog grooming service” and they returned a serp list of breeders, pet stores, products etc and not a single site that said “Dog Grooming”? Not long.

As a user you expect that there is probably a site called doggrooming.com and when you query G – because you are too lazy to type it in your browser address bar, or you want some options, or you don’t know you can type a url into your browser – you expect to see a site or list of sites that all say dog grooming somewhere in their serp listing. Those that have the term highlighted in their site Title and URL tend to get your attention and you are pretty sure they are offering what you are looking for. In contrast you may see a wikipedia article on “Dog Grooming” and avoid it as you know they are not offering the service or a NYT article on the subject and ignore it as well. You aren’t looking for a “history” of dog grooming – you are looking for a dog groomer. G has to know your intent and the algo decides this based on the keywords you type in and your search history.

From G’s point of view it probably makes sense that a site called “Dog Grooming” using doggrooming.com as a domain name is probably a site catering to dog grooming. And listing it will result in a good user experience. It’s obvious that the site is probably related to what the user is looking for. And yes it probably has a lot of exact match backlink anchors – it should given its name.

And this is a problem for G in trying to eliminate sites that have an unnatural linking profile. Exact match domains have a natural link profile full of exact match keyword backlinks. They can’t disregard the links as they make perfect sense so they have to rely on the trust factor and relevance of the sites linking in and look at the rest of the link profile – the brand links.

Keep in mind that all the good two and three word EMDN’s were snatched up long ago – they have age and for the most part are valid sites that provide the kind of info contained in their domain names. They aren’t a problem for G.

People who name their site “my-dog-grooming-site-woof-woof.com” are a problem as they are new and tend to have a link profile using an over abundance of exact match keyword anchors from a variety of unrelated and low trust sources. And they tend to lack branded links. Pretty easy for the algo to spot and ignore. This is why you don’t see over hyphenated urls on top of the serps much these days and why the rumors abound that G is penalizing EMDNs. They aren’t – they are penalizing sites with unnatural link profiles. Maybe its better to think in terms of rewards rather than penalties. In most cases a site isn’t penalized – it’s just ranked where it should be. It hasn’t been rewarded high ranking because it hasn’t achieved the necessary criteria. Age, Trust, Relevant links, Internal structure etc. The stuff your high ranking competition has achieved.

Now having said that EMDNs have an uphill battle if you choose to use them. They will continue to have an advantage over non EMDNs but only if you are smart in your linking profiles. I mentioned this in the comments on the last post – EMDNs have a natural variety of anchors too – not just keyword anchors.

The doggrooming.com site should have a mix of links

“doggrooming.com”

“www.doggrooming.com”

“www.doggrooming.com/”

“dog grooming”

“grooming your dog website”

long tails like “my dog gets groomed at Bob’s place”

“bob’s dog grooming”

“bob’s site”

“click here”

etc.

If the EMD has nothing but “Dog Grooming” links or an over abundance of them then it will suffer in the serps. There are many ways to send brand links and a natural link profile will have a good variety of them along with the exact match keyword links.

So. Should you use EMDNs if available? My answer is simply yes but be smart. If you have to hyphenate the crap out of them to include your keywords – don’t. Find a related term or use an add-on before bastardizing your url.

Don’t use “my-dog-grooming-site-woof-woof.com”

use “superiordoggrooming.com”

or “pampereddogs.com”

or “Timbuktudoggrooming.com”

or “Timbuktudoghaircuts.com”

or use a different TLD like .net, .org, .ca (your country TLD)

The point is that you will achieve better results using a primary keyword or related keyword in your domain name than without one. Users will look more favorably at your site in the serps compared to the “petservices.com” site because you use “dog” or “grooming” in your Title and Domain name and you will have a natural advantage when people link to you naturally – they are likely to add a relevant keyword in the link. Don’t always think search engine and gaming G. I want a related site that decides to link to me to use my keyword in the link for traffic purposes. If a pet store links to me then I don’t want them to just use “pet care” in the link. I’ll get more targeted traffic from the pet store site if they use the term “Dog Groomer” in the link.

If you are building legit sites (and you should be) then do what makes sense from a business point of view. Your site should be built around what you provide and not using your keywords because a search engine may penalize you is silly. If your site is legit and you don’t try and manipulate your rankings (everyone does to some degree – just don’t be overt about it) then your search rankings will develop naturally and take care of itself.

I have a site that is six years old and I first built it on a completely unrelated domain. Lets call the site Albatross Lovers (it’s Title) and I used the domain name “nosepickersoftheworld.com”. It’s a static site and at the time I built it prior to finding an appropriate domain name. I loaded it onto the nosepicker domain just to see how bad my HTML coding was. (bad bad bad) Unfortunately I left the pages up as I kept building new ones and suddenly G was sending traffic to it – the buggers indexed it. At the time I was afraid to pull it off and move the work onto a properly targeted domain as it was already indexed and ranking for several terms. So I left it. Within six months the site was ranking number 2 in the serps for just about every keyword I targeted. It has been number 2 for six years now – 1 position higher than wikipedia – but nothing I have done and no amount of legit links (wikipedia even links to it) has been able to unseat the number 1 site (who ironically also links to my site). Guess what the number 1 site’s domain name is? You got it – “Albatross.com”. It’s a legit site. Mine is a legit site. We share a lot of backlinks from the same trusted sources. Mine actually has more trusted links than the number 1 site but in the end the algo has determined that the EMDN site should rank number 1. I have no doubt that had I used at least one keyword anchor in the domain I would be number 1… but I didn’t. Do I know for sure? No but I rank well in multiple domains for many terms not used in my domain and have seen a pattern where I reach almost the top of the serps but never position one. That spot is almost always occupied by an EMDN or a mega trust site – (wikipedia, about.com etc.)

Now my last point – if you are still building thin affiliate sites or made for adsense sites then you are the ones who started the rumor that EMDNs are being penalized by G. And they are.

If you are building typical warrior forum member sites, IM niche sites, Loan sites, Weight Loss sites etc or otherwise high spam niches targeted by all the beginner marketers then you will not do well with EMDNs. Real sites in niches outside the spam niches do just fine. If you are still pissing around with spam niches and affiliate sites then time to move on. Selling IM crap to IMers is a huge waste of your time and any success will likely be temporary. Google does not consider your site “a1weight—loss-over—-night.com” site to be a good user experience compared to “weightwatchers.com”. Hard to believe but get over it. Time to stop playing and start building sites that serve a real purpose other than serving ads or selling affiliate products. There are ways to generate income from a site like “timbuktufurnacereplacement.com” – either because you actually replace furnaces or you sell leads to those who do or provide ad spots to service suppliers. The point is this – expand your horizons and leave the IM niche behind.

Cheers

Griz

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This question keeps coming up and I noticed Tracey posted about this recently. see Should you vary your anchor text?

A couple of years ago we all knew that you could get ranked well and fairly fast by simply generating a lot of backlinks that contained the keywords you were trying to rank for. I mentioned at the time that you should still follow a natural link profile because G would and has gotten better at weeding out sites that display a link profile consisting of unnatural patterns such as a predominant amount of “keyword targeted” links and a short supply of “brand” links such as your URL, your name, product etc.

To put it simply your link profile should have a multitude of anchors in your backlinks and they should point to a wide range of your posts. Check any authority site and you will see a similar link profile – a wide variety of backlinks using a wide variety of anchors and coming from a wide range of sources pointing at a wide range of their pages. That is a natural link profile. Having 100 links pointing at your site (mostly the home page) from a few sources using 3 or 4 different but exact keywords is not natural – with a few exceptions. Exact Match Domain Name sites are treated different – if your site is doggrooming.com then you will have an abundance of keyword anchors in your backlinks but keep in mind – they all won’t be “Dog Grooming”, many will be “doggrooming.com” or “doggrooming” or “Bob’s Dog Grooming Site” or just “Bob’s Site”. The point is that even Exact Match Domain Name sites still have a natural vs un-natural link profile.

I test a lot and one thing has always stood out – you can easily extrapolate the wrong conclusions for any number of reasons but usually because you are already looking for a set conclusion and quickly jump on any result that seems to prove what you thought in the first place. Or you don’t have enough data – testing on one site only is a mistake.

Case in point – I have been interested in how the G algo treats too many”keyword anchored links” as well as the old standards “will I be penalized for too many links too quickly?” and “I think I’m being penalized can I fix it?”

The answers are “It Depends”

You have to understand G’s version of a Trusted site. If your site is trusted then you will be treated in the algo differently than if you aren’t trusted.

Does your site have age? Again an aged site gets different treatment than a new site.

Links from authority or trusted sites will gain you trust. You can still attain trust over time even without a single link from an authority site – it just takes time.

Now I recently tested 5 sites that are all older than 4 years. They all rank on top for their niche/keywords. They all rank for a number of relevant keywords and I haven’t done a thing to the sites since I built them. They are all 10-20 page static sites.They all have between 300 – 700 visitors a day and have built up a few dozen real links from sites I don’t know over the years. The links I provided to start them off have long since fallen off of G’s radar (even in WebMaster Tools). They basically have a natural link profile and sparingly as they are they all rank well due to poor competition and the fact that my sites have links from relevant sites and mostly contained with in the posts – not sidebars or footers.

So I picked one keyword from each site and had 50 perfectly matched anchor links point to a page on each site. Within a few days all 5 pages dropped to page 10 or worse in the serp’s for the keyword that was targeted. Most of you would immediately conclude then that you will be penalized for using exact keyword links or for using too many or for having them all point to just one page. Well which is it – all of the above? Or is it just because I had too many? The point is you may get obvious results (there is no doubt what I did caused a major reaction with the algo) but there are still many factors you have to weed out before you know exactly what caused it. Rule number 1 when testing. Wait before doing anything. A few days ago 1 site was right back on top of the serps for the term it had been relegated to page 10 for after the link barrage. As of today a second site has rebounded to its former position. Another site has held steady on page 12 and the other two have continued to drop in the serps since the original drop.

So what gives? I did the same thing to all 5 sites and have different results. The fact is you have to consider your competition’s trust factor and yours.

The two niches I rebounded in have no serious competition and my sites have some trust (one has a wikipedia link to it as an authority on a certain topic and the other has several media links). Because of their trust they overcame the sudden influx of  keyword only links. My competition have only keyword anchored links and most from irrelevant sites.

The site that is holding steady has some trust but so does the competition and mine has just lost some of it due to the links. It’s not dead and I will be removing the offending links to see if it can rebound.

The last two sites had little trust even though they ranked number 1. The entire niche is trustless (think MMO for example or any spam niche). I ranked well only because the sites were old and hadn’t suffered penalties like the competitors. Even in a niche that everyone is gaming someone has to rank on top – the best of the worst until a trust site emerges. I’ll see if I can reverse them as well.

Yes, but Griz, I have had my ranking improve just using Keyword anchored links. And some of you will see improvement, at least for awhile. It depends on the other factors your site is ranking for and your competition. If you have trust and/or your competitors are all heavy on keyword links then you can get away with it but pass the magic number and you will see a detrimental effect.

If I had to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do I would tell you to stick to Brand links as they won’t hurt you long run. Concentrate on relevant, in content, brand links and don’t worry about getting your keywords in the links. G has come a long way – if your pages are optimized properly then G knows what your page is about. Just get the page a few quality links and your site’s trust factor will rise. The higher your trust factor the better you will rank for everything on your site.

I think many of you have figured out that you can use any link anchor these days and have been avoiding keyword targeted anchors but I still get asked often by beginners (because of the old posts) whether I still recommended the same type of links and I don’t. I strongly suggest you all pay heed to keeping your profile natural regardless of your linking sources or habits.

Too many links too fast is not going to hurt you if natural looking. If they are not natural they may well hurt you. Know where your site stands in G’s eyes. Darren Rowse can get 100 links tomorrow that all use the keyword “Pro Blogger” and he won’t suffer as the links are nothing compared to the overall amount he has and the keywords are reasonable given his site’s name. Plus his site will have a regular and natural pattern of incoming links – usually concurrent with a knew post and most of the links will be to the post page and not the home page. 100 new links wouldn’t raise a flag on his site. If you have a site with a few dozen total links and suddenly have an influx of 100 links that all use different anchors and point at different pages you probably won’t raise a flag either. If all the links are identical keyword links you probably will raise the flag. Everything is relative to your own metrics and your competitions. As such there is no right or wrong answer. What may work for one site may not work for another. If you’re in this for the long haul then be safe – go natural and be patient.

And speaking of links I know many of you have already changed or removed your links to the old MMOFB site but for those that haven’t you should. A few dead links on your site aren’t going to hurt you but its always better to do away with dead links. It’s a pain checking sites for dead links but you should from time to time as I have seen improvement in the ranks after giving sites a good housekeeping.

On a side note it has got to the point that even dinosaurs like me have to use CSS and PHP these days and can’t just rely on their cut and paste HTML talents anymore. These bloody themes (if using blogs on WP for example) require you to muck about with stylesheets and PHP if you want to get them optimized properly. Yes there are lots of plugins for us idiots but they can be a challenge as well. For those interested RT Cunningham is slowly posting some articles aimed at the novice wanting to know some of the basics. He has had two posts to date and you can find him here; PHP Programming for Beginners

For that matter – many of my old friends are code monkeys and I welcome any posts that any of you would like to share regarding WP Theme optimizing, plugins etc. Hit me up as I get asked a lot of questions that I can’t answer.

Ok – long enough. Have to get back into the long posts slowly.

Cheers,

Griz

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Automated Niche Link Exchange

Simply click the link above and then follow the instructions.

I have tried to keep it simple but if things are confusing then my bad and please leave a comment here so I can fix it. Ditto if you encounter any bugs in the system.

We have had very few spammers in the past so I hope to keep things that way – if I catch a spammer they will be removed – no warnings – no discussions – no explanations.

This is free as always so make use of it but play nice.

I will not be removing the old niche support site but encourage all of you to transfer and update your listings to the new page.

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This is going to be short, brief and to the point. The niche support page is actually working – who would have thought! If you haven’t dropped by lately please do – and read the comments as feedback is starting to come in now.

There are 98 people exchanging links using how many hundreds of blogs and all the links are white hat and more importantly “anchored” for the right keywords.  And all for free…

So – let’s get the word out and get more people to the page. More people – more link partners. More links – better serp rankings. Better rankings – more traffic. More traffic – more money!

Help me, help you, help yourselves. Send people to the niche support page and encourage them to join up – this is working really well and the bigger the pool the better it will be for all of us.

In a related matter please read RT’s guest post regarding his new site connectcontent.com over at my beginners blog.

Thanks folks – and if you haven’t added yourself to the list please do – it works and it costs you nothing. It is a true win-win for all.

- end of hype!

Cheers

Griz

btw – we have had one spammer/scammer slip into the group – he’s been removed – but please let me know if you run into any unsavory characters in your dealings.

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