Beating About.com for #1 SERP for "orthopedics"

Below is a graph showing the outcome of moving from the #2 position to the #1 position on Google.com search results for the competitive keyword, orthopedics. My site is the Orthopedics SuperSite. I have only been #1 for three days now which is why there is so little data, but due to the nature of Google, I figured I'd post now because you never know how long a certain rank will last. It took many many months of persistent link building to catch About.com and now, finally pass them. Maintaining this #1 position will be as hard as obtaining it was for sure!

301 Redirect Case Study: Capone Photography

There is an old adage in the SEO world that one should never leave it up to Google to decide which page of your website to index. Matt Cutts uses the following four examples here in his discussion about canonical issues.

www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

But this post is about more than just singular domain canonical issues. Take the Capone Photography Website for example. Many smaller companies, particularly in the photograhpy industry, are usually start-ups with little to no SEO knowledge and/or experience. SERPS for photographers like the Capones are merely a guess. But all websites, big or small, should take the guesswork out of domain usage. Capone Photography, for example, has one web site, but four domains. The domain they use in marketing pieces is not the domain that is indexed and ranking best right now, which creates an obvious problem.

www.caponephotography.com
caponephotography.com
www.caponephotography.net
caponephotography.net

As far as Google is concened, the right way to go here is to use a permanent 301 redirect to point the .net version to the .com version. A 301 redirect can also be done to point the non-www version to the www version. An eaiser way would be to tell Google which version you prefer in your Google Webmaster Tools account. This yon't help your cause on Yahoo or MSN unfortunately. 301 recdirects are always the way to go; they are search friendly and pass along any links and reputation to the new domain. Good luck and email me with any questions you may have.

No Free Link at Wired

That was quick. Wired has deleted my unspammy link from the "How To's" section and marked it as spam. Actually, Ross Mayfield himself did. Was just a test anyhow. More here.

Free Link for All at Wired How To’s

Visit Wired How To’s, a potential threat to Wikipedia. Wired has some serious work to, but refraining from using a nofollow on its links is definitely a good start. To put in perspective, Google currently indexes 25,900,000 pages of Wiki and just 4,060 pages of Wired How To’s. Wiki saddened all seos the day they announced they’d begin using the feared nofollow tag. Barry Schwartz covers this a bit more in depth at Search Engine Land.

Go get that link juice already. It's quick and painless.

$20 via paypal - For Best Answer to SEO ?

SEO Chat user MadisonSEO just figured out how to get real answers from all of the seasoned seos at SEO Chat. Very simple. Very brilliant. He offered $20 for the best answer to a simple SEO question. Actually, it was a string of several SEO questions, but that is not the point.

I laughed when he first posted this because I doubted anyone would respond. But, then I remembered what the key to this business is - competition. It is unlikely anyone is actually posting over there to win $20, unless they are really swimming in that wonderful christmas present debt. Anyway, something amazing happened.

Fathom chimed in. Then dzine. Visio. GaryTheScubaGuy... The list goes on. For a measely $20, this guy got great advice from some serious seo big timers. For the record, I don't know that he has choosen "the best answer" and winner of the 20 beans yet.

My fav from Visio, "Create an article for each topic, question, subject in your niche which has merit, don't create one for each keyword, then your articles will lose meaning, they will become drab and same ol' and you won't be getting any quality links to them."

Okay, this post is getting long.... The point is, go read the thread!!

SEO SPAM - Searching with YOUR KEYWORDS in their Native language

Spam is annoying enough, but SEO spam is the worst. SEO is a touchy subject that is still relatively new to most. I can just see emails like this making waves in companies and it's truly sad. So, this post goes out to you, "heard of SEO but not sure what it means or even what the acronym is, but want to sound techy and on the edge of internet stuff to impress my boss manager guy". Assuming you are searching segments of the email to find out if it is legit, it is NOT. Here is one of many samples. International SEO seems to be the theme. It's even more mysterious than normal SEO. My favorite part is that this particular sample "company" claims to be a leader in search since 1999, yet there web site is just 3 months old.

I am Dr. xxxx xxxxxxxxxx and I work for Bogus Company in Washington DC, telephone (xxx-xxx-xxxx) - I would like to speak with the person in charge of your international clientele. Who is my contact? Who should I speak to??

In fact, after visiting http://www.xxxxxxx.com, I have noticed that your website cannot be found on foreign search engines (I tested it on Hispanic search engines, German search engines, Asian search engines, etc.) Our company is specialized in multilingual search engine promotions in 28 languages . From the Japanese Google to the German Yahoo, from the AOL in Spanish to the MSN in Chinese, we can show you how to develop a true international online presence by promoting your website on foreign search engines.

Let us show you how to develop a presence on the multilingual web without having to translate your website: It is not necessary to translate your website in order to submit to foreign search engines, however, you need to have at least 1 page in Japanese optimized with Japanese keywords and meta tags in order to submit to Japanese search engines, at least 1 page in Spanish optimized with Spanish keywords in order to submit to Hispanic search engines and so on...

I strongly suggest that you watch our online presentation which will explains clearly how to get top rankings on foreign search engines with only 1 entry page per language (click on the following link or copy-paste it into your web browser): http://www.xxxxxx.net/demo

From the Japanese Google to the German Yahoo, from the AOL in Spanish to the MSN in Chinese, get users to find your website when searching with YOUR KEYWORDS in their Native language.

Please call me at 1 (xxx)-xxx-xxxx or email me and let's work on giving your website the true international exposure which it deserves to have with foreign native online users!!

Regards,

xxxx xxxxxx, Ph.D.
xxxxxx@xxxx.net
_____________________

Bogus Company
Bogus Address
TEL:1 (xxx)-xxx-xxxx - FAX: 1 (xxx)-xxx-xxxx
http://www.xxxx.net :
Multilingual Search Engine Promotion Services since 1999.

Advertisers Beware... ROBOTS!

What is this world coming to? The day has come where advertisers must actually specify their target audience, "humans only, no robots please".

Yes, you read that right. I recently began working for a new client and started familiarizing myself with their seo/sem budgets and ad spend strategies. It didn't take me long to uncover a terrible ROI with a particular advertiser. I requested log files from some of sites of this advertiser and to my surprise, I was granted small samples of them. Two hours and two phone calls later, I realized that robot activity on the site (aka spiders) was not being filtered from the web analytics reports. This client was actually paying the advertiser for impressions made by robots. And to their dismay, 50%+ of the "traffic" were actually from robots and not real human visitors!

In this scenario, I was a hero. My client received a significant make-good. There aren't exactly audits or laws pertaining to web advertising and robot filtering. Sometimes it is an evil webmaster; sometimes it is an uneducated webmaster. Either way, make you are aren't losing out! Advertising to robots will rarely get you a good ROI ;) Now get back to work and do some investigating. Go be a hero for your company. Go, go, go!