EzSEO Newsletter # 60
by Andy Williams ez SEO
This week:
1. Christmas presents all round
2. Do you want some free content for your website?
3. Getting links to your site the easy way
4. Is someone stealing your content?
5. RSS & Blogs f.r.e.e. Report
6. Anatomy of a top web page. Part II
7. Poll Results from last week
Hi again, and let me first wish you a Merry Christmas! It's less than a week to go before we find out if we've been naughty or nice ;o)
It is often difficult to get that Christmas feeling over here in Tenerife. The weather is warm all year round (I am sitting in the garden writing this newsletter as usual) and the Spanish don't celebrate Christmas with quite the gusto that some of us do (they have a 3 Kings Day in January which is their main celebration).
The only clue that Christmas is coming is if I look over to my left. Mount Teide in all its glory is covered in Snow. Here is a picture I took a few minutes ago:
http://andrew-williams.fotopic.net/p10022318.html
Looking down to my right is the coastline of Puerto de la Cruz. It is bathed in sunshine, and I am sure there will be a few people in the water today.
As I mentioned mid-week, two of the subscriber bonus reports have been withdrawn from the bonus page. It is quite possible that the rest will be withdrawn in the next few weeks. However, I have something special lined up for you in the New Year - a successful info product that I have written that you can sell and keep 100% of the profits. Keep reading to find out about that in the not too distant future!
This week I have quite a few f.r.e.e.b.i.e.s to tell you about, as well as part II of the mini-series on the Anatomy of a top ranking web page. Let's get on.
1. Christmas presents all round
I am sure you have heard about these great Christmas give-aways already. Lots of internet marketers giving away products, for F:R:E:E:
I picked up a Clickbank Marketplace script that allows me to set up a Clickbank shopping Mall on my site - I have wanted one of these for a while - Yippee!!.
There is even a Mispelled Keyword generator which you can use to find those mispellings when you do your Wordtracker research (although this link was not working when I checked moments ago). You will remember how lucrative those words can be?
I have also seen some products being given away that were being promoted by "top" marketers earlier this year.
Here are the two of these Christmas give-away sites I know about (you might spot my "Wordtracker Tutorial" and "Creating a Niche Site" report):
http://www.117christmasgifts.com/main/80
http://www.hunteridge.com/12days/in/ezseo.htm
Go get yourself some f.r.e.e.b.i.e.s.
2. Do you want some free content for your website?
Do you have a marketing related web site?
If so, I have some articles that I have written that you can publish on your site. The articles are distributed using a new tool I am developing, so if you do decide to download and publish them (or just want to see how this tool might help you), I would love to hear how you get on. You can easily edit the template to match your own web site.
Download the package here:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/freearticles
Unzip the contents into a temporary folder, and run the application called CPDistributor.exe. Instructions are included.
3. Getting links to your site the easy way
Phil Tanny contacted me in the week to let me know about a web site he has set up to help webmasters get links to their sites. You may have seen Alan Gardyne mention it in his newsletter last week. Below I have included the Phil's press release. If you have had trouble getting links to your site, this may be the answer you have been looking for.
PRESS RELEASE: New free service for link swapping
webmasters opens on December 10, 2004.
Links-For-You.com is a free service that helps webmasters
find willing link partners in their niche.
http://Links-For-You.com
Overview
Webmasters who wish to announce their interest in link
swapping partnerships can have their contact info mailed
once to Links-For-You members in their niche. This mailing
is sent for free. No fee, purchase, or return link is
required.
If a webmaster chooses to provide a link to Links-For-You,
they can also receive emailed listings containing the
contact info of willing link partners in their niche on an
ongoing basis.
Willing Link Partners
Each member displayed in Links-For-You listings has proven
their interest in reciprocal link partnerships by completing
a 2 step confirmed opt-in subscription process.
Relevant Link Partners
Each mailing is customized for each subscriber and provides
listings for willing link partners only in that subscriber's
niche. This customisation saves the reader from being
distracted by listings of websites in industries outside
of their own topic area.
Quality Listings, Sorted By PageRank
All web sites are visited and reviewed before inclusion in
Links-For-You listings and the PageRank of each site is
added to the listing by the reviewer. Mailed listings are
sorted by PageRank, with the highest PR sites appearing at
the top.
The goal of Links-For-You is to liberate webmasters from the
tedious job of searching the Net for willing and topic
relevant link partners.
Links-For-You delivers the information needed to establish
these partnerships to the member's email inbox.
For further information and signup please visit:
http://Links-For-You.com
Or contact:
Phil Tanny, phil@Links-For-You.com
4. Is someone stealing your content?
I got this letter earlier this week and thought I would share it with you since it mentions a great f.r.e.e. resource.
"Hi Andy,
In your next Newsletter you might want to post this
link. It is very useful to find web pages using your
web copy or articles with or without permission.
http://www.copyscape.com
Attila"
Thanks Attila! BTW, Attila has just put up a new web site (built with SEO Website Builder) about baby products:
http://www.happystrollers.com
For a first site I think he did a fantastic job!
If you have a related site, why not swap links with Attila?
5. RSS & Blogs f.r.e.e. Report
Another e-mail I received this week, and another f.r.e.e. resource being offered....
This time a report compiled by Hugh Harris-Evans called
"RSS and Blogs - a short and simple guide".
Here is the download link:
http://tinyurl.com/4vq5c
In previous newsletters I have kept you up to date on how my own experiments in RSS and blogging have gone. Well, this week my wife's site hit an all time traffic high of 448 unique visitors in one day. Not bad when you consider that before the RSS feed was added, her site was getting less than 50 unique visitors per day!
I learnt how to do this RSS stuff by reading Adrian Ling's RSS Made Easy eBook. You can learn it too:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/rssmadeeasy
However, remember, that while RSS and blogs can help get your pages into the search engines (and keep them there), you wont get much traffic unless your pages are optimized for keywords people are searching for. Do your keyword research carefully, it is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of any site design.
6. Anatomy of a top web page. Part II
Last week we started our mini-series looking at what makes a page rank well in Google. Today we continue with that series. However, instead of taking another page and analyzing it like we did last week to decide why it is ranking well, I want to take the opposite approach and look at a page that is not ranking well. We should be able to figure out why.
Last week we analyzed the top page for a fairly uncompetitive search "alsatian dog". If you missed it, you can read it online at my blog:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php
Let's do the same search today.
I am using the f.re.e search tool at:
http://www.prsearch.net/
I use this for all my analysis since it gives me the PR and backlinks embedded in the search results - no need for the Google toolbar here, the process is much quicker.
Up at #1 is the same ghost story we looked at and analyzed last week. Looking down the top 30 results, I can see some interesting pages. At #14 is a site with PR4 and 18 inbound links:
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/germanshepherd.htm
This site is certainly about alsatian dogs, so why is it not ranking better?
Running this page through my analysis software, I can immediately see why this page is not at the top of Google for the search phrase "alsatian dog". It does not contain the exact phrase anywhere on the page.
So here is an example that I touched upon last week. A page that is ranking quite high, without the exact search phrase found anywhere on the page.
So, how does Google know to include this page in its results for the search phrase "alsatian dog"?
Well, my analysis software tells me that there is a PARTIAL match density of 4.8% for this phrase. If you are unsure what I mean by partial match, read last weeks issue.
Certainly this page is about alsatian dogs. The word alsatian occurs once in the page title, and twice in the body text. The word dog is far more frequent appearing 52 times in the HTML document.
Both word - "alsatian" and "dog" do appear in the title.
The higher PR of this page means that Google does see it as important, and the fact that the two words were found on the page (as well as a lot of related phrases) tells Google it has found a relevant page. I would bet that if the webmaster of this site put the phrase "alsatian dog" in the title of the web page, and once near the top of the page, that it would easily rank #1 for this term.
I can do a quick check on the incoming links to this page by running the URL through Optilink.
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/optilink
The incoming links come from 9 distinct domains (4 of those links are from the same domain as the web page). Here is the link text used by these incoming links:
German Shepherd Dogs
A site dedicated to the German Shepherd
German Shepherd
German Shepherd Dog
German Shepherd Dog
German Shepherds
German Shepherd Dog (Alsatian) (Deutscher Schaferhund)
german shepherds
German Shepherd Dog
German Shepherd Dog (Alsatian) (Deutscher Schaferhund)
German Shepherd Dog (Alsatian) (Deutscher Schaferhund)
here
German Shepherds
The word German is in 92% of the links, shepherd in 69% of the links, and dog, 46% of the links. Alsatian is only found in 23% of the links.
Remember that it is important to get your target phrase in the link text of incoming links.
This webmaster is obviously targeting the phrase "german shepherd" or "german shepherd dog" as his main phrase.
However, with much more competition for this phrase and an average PR of 5 for the top sites, this page does not get into the top 100 at Google for that term. Remember to think niche when you search out your target phrases.
A page I could not find in the top 1000 of Google for the term alsatian dog is this one:
http://www.dog-names.org.uk/alsatian.htm
It has a PR 3 and 2 backward links (albeit from its own domain) and is certainly targeting the phrase "alsatian dog", so it should be doing a lot better than it is.
Can you make a suggestion as to why it is not doing better?
It has a keyword density of 1.54% and a prominence of 62% meaning the phrase is located more towards the beginning of the document. Those are the sorts of figures I would normally go for to get a top ranking page. So what is up with this page?
Have you heard me talk about an over-optimization penalty?
This page may well be penalised for being over-optimized.
The keyword is found:
1 time in the title
3 times in the meta description!!!
2 times in headers (an H1 and an H2)
18 times in the body text
The word alsatian dog is the most common 2 word phrase on the visible page appearing 20 times (the second most common 2 word phrase on this page is "of the").
One way I usually check to see if a page is over-optimized is to see how the webmaster uses the meta description and meta keyword tag. While not important in the ranking (at least not in a positive way), it is one the areas that is often abused by webmasters who are trying to optimize a web page.
Here is meta description tag:
Hmmm. That's a big tag with our phrase found 3 times (that is 2 times too many times if you ask me).
And here is the meta keyword tag:
That is over 30 words!
You may interpret the results of this page differently to me. However, in my opinion, this webmaster has gone over the top. If Google does use an over-optimization penalty, this would be a candidate in my book.
All of my own testing in recent months suggests less is more.
Whether you agree or disagree with my analysis, I hope this section of the newsletter has made you think about the way you optimize your web pages.
In the next newsletter we will look at more examples and try to decide why they do or dont rank well.
7. Poll Results from last week
Last week you'll remember I ran a poll on eBook formats.
100% of those that replied preferred PDF over compiled exe eBooks (I did get a few blank replies so ignored those).
I contacted the author of the exe book I was trying to read (which started off this poll) and told him about the poll results. He wondered whether those who preferred exe eBooks had just not bothered to reply.
Unlikely, but I told him I would ask.....
Please, If you prefer compiled exe eBooks instead of PDF, please send me an e-mail and let me know.
Some of you were quite scathing in your comments about exe style aBooks (e.g. I got a lot of answers along the lines of "I HATE exe ebooks". Others raised some very good points in favour of PDF format.
I think Michael Campbell summed it up nicely with his comments:
"PDF is a universal format. It's installed on 98% of all
computers when shipped. People are very comfortable with PDFs. It's easy for exe files to contain viruses. They only work on certain versions of certain operating systems. They are also difficult to read as they cannot be "designed" to preserve the readability intended by the graphic designer."
Here are few other comments I received (think about these if you decide to publish your own eBook.
1. Smartphones, Blackberrys, PDAs, XDA, PC, Mac, Linux etc all support PDF. Why would anybody want to create a product in a proprietary format eBook?
2. printable + more reliable (.exe often doesn't
work with the latest XP updates).
3. I always prefer to print out ebooks for 2 reasons...#1 - I can read faster on paper than on a monitor and #2 - It's easier on my eyes.
4. With exe files you can also put people off as many don't like the idea of running executable files from unknown sources.
5. A lot of eBook compilers make my computer shudder.
6. Potential virus issues with .exe format.
7. I find it difficult to read and take in information from the screen.
Well, another week has come and gone. I am not sure if there will be a newsletter next week (I'll probably be feeling ill after all that turkey and "Christmas Cheer"). If not, take care this holiday season, and have a great, safe, celebration. Don't forget to make a New Year's resolution and stick to it.
Happy Christmas!
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