Stuff you probably missed on the blog:
And here’s the download page for Backlinks Quickstart (in terms of branding, the guide is a bit outdated, but I trust you’ll forgive me for that):
Get it HereI’m looking forward to reading your feedback on this week’s video, in the comments!
Cheers,
Please leave a comment below.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
Note that I don’t reply to all comments, but I do read them all. If I don’t reply to your comment, it most likely means that I agree with what you say and don’t have anything meaningful to add, myself. I appreciate and read all comments and your comments play an important part in what I write about, so keep them coming.
Spammy comments are always filtered or removed. No surprise there.
Shane, You’re absolutely right about wild spikes of Google traffic. I’ve seen it across a half-dozen sites starting Sept 1st. It only seems to be happening to sites that are not well-aged, generally 9 months old or less.
http://mac-seo-tools.com/traffic-swings.jpg
Something changed in their algo at the end of summer. Google is now HEAVILY shifting to strict, EXACT keyword or Domain name matches ONLY – thensuddenly briefly sampling long-tail for 3-7 days – then back to Exact Match you go!
“THE NOOSE IS TIGHTENING” is the best way to think about Google these days. One is a much shorter list of Short-Tail keywords your site will get ‘awarded’ – and an ever more tighter noose on which backlinks it deems to have Authority.
Interesting. I’ve also only seen the effects on smaller, younger sites. Others are still stable in rankings and stable in the traffic they get.
Hi Shane,
Not sure if this is relevant but…some of my sites are autoblogs and I have found that when there is a pause in the posting, I almost suddenly drop in the rankings. And this is a major drop, in fact I don’t exist at all. When I start posting again I get the old ranking back. These are keyword domains and the content is most amazon products, some yahoo answers and youtube videos meaning everything is duplicate. I have very few links to these sites.
This is a major test for me and after 3 months when I have to renew the domains I will delete most of them as they are not profitable.
/Erik
Wow, that’s sure weird. Is it always the homepage that’s ranking, or individual posts?
It’s the homepage. I have to try a plugin where I can have several “sticky” posts that are relevant to try if can find a way to keep the ranking without posting. Maybe another way would be to build some more links :-)
Yeah, links would probably help. But the idea with the sticky posts sounds good. That might do the trick.
Hi Shane Norman here I have about 15 web sites up and running and what I have found is anytime I start building back links they start jumping all over the place then tend to settle into a position I have seen some jump around for no reason but always seem to come back just the Google dance so get your dance card out and get ready to dance most of what I am doing now is local SEO and it is a whole different beast but as of late Google has decided to weigh the organic search with local search interesting because I have always used the two together it is nice to see your web site in the local seven block and the your web site also dominating another top spot in the organic on the same page with some keywords I have actually seen three and four spots on the same page anyone else in our group dabble in local SEO ???
Shane thank you for all you do
Seems like the rankings have become a little more jumpy across the board, then. I have no experience in local SEO, though. Guess you just can’t do everything. :)
Hey! Shane
That is some very interesting stuff. I have always had questions about this backlink stuff. I being doing a little research myself. Thanks for what you have shared.
Hey Will, thanks for your comment!
Hi Shane – I have a page on a site that in the last two months has gone from 7th on the fist page of Google to not being in the top 1000. Then back to 8th position and then off the top 1000. And now back to position 10 on the first page of its keyword. What I don’t like is that I am dropping every time this happens.
Are you building links while all this is happening? Because what I’ve seen often is sites dropping and then coming back a little higher than before, when I build links.
Hi Shane,
Excellent video as always and thanks very much for the info. I am using your Back Link Battle Plan and find it very useful. A great link building tool. I use it to build back links for my client’s website. There has been a good improvement in Google ranking. While doing this work, I find that the search term for my keyword on Google had my hub pages article in the first position two days ago and right now it is in the fifteenth position. Strange!! Maybe one can never predict the activity of the bots?
A few weeks ago, again I saw the same thing happening to my Ezine article which could not be found at all after coming to number one position on Google. Anyway thanks for all the great information you are sharing with us.
Cheers
Rema.
Hi Rema,
It can happen quite often that new pages rank well for a short while and then drop. If you see something like with your hubpages article, where it drops to a fairly high position like 15, that’s a good sign that you can get back into a top position with a bit of backlink building.
Wow! That’s great news! It probably will get back to the top position in sometime. Thanks again Shane! Can’t really thank you enough for all the help!
Regards
Rema.
Hello Shane and Hi Norman
My main money site has been a victim of Goog for months. Up and down all the time..Page rank makes absolutely no difference. I have always been a big one for internal linking…and I think that was my undoing. I removed a bunch and it has been stable for awhile now.
But yesterday I was amazed to see that one of my sites, normally at the top of page 1 of Google had vanished. Especially because it has just been sitting there minding it’s own business. No linking. No nothing except occasional auto blog arkles coming in. I doubt this was a factor.
Just goes to my saying that “Google giveth and Google taketh away. No man knows the mind of Google.” (May the name of Google be blessed again and again.”
Frankly, I despise Google…but, you’re just backing up with great listings elsewhere. Unless you’re ranking in Google you’re just not doing much. They know it too. I wish there was some way we could break out of this Google cycle. They are much much too powerful in too many things. Sort of a 5th estate kinda deal.
For link building, I have to admit that SocAdr is just pure fun. But Build My Ranks is more profitable. You really have to work it though, to make it pay for itself.
And I have been amazed at how easily some of my stuff on Hub Pages has floated to the top like a real website.
Posterous? I dunno. It’s quick and easy, but I haven’t made up my mind about it. In the meantime, there aren’t enough hours in the day for one person to update all of this stuff!
Norm
Hi Norm,
Thanks for your detailed feedback!
It’s definitely unpleasant when your main traffic source is moody like that. That’s another reason why I’m experimenting with non-Google traffic sources, lately.
Not that I want to stop doing SEO or anything, but it’s just good to not have all the eggs in one basket, as they say.
I can confirm that hubpages seem to do well in Google. I have one that’s ranking quite well for a term, even though I have hardly done any link-building for it. I’m also running a backlink experiment on two new hubpages to see what will happen.
Hi Shane,
I have 16 sites all of which are less than 3 months old. They are all exact match keyword domains and I have a mixture of hyphenated and non hyphenated domains. Despite what many people say I have experienced a massive difference between the two.
My non hyphenated domains are doing phenomenally well – all on Page 1 and most at position 1 – but to a man my hyphenated domains are like yoyos on steroids!! Up and down the SE results like mad – sometimes disappearing deeper than Page 30 (well you have to stop looking somewhere dont you??!!)
This leaves me to conclude that hyphenated are to be avoided!!
Have a great Christmas Shane
Regards
Jonathan
Wow, that’s pretty harsh.
Although I don’t see how it makes any sense, it does seem like Google has a preference for non-hyphenated domain names. Strange stuff.
Hi Shane,
My experience on duplicate content:
As a test I’ve set up a blog on public speaking. Homepage content is almost the same as a page on my main domain. For this keyword the ‘original’ page on my main domain ranks no3. The new domain, 4 weeks old, almost no content and duplicate content on the homepage does rank no6 for this keyword.
Testing on onpage optimization:
I did some test on some pages that where stuck on second page on Google. All the onpage optimization did not have any influence on the ranking. Note, these pages where optimized, but not in detail.
Linkbuilding testing:
I’ve tried several linkbuilding techniques to improve ranking, not with very much results.
I’ve now started to outsorce linkbuilding to see what linkbuilding providers do have the right techniques, tools and tactics.
About hyphenated domains:
The new domains I’ve set up for the adsense challenge are hyphenated. Normally new domains are ranked well within a few days. However these domains I still cannot find.
I’ll do some testing and set up some non-hypened domains.
Btw, my old domains are hyphened, no change in ranking for the pages of these domains.
Cheers,
Jan
Hey Jan,
So, do I get this right: You have two pages with identical content ranking on the front page for the same keyword? That’s pretty amazing. :)
Hi Shane,
the content is almost the same. I’ve only changed some words. Paragraph count is the same.
Hi Shane,
I have the same issue with one of my sites. It’s gone from positions 1,3,7 and 9 for 4 different keyword page combinations. I have not changed my link building approach recently and I personally can not explain what is going on.
The only unusual thing is that I also have very old pages that don’t exist any more, like my hello page that suddenly are reported as broken links. Google had never complained about this so I suspect there is a mixture of cache versus current crawl comparing going on, who knows!
Thank you very much for your posts, I look forward to them each Sunday.
I wish you all the best for the holiday season.
Regards
Turan
Hi Turan,
Thanks for your comment! So, the site just dropped entirely? I had that happen for one of my fitness-related sites, as well, but then the rankings for all the keywords (well, only three in total) popped back up again after about a week. And they’ve been jumbing up and down ever since.
I have also noticed google rankings being all over the place. One week I’m on 1st page then suddenly nowhere then back again etc. This site is less than a year old. I have another site older than this and although I don’t even bother with it anymore it is still staying on 1st page. Its so frustrating. When google is messing things around it makes it virtually impossible to test any strategy – apart from indexing!
At least I am not the only one noticing this and so thanks for sharing.
Hi Kay,
Thanks for sharing! Really seems like there’s weird stuff happening across the board, with Google.
Also looks like we have at least one more good argument FOR buying aged domains.
Shane, to answer your question, YES, I have several pages that seem to be on Google page one for a week, then they completely fall off the radar, only to come back (and there is no promotion of any type going on).
Regarding the ‘duplicate content’ issue, certainly there are millions of ‘hello world’ sites indexed…thats NOT the question. Google’s challenge is to show the BEST ‘hello world’ sites. Out of the millions, they can show at maximum 1000. So, here’s the thing… if you put up another ‘hello world’, how do you get Google to rank yours?
I believe ‘duplicate content’ is a logistics problem, not a programmed ‘plenalty’ by Google.
Keep up the good work Shane. Can’t wait for the BBP update.
That’s a good point and I agree that duplicate content is a logistical question or perhaps a problem of how much space is available on the front page, when it comes to ranking.
Since Google is willing to chache and index yet another Hello World post, it would seem that a backlink from such a post would be valuable, despite it being duplicate content. Would you agree?
Thanks for all the comments, so far! This has already brought some really interesting things to light and it’s good to know that the bouncy results aren’t an isolated issue!
This IM is really only a hobby for me at this point. I am in a continual building process of my understanding of Internet Marketing. Basically for me, it has been how to get my page ranked. You really give great directions for building page rank. I have been able to get my Health and Wellness site ranked on both Google and Yahoo in less than a month; since, I have been following your Backlink Battleplan. This has been a victory for me. I have a lot to learn; however, I like to enjoy the steps forward.
That backlink building process do I like the most. I can not recomend the best one; because, I do not understand enough to do that. I can say that following a backlink gameplan has given me results. Keep in mind these are very limited results.
Hi Stanley, thanks for your comment! Looks like you’re making good progress with SEO and I’m very happy to hear that BBP has been helpful for you, of course! :)
Hi Shane. I have had these same problems. I don’t know what google is up to but I am not liking it. I used to be on page 2 for a not so competitive keyword that has low competition and I recently switched over to a new site format (same domain name). However it now hovers around page 6 and now is on page 7. Since I moved to the new site I haven’t been doing much backlinking apart from article marketing, but it seems to be in vain for now. It has stressed me out a little, but I guess all I can do is keep persisting. It is not great that I feel so dependent on google. They have too much clout and can make or break honest and legitimate sites. I want to find other ways and learn how to use Facebook a lot better. I guess I also need to come up with a solid backlinking strategy as I was told I was getting the wrong types of backlinks, so I am confused now. I guess I should try to get more in my niche, but have been reluctant as I don’t want them to treat me like a spammer.
I guess I like article marketing for links. I am now trying to spin the article so the search engine doesn’t treat it as the same content. Hopefully it will work.
Hey Chris,
Thanks for your comment! It can be tough to make things happen in the rankings if you are only getting your links from one single source (e.g. article marketing). My number one recommendation would be to find at least one other source of backlinks and see if that improves the situation.
Thanks for the advice Shane. I agree with what you said re article marketing being too limited for results. I don’t know whether I should look for more health related, or dentistry related blogs to comment on, or if it is okay to stay on IM sites. I feel I am in the same boat as a lot of newbie IMers so I tend to hang around these kind of sites.
I look at too many sites re information on backlinking. It gets confusing.
I think I need to listen to one source and stick with that for a while. I am interested in your backlink battleplan. Don’t have much cash, but because I trust you and see that you are legitimate (unlike most other IMers), I am willing to buy it at some point. I was just wondering if you could give me some info on it, or is it somewhere on this site?
Test test test…..
It is tough with all the information overload that is online and the complete left and right of what people say works and will not work.
I have been testing the whole follow and no follow and duplicate content debate and I must say I am getting great results with both so for me it is now going to be all about the mix.
Thanks for always putting out great content I look forward to your next blog.
Hi Jim,
Yeah, as with many things, everyone has an opinion (and some people are very forceful about their opinions), regardless of whether they actually know anything or not. I agree that it can be difficult to cut through the crap and just focus. Congrats on your testing so far! :)
Hi Shane,
A thought provoking Sunday update as usual. In my opinion, the results one sees on Google can vary pretty drastically from country to country as the data is drawn from different Google data centers due to load balancing. Further personalized search can also cause different set of rankings to appear (if user is logged into a Google account while searching)
A good accurate reading of results can be got from Google Webmaster Central account where you can see the keyword postions, changes by % and position etc. This can give a better idea though it is also at a certain point out of date. It takes time to get updated.
As for duplicate content, from my experience, though Google does not admit to penalizing a site, I have found that there is a link on the search results page for some keyword phrases which says –
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 89 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.
When Google finds the original content (in the form of an article) on a site and finds duplicates of that article on other sites(with or without attribution), by virtue of the timestamp, it gives the original article the real value and the other duplicated ones tend to appear under the omitted entries section.
I find that contextual links that appear in natural context and quoted by other sites (your article appearing on other sites) on a good strong domain is the most powerful link because it is not easy to get one like that unless the content is of the highest quality.
Regards
Ravi
Hi Ravi,
Thanks for your reply! Concerning duplicate content, the question would be: how are links coming from the omitted seach results valued? After all, those pages are still indexed.
Apart from that, I can only agree with what you wrote. :)
Hi there Shane
I was recently building backlinks manually to a new blog of mine when all of a sudden I started receiving emails from the postmaster from the email client that I use stating that many emails that I sent had not been delivered. Next, I received an email from Ezine saying that they had suspended my account for spamming them, followed by many people in my contact list of friends asking me why I am bombarding them with emails promoting digital products. I contacted an associate in US about this, who used to be a big time hacker in the past, who advised me to change all of my passwords. As I am pretty new to IM I would just like your take on this? Oh ye, there was a happy ending, after explaining to Ezine what had happend they reopened my account and when I submitted my next article I was given platinum status:-)
Cheers
Mike
Hey Mike,
Yep, looks like someone hacked your account. I’ve had a site taken down with some malicious code before as well, although luckily, it was on a site-level and not a hosting-level, so no one could send e-mails through my account.
I’m not an expert on any of this, but these kinds of attacks do happen, unfortunately.
Hi Shane,
My site has also been jumping all over. It’s only 5 months old. has appeared for one keyword on page 2 and for another on page 1. Then, suddenly, nowhere to be found.
It is till getting indexed and cached though, so who knows. Am now building links and adding content.
Some one mentioned in a previous comment that it is not a good idea to do any internal links. Why is that? I have been adding internal links on my site as I learnt (perhaps incorrectly?) that it was a “good thing.” Another myth?
Thanks for all great info!
Hi Con,
I do a lot of internal linking as well. I can only hope that Google doesn’t really start to get fussy about internal links. I mean, it’s one of the very basics of website usability, to have good interlinking.
For now, I’ll just keep going and see if this all settles down again.
Hi Shane,
Another insightful Sunday update – thanks.
I’ve been following your Backlink Battleplan since August and it has enabled me to get to position 3 on Google for my top keyphrase. There hasn’t been any Google dancing so far and the site is 5 months old (aside, the domain name is an exact match keyphrase, hyphenated twice). I took your recommendation of using TrafficTravis to track my progress and this has been useful to see the rate at which my compititors have been building links too. Having knocked a few competitors out of the way on page one, I can see their off page seo starting again more agressively.
Favourite link building tool has to be Build My Rank, this service has been the focus of my backlinking activities for the last 60 days: 89 posts live, 95% indexed, PR5 is the highest listing so far for 6 of my posts. I’ve tried to spread my inbound links across the site, 70% to home page, 30% deep links to other targeted keywords.
Reinforcing backlinks with SocialAdr appears to help and IMAutomator for indexing.
Looking forward to the updated BBP, any ideas when you’ll be releasing?
Thanks again for all the info.
Rgds
James
Hi Shane,
How weird – I have experienced this same problem in the last two weeks. My site is 13 months old and has remained at the bottom of page one for months without doing any seo and without adding any other contents. I decided to add one more post, hoping this would help to push it up a little, but it has completely vanished from google pages.
I find this very strange and maybe if I had not done anything it would still be hovering around the bottom of page one.
Regards,
John