SEO SEATTLE® --- SEO Search Engine Optimization --- SEO SEATTLE

Bloging with Trackbacks

admin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:37:20 +0000

Finally something new in bloging tools worth sharing.

If you are a serious Blogger you may already know about Trackbacks. If you don’t know how Trackbacks work, it is worth checking out. Trackbacks allow a Blogger to provide visitors with different perspectives regarding an article and continued fresh new content for their Blog.

I found this article about Trackback Tutorial, How To Do Trackbacks a ten and hope to find even more interesting articles and useful tools on future visits to SeoServices USA.Com in the future. Even if you already know about Trackbacks I highly recommend visiting SeoServices USA.Com where you will find an archive of great SEO articles.

Is Google Sandbox a Myth?

admin — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:28:19 +0000

A subject deserving pages of data taken from actual SEO projects is the so called Google Sandbox. Since my duties for SEO are mounting, and time for which I can allocate to this article limited, I will share only my current understanding of the Google Sandbox.

Ask almost any SEO professional and they will tell you that Google automatically penalizes and places newborn domains in a Sandbox. The idea is that the purchase of a new domain comes with a Google Sandbox incubation period. So it goes that a domain less than 12 months old has little chance of ranking high in Google search returns. It is also said that should a recently purchased domain get lucky and rank high in a Google search, the luck will wear out sometime before its fourth month. There is strong evidence that the Sandbox does exist and that Google does filter a search return by including a check of the URL’s domain age. It seems that Google has confidence only in a URL connected to a mature domain, and only after it can show a time-tested history.

I am aware that such treatment by Google does indeed exist (today anyway). During the past year I have averaged several SEO projects a month that have included working with brand new domains. I can tell many stories and share my personal testimony that the Sandbox exists, and continues to frequently test my abilities and SEO methods.

That said, let the record show — my experience is that the automatic Sandbox penalty does not always occur. I also believe that the selection of which domains to send to the Sandbox is not randomly made by Google, and that Google has left a pattern of how the selection is made.

I am confident that if you are an SEO professional you will find this post good reading. That, of course, is what we all hope when writing and posting our experiences, questions and other scenarios. That is why I will ask that a level of caution be considered. I am sure most of us will agree that the domain and its importance in SEO is but a single spoke in a complex wheel of many, and that without including all the steps taken in a SEO project the chances of duplicating successful rankings offer but a small chance, if any.

My personal experience with URL’s involving newly purchased domains is that the more search demand there is for the actual keyword string being targeted, the more the Sandbox filter presents itself.

This should not be confused with the amount of pages indexed by Google displaying the words from the search query. It is purely the number of times searchers are entering and actually searching Google for the exact keyword or string.

It is that simple. The more popular a particular search is, the greater the chance that a newly purchased domain, with a URL that is targeting the popular search, winds up in the Sandbox.

Conclusion: I have successfully managed to capture high search engine rankings involving new domains, even with popular keyword searches or strings. However, I have also uncovered a pattern that suggests Google uses the number of searches being made for popular targeted keyword string as a factor in which domains will be placed in the Sandbox. I will usually factor in an additional thirty hours to a SEO project that includes the use of a brand new URL.

Written by:

David S. Freid / SEO

Seattle, WA 98104

SEO SEATTLE

Web Site: http://www.seosearchengineoptimizationseattle.com

Interesting – But I don’t Recomend

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:51:27 +0000

I copied this post made by “Tehfincheh” on Digital Point . Digital Point is one of the many forums I frequently go to and exchange ideas and information with other SEO’s. While I found this article interesting and wanted to share as an intellectual brain teaser, Iquestion the use of this method. I found this article to stimulate exploration of methods used in my daily SEO. At the very least it reminds me that exploration of methods used in search engine optimization should be a never ending jorney.

Hope you enjoy the following re-post.

“I read this a long time ago on an old Black Hat blog. I can’t remember which, but it works!

Simple process, incredibly effective.

To pull it off, you’ll need to have an old indexed domain sitting in your toolbox.

Let’s say that domain is MyEstablishedSite.com

Your new sandboxed site is MyNewSite.com

1. Take all the files from MyNewSite and upload them to a subfolder on your established site.

2. Create a subdomain for the replica site:
MyNewSite.MyEstablishedSite.com

3. Link to your new replica from the main page of MyEstablishedSite.com

4. Ping Google to ensure that it knows to come and re-spider.

5. Let Google index the replica site.

6. 301 redirect your replica site to the real MyNewSite.com

And just like that, Google assumes that your site has been moved. You hop on the established authority of your old site and fast track your way out of the sandbox in a matter of days.

Don’t believe me? Try it! Unless something drastic has changed (I haven’t needed to use the method for a few months), it should still be working.”

SUBMIT OR NOT TO SUBMIT

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:28:31 +0000

I have a theory about submitting a website using third party companies. You know the ones, “Your Site Seen by Millions. Submit to 500,000 Free Sites Now!” I have paid for and used some of these “snake oil” offers and like many others waited, and waited, and waited, and I am still waiting to see the shower of backlinks pointing to the intended site. I am starting to doubt that they are ever going to show up. At this point I would be satisfied with a sprinkle instead of the shower I had originally anticipated.

So, what am I worried about? Sites under my care are fairing very well without the “snake oil”. Emerald Tree Service just renewed their contract for still another year following the example of many other happy website owners. Let’s face it, for less than a thousand dollars a month not only do they pay for and receive Featured Listings in a network of sites used by millions, But they also during the past year were included in my continued exploration of SEO (which is an invitation sent at random to a select few and continues to provide me with a steady stream of websites to experiment with at absolutely no cost to the beneficiary.) Emerald Tree Service comes up number two in the search on Google for “tree service Seattle” with the results page showing 968,000 web pages including those keywords.

Back to center. I never submitted Emerald Tree Service to any Search Engine not to mention any third party submit programs. So, here is my theory: It is better SEO to manually and strategically place the respective URL in High Ranking Directories like MapQuest, AOL, AnyWho, 411.com and let nature take its course. There are many examples to support this theory. Probably the most interesting is a company for which I SEO’ed over a year ago. Namely Sea Tac Copy located in Seattle.

It started with a brand new URL which I helped Sea Tac Copy purchase from Godaddy. The keywords that were being targeted “Used Copier Seattle” were included in the new URL commonly referred to as “Sandbox URL” by Google and most of the SEO community. Sandbox is a name used to refer to URL’s less than 12 months old and is considered very, very difficult to obtain high rankings with Google during the initial 12 month period.

To make this long story short. After getting my coveted list of high ranking sites to point to Sea Tac Copy’s URL and mixing in a few other select Blog’s and of course personally Optimizing a couple of my Pillar pages on the Net, the URL went to #1 and #2 within a few weeks for the search term “Used Copier Seattle” and has been there for over a year. This was and is still directly ahead of “BuyerZone” which is still #3 and a page known to have over 50,000 backlinks and tons of content.

CONCLUSION: I believe that with the correct linking and strategically placed keyword phrase that a SEO’ed web page maybe better off without submitting at all.

Backlinking In 2009

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:05:49 +0000

It is Easter Eve 2009 and I have pulled away from my SEO responsibilities for the moment to write about what I believe to be one of the most valuable SEO topics currently challenging the SEO community.

FYI – This was an article that I submited for publication elsewhere. When you read the following article you will learn why this article will never show up in my main domain root directory.

BACKLINKING, the definition of which I believe has changed from what was common not too long ago. No Search Engine Optimization project should under estimate the power of a well planned attack on acquiring quality PR4 backlinks ( PR = Page Rank ). Unlike the days of reciprocal linking which has been apart of many well ranked sites of yesterday and still some today, non reciprocal linking is or should be the focus of the SEO community today. Google already has documented that it will only show links to a site coming from sites branded with PR4 and higher. To add to the mix of filters used by the Google bots, it is now believed that it will be far more rewarding for links that are coming in from sites that are relevant to the content found on the page pointed to.

That means that if a web design company has a one way link coming from a page that has nothing to do with anything else but web design, that the result will prove more rewarding and more in favor by Google as the Google bot calculates a PR. I have also seen evidence that if the link pointed to your page originated from a generic text link like – Click Here for Web Site – that while some credit is given, it is much more rewarding if the link were more descriptive like that of - Web Design Company -.

Linking has become necessary most likely due to those SEOs which have used BLACK HAT methods. Many SEO professionals at one time or another either exchanged links or purchased links from what are now referred to as link farms. It made since that link farms would crop up due to the simple times when Google would automatically feel that a site that was being linked to more than other similar sites would receive better ranking in relative keyword searches. The Google bot was using a method of calculating sites popularity much like that of the voting system we use to elect government officials.

The more votes method for a web site proved to be misleading. Webmasters without much experience could easily add a page to a site and exchange links using many of the sites that operated as a match maker for links.

The simple truth is that backlinking has become more complicated. So here are two steps to getting the coveted backlinks.

ONE: Join a forum that relates to your site and that best matches relevant discussions concerning your business. Some forums will allow you to add links to your site only after a period of time or after a number of posts. Be patient and enjoy the exchange of ideas with those that have a common goal.

TWO: Write an article of at least 400 words and use keywords that you believe will represent you well. Most article directories will have a link back to the authors site. Use your URL several times in the article to help brand your site. While there are some free article submission services, I recommend spending a couple of bucks on getting your article submitted. WARNING: Google does filter sites using duplicate content. Play it safe. It is best not to put the article on any page in your domain. I personally post my articles in a blog linked to from my website www.seosearchengineoptimizationseattle.com. You could consider a do not follow in the Meta.But that will only work if you manually submit to article directories using html. That being said, it is thought that sites displaying duplicate content may not even get indexed or a type of Russian roulette will determine which single site displaying the dup will get indexed.

No matter the index scenario, you should still receive backlink juice from the directory archiving the article. I should mention that this should be considered theory even thou I myself use this method. Treat this method with respect. Too much of a good thing can turn bad for ranking high in search engines.

In conclusion: There are hundreds of calculations – according to Google – that go into a Google PR calculation and without a doubt backlinking has proven to be an important off page optimization method.

I have shared two ways of gaining quality backlinks and both are methods that have proven success. Please take a moment and post a comment about this article.

www.seosearchengineoptimizationseattle.com

You may also leave a backlink to a single site of your choice after contributing to this article and I will approve it.

I also welcome discussions by telephone should you drop me an email with topic and time to call.

david@seosearchengineoptimizationseattle.com