Great Google SEO Ranking Analysis
Ben Hendrickson and Rand Fishkin posted a tremendous article on Google's Algorithms digging into the way in which a ton of different factors influence that all important search ranking. This is a must read for anyone interested in the fine art of Google subservience that is modern SEO and webmastering.
Topics:
- Are Links Well Correlated with Rankings?
- Can Any Single Metric Predict the Rankings?
- How Do "On-Page" Factors Correlate with Rankings?
- Can We Build a Ranking Model that Gives more Actionable Takeaways?
- Conclusions & Take-Aways
seomoz.org is really tearing it up over there content wise. I like their tools as well but am a bit put off by the obscene amount of 'pro only' disabled features they stuff into their 'free' offerings. See their rankings page for another view of the smiling waving kings and queens on the web popularity parade float.
As usually, share and enjoy.
Great things to learn about search this (or any) week
Here's a great collection of seo (mostly Google Search) tips, tricks, insights and analysis from Michael Martinez, posted on the self proclaimed best seo blog. The post is definitely worth a read through if these topics peak your interest:
- Google says “Links Are Only 1%”
- Want immediate consumer trust? Buy search display ads
- Half of all SEMs want to pay higher advertising costs – WTF?
- Google Web updates blog indexing faster than Blogsearch
- Bounce rate should not affect your (Google) rankings
- Yahoo! dropped the “keywords” meta tag
- Google wants to crawl your AJAX
Michael has some great analysis that suggest how the personalities behind the search giants (Sergey Brinn, I'm vaguely referring in your general direction) have a hand in what's weighed how. As always, Mike doesn't give any passes to the wacky apparent inconsistencies of the ever changing search engine optimization landscape. It's like there are people who's job it is to constantly shake up the algorithms making full time seo guys as manic and confused as these guys.
Sensational Seo is the way to go
Sensational Seo is the best way to check your site for seo compliance.
+1 to Firefox for opening itself up to the world of addons. +5 to the developers of firebug, the piece of software that has done more to improve both the quality and efficiency of my web work than anything else I've encountered. And now +1 to the folks behind Sensational Seo, who have written one of the first addon addons, bringing the best in seo page analysis into the firebug console. Now you can kick your feet up to the warm hearth of the detachable firebug console as you compulsively scrutinize your site for keywords, best practices and completeness. I also recommend running it on very successful sites like yours to see what they do.
Contest anyone?
I have been talking with the creator of http://www.advertology.com about the possibility of starting up a mini web development competition. Here are the rules I've come up with so far. I'd like air out these ideas to let some of the stink out before throwing them down for the massive event. Please let me know if you'd be interested in entering such a competition or if you have any ideas/suggestions about it or if you'd like to play some frisbee anytime in the near future.
Rules
- The competition will run for a set amount of time. I say 4 months, but I may be off.
- Everyone will create a site containing the same subject matter to be decided via committee having:
- a decent amout of popularity (ie is being searched for) and
- some web commercial value (ie is associated with items that are selling on Amazon.)
- A maximum budget will be set, say $50, to be paid out of pocket or hustled from friend or family member
- Each contestant will hook up a google analytics account and share it with a centralized competition account so that everyone can see everyone's traffic, goals, etc...
Judging criteria
- Visitors, uniques, time on site, etc...
- Goal conversions
- Ad Revenue collected
- Commission profits, such as Amazon Affiliates revenue
Prize: deep fulfillment and lifelong well being.
Strategies for creating web traffic and revenue
If you're looking for a practical, down to earth resource for building a niche site and generating web traffic, check out http://www.doshdosh.com/. Rarely does a website do such an exacting job of focusing on a niche and expanding upon the subtitles therein without loosing focus on practicality. It's an inspiring site in both form and content.