SEO - SEO Goggles

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SEO - SEO Goggles

Will a DMOZ link help your site rank better?

November 30th 2006 18:14

A few years ago a link in the human edited DMOZ web directory meant you had a much better shot at ranking top 3 for big keywords, but those days are long gone and the debate on DMOZ links is still going strong.

The directory, which is currently near impossible to get listed in due to a huge back load and faulty editor setup still has benefits, but those benefits can be attained anywhere else that has the same page strength.

I have 3 listings in DMOZ right now, so I get to see how it all works from the perspective of a webmaster who has sites in DMOZ. Two years ago a listing I have on a PR 6 page on a pretty good spot within the travel section of DMOZ was doing VERY well for my keywords. I was targeting "Youth Hostels" and was bouncing between spot 3 and 5 for a good 6 months. This brought on a ton of traffic with little or no effort on my part. My on page optimization at the time was terrible and I had few backlinks. Could it have been the DMOZ listing that was boosting me past others who had done a lot more work than I in the area of SEO?

My suspicion comes from a plummet in rankings on that site right about the time a big Google update come along and nailed everyone to the wall. The update supposedly removed the weight of a DMOZ listing. I believe it did.

My links in DMOZ are still good links. All 3 are on a PR 6 page or better, but the links are acting just like any other PR 6 backlink. Nothing special.

The bottom line is that if you're going to submit to DMOZ, just submit your site and forget all about it. You might end up with a strong backlink 6 months down the road, and you might not. Either way I think it's a waste of time to sit around working on ways to get listed. It just isn't worth it.

-Eric

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How To Check The Strength Of Your Website

November 26th 2006 19:21

"Although not a considerable presence, your site/page is making inroads online. Visitor traffic and search engine visibility is within your grasp"

That's the message I received when I put one of my political blog domains in the SEOmoz Page Strength Checker. Apparently my blog has a 4/10 when it comes to page strength, which I guess means I'm right on the borderline of breaking through to a new level of traffic.

The search engine optimization tool tells you the following:

* The Relative Importance/Visibility of a Webpage
* The Potential Strength/Ability of a Page to Rank in the Search Engines
* Data on Popularity, Links & Mentions of the Page Across the Web

Now I find most of these tools to be redundant and of little value, but this one kind of seems to be on the right track. I don't like how they pull data from Alexa, which can easily be "tricked", but other than that I like the potion SEOmoz uses to aggregate the data.

If you're looking to sell ads on your site, or even purchase them on another, you might want to start with this tool.

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Are link exchanges good or bad?

November 17th 2006 17:44

Text Links – The good, the bad, and the downright ugly

Jessicca had a few questions over on the Blogging Tips pages so I decided that instead of trying to answer her in a comment that I would go ahead and post about here.

The question raised was about making search engines "mad" using spam like linking schemes and black hat SEO in the way the links are (or are not) presented. My answer isn't professional, but I'll go ahead and take a stab at it.

For years and years the internet ran on a algorithm similar to that of Orble, only it was much more behind-the-scenes in the past as opposed to today. Search engine pioneers such as Google looked at links from one page to another as if were a vote. The websites with the most "votes" would rank higher almost on links alone.

For a while it worked, and in theory I think it was a grand idea. But money came into play and where there is money there will be corruption. It didn't take long for black hats (people who do bad, bad things to manipulate search engine results) to figure out ways to generate millions of visitors by cheating the system. It was at this time that links started being looked at in a whole new light.

When it all first began, links were 100% organic and authentic. Chances were that if you got a link to your website from somebody else, you actually deserved it. Unfortunately that changed when people started buying links, selling links, trading links that have no benefit and don't match the content of the page it is on, hiding links using css and on and on.

Over the last couple of years these money hungry webmasters have slowly but surely put a serious strangle hold on search engine results and users have suffered greatly because of it. There for a while Google was badly losing the battle against spam and sites that aren't worth anything were tricking millions upon milllions of searches into visiting their pages for the purpose of clicking on ads.

The good news is that Google seems to have put a harness on the beast and things appear to be getting slightly better as we progress. The folks over at Google have been brainstorming on ways to streamline the Algo and stop putting so much weight on links, and I think it's working. The results are getting a little better with each new day.

What changes did Google make? Well no one knows for sure, but watching the industry dip and bob during search engine index updates points us to a few key findings.

- Sites that participated in mass link exchanges (meaning they have more than ten pages loaded with nothing but links) took a hit
- Sites that have a lot of links from unrelated sites took a hit
- Sites that are not gaining links through natural means took a hit
- Sites that link to unrelated sites or pages took a hit

This may not be the same for a lot of users, but I've actually watched each of these scenarios unfold.

The best advice at this point is to give yourself patience and use common sense when it comes to links. If you have a bird site, don't link to a car site. If someone asks you to exchange links, make sure their site has similar keywords and a common theme. Only link to pages that actually contain unique and valuable content, don't link to useless spam like sites.

You're not necessarily going to get "penalized" for making a bad link decision, but I'd be willing to bet that if you don't follow these simple steps someone else is going to beat you in the results.

Now inbound links are VITAL in ranking well, but you want to get them the right way. As mentioned above, try to stay away from link exchanges. Buying inbound links is a bad idea and spamming blogs and other php sites is an even worse idea. Just don't do it. Please?

The best inbound links out there are links that you didn't ask for or even know you were getting. These are links that are usually found in the middle of a page, surrounded by good quality, unique content (search engine food). You get these links because you provide information for others and when they find it they'll talk about it. The search engines are getting a lot smarter about this sort of thing and they now know what a good organic link is, as well as one you got but didn't deserve.

Jessicca, I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll try to answer them if at all possible.

-Eric

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