The following question was sent in using StepForth's SEO question submission form . If you have a question that you don't mind being answered publicly please send it in and we might just use it in our next SEO newsletter.
QUESTION: “When do inbound links dictate ranking?”
“We have been told by an SEO consultant that, once the number of inbound links becomes significant, this rather than any SEO optimisation of the site itself dictates ranking for search terms. How true? If so, it implies that, to make any changes in rankings and search terms, we need to devote effort to links and link text from appropriate sites (authority etc). It implies time spent on adjusting title tags, keyword density etc, is fruitless.” Paul C.
ANSWER
As I see it the issue is that your SEO consultant has told you once a large number of incoming links are obtained their ranking power will usurp the benefit of optimization. In my opinion this is too bold a statement to make so I will try to define it better in two parts:
Part 1: How to Make Inbound Links Fulfill Their Potential
Quality inbound links are indeed an extremely important element of any promotion and when many are obtained I am certain they are a significant cause for rankings. There are even circumstances where ‘Google Bombing' (the act of having many sites linking to an unrelated site using nefarious text in order to get that site ranking for that text) has worked. Google Bombing, however, is SPAM and not the type of promotion that a business should be considering because it is against search engine policy and it has the inevitable negative of placing all of one's eggs in one basket.
In reality before an inbound link can be established as credible your page must be credible. For your page to be credible it must clearly identify the topic that is reflected on the inbound page. Here is an example:
Say you currently have 800 links from various relevant sites pointing to a page within your site. Now, consider a search engine algorithm; it will try to determine if these links are relevant to your page and determine if you are to get a boost from these links. This is your moment; you must convince this ruthlessly objective software algorithm that your page is clearly and undeniably relevant to the pages that are pointing to your page. This determination will require that your page is setup to clearly present relevance. In other words, you will need to ensure that your page title, Meta Description, headings and content all clearly reinforce the topic you wish to portray.
Part 2: Optimization is the Resin, Link Popularity is the Catalyst
Are you familiar with two-part epoxies? Essentially they are two chemicals (the Resin and the Catalyst) that when mixed becomes glue. Apart they are nothing but smelly chemicals but together they become powerful. This analogy is very apt for describing the benefits of link building and optimization:
• Link building alone will perhaps get you a competitive ranking but it can take a long time.
• Optimization alone may also get you a ranking but in my experience rankings rarely ‘stick' without some popularity thrown in; in fact if your rankings bounce around a lot it is fair to guess that you may not have enough inbound links.
The ultimate solution is to combine the two and make them both work to improve rankings.
In this analogy, however, unlike an epoxy product there is no indication of the formula to use; should it be 50/50, 20/80, 60/20? This is where the process of ongoing optimization comes in. For example, say your 800 links and your optimized page combined to create a ranking in the top 10. Now you obviously want a #1 ranking so what do you do next in order to improve your rankings? Do you wait until you have more inbound links, do you tweak the text used in the inbound links or do you optimize your page to increase relevance? Let's take these one at a time:
Waiting until you get more inbound links is not the answer, especially in today's fast paced marketplace where achieving that top ranking quickly is paramount.
Changing the linking text in your inbound links requires contacting each webmaster and somehow convincing them that it is in their best interest to drop what they are doing and change the text in your inbound link; highly unlikely and very time consuming.
Optimizing your page further by finding ways to increase relevance is quite painless and as soon as you make the changes you may only have to wait a few days to see results.
To me the answer is obvious; while you continue to naturally build inbound links (you should never stop) you should re-optimize your page and try to increase its ranking. This is where everyone who is trying to obtain a ranking is essentially trying to discover their personal ranking formula; the formula for you may be totally different to someone else's.
I suppose the question now is, “Will optimization work in such a scenario?” Yes, in my experience optimization is that extra edge that can move you up a single position or many positions depending on just how competitive your top ranking goal is.
QUESTION Continued…
“We were told this some way down the line in an SEO contract, where the initial proposal was made in standard terms. The argument we were given was that one of his sites had remained at no1 position for some keywords despite major changes to the home page, thanks to the weight of consistent link text from inbound links. We seem to have seen this ourselves a few times on our well-established websites: a major change in home page design, where we placed more emphasis on design than retaining SEO structures, did not affect our good Google rankings. Is this due to good inbound links? Look forward to your views!” – Paul C.
ANSWER
I get the impression from your question that your SEO consultant was not immediately clear just how important link building was to the success of your contract. This is unfortunate and in my opinion it was an oversight on his/her part. I am always very vocal with my clientele about the importance of having an active link building strategy. I also don't leave it at that. I have a whole array of tools that allow me to determine where to attain the best inbound links and I also recommend a link building company to help the ongoing process of building link popularity.
With Luck the Formula May Change For You: Optimization 10% / Inbound Links 90%
You also mention that in your experience there have been occasions where you have been able to alter your design without affecting rankings. It is difficult for me to know for certain without having explored the situation but in my experience this can happen when you have built such a strong credibility (through inbound links and consistent site wide topic) that you are many steps ahead of your fellow ranking competitors. As a result when you made these changes your relevance ‘perhaps' dropped (assuming your site optimization didn't actually improve with the new design) but not enough to lower your ranking. So in essence you are in the ideal situation of being a leader in your rankings which means you can take more risks with design and enjoy your reign at the top.
Ask Your SEO Question
Do you have a question you want to ask an SEO expert? The following question was sent in using StepForth's SEO question submission form . If you have a question that you don't mind being answered publicly please send it in and we might just use it in our next SEO newsletter.
In a show of humility we are not used to seeing from Google, the Blogger team published an apology of sorts today regarding a hailstorm of Blogger outages this week.
According to the team the current version of Blogger is causing massive problems for a variety of reasons which can be summed up as one thing - they have outgrown it. The post is a good read and gives some enjoyable insight into the world of Google when it turns upside down; not something I figured happened over there ;-)
The post also mentions that an entirely new version of Blogger will be unleashed soon which they promise will be far more stable - and full of goodies. Goodies you say? Well yes but I have to admit none of them are all that 'new' in the world of blogging but they sure will improve Blogger:
Content labeling: finally you can sort your posts by topic! I can't wait!
Multiple RSS: first they have finally introduced support for RSS2.0 versus just having the Atom format. In addition you can create RSS feeds for your comments site wide or per post.
Account Merging: You will now be able to merge your Blogger account with your Google Account... woohoo less passwords!
There are a few more additions that I don't find as noteworthy but maybe you will, read about the new Blogger features here.
Called a "weather update" by the Yahoo search team, a round of search engine ranking tweaks have been added today according to this blog post. I am looking forward to seeing how this new set of updates pans out. There does not appear to be a concensus at WebmasterWorld regarding this update; some have noticed changes and some have not. As a result, keeping in line with Yahoo!'s lingo; StepForth's doppler radar does not forecast a huge storm (aka, it doesn't appear to be a huge shakeup ;-)
In addition to this update Yahoo! announced that it is now formally supporting the NOODP tag:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP"> or <meta name="Slurp" content="NOODP">
Google implemented the NOODP tag around July 14th of this year. For those of you unfamiliar with this tag it is designed to tell the search engines NOT to use the description that you have in your Open Directory Project (ODP) listing. This tag was an extremely welcome addition for webmasters because search engines were using the often out of date and poorly written descriptions from the ODP as the default for associated organic results. Finally, with the implementation of this weather update Yahoo has enabled site owners to prevent the use of their ODP description.
The Google Adwords team released a new beta tool that will allow Adwords users to test and track the success of their PPC landing pages. Called Adwords Website Optimizer this new tool is not widely open to the public quite yet but you can apply to become a beta tester.
As with most Google applications I find this program to be very straight forward and clever. The concept allows for users to create a single landing page, implement Adwords Optimizer code, then configure different variations of the page from within the Optimizer (changing the title, picture, content... anything). Each variation will be served up to Google viewers who click on the advertiser's PPC listing and then the actions that the viewer takes will be tracked to calculate the effectiveness of the landing page in comparison to the other versions. Reports are provided along with some very straight forward statistics to make it simple for the average Adwords user to use the system successfully.
Time will tell just how well received this free service will become but I am betting it will be a powerful addition to the Adwords toolchest. In fact I would be surprised if MSN and Yahoo are not already playing catch up.
It was Christmas yesterday for the SEO community as Incisive Media announced that an arrangement with Danny Sullivan was announced to continue arranging the Search Engine Strategies Conferences through 2007. At this time there is no indication that Danny is going to continue his role as Chief Editor of Search Engine Watch. In fact according to his personal blog it appears that he is going to continue writing his informative search engine articles privately.
Congratulations Danny! We are happy to see you back with SES, it would not have been remotely the same without you I am sure.
I just have a second for a quick tip but this is a good one for those of you new to link building. If you have ever done a backlink search on a competitor to find out where they have their links from you often find that a large majority of the links are from their own site. It can be a real pain separating the wheat from the chaffe so here is a little trick on Yahoo (the best place to do link building).
Conduct the following search in Yahoo replacing "domain.com" with your competitor's address:
http://www.domain.com -site:domain.com
The result is a listing of all the sites your competitor has gotten links from minus your competitor's own pages. This is a handy little tool. Now if you want to do this faster you can always pick up OptiLink - a program that we use religiously when we are conducting link building campaigns. Visit our recommended SEO tools section of the SEO Blog for this one and much more.
On November 1st, 2006 in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is providing a 2 hour workshop to budding entrepreneurs on the basics of search engine optimization. The workshop is run by the Entrepreneurial Learning Foundation (ELF), a not-for-profit foundation devoted to supporting young entrepreneurs.
The workshop will be run by Ross Dunn, CEO and Bill Stroll, Marketing Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. and is titled: "Essential Search Engine Tactics for Increasing Web Site Visibility." The ELF is charging only $35 per attendee and all of that money goes to the ELF; StepForth is providing this workshop entirely free.
Ross Dunn, CEO of StepForth had this to say about the workshop; "when Jenny Leary of the ELF contacted me to provide a free workshop to budding entrepreneurs, I knew I couldn't say no. I have so much respect for entrepreneurs and I know that StepForth wouldn't be the successful business it is now without the help of valued business mentors. It is an honor to give back to our community in a way that I know best - SEO training."
The Entrepreneurial Learning Foundation provides the Entrepreneur Coaching Program several times a year for which StepForth is providing its expertise in one of many two hour marketing workshops.
The Google Code Blog just posted that Google web gadgets can now be posted for free on websites. Gadgets available are many such as calendars, games, jokes, etc. Here is a listing of the gadgets you can add to your own webpage.
Oh no, I hope this doesn't take us back to the old days of gadget/eyecandy overuse (remember the animated gif nightmare?).
Live.com has released a great new search option for webmasters which allows you to see just how many links point to other websites from within your own. To use it simply search using the following syntax without the quotes and replacing "yoursite.com" with your domain (do not use 'www.'): "linkfromdomain:yoursite.com"
Okay What Does this Mean? This tool is a great addition to the webmaster's toolchest because it provides a snapshot of the sites that your site is linking to - a considerable factor when trying to improve PageRank (credibility). It will also point out any sites that you may have had no idea you were sending traffic to that may have been posted on your site using SPAM tactics (i.e. in comment postings on your blog).
More Information on PageRank and Credibility PageRank... it is not something that many SEO's take very seriously anymore since Google downgraded its reliability due to rampant manipulation. One thing is for sure, however, the statistic that PageRank essentially accounts for - credibility - is just as important as ever.
"Credibility" when attributed to search engine rankings is a loaded topic with a myriad of opinions and supposedly firm facts. One statement that makes a ton of sense is the effect that the ratio of incoming to outgoing links can have on a webpage's credibility.
A Basic Example To try to explain what I mean I will use the following general example:
If a prominent page within your website had 15 links pointing to other websites (outgoing) and less than 15 links pointing to it from external websites (incoming or aka backlinks) it would gain less, if any benefit from the incoming links. This is because it is giving away, or 'bleeding' more credibility than it has earned (because it has less links pointing to it).
An Advanced Consideration Now that you understand the basic concept here is a little advanced info. If the 15 outgoing links were pointing to high-PageRank websites such as internationally renown news websites or prominent search engines, these outgoing links would not have as negative an effect. This is because the page is pointing to sites that are recognized by the search engines as highly credible; there is no point in penalizing a page for linking to quality websites. In this scenario, it is my opinion that the incoming links are less dampened by the outgoing and the page would actually benefit from enhanced credibility.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:07 PM
First there was Google Earth, Then Google Moon, now Google Sun? Robyn Beavers announced on the Google Blog Monday that soon Google will be installing 1.6 megawatts of solar panels at their Mountain View campus. When complete Google will have the largest corporate solar installation in the US and possibly even in the world.
The electricity generated by these solar panels is equivalent to that used by about 1000 average California homes and will offset roughly 30% of their peak electricity consumption.
Good job Google on working towards a greener environment.
Brilliant! Sometimes I think the folks at Google are too smart for their own good. Okay, perhaps I am a little too excited about this but I just love to see a good idea. Yesterday Google announced "Google Teacher Academy":
"The Google Teacher Academy is a pilot program designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. The Academy is a one-day experience at Google's Mountain View Headquarters where participants get hands-on experience with Google products and other technologies, receive instructional resources to share with colleagues, and share innovative instructional strategies with other local educators. Upon completion, Academy participants will become Google Certified Teachers and will be asked to lead at least three related professional development activities for local educators." (source, Google Teacher Academy)
The pilot program is an extension of the "Google for Educators" resource section of Google. Unfortunately, the course is only accessible to Northern California K-12 educators but there are plans to role this out across the country region by region. If you are in the Northern California area and you want to be a Google Certified Teacher then you had better apply quickly because the deadline is October 22nd and the course starts November 7th.
"Google Certified Teachers" -- I love it! Hmm, I wonder if certified teachers can ask for more pay? :-) Anyway, their marketing team deserves a heck of a pat on the back for this one! Of course, since Google seems to have something against their Canadian brethren (Google doesn't allow Canadian companies to become Adwords Certified - unbelievable!), they probably won't role this out in Canada. So sad and yet so true.
It is widely known that the Indian economy is booming and as a testament to this fact a new search engine providing entirely Indian based content has recently launched: Guruji.com .
The design of Guruji is very nostalgic of Google's early days; clean, simple, no advertising, and quite attractive. Created to capitalize on the growing need for local search, this 30 million page index is bound to grow considerably over the next year. Currently in English, Guruji will offer search in the following languages within the next 6 months: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali.
If you are interested in getting some exposure in Guruji then your site had better have some Indian content. From my own tests I have to say that their filter to ensure Indian-only content is quite good.
Last week Yahoo! posted that they had launched a few updates to their Site Explorer tool in response to user feedback.
Here is a list of the updates:
Authentication filenames have been reduced to 27 characters in response to users who stated they were far too long.
Authentication files are now in HTML format for those who had problems uploading text files. The older text file format is still compatible so no need to change if you already have it setup. They also reminded users that they should not remove the keyfile from their sites because if they do their site will be unauthenticated.
Site Explorer is a great tool for anyone who wants an idea on how well their site is indexed in Yahoo and to find out how many backlinks they have. Here is an article that describes how to use the Yahoo Site Explorer tool.
Occasionally rumor becomes reality! This October 9th, 2006, Google agreed to purchase YouTube for 1.6 billion in swapped stock. Here are the main points of the sale:
YouTube will stay separate and short of working in an air of unrestrained giddiness the YouTube offices will be business as usual.
The purchase provides Google shareholders with a fantastic media portal and a great software platform that is in sync with Google's mandate of organizing the world's information.
Other than the obvious financial benefit, YouTube will now have Google's resources to become bigger and better.
This purchase has been approved by both companies and expects to close in the fourther quarter of 2006.
I hope all of you experienced an excellent weekend full of family, and friends, swirled in the aroma of oven-baked turkey! I had a wonderful holiday weekend with my fiancee, my family, and hers; I ate and drank far too much and I am certain I set my workout routine a few paces back :-)
In any case, I just wanted to wish you all a great short week full of profit and fun. Now it is time for me to get back to work and get our blog caught up with the times - among many other things.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 10:51 AM
Yahoo will be introducing the new sponsored search soon and with it Yahoo wants their advertisers to know about a few structural changes about to take place. In their latest monthly edition of "On Target", Yahoo noted a few key points advertisers should know about.
1. Account upgrades are expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2006. At this time some of the account terminology will be changed.
2. Listings will now be known as 'Ads' and will be joined into Ad Groups (not to be confused with Google AdGroups). This will allow for bidding based on the entire group, or by individual keyword.
3. Categories will now be known as 'Campaigns' which will consist of one or more 'Ad Groups'. (This is starting to sound a lot like the AdWords setup.)
Once Yahoo has implemented the new structure all current categories will be moved into campaigns automatically. However it is advised that if you have not already done so ensure your current listings are added into appropriate categories. This is not required, but this extra step may help you with organizing your account after the switch over.
All in all the account upgrades are likely to make life easier and more structured. The one thing I wonder about is why it has taken so long to have them implemented. The changes have been in the works for a while now and it will be nice to see them in place. Hopefully they meet their projected Q4 deadline.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 10:47 AM
Yahoo announced this morning their beta launch of sponsored search results on their mobile web service in the US and UK. This will allow Yahoo! Advertisers to reach searchers on their cell phones and other mobile devices.
The beta launch will allow a select group of advertisers to post their sponsored ads to the mobile marketplace. While this service is not yet available to the general business person, it is certainly a step in that direction.
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