Thursday, November 12, 2009

Exploiting Longevity For Google Search Results

Here’s an interesting observation I just made to justify how I am writing to the web: Google rewards longevity, and doesn’t care so much about readability. A few months ago I did a revamp on There Is NO Box, and I am continually amazed at the traffic I get for years-old posts which are (frankly) not very good. Some of these are posts with one word titles, or posts that are very short, or just generally lame.

Currently on Website In A Weekend, I’m producing out a large number of articles, some of which are more technical (and take more time) than others.

But in all cases, when I feel the article is “good enough,” I pull the trigger and publish to get the permalink into Google’s index. I have read that this strategy is called “Publish, then polish” (watch for an upcoming article explaining publish then polish in detail). It goes against every bit of formal training I’ve ever had as a writer, where “quality” is the only overriding concerning, articles take a long time to produce, and inaccuracy is severely punished. Unfortunately, long, in-depth and technically detailed articles on blogs are punished by the “lack of readers” effect.

Using “publish then polish,” Google is now indexing me everyday, sometimes within hours. My highest traffic post so far published on Website In A Weekend was published the morning WordPress 2.8 was released, and got a couple of dozen hits by the end of the day. It continues to get traction. But there’s good posts on this site which haven’t yet gotten a couple of dozen hits total.

Right now a couple of dozen hits is pretty good, for any post.

Website In A Weekend doesn’t have many other readers yet. Google is probably the most active consumer… although Google sends very few search results this way.

At some point this will change. [Update 7/6/2009: in the three weeks since I wrote and scheduled this article, my daily traffic as roughly doubled!] When I do start getting traffic, I won’t feel compelled to write quite as much, and will concentrate on more refined output.

Until then, cranking out content in bulk seems to be the correct strategy. Long time readers know I’m on a schedule to complete 101 articles on WordPress, which is tentatively complete around August 10, 2009.

Whether the “publish then polish” strategy leads me astray in the long term remains to be seen.

What’s your experience?
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Title Pages for Google and Yahoo

Title Writing Tips pages
Search engines make the title page as one of the important reference relevant in determining whether or not a page. Pages this title is a sarcastic title of a page, so should have a title reflecting the content of the page content.

Some things to note are:

1. Number of characters
From sources that I read your page title optimal if 80 characters is optimized for google and yahoo ranges to 115 characters.
The point is if you exceed the optimal within reasonable limits, do not be bad, but of course taken into account the density of your title, may be better if you use it makssimal 80 characters.
Meanwhile, after I did the experiment, Google is only 65 characters max menampilakan in his SERP, and yahoo about 115 characters with spaces and punctuation.
From here I also found, that the title page after the characters to 65 from google not very helpful, in this case there is a site that terlisting no 1 on google with keywords "I do not call". This site has a title that more than 65, I add keywords to the "in Indonesia" (these keywords in the position after the character to 65). Apparently, this site even defeated by the sites in its pages none keyword "Indonesia".
As a second note the site has a pagerank 4. From this I conclude title after 65 characters to a smaller impact than the inbound link text. (The second site that does not have keywords "Indonesia" in dalamanya probably because it has terlisting inbound text link "Indonesia").

2. Do not use the words in the search engine filters.
For sites that speak "English", words like is, are, etc. should not be included in the title. As for Indonesia language site, it should be influential, as far as I know now, the word "the", "and" etc. are not filtered search engine. (IMHO)

3. Dispose of the words that are not useful
Words such as â € œselamat arrived at the site kamiâ €?? better etc. not included.

4. Reduce the use of separator
If possible do not because it has a long title be added separator, eventually the number of characters exceeds the maximum amount recommended karekter.

In the title selection is also not free from how to choose good keywords. And do not forget in your item has a good density of the title / title you choose.
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Seo “Ilmu pasti” atau “ilmu raba-raba” ?

Lama juga saya berpikir untuk menjawab saat mendengar pertanyaan ini.
Karena menurut saya sendiri, segala proses yang dilakukan search engine menggunkan algoritma dan dan algoritma itu berisi perhitungan-pertitungan matematis. Seperti diungkapkan sergey brin, pendiri salah satu search engine (google). Segala proses dalam index google sebisa mungkin tidak melalui campur tangan manusia, ini berarti segalanya dilakukan dengan mesin (komputer) dengan algoritmanya. Meskipun untuk hal-hal seperti penalty atau halaman yang di banned oleh google melalui proses penelitian dan campur tangan manusia untuk melakukannya. Tapi itu tidak mengganggu algoritmanya tapi lebih kepada variabelnya.

Jika kita membaca artikel-artikel seo, banyak juga saran-saran yang kadang-kadang ada juga yang bersebrangan, yang mana yang benar? kalau seo itu ilmu pasti, tidak mungkin terjadi kemungkinan 2 jawaban. IMHO.
Saya bukan orang matematika, jadi saya juga tidak tau pasti apa mungkin ilmu matematika memiliki beberapa jawaban. :)

Karena itu saya simpulkan menurut pendapat pribadi saja, Seo misalnya untuk pagerank, link popularity dan sebagainya tetap merupakan ilmu pasti, tetapi tidak semua orang tau rumusnya, jadi jawabannya juga tidak semua orang mengetahuinya. Kalau algoritma pagerank misalnya, merupakan kede opensource, tentu lebih mudah menjawab apakah seo untuk pagerank misalnya adalah ilmu pasti atau ilmu raba-raba.
Minta bantuan pendapatnya ya!
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Keywords Research! Hati-hati dengan keywords korban seo

Sebagai tambahan artikel sebelumnya tentang bagaimana memilih keywords yang baik, kali ini saya akan coba mengulas bagaimana sebuah keywords bisa menjadi korban seo. Untuk mempermudah, saya langsung ambil contoh kasus yang saya temukan.
Kemaren sudah dibahas kalau lebih baik memilih keywords yang berhubungan dengan apa produk atau jasa yang dicari orang dan bukan terfokus pada nama usaha anda, tentu saja ini tidak sepenuhnya benar. Bagi yang menginginkan situs web yang dimiliki merupakan sumber pengunjung yang akan menjadi sumber customer dan pendapatan ini sangat disarankan. Tetapi bagi perusahaan yang sudah besar atau pribadi yang sudah terkenal dan sedang membangun coorporate image tentu akan lebih sesuai menggunakan nama perusahaan.

Salah satu keywords yang menarik bagi saya dan sudah dioptimasi oleh sangat banyak situs adalah ; “bali-hotels” dan “bali maps“. Kalau melihat hit-nya di tool-tool keywords research, hitnya sangat tinggi. Dari keywords itu dapat kita lihat dua perbandingan :

* Hotel adalah akomodasi pariwisata yang sangat dibutuhkan orang saat bepergian (kebutuhan primer), sedangkan “maps” atau peta hanya dibutuhkan sebagai panduan untuk yang belum tahu sebuah lokasi.
* Hotel merupakan bisnis yang sangat besar jika dibandingkan dengan sebuah peta.

Dari point satu dapat kita simpulkan bahwa keywords hotel akan lebih banyak dicari pada keywords maps.
Perbandingannya dapat kita lihat dalam gambar.

Sedangkan dari point dua dapat kita simpulkan dalam ruang lingkup seo, keywords hotel akan lebih banyak dioptimasi oleh situs-situs hotel, karena dari situ meraka berharap pesanan kamar dari tamu.

Jika diperhatikan, kedua keywords ini paling banyak dibutuhkan oleh orang asing yang bepergian ke “bali” dengan tujuan wisata yang sudah dapat dipastikan nilai konversi pengunjung situs yang sudah dioptimalkan merupakan pengunjung yang dari luar bali atau luar negeri. Tapi dalam tabel di bawah jumlah hits kedua keywords tersebut terlihat aneh !


Dapat dilihat, kedua keywords “bali hotels” dan “bali maps” sudah menjadi korban seo dan yang lebih parah adalah keywords “bali hotel” disebabkan karena banyak situs yang melakukan optimasi pada situs ini. Hits pada keywords yang besar itu bukan berasal dari para calon customer, pelanggan atau calon pengguna jasa. Tapi tidak lebih dari ratusan kali searching dari para webmaster yang mengecek posisi situs mereka di search engine.
Kita sudah tidak dapat lagi menentukan dengan tool apapun berapa sebenarnya customer potensial dengan pemakaian keywords tersebut. Satu lagi dampak buruknya bagi yang berkantong lebih tipis, biaya traffic anda mungkin bukan dari calon customer potensial, tetapi lebih banyak dari saingan-saingan anda.

Apa yang salah? Jawabnya tidak ada!. Dari contoh kasus ini kita hanya perlu lebih teliti dalam menganalisa jumlah hit keywords-keywords yang populer. Dan inilah salah satu manfaat jika anda lebih mengoptimasi pada keywods yang lebih spesifik seperti contohnya “bali cheap hotel” atau “cheap bali vacation package“. Dan tentunya kasus yang sama mungkin terulang lagi.

Sebelum keduluan, kenapa tidak dicoba sekarang.! :)
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Oes Tsetnoc Buzz Growing In SERP

I don’t really know why this happen lately, yet if you have a time to see it in Google SERP, Oes Tsetnoc buzz is growing. It’s so different compared to last week. As I remember, there were only around 150k results at that time. However, now it’s more than 200k. What’s the matter? Although I can’t answer it surely, but in my opinion, it’s all because the time left for this SEO contest is getting smaller. I think, there will only a month an active time to optimize it. So, whoever, especially thos who join it, will try anything to boost their SERP.

Although Oes Tsetnoc buzz is growing in SERP, but I am still lucky today. My main entry still exist in the big four. Even, once in this morning, I can see it in the third position. Considering that this situation makes an optimization becomes harder than ever, now I must make routine update in every dummies I have. This to ensure Google bot visiting mine regularly. And hopefully, he will take mine as the best page at the moment till the final day come.

Anyway, apart from the simple news about oes tsetnoc buzz that is growing in SERP above, now I am joining another local SEO contest too. It’s entitled kerja keras adalah energi kita. Sadly, it’s stuck in 6th place. So if you have any blogs that are having space to support it, please do that as soon as possible guys. I really need your help today. Will you?
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Black Magic SEO

“Abracadabra.” – Alfred Borden, The Prestige

There is a bit of truth to this Ranked Hard. No, there isn’t any sorcery being performed, but I have had more than a few phone calls from potential clients that have spoken with other SEO companies that have gotten similar responses. We are very forthcoming with how we will achieve better rankings in the search engines and as most reputable SEO firms will admit, it isn’t overly complicated. Good content and solid link building are the foundation of any good SEO campaign.

Unfortunately, many SEO companies will say things like, “It’s too complicated to get into,” or “We can’t share or SEO techniques.” When I hear that I immediately tell the perspective client to be very suspicious. When an SEO company isn’t willing to share their methods, it is usually because they have no methods to share or else they are doing things they wish to hide.

Or, maybe they are practicing Black Magic SEO, who knows?
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Monday, November 9, 2009

title tag

Looking for a quick fix that will improve your rankings? Take a look at your title tags. A title tag is the line of text that is normally displayed at the top of the browser window. Title tags are arguably the most important SEO tags for any site.
For most search engines, the maximum length of a title tag to be displayed is between 60-70 characters. If your title tag is over 70 characters, your title will be cut off around 70 characters on the search results page.
Search engine spiders use these title tags as the main source for determining the page topic. Spiders or crawlers examine the title and then translate the topic of the page. This is one reason why it is always best to use your keywords in the page title, and to place them as close to the beginning of the title as possible. Remember, the text included in the title tag is also the text that will appear in the SERPs (search engine results pages) as the linked title on which users will click to access your page. In fact, just fixing the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and significant improvements in your rankings.
For example, let’s say you have an educational site that provides information and guidelines on teacher certification requirements. You’ve decided that the most important keywords for your site are “teaching certification” and “teaching requirements.” In this case, a page title along the lines of “Teaching Requirements for Teacher Certification” is highly relevant to the topic of the site. Spiders will crawl your site, and because the title is the first factor it sees, the spider will “read” it and then examine the rest of the page finding the keywords used in other places on the page to determine how relevant the title is to the rest of the content. If the content, H tags, and title tag all relate—you’re in business! This is why it’s so important to target the most critical keywords in the title tag.
Follow this same process for all of your pages, and remember to create unique titles that are relevant to each page and do not keyword stuff. This greatly improves the effectiveness of those tags and will increase the search engine rankings for your keywords. Although your home page might show up for 20 or 30 different keyword combinations, only your top two or three keyword phrases should be included in the tittle.
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