The foundation of this forum is SEO and SEM.

It the simpliest terms, the best method for SEM is putting as many words on as many pages as possible, then link to those pages.

The next step is "optimizing"...And by optimizing, I mean every aspect, not just SEO.

A. Making pages consists of:
1. Content
2. Layout
3. Graphics

B. Linking

All of these can be "optimized", including making each faster as well as optimizing for the search engines.

IMO, you're better off making pages very quickly and efficiently than knowing every SEO technique in the book.

Automation whereever possible, and efficiency, is a major part of optimizing.

You need to be able to create basic templates (layout and graphics) quickly and easily so you can conquer niche after niche.

You also need to be able to create content and use content as effectivley as possible.

Master creating sites and linking to those sites and you can be very successful. This philosophy is what this forum will conncertate on in the coming months...

Kurt,
I wonder what kind of tools you will recommand to accomplish this?

You also mentioned using easybloggercreator somewhere (couldnt find the thread anymore)could you enlight me with some kind of creative usage ?

Then I wonder what the best approach is if I want to start a post/topic say about something in regards to link building.
Should I use one of the "old" threads or open a new one?
To put some thought into this could help to organize the whole thing a little bit and therefore makes it easier to access information

Karsten

Karsten,

>I wonder what kind of tools you will recommand to accomplish
>this?

Tuelz and Bombs will be the primary focus.

>You also mentioned using easybloggercreator somewhere
>(couldnt find the thread anymore)could you enlight me with
>some kind of creative usage ?

We'll get to this when we cover the relevant Tuelz. Each month I will focus on different Bombs and Tuelz. Coming up is BlogBomb and RSS.

>Then I wonder what the best approach is if I want to start a
>post/topic say about something in regards to link building.
>Should I use one of the "old" threads or open a new one?
>To put some thought into this could help to organize the
>whole thing a little bit and therefore makes it easier to
>access information.

Please use exisitng threads when possible. Linking has its own thread already, so any posts about linking should probably go there...

Hello Kurt,

When you talk about niche, do you mean specific topic/keyword? e.g. :target 'basketball' instead of 'sport'?

What tool do you use to search the niche keywords? I have been subscribing wordtracker but my subscription will expire in a few days, will the free keyword tools good enough to find a good niche?

Thanks.

>Hello Kurt,
>
>When you talk about niche, do you mean specific
>topic/keyword? e.g. :target 'basketball' instead of 'sport'?
>
>What tool do you use to search the niche keywords? I have
>been subscribing wordtracker but my subscription will expire
>in a few days, will the free keyword tools good enough to
>find a good niche?

Hi Roze,

I generally define keywords/niches as one, two, three or more word (long tail) keywords. Both "sports" and "basketball" on one-word keywords, and are therefore "broad niches".

Also, when I look for a good niche, I am NOT looking for a single keyword, but rather a group of keywords (niche) that has dozens and dozens (or more) good keywords. You will only find these with experience and research.

I use and suggest www.nichebot.com (my affiliate link). They have a cheap trial, and a program that is only $9.95 a month, which offers enough benefits for most SEMers.

They have a bunch of features and you'll need to go over the tutorials to get the most out of Nichebot, but they also include WordTracker results and are much cheaper.

Thanks Kurt,
I will check out nichebot.com.

So are your dozens of long tail good keywords all derived from the same root keyword on a specific topic? or do they across different topics?

Do you have an post where you give example of how to create a content based site with the long tailed keywords? I understand how to integrate fatbomb to create search box now, but I still don't quite get how you create content site with the scripts and make the site more white hat like site instead of a collection of good-keyword pages.

Thanks!
Roze

Hi Roze,

>So are your dozens of long tail good keywords all derived
>from the same root keyword on a specific topic? or do they
>across different topics?

In general, neither. There are on a specific topic, but not derived from the same keyword.

Basketball => Denver Nuggets => Allen Iverson
- on all on the same "topic" but not from the same main/root keyword

>Do you have an post where you give example of how to create
>a content based site with the long tailed keywords? I
>understand how to integrate fatbomb to create search box
>now, but I still don't quite get how you create content site
>with the scripts and make the site more white hat like site
>instead of a collection of good-keyword pages.

See the threads on making pages with Fatty for making pages.

To make Fatty pages "more white hat", you can create your own databases to create content. Spend the time to find 30+ good resources per day and you'll have 1000 by the end of the month. This should be able to create 100s - 1000s of pages.

I'd say a directory of hand picked sites with hand written descriptions is "white hat"...But this takes work.

Or, you can just find 100 "great, hand picked sites" and mix them with other Fatty results, for some "gray hat" pages.

Or, take PLR articles or articles from the directories, add a relevant Fatty SSI tag to them, and IMO, these are unique whitehat pages.

In about a week or so we'll start learning how to add RSS to the mix.

What I haven't mentioned in this forum is to use gray/blackhat sites to push traffic to sites that exploit user generated content, such as a forum. This is the very best way to create white hat content.

Another thing about keywords, not only do you want to find topics/niches that have dozens and dozens of keywords, you'll want to pound away at those keywords.

When you do your keyword research, seperate them into three groups:

Primary - These have the best "stats", according to your research. You should have about 10-25 of these. Your primary keywords on the ones you want to use as domain names, as titles for Squidoo and Hubpages, etc.

Secondary - These are the "next best" keywords, and you should have 25-100 of these.

The Rest - These are the "left over" keywords. They have some value, but not a lot. You should have 50-100's of these. You'll want to mix this into your pages.

Now, you'll want to pound away at your primary and secondary keywords/phrases. Most people will make a page focused on a keyword, and that's all they do.

You will want to have dozens and dozens of pages for each of your primary keywords and as many secondary keywords as you can. These pages should be spread over domains, blogs, free resources, web 2.0 pages, etc.

You will want to cross-link your relevant pages that use your primary and secondary keywords, as this will build relevancy. We'll do this by exploiting RSS.

While RSS can be used to add content to your pages, it is also a great way to automate your cross-linking efforts. You just need to plan a little ahead, which is what we'll be doing next.

What

Kurt.. I suppose you add the LSI method for the secondary keywords ?

LSI are those keywords showing up in bold when doing a search, NOT always your keywords

Tasari

Hey Taz...

LSI keywords could fall into any of the three groups...It all depends on the research numbers.

Keyword research is only for when you're starting out...After you start getting some results your own experiences should trump any previous research. For example, if you're getting good results for a keyword POUND away at that keyword despite what the research said.

I'm putting a few relevant comments from a recent conversation with Matt Cutts of Google here rather than starting anew thread.

=============

Question:

If I own a VPS (virtual private server) and I have a bad neighbor or neighborhood (of porn sites or something) on the same Class-C will that close proximity pollute my domain.

Matt:

Great Question.

No.

If we were to take on relationships at the class-c subnets level, we would be overwhelmed. It is too difficult for us to determine what is really going on because it is changing so much.

However

If you are the ONLY clean person in that area, and there are twenty five thousand porn sites, you may need to be careful.

Google does not look at class-c IP subnets, unless someone is hitting us with a TON of queries.

Question:

Number of redirect chains in a row, will that dilute pate rank?

If I do a 301 redirect 4 times will it dilute Page Rank juice?

Matt:

Good question and, no.

There is no limit to the number of 301 redirects on chain.

But you may want to remember that is may not be a good idea to have five 301 redirects chained in a row or the bots will start to get tired. It is not so much a question of page rank, but the speed of parsing the redirects.

You will not lose any juice (page rank) by daisy chaining 301s.

Question:

Why do you keep Dmoz around.

Matt:

Yahoo does reject things even when paid.

Paid directories have no discernment.

We recommend yahoo because they really to sensor.

DMOZ is very high quality.

============
Ernie

Here's a post I made on the Warrior forum, in case you missed it:

Here's a little known SEO topic that gets little, if any, discussion called "link velocity".

Link velocity is the speed at which links are created and appears to be a very important factor in Google's ranking.

Many people think that if you build links too fast, Google will see that as "artificial". However, if a site gets major publicity in all forms of media, like TV, it's very likely a page can build links very quickly, in a natural way.

What happens with most people is that they build a links at first, then stop. Google then lowers their rank and people assume it is because they built their links too fast.

The link velocity theory also fits this scenario: It isn't that Google punished the site for "unnatural links", but rather their link velocity decreased after a short period of time.

If a page is getting a lot of links fast, it could be that the page is legitimately "hot". However, once the link velocity really slows down, it is an indication that page isn't so hot.

Where the links come from are also likely a factor. Are they all blog posts? All from directories? etc...

The point is, if you are going to get a bunch of links quickly, you will probably need to keep up the pace for a while (a couple of months). If not, your link velocity will decline and that could impact your rankings.

The consequences are the same for both link velocity and "unnatural links", so it is hard to say either are the direct cause and effect. However, the concept of link velocity is a very important one, and one that's been ignored by many (if not all) SEO "experts".

IMO, your goal should be to get as many links as you can, as fast as you can, for as long as you can, keeping in mind the concept of link velocity.

...then imitating the webs natural "linking process" would be best wouldnt it?
getting links from here and there adding links more or less constantly (because the web never sleeps) with some ups and downs in terms of speed and quantity. This for sure takes the most effort...but should produce some stable results...
Karsten

Hey Kurt,

Your above post about link velocity is well stated and right on. I found this out last year on 2 of my primary sites.

I think the main thing people don't realise is the pace in which they link versus the amount of links.

It is much like adding content to a site. If someone starts off with a bang adding tons of content to their sites for say a month, then slack off to adding an article once in a while, the SEs take note.

Personally, I think this is where the saying, "add content at a slow steady drip" came from versus adding tons of content at one time.

It's not the amount, as much as it is consistancy right?

I wonder if there is such a thing as content velocity lol.

JK here at the end ...

Mary

Hi Karsten, Mary and All...

I believe that the initial velocity should be pretty high, getting a lot of links quickly. However, this should level off in time, while still adding links, but at a slower pace.

Phrase Based Indexing

Yahoo has filed a patent concerning "Phrase Based Indexing":
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20080033982.PGNR.&OS=dn/20080033982&RS=DN/20080033982

"System and method for determining concepts in a content item using context

Abstract
The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for indexing one or more items of content. The method of the present invention comprises extracting one or more items of text from a given item of content. The one or more items of extracted text are tokenized into one or more concepts. One or more related concepts associated with the one or more concepts are identified. A support score is generated for the one or more concepts, and the item of content is index with the one or more concepts and the one or more associated support scores. "

Simply, this means the SE will look for word phrases on a page and compare them to other pages.

What do I have to change? NOTHING!

My SEO style has always been to include as many keywords on a page as possible. I've NEVER bought into optimizing a page for a single keyword.

Sure, you may use a primary keyword or two, but to only focus on one keyword has always been a mistake, IMO.

Here's why: SE's index all the words on your pages, minus "stop words", which are common words such as the, an, and, is, etc.

SEs don't know which words are "keywords" and which words aren't.

As a matter of fact, every word on your page can get you traffic.

Plus, in my experience, 40-60% of all SE traffic is generated from one of a kind, unique search queries, where the user inputs a long search phrase that NO page in the SE index matches correctly.

By using numerous "keywords" on pages, you create tons of possible combintations.

This is why neither LSI nor Phrase Based Indexing has influenced my SEO keyword strategy, as I've always believed in using mutlple, related keyword phrases.

This is the "theory", for the "how to" of using multiple keywords on your pages, visit the Extreme SEO thread:
http://www.dombom.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=111&forum=DCForumID42

Google has just filed a new patent concerning doop content:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20070233808.PGNR.&OS=dn/20070233808&RS=DN/20070233808

I tried to read it to figure out what they are trying to do, but couldn't get any specifics out of it.

If anyone wants to try and "translate" the patent, we'd appreciate it.

The main point is that Google is trying to deal with doop content across multiple sites. It's up to us to stay a step or two ahead.

Hi Kurt and All

I've just spent the last hour or so reading through the latest patent application from Big G.

Rather than dealing with 'doop content', it deals with 'Authority Sites' and more specifically, how those sites that might be considered authority sites, for a given geographic area, can be better identified.

In other words, Google are trying to provide users of 'local search', with more definitive results.

To do this, they are not only examining data from the Website, but from 'Yellow Pages', domain registries, Trademark registration, and contact info. from the site itself.

In other words, it's about 'congruency'. Does all the data line-up? If not, why not?

For those building 'Authority Sites', with a 'local search' bias, this would be well worth ploughing through.

For the rest of us, we do need to take note that 'G', is pulling all sorts of data together, to validate, or otherwise, the credibility of the sites that they are indexing.

Just like Kurt said they would do, over 2 years ago, or more.

Y'all take care out there.

Kind regards

Ian

Thanks a lot Ian...

I skimmed through it and didn't see anything relating to doop content either. The resource I got the link from (Search Engine Facts newsletter) may have posted the wrong link.

But two points are still valid:

1. Authority sites will earn more trust and will probably have an advantage when it comes to doop content.

2. Google is concerned with doop content.

Wikipedia Traffic Checker:
http://stats.grok.se/

This resource will tell you how much traffic any wikipedia page receives.

Since Wikipedia pages are typically ranked highly by Google, it could be a good indicator of traffic...However, Wikipedia also gets traffic from many other places, so consider that the info may be distorted.

I just wanted to post this as it's another research resource...

I posted the follow on the Warrior Forum...Thought I should post it here, as well:

My own keyword program PowerBomb, which I took off the market years ago due to faulty third-party results, used a more sophisticated formula than any other keyword research tool.

But first, you can't use a straight ratio, it's too inaccurate. For example:
1/1 = 1 (KEI)
100000/100000= 1 (KEI)

Both of these give us the same "expectation", however they are two totally different situations.

1/1 is very easy, however, there's only one search per month. Hardly worth going after, whereas the second example would be pretty hard to crack, but offers a good amount of traffic.

Again, these are two very different situations that a straight ratio tells us are the same.

Next would be KEI, which "dampers" the traffic numbers. This is better, but still not accurate enough, as it leaves out the VALUE.

Therefore, we need to factor in the VALUE of the keyword phrase to get the most accurate info. Value is calculated by the amount paid for the keyword in a Pay Per Click search engine.

I won't give away my exact formula, but it would be something like:
(Traffic X Damper) x (Traffic X Competition) X Value = Power of Keyword

Now here's the problem and again why I quit selling my PowerBomb: Accurate third party stats became impossible to get. I you have crap going in, you'll have crap coming out and it doesn't matter how good the formula is.

GoTo (Overture) used to give accurate info, including cost per bid and traffic. The info around today just isn't as accurate as it needs to be.

Having said this, IMO, good keyword research isn't finding a keyword phrase or two that are "good"...It's about finding a niche that has scores and scores of good keywords and phrases that can be mixed and matched in different combos.

Another thing, keyword research is really only accurate for those using SEO/SEM. If you're using other methods of marketing, keyword research isn't needed to a great degree. You may want to research the broad, general niche. But to drill down is a waste of time.

Search engines are like creating a shopping list. But while folks shop for items on their list, they also see (and buy) many other things.

If you have a product/article that will appeal to folks if they are exposed to it, keywords don't matter. Just as having milk and eggs on your shopping list, you see a box of Twinkies and buy them, even though they weren't on your list.

Another point: Research is just that...Exploring things that happened in the PAST. With a little insight and creativity, you can predict some keywords that have zero demand now, that could be very popular in the future.

I've given the example of hurricanes in the past. Names for hurricanes are put out years beforehand. Most of these names will be meaningless. But if one hits a major city, this particular keyword will become hugely popular. Here's an example of a keyword phrase that would have poor traffic numbers before hand, but will greatly increase, and any research is useless.

Here's another example of what I call "keyword speculation"...American Idol. Every year there's 25 unknown "keywords" at the beginning of the season that get zero traffic and have zero competition. After about a month, the remaining singers will create huge search totals.

If you're into keywords and research, you may as well take the next steps:

- Understand that today's stats aren't very good.

- You only need to research SE keyword stats if you're using SEO/SEM (and maybe PPC)

- A good "keyword" doesn't do much good for SEO. You need a niche with a lot of good keywords

- Research is history. See if you can't "speculate" about what keywords may be hot in the future. Get a head start on other marketers. Find niche magazines that discuss products that are going to be released soon.

Here's a report that was supposedly "leaked" from Google that details how real humans hired by Google are to rank web pages.

http://www.mauriziopetrone.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/quality-rater-guidelines-2007.pdf

Even if you don't have time to read it now, I suggest you download it as it may dissapear in the future.

Whether this is an official Google document is irrelevant IMO. What is important is the way the document teaches how to judge relevancy, as well as spam.

While some claim the document is fake, it does contain a number of facts that are exactly the same as Google has published in other documents.

Those that have been Bombers for a while know that I have a concept I call "People Rank", which is a combo of hired reviewers as well as the SE tracking searcher actions...This document adds to my theory.

It seems .info domains are being penalized by Google.

Here's a discussion:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3657421.htm

A little more circumstantial info:
Cutts says: "A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations. "
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/my-2008-predictions/

Note the phrase "another TLD". TLD = domain name. "Another" seems to indicate that at least one domain name extension is a "blight".

This makes sense. While not all .info sites are spam, SEO bought them up as they are often cheaper. The fact that they are cheaper likely means they are more often used for spam.

It seems that a lot of people are using ".info" domain names because they were VERY (still) cheap. Many use to build crap sites with it (pity!!). I even remarked that on forums where sites are being sold the ".info" sites sell cheap because no interest of those sites.

Tasari

Old timers around here will remember me theorizing for years about something called "People Rank", where the actions of real people influence the search engine rankings.

Here's a new search engine that heavily relies on "People Rank":
http://www.scour.com/

It isn't as covert as many other People Rank concepts...Here it applies a strategy similar to Digg to help rank sites. You vote up/down and can add comments for each site.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20081017/0150532568.shtml

"Search Engine Cache Isn't Copyright Infringement"

And...

"Now a court has basically destroyed that argument, noting that putting content online is giving an implicit license for search engines to index and copy."

A court in the US has ruled that an SE cache isn't copyright infringement...However, the ruling did say that if a SE was asked to remove the content, the SE has to comply.

While most webmasters will have a different persepctive on this, many of us also run FatBomb/SpiderBomb.

While I'm not a lawyer, this is a law we Fatty users should all be familiar with. If you are ever sent a threatening letter, remove their links and then refer them to the link above...