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Some products we are analyzing

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Every week several new tools for web promotion and SEO appear in the market. Most of them can be useless for the average Web Promoter, but a few can bring significant value. Which ones? Hard to tell.

Every new product comes out with an impressive amount of cleverly designed marketing mumbo-jumbo, mixed with technicalities and dubious favourable testimonials. Knowledgeable testing is rarely performed. Objective reviews are hard to find.

As anyone in the SEO field, we are subscribed to a number of SEO-related newsletters and Twits, and receive info on many new tools every week. All of them with a strong promotional intention and little hard data. To the unprepared beginner, Web Marketing would seem a piece of cake with the purchase of any of those tools.

Forums and open blogs are also filled with comments on SEO Tools (scripts, software, strategies), but since the tool makers sponsor the place, the webmasters cannot afford to be critical, skeptic or objective.

Thus, the customers (SEO-oriented webmasters) cannot keep up with the flood of new information, find opportunities and apply the new tools to his business, unless he devotes significant resources to this crucial aspect of R & D.

Most tools require a high level of expertise to apply them with maximal effect. This can better be achieved by an expert who runs the same tool on dozens of sites at a time.

We started this project thinking that SEO people can use specialized, objective advice from a company not-affiliated with vendors. We will stay independent, and refrain from affiliate programs that could bias our judgement.

We intend to become a “Consumers Digest” of web promotion and SEO: unbiased, knowledgeable, complete.

There are no other companies specialized in Website Promotion Tool Evaluation. There are a few ones that come close, like MarketingExperiments.com, but they have a more conventional marketing approach and do not use software tools. They cater to large clients needing strategic marketing guidance.

Why our testing instead of yours

We have a team that include PhD scientists, that are able to design an experiment that would answer the main questions or issues.

We will use new domains and contents for every experiment, to avoid contamination with previous results. We will not look to increase the rankings of our own service or product sites, just to ascertain the efficiency of one tested tool at a time.

Examples of actions performed by specific SEO tools in behalf of our clients (plans 2 and 3)

• Manual Submission to 50 directories using Robo Form to help with form filling.
• 200 Keyword-dense Phrases, made with Synonymizer Phrase Generator, to be used as Description Metatag in large sites. Example.
• 200 search engine optimized pages, made with Great Gateway Generator, optimized for 200 keywords. Interlinked. Distributed in several domains, with different IPs.
• Link integrity report.
• Google domain penalization report. See article in our DomainGrower blog
• Metatag length and relevance analysis.
• Bad Neighbourhood linking status.
• Sitemap analysis or generation
• Linking analysis
• Keyword Density report

Categories of Web Promotion Tools

• SEO (in-site factors)
• link exchange managers
• Social Network tools
• email marketing
• search engine analyzers

Contact for details and possible discount prices

So far we achieved good rankings with some of our older blogs: DomainGrower and PromotordeSitios (this one in Spanish). However, some postings are very well ranked and others not at all. Why is that? It would be nice to know. And it would be excellent to have a formula for consistent good rankings in WordPress.

First of all, we need a method to measure positioning. I have published an universal SEPI (search engine positioning index) in Wikipedia and I am trying to obtain general acceptance on this index. In the meantime, we will use SEPI as described in our own calculator:
 
SEPI. See http://www.domaingrower.com/sepi.htm
The SEPI can be calculated with or without quotes. Without quotes there are more total results and ranking is more difficult. I prefer to use quotes to restrict the results to what really matters. For instance, for the previous article in this blog the keyword could be “viral marketing”, because I am not interested in other viral things, neither other marketing issues. For this article there are several possible keywords: google algo crack, SE ranking position index, good wordpress rankings, blog positioning.
We collected data from several postings from different blogs:
• Number of words per article
• Length of title
• Ranking in Google for each title
• Images
• External links
• Description metatag

We calculated the SEPI for each posting, using the title of the article, without quotes, as Keyword Phrase. We used Google.com without a user.

After analyzing these results, we arrived to a few conclusions.

• WP articles rank in Google in an all or nothing fashion: different text strings taken from the title or the contents rank in a similar way, no matter if they have keywords or not.

• Some of our blogs consistently outrank others, no matter the PageRank, how the article was written, how long, with or without external links or images, or other factors mentioned in this posting. It seems that good, old, non-promotional blogs are better than others.

• The title of the article is the most important keyword phrase. It needs to be matched by an equal or similar Title Metatag, and also by the URL by means of the Permalink setting.  The title needs to be useful as a keyword and have a normal Keyword Difficulty. If the title is too long, the chances of being searched as such are very low. If it is too short, there will be many million competitors and it will be hard to get a decent ranking.

• The ranking quality of a blog determines the percent of well-ranked postings. Good blogs get 90% of good postings, while bad blogs get 10% or less.

• Beyond the previous fact, it is impossible to predict the ranking of a given article. It seems to be a random factor in that.

Postings from my Netocios.com blog (in Spanish):
 

Advice:

Put effort into writing quality contents for your blog. Once you get there, establish how general or specific your Posting Titles need to be for optimal results.

Use the metrics proposed in this article to optimize your writings for your blog.

Avoid duplicate content

Include SEO plugins in your blog: all-in-one-seo, sitemap grator., avoid-dupe-content and others

Use tags for increased internal PageRank

Contact us http://domaingrower.com/contact for SEO services.

This content is sometimes unrelated to the other pages in the site. As a result, a visitor can arrive to a page, not be sold after spending the usual 2 seconds there, and move on to another search result. In few cases Google provides two pages of a site, instead of one, giving an additional chance for the webmaster to deliver its content. However, even with two pages, the sales message is not complete.
Google often provides the keyword-specific page plus the home page, or maybe to non-home pages. I took notice of this problem analyzing my sites with Google Analytics, an ever-growing assembly of nice utilities that help webmasters figure out what goes on with their sites and visitors. I saw that one internal page of a site was bringing lots of unproductive traffic. Seeing it as an isolated unit the content was not enough for a sale. So, I fixed the problem adding some introductory text to the page that put the rest in perspective, and helped disoriented visitors to find the way to the informative and decisive pages of the site.
In cases where I use a doorway page generator to create hundreds of keyword-specific pages, the result is the same. A few pages manage to get to the top of the search engines, but they design is poor and the content insufficient. Thus, once they reach the top and start bringing traffic, as detected by Analytics, I edit them to improve design and relate the contents to the rest of the site.
This two-step design strategy usually pays off in a couple of weeks. Ask me for examples and more data.

We recently made a project for our Spanish SEO site, www.yo1ro.com and got excellent results for most of the keywords. It is very interesting to analyze the results of the near 80 pages made, and which ones obtained good results. All pages have one of 5 templates, depending on their role in the site network: sitemap, 1st level keyword, 2nd level keyword, index to secondary domain pages, randomly combined keywords.

Since we can change the structure of the templates, getting different keyword densities and element (image, metatag, heading, tag) combination, there are many experiments to be made. Those experiments let us know which factors are important (positive or negative) for results.

If you understand some Spanish, ask us for the  detailed results of this experiment. Ohterwise, wait a couple of weeks for the next English experiment resutls.

I entered my sites by FTP and I found many offending pages that some bot had placed there. And when I say many, I mean about 5000 files in dozens of directories in several sites accross 3 servers… Many hours were needed to clean up.

Of course I had to clean my PC from malware, apparently coming from a mailing software that I had downloaded 2 weeks ago.

The offending pages were quite complex, and all leaded to an exploit page that showed an infection scene, with strong advice to buy their antivirus, at adware-spyware-removal.co.cc. I am not sure if that page succeeded in loading malicious code into my Windows. They can have one inocent-looking page to enter thru a hole in your Windows, and another to sell you antivirus. In any case, I do not advice to buy anything from them. It is like paying ransom for your computer, and also giving the offenders much broader access to your system.

I saved a few of the offending files for exam. They use obfuscated Javascript to redirect traffic to their site. Something like:

script language=”javascript”>function not(kf,cybf){if…

I cleaned 3 pages (no javascript, nofollow in all links) and posted them in my site, but I kept having problems. The amount of links in them was too much, they got indexed and diverted my site from its theme.

The bot used my own material to create its pages, in order to camouflage it among the existing pages. The pages link to other infected pages in my servers and others, and lead to the main site that sells their own spyware removing product.

The bot-made pages are made in such a way that Search Engine spiders can index them well, reinforcing the traffic to their site. Thus, pages in my server bring new traffic from the SEs. If I was interested in those keywords, I only had to clean the pages and add my own links.

Google noted the infection in one of the sites, and posted the infamous “This site may harm your computer” note before the links. Other infected sites were indexed with no warning. I assume Google did not reach the end of the pages, where the malicious code is inserted.

Another advantage (?) of the infection are the incoming links from other infected sites, pointing to pages in my site. Since most webmasters willl not notice the problem for weeks or months, I will get some additional PageRank benefit.

The pages have a lot of text, combinatorially mixed phrases and keywords, keywords in the filenames, many links and lots of H1, li and Strong tags. Very similar to pages made with some page generators in the market, including mine… So, I expect to get some intelligence out of this event.

The funny thing is that I had tried for years to obtain such good, fast links and rankings for my pages. And a small bot achieves it with my own resources and without my knowing.

Hey, want to get your computer infected?

Over the years we collected several testimonials from customers who succeeded in improving their SE rankings using GGG, and we used it to provide service to our customers. Several buyers requested special features and appointed custom programming from us. Most of those improvements were incorporated into the products.

We suddenly realized that the gateway pages WERE NOT the reason for the good ranking results obtained with GGG… Something else was, and the links had something to do with it. Thus, the product should might be renamed from Gateway Generator into “Optimized Site Generator”, “Website Ranking Enhancer” or something like that. The new name would also reflect the fact that the product did not rely on Black Hat techniques, like gateway pages.

The many changes in the Google algorithm have not affected the ranking power of GGG. However, there is a need in a strategy change. Very large projects are no longer acceptable, because the sudden increase in pages and links is seen as unnatural by the Search Engines. Slow but permanent site growth is now required. In GGG, that means periodically adding more domains or directories as secondary hosts holding random pages.

The other change in Google is related to subtle penalization of domains that do not follow some hidden guidelines, like “No Content Duplication” and “No Bad Neighbourhood Linking”. For that, we are developing special tests that set off the alarm before having the offensive pages indexed.

Having said this, we admit that we never completed an extensive testing on the optimal settings of the GGG Projects, the minimal and maximal values for keywords, domains and pages, and the limits for safe operation without getting penalization.

At this point we have 3 goals:

- create an effective communication channel for users of GGG. At this point, I publish the results of the Web Ranking Experiments in this public blog. However, the most critical info will be mailed to paid subscribers of the future Page Generators Newsletter.

- release GGG 4.0 in no more than 3 months.

- offer a Website Ranking Enhancer service for those who do not have the time and patience to obtain the new software, create the contents and upload the pages. We will use the latest GGG, Synonymizer and Keyword Thief, plus all the knowledge on optimized page generation that we have collected and keep collecting.

- run a permanent Testing System for our GGG pages, in order to be aware of the best site settings according to Google, and to provide the best possible service to our customers.

- acquire more hosting services with different IPs, in order to host our pages without loss of ranking value.

For all those web promoters out there that want to enhance their web rankings, we announce different service packages in this site.

The other result refers to the extent of indexation. It seems that penalized sites receive only superficial indexation. For instance, if a site is well indexed, all the word strings will be indexed, and searching for phrases within quotes will find them. If the site is badly indexed due to penalization, only individual words will be indexed, and the strings will not be detected. Interesting…

The other result is that penalization covers all subjects, even those unrelated to the main one. For instance, a domain penalized for duplicate content will be penalized for content that has nothing to do with the abused content.

However, I am not making a difference between penalization types, which probably exists. In the next test I will include one domain that was penalized for duplicates and other penalized for linking to bad neighbourhood. Let’s see if the penalizations are similar.

I am now working on a new experiment (3rd of my controlled series) using more domains, mixing penalized with healthy domains.  

On the other hand, I am analyzing the directories I use for submission with reciprocal link exchange. It seems that some of them are considered bad neighbours, maybe because they include black hat sites, or they sell links, or whatever. My analysis includes only existing factors, because I am not free to upload test pages to them.

There are a few factors that warn you against bad directories: bad ranking in Google while searching for their own Home Page Title or Description, as compared with Yahoo or MSN. Also, few indexed incoming links, and other parameters. We are trying to establish the most reliable of those parameters.

For all the Penalization Detection experiments we need to focus on keywords that have 10-200 results. Less, is not enough to detect a fall in rankings. More, are difficult to detect and count.

We plan to offer a Standard Penalization Detection service (exact value), and a Penalization Diagnosis which will try to find an explanation for the issue. In most cases we detect bad linking, code problems or duplicate contents that explained the problem and could be corrected. 

We create one page for each brother, hosted in each tested domain. We also create a sitemap in an independent well ranked domain pointing to each brother. Something like: “The Antolineck family is composed by (Gualter link), (Serap link), (Rupert link), (Egbert link), (Torib link).”
That’s it. After a couple of weeks we will see the results. We will search Google for every brother, and register the rankings. And if we search for Antolineck, every indexed page will appear, ordered by the real positioning value of each domain. This value is not necessarily the same that Google’s PageRank.
For this example I used a made-up last name, completely absent in search engines, for clearer results. However, the test can be performed under less common but existent words, say 1000 results. In this way the search is more natural and detects the -30 or -100 penalizations (descending 30 or 100 results in any search).

Are the domains penalized? We will soon see. Will the domains be penalized because of a test? There is no breaking of the S.E. rules here.

I plan to repeat the test periodically with my own and my client’s domains, because if a penalization occurs I need to instantly be aware of it and fix whatever it is that I did wrong. The test is also open to individual SEO webmasters who want to share the data.

Ask a SEO-focused webmaster to position your site. Webmasters today are quite specialized, and the guy that designs, programs, writes and hosts, does not necessarily get you a good ranking…

I have been collecting clues on the algorithm for a while, and running some quiet experiments. The latest non-official disclosure of the algorithm is from Rand Fish, in his seomoz.org site, obviously very well positioned under the SEO keyword. The article’s name is “A little piece of the Google algorithm revealed”.

And the formula is:

GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) – (Automated & Manual Penalties)

The different factors are calculated as follows:

KW Usage Score
• KW in Title
• KW in headers H1, H2, H3…
• KW in document text
• KW in internal links pointing to the page
• KW in domain and/or URL

Domain Strength
• Registration history
• Domain age
• Strength of links pointing to the domain
• Topical neighbourhood of domain based on inlinks and outlinks
• Historical use and links pattern to domain

Inbound Link Score
• Age of links
• Quality of domains sending links
• Quality of pages sending links
• Anchor text of links
• Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
• Subject matter of linking pages/sites

User Data
• Historical CTR to page in SERPs
• Time users spend on page
• Search requests for URL/domain
• Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users GG can monitor (toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)
Content Quality store
• Potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages
• Provided by Google raters
• Machine-algos for rating text quality/readability/etc

Automated & Manual Penalties are a mystery, but it seems they lower the ranking by 30 entries or more.

The mentioned factors are generally known in the experts’ forums, but the relative value that Rand gives them is useful. Rand’s conclusion is that little we can do to apply this algorithm, but to improve the content quality.

Some factors are too basic for Rand to mention, and relate to selecting a good domain, writing with a reasonable density of keywords, intelligently programming links, good code, sensible writing, etc.

Surprisingly, there are very few companies publishing results on the Google algorithm. However, competing search engines do very well their research, because they were able to copy almost the same ranking features as Google. Most of the times when I get a good ranking result in Google, Yahoo follows. A clear difference between both algos lies in the penalties, being Yahoo more lenient.

Most algo crackers show only a small sample of their knowledge, to prevent their competition to take advantage of their findings, and to avoid identification and possible penalizations. However, some of us are a bit more open, trying to use distributed thinking in order to achieve our algo cracking goals.