Newsletter81
EzSEO Newsletter # 81
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. Why have my rankings dropped?
2. Watch those affiliate links
3. What exactly are Niche Blueprints?
4. A question about link exchanges
5. Great fr.e.e. resources
6. Other Stuff
Hi again
The Niche Blueprints were finally released earlier this week/last week, but have not yet sold out. If you are wondering what Niche Blueprints are, then I have included a section in this newsletter to tell you what a Blueprint contains, and why many people are raving about them.
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1. Why have my rankings dropped?
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I am constantly being asked by subscribers to look at their websites to see why their site is either not ranking well, or has lost its rankings. As I politely point out, I don't have time to analyze other people's sites - there is a reason why I don't do SEO consulting for a living ;o)
The big problem with SEO is that there are so many factors involved, that it usually takes more than a casual look at a website to find the problem.
The most disturbing thing for many webmasters is that their rankings drop, even though they have not done anything to the site.
Why would a site that is ranking well, suddenly drop like a stone in the rankings?
Welcome to Search Engine algorithms!
When a search engine algorithm changes significantly, we often see this "ranking drop" on lots of sites. If you go to any of the webmaster forums around this time, you will see lots of upset webmasters complaining that they have lost their rankings. At the same time, you will see lots of others who are happy with the changes, and even found their rankings improved.
Usually the webmasters that have lost rankings have done something that the search engines don't like, or something that the search engines use to like, but no longer give credit for.
Let me give you an example.
Imagine that you had a website that ranked well for the terms you targeted. That site had grown to include 1000 backlinks, but the backlinks were not targeted to your niche, and were merely gathered in a "more the merrier" fashion. In the past, I believe that Google gave equal credit for all links, irrespective of how related the linking page and the linked page were.
With more recent changes at Google, I now believe that links from pages related to your own site, have more weight, and count for more in boosting your rankings. Non-related links have been devalued, and may not even count at all! If this is the case (and it is only a theory at present), what would you expect to happen to your rankings for this site at the moment Google switched to the new algorithm?
Obviously rankings would drop. There would be no clues as to why. One day your rankings were great, the next they were no-where to be seen. And the puzzling thing was, you had not changed the site at all!
When this happens, many webmasters use the word "penalty", yet it often is not. It is merely the result of devaluing something that had once helped your rankings.
One of the jobs of an SEO is to keep up to date with information given to us by the search engines. Google do publish guidelines (we looked at them in a recent newsletter), yet how many people study them, try to interpret what they mean in SEO terms, and then follow their findings?
It is the job of all webmasters to keep up to date with what is going on. Read press released from the main search engines, and try to interpret these into an action plan of "Dos and Don'ts", then change your methods accordingly.
Obviously the task of keeping up to date with what is going on can be a huge undertaking. It is often easier (and more profitable in terms of the time it can save you) to subscribe to a service like Planet Ocean's. This is the service that I use, and many of the professional SEOs I come into contact with. You get a complete SEO eBook, and then monthly updates on what is happening around the search engines. There is also a number of great questions answered each month. You can read more about what they offer here:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/planetocean
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2. Watch those affiliate links
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It is all too easy to trust your merchants. They give you links to put up, and you do so, often without even clicking them yourself to make sure they work.
In the early days, my wife and I built large shopping sites with hundreds of hand built pages using 5 or 6 product links per page. These product links were lifted out of Commission Junction and pasted onto the page.
These sites could do OK for a few months, but then sales would inevitably dry up. We were confused. Why would this happen? Our rankings were still the same.
Well, we learned a very valuable lesson. Merchants change links, often without telling you.
Links are often just scrapped, or end up pointing at a page where it says "product discontinued" (even worse is when they go to a page not found).
The problem with our sites was that if we had 5 links per page, and 200 pages per site, that meant we had 1000 links per site to check every month.
Now checking links is not fun, so we finally changed the way we built sites to avoid this problem.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, make sure you check your links regularly, and make sure they point to where they are supposed to. I recommend you check the links on all of your sites at least once a month.
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3. What exactly are Niche Blueprints?
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Niche Blueprints were an idea I dreamt up while chatting with some people on the SEO Website Builder user forum.
Different people had different stumbling blocks along the road to building a successful website.
Some found the keyword research difficult.
Some found they had difficulty coming up with niche ideas.
Others found it difficult to know what phrases to use as main keywords, which phrases to use in articles, and where to put those phrases on the different types of pages.
Some people found it difficult to know exactly how to link the pages together in an SEO friendly manner.
Out of these questions, Niche Blueprints were born.
Each Niche Blueprint contains a training manual (which holds its own against Affiliate Training Manuals selling for more than the Blueprint itself). The manual is the "Master Plan". A step by step methodology showing you exactly how to build a well optimized site. It takes you from start to finish.
Now the real beauty of these Blueprints are the data files you get with each one. These data files contain all the keywords you need for the site, split into different categories. The manual will then tell you when and how to use the data in these data files.
When it comes to finding affiliate programs to promote, the Niche Blueprint provides that information for you too. I have hand-picked several of the best affiliate programs in that niche and included then with the Blueprint.
You even get some basic templates with the blueprint that you can use in the editor of your choice if you dont have your own template.
Every month, I release two blueprints on two different niches that I have personally researched.
These Niche Blueprints come in two flavours - Secret and Revealed. The secret Blueprint is one where you don't get to know the topic before you buy it (many people prefer it this way). The revealed blueprint is one where I tell you the topic. There are only 100 copies of each blueprint sold, so that limits the amount of competition you will have in that niche.
Have a read through the testimonials on the Niche Blueprint site. These are all real!
http://niche-blueprints.com
The manual that comes with each Blueprint is a guide that you can use and re-use. After you build your first Niche Blueprint site and learn the methods, you will have the knowledge to go out and "go it alone".
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4. A question about link exchanges
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Here is a good question from one subscriber.
"Hi Andy,
I have noticed that a lot of sites that request a link exchange from me may have a PR 5 or 6 on their home page and when I click through to the links page there is a PR 0. This is very disappointing and I don't exchange with them. Should I reconsider this practice or am I right in thinking they are doing something to prevent PR from passing to their links pages?
Best Regards,
Troy"
There are many things to consider when exchanging links.
The above question asks whether you should consider linking to a PR 5 site when the links page is a PR 0.
What are your thoughts on that?
The question you should ask yourself is "Why does the homepage have a PR5 and the links page a PR0?".
There can be a few different reasons for this.
Reason #1 - the links page is new and has not had a PR assigned to it in the Google toolbar (that does not mean it has no PR, just that the toolbar has not been updated to reflect its PR).
This case is easy to spot. Look at the URL of the links page. Then go to the homepage and View the source of the homepage in a text editor (from the View Menu in Explorer, select Source).
Do a search of the source for the links page filename. e.g. if the links page is called links.html, search the source code for links.html.
If you find a link on the homepage to the links page, chances are the links page is new and has not had time to be assigned a PR in the toolbar yet. In this case, I would consider the link to this site.
You could also go to the Wya Back Machine:
http://www.archive.org/
..and type in the links page URL. If the Way Back Machine has no record of it, it may be new (though it is possible to prevent the WBM from caching your site).
Now, before we move on, check that link to the links page in the source again. Make sure that there is no dynamic linking going on. While it is not always easy to spot, the introduction of the "nofollow" tag in recent months, has meant that many non-techie webmasters have been able to create dynamic links, quickly, easily, and without much technical knowledge. If you see the word "nofollow" in the link HTML pointing to the links page, then this webmaster is not passing PR to the links page. In fact, worse than that is the fact that the search engines wont even find and index the links page.
This is a case of one webmaster trying to cheat you out of PR. Don't link to them.
Reason #2 - Links page is not being linked to, or is linked to using a dynamic link.
If you do not find a link to the links page on the homepage of the site, or the link uses one of the forms of dynamic linking, then I would not recommend you link to that site. The links page will get no PR, and wont even be found by the search engines, so you get no benefit. It is possible the links page does have a link pointing to it from another page, but let's look at that as a separate issue.
Reason #3 - links page is buried deep in the navigation of the website.
Some webmasters bury the link to their links page deep within their site, so that the only way a search engine spider will find the links page is by following 3 or 4 links from the homepage. When this is done, very little (if any) PR flows to the links page. Again, I would not link to a site like this. You wont get much benefit.
Reason #4 - Multiple links pages bury the page your link is found on.
On some websites, there are so many reciprocal partners, that links are often split across 10s (or even 100s) of pages. For a search engine spider to find the page you are on, it would require following link after link on these links pages until it reaches yours. Again, by the time it gets there, very little (if any) PR will have flowed to the page your link is one.
For points #3 & #4, my advice is simple. Start at the homepage, and see how many clicks it takes you to navigate to the page your link is on. If it is more than 2 clicks away, think carefully about exchanging links. You may not get much out of the deal.
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5. Great fr.e.e. resources
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I have to admit that when I tried the Firefox Browser, I loved all the add-ons that were available. However, I just could not get use to it, and it had a few issues where I could not get it to work the way I wanted it to. You see, for a long time I had been using a relatively unknown browser, which worked exactly as I wanted.
If you are unhappy with your current browser, do check out Maxathon at:
http://www.maxthon.com/.
Some other software that I only found this week (after my dad recommended it to me) is one that helps keep your images on your hard disk organised (especially useful if you like digital photography). It is called Picasa and can be downloaded at:
http://www.picasa.com/
This one is always going to be a winner when you see which stable it comes from ;o)
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6. Other Stuff
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Content Publisher...
Well, it has been a long time coming hasn't it? Bad news is that it is still not ready. I have a couple of great beta testers who are giving me a lot of feedback on features and bugs, and I am trying my best to accommodate their suggestions. Good news is, that I expect it to be released in the next couple of weeks. I will be announcing it in this newsletter, and to the Content Publisher notification list (you can sign up on the website):
http://content-publisher.com
Even better news is that for a short period of time, you will be able to get it at a great discount price (only via this newsletter or the CP notification list).
Other news:
Remember last week I mentioned some software that helps with the tedious task of submitting articles to article sites? Well, I have been chatting with the author about it, and he thinks it will be released in the next couple of weeks. He is having a few extra features written into the software, which will make this a must have program for anyone serious about their article submissions.
This software has a ready made database of 100s of directories, article lists and ezine publishers. If that is not enough, you can even add your own, if you find one missing.
This software comes with videos and training materials to ensure you get maximum benefit out of your articles. I hope to have some more information next week on this.
Well, that's it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ez-search-engine-optimization.com/archives
Have a great week!
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Visit the subscriber Bonus page for free reports and other subscriber-only offers:
http://www.ez-search-engine-optimization.com/nls
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please send then to me at webmaster@ez-search-engine-optimization.com. Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site
if you want it. That's extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.
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