Taff’s Article Directory Blog

Isn’t it just great when we actually get to see some pros talking about what they know?

If you haven’t seen them, yet these Andy Jenkins / Brad Fallon videos are definitely worth a look.

http://www.convertlinks.com

Taff

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We all know statistics can say anything the author wants so it’s always good to be a little careful when reading results. After reading about Googles Golden Triangle I did decide to undergo further research just to ensure the figures I was reading were somewhat accurate. With a little variation you can take any stats on this post as accurate to the very best of my knowledge.

Googles Golden Triangle - What is this? Basically it’s a web page heat map. It was compiled from a survey done with 400 people to identify the habits of people when visiting a web page. It appears that we are all so similar in our online habits that just 8 people will give an accurate survey result so 400 should be a fair indicator. Even infra red cameras were used to track the eye movement of the testers.

Type in Googles Golden Triangle to see the page heat map. In essence the top right hand side of a web page is the hot zone. Be aware that the results work for all search engines, not just Google.

If you are within the top 7 naturally returned results you are going to get good traffic. This is because searchers are now conditioned to knowing where the paid ads are and they are usually looking, in the first instance at least, for information to make a buying decision rather than a straight sales page.

63% of top natural listing will get a click.

Natural search results will return 250% more clicks than Paid Search Terms.

Natural search visitors will convert around 30% more than paid search visitors.

Surfers Hit The Natural Search Results First Every Single Time

3, 4, 5 or 6 term phrases are much easier to optimize for. It’s called a “long tail” search term and it’s much easier to rank for. You will not get as much traffic but it is highly qualified traffic so definitely worth having.

Latent Semantic Indexing. Sounds a real mouthful but this LSI is actually very simple. It’s all to do with page keyword density and related words / terms to your main keywords or keyphrases.

Google is one smart bunny and keeps getting smarter all the time. Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past and search engines are wise to such techniques anyway. Nowadays SE’s are looking for a much more natural flow to the page and it seems that an acceptable keyword density is around 2 - 3% but an important factor is also associated words and phrases.

For example, if our keyphrase was camping holidays in France then it is worth doing some research on terms associated with this phrase and use them in the body text so the SE can associate them with your search term. Briefly some words would be tents, caravans, ferries, camping site facilities and so on.

Bad Example: Camping Holidays In France is our specialty. If you are looking for Camping Holidays In France call us now for more information where one of our expert representatives will be only to pleased to discuss Camping Holidays In France with you.

The Search engine will pick up on the keyphrase but it has no other related information to help it decide the value and relevance of your page. Always keep in mind that Google is obsessive over the quality of the information it serves up to it’s clients.

To maintain a quality service then issues like the latest craze in churning out thousands of “unique” articles from a single source or the general poor quality of Adsense pages has to be addressed as a matter of priority otherwise Google will just become a has been. No one will continue to use a service if the results dished up are erroneous or just plain rubbish.

This is the basis of LSI.

Hope it has been of some interest and use to you.

Taff

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Hi,

Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon have made 2 excellent videos with more to come. This is must read information for anybody needing to know the basics to intermediate SEO techniques. http://www.convertlinks.com

I reckon that these 2 guys with Brad Callen\’s superb free SEO e-book and Matt\’s blog covers all the information most of us need to know on this subject.

Taff

It isn’t often you find information on the internet which you can rely on 100% as most articles are just opinions. Even “factual” articles have to be treated with a certain degree of skeptism due to an uncertainty over the validity and trustworthiness of the author.

The best and worst thing about the internet is the sheer volume of information available. Unlike a book purchased from a real bookshop where the authors credibility is 99% guaranteed, internet authors can publish what they like with virtually no controls.

Matt Cutts is amongst a rising breed of knowledge hounds using video to share his wealth of knowledge with the rest of us info seekers. Watching informative videos whilst actually looking at the person is going a long way to re-dressing the balance between Good, Suspect and Bad online information. After all, is someone who is not that sure of his subject going to sit in front of a video and then post it online for all to see?

I think not. It is one thing to anonymously write countless articles to bombard us with but a live video would be out of the question.

Matt’s blog is here http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Taff

Hi,

This is something I have never really considered before as link exchanges have never really produced much in the way of results for me. Here is an article I have produced on my findings…

Search Engine Friendly Web Directories Why on earth should anybody knowingly submit their valuable links to a non SEO, (Search Engine Optimized), web directory?

What Is A Search Engine Friendly Web Directory? Basically we are looking that all the links on the pages of the web directory can actually be spidered by the search engines. These pages must be able to be scanned by the SE robots so your links will be cached and assigned a page rank.

Let’s Build A Search Engine Friendly Web Directory… Redirects… It is surprising how many link exchanges / directories use redirects for the link listings. Even with a basic knowledge of SEO you know that a redirect does not count as a back link so your listing is worthless. A redirect can be used for link statistics. Also, consider that the PR formula will effectively reduce the PR of the owners link site as it is applied to outgoing links. Using a redirect will work to the benefit of the link exchange owner but against you as your links are never actually seen by a bot. So beware paying for a link to a directory with a high PR before first checking it out.You can check out the possibility of a redirected link by placing your mouse over your link and seeing if it shows your actually site or goes through a script first.

Nofollow, Noindex tags… These tags will prevent the search engine robots from spidering pages. If these tags are used on pages containing links then the link is never seen. Using these tags also prevent the link exchange site having to share its PR. 

Too Many Links On A Page… This has the effect of burying the link so it probably will not be indexed. Opinions differ in that my research produced one line of thought saying 10 links per page is optimal, another saying no more than 30… take your pick as Google probably wont tell us. To be on the safe side I have decided to limit the maximum number of links within Taff’s Search Engine Friendly Link Directory to be 8 on any one page. 

Site Maps Are Good… Let’s make it as easy as possible for the bots to crawl our links therefore a site map is a must.

Mod Rewrite… Should have this to make a dynamic, (non spiderable), link into a static, (spiderable), link. This is done at the .htaccess level.Use relevant anchor text when planning your link. Click Here is not what the search engines like to see. Use your keywords as your anchor text. I will use an internal link to my article directory as an example - why waste an opportunity?