SoloSEO

Discount or Ignore Paid Links

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 16th, 2007

There has been some post and comments lately which have expressed frustration with Google’s attempts to discount the referral power of links purchased to bolster rankings. Why people have a problem with this makes no sense to me. I personally don’t have a problem with any SE discounting paid links. Why wouldn’t they attempt to discount paid links? Isn’t the whole purpose of a search engine to provide clients with the most relevant results possible, results not influenced by tactics or games? I personally want my organic search results to only contain sites that are reputable, sites where the owners have worked hard to get there, have written good content, have naturally established themselves in relevant circles, have referral links from past clients, or associates, based on a good product, solid customer service and historic proficientcy. I don’t want directories, no matter how “good” the content is, or fly by night companies looking to make a quick buck, who have paid for links to sneak themselves on the first page. it is sites like these which muck up the SERPs organic results.

Some will spew that ads on the SERPs are actually paid links, to which I totally agree, but we know they are paid links, we understand the bias there, and they are obviously quarantined away from the organic results. In my mind the search engines have earned the right to sell space on their pages based on the traffic they attract. This incredible level of traffic is based on the satisfaction of searchers, due to the accuracy of previous organic search results. So, in my mind, if you want qualified traffic quickly, then paying a search engine and picking out some targeted keywords in a PPC campaign might be the best way to go to get started. But there is no way someone should go out and attempt to purchase a bunch of paid links in an attempt to bully their way onto the organic search results page, that is not what organic search pages are there to provide, and the search engines are looking to stop you. Don’t risk your business in this manner.

Search engines attempt to deliver relevant results for search clients, these results consist of both organic results and paid ads attempting to match the purpose of the initial search. However, when a SEO uses other sites they own or control to provide links to improve their clients rankings, that too is a paid link. Do these sites, which have been artificially forced onto the SERPs, occasionally give the searcher what they need, perhaps, but not always, and that is the problem. Random links from a site, which only is linking out because it was paid to do so, can’t ethically be considered a link with any value, it is a tainted and usually irrelevant link. Search engines rightfully use the number of links and the quality of the sites providing the links, to assist in determining the quality of a site, that makes perfect sense to do so. But links from sites that have no relevance, or from individuals who have never used the product, really don’t have any business handing out a link and should be discounted, or not used in the rankings at all.

All a paid link can really tell us is the site buying the link has money to spend on links, and the site selling the links enjoys cashing checks. That really isn’t a sound foundation for a legitimate referral. So Google, Yahoo, Ask, all of you guys, please continue to weed out those sites that purchase links, and those SEOs that use other sites to game the rankings, they are attempting to bury small business owners who are working to establish themselves online by working on content and links the right way.

5 comments Visited 7086 times August 16th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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SEO – Vital to Small Business

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 7th, 2007

To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all – be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.

So if SEO is important, and we can learn it, how much time should we spend on SEO as a small business owner? It is an excellent question, and ultimately depends on how much business a firm hopes to bring in through their online efforts. For example, if a firm has in mind that in 12 months they would like to have 50% of their sales coming from online sources, and they currently only enjoy 5% of total sales from the site, then they should probably spend a considerable amount of time working on the site, making sure all the pieces are in place, so not only will the site’s visibility improve, but potential clients will be happy with what they find. Conversely, if this firm wants only 50% of their sales from online sources, but they now enjoy 60% of total being online generated, then they should focus more attention on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising until this ratio changes.

To get started in SEO, I would recommend just setting aside an hour a day to dive in. At first start just by learning about SEO, either from some pretty good books on the topic here and here, or through a number of blogs we recommend to our readership, namely: Michael Gray (GrayWolf), Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl), Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), and Brian Clark (CopyBlogger). These books and blogs will provide good insight and instruction on the ins and outs of all aspects of SEO.

Once one has a basic grasp of SEO, they really should get themselves an account with SoloSEO, in order to put this knowledge to use, using the most comprehensive set of SEO tool on the web. Much like exercises in Accounting and Economics, actually using the tools, and seeing the results of your work, drives home the SEO concepts, and puts the finishing touches on the learning process. Through working with SoloSEO’s tools, a solid understanding of the pillars of SEO, namely keywords, links and content will form, and SEO will then seem not only doable, but pretty simple.

So once we understand what SEO “is,” then it is time to really understand our industry online, and review what our competitor’s are up to. This online Competitive Analysis can also be done using some of SoloSEO’s tools and reports. We must remember we are competing within a different marketplace, with new competitors, and how they have positioned their sites online, could and should influence how we position and optimize our sites today and in the future. There is not a pre-determined set of guidelines at this point for SEO, no matter what some might say, much of what we need to do to compete most effectively online will be determined by what our competitors have done and will do in the future. While the process of SEO is standardized, the focus of our specific SEO strategy will need to be flexible to face the challenges put forth by our online competitors. If we watch what they do, and manage our online SEO accordingly, then we can keep pace or outpace what they are attempting to do, and better our online exposure.

In my mind there isn’t a business out there today which cannot benefit from an online presence, especially a site that is well prepared, and skillfully promoted. Small business owners need to take every advantage, use every possible tool and strategy available, to insure their eventual, or continued success. I can think of nothing more vital, more accessible and more easily implemented (not to mention more affordable) than SEO. A site which runs well, and effectively targets the right potential clients, promotes a firm’s image in a positive way, while making sales, even while we sleep, or while we play golf (not that anyone would do this during business hours). Take the time to get to know SEO and you will quickly understand just how big your little company can become, and that realization can be quite jolt.

2 comments Visited 4397 times August 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Google + SEO = The New “AOL Keyword”?

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 18th, 2007

We all remember TV, radio, and even print ads back in the AOL era that left us with an AOL Keyword for finding their site. Over time, and as AOL became less important, TV/radio/print ads gave you a domain name instead. Today on the radio I heard a commercial from Honda Certified Used Cars that sounded eerily similar to “type in the AOL Keyword”. The radio ad said to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the keyword “Honda Certified Used Cars”. Searching for this in Google brings up Honda’s Certified Used Cars site (http://automobiles.honda.com/certified/) as the first listing in the results. Obviously telling us to search for the keyword in Google/Yahoo! is much easier than telling us to go to “automobiles dot honda dot com forward slash certified”.

Plus, they can always control the PPC page. Their PPC page appears to go to the same place, but it actually goes to a page hosted on googlepages.com, so they must be doing some landing page testing.

As I was pondering this, my mind brought me back to last year’s PubCon when John Battelle talked about Google (et al.) as “the new interface to technology”. It literally is our yellow pages, our 411 service, our encyclopedia, our calculator, etc.

Some cautions are in order

1) Obviously if you’re buying radio and TV spots, you need to give out a keyword that you can realistically be in the top for a long time. It should probably include your company name. But if your company name is weird, hard to spell, hard to remember, or just plain dumb, you’re probably a good fit.

2) You’ll need to make sure your SEO is in tip top shape. Honda isn’t going anywhere ranking for that term, but you’re not Honda. Content alone is not going to do it, you’re going to need to build and/or buy some links.

3) You must also realize that you are setting yourself to lose some advertising dollars from your consumers finding alternatives on just their first look into that search space. Hopefully you control more than just 1 listing in the organic results, because otherwise the search results page has 9 other results just on that front page alone, and probably 9 more advertisers running ads on that page.

Is it a Good Idea?

I think we may see it be more common, especially for advertisements about specific products from a company. Honda sells new cars too, but this commercial is to boost their used cars product, and because it takes two clicks (on small text even) from their home page to get to the same place, it makes a lot of sense just to direct them to Google.

Another advantage is that in Honda’s case, they have local dealers selling Honda Certified Used Cars and the ads are geo-targeted. So I can not only find Honda’s site, but I can also find my local Honda dealer and search their inventory from their site (hopefully).

5 comments Visited 9643 times June 18th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Does SEO work in Hawaii?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on May 15th, 2007

I was gone all last week, in Maui. Yeah baby. It was our first time to Maui, and I loved it. I didn’t even think about writing a post the whole week, I am sure you understand. We had a great time, we enjoyed the beauty of the island, stayed in an amazing place with good friends, played a bunch of golf, hung out with my wonderful wife (who, we discovered, is allergic to macadamia nuts, poor thing), and made some new friends. One of the new friends we actually met on the plane over, his name is John Kennedy, and he is a manager of a wonderful magic/comedy show in Lahaina on Maui called Warren and Annabelle’s. If you are visiting Maui, you MUST attend this show, it was amazing. John, and the entire W&A staff treated us like family (in a good way), and we will never forget the experience, it was fortunately unforgettable. We saw the show on Monday night and were on the island the rest of the week, so later on in the week we called John and he kindly joined us for a round of golf on the Makena North course (which has some of the best views on the island, better than the Kapalua Plantation course, and is frankly a better course, but once again I digress).

During our round the usual topics were up for discussion, and we eventually discussed what we do for a living. I had given John a sleeve of SoloSEO logo golf balls, so he asked about SoloSEO specifically. (In fact, I will be happy to send out a sleeve of these Callaway HX Tour balls, to the first person who leaves a nice comment, and sends their address to info@soloseo.com, these are so rare and new, not even Michael has a sleeve yet). John listened to my simple explanation of what SoloSEO was, and he asked a question many have asked previously… “Does it work?” Excellent question. Either due to beauty of the course, my miserable play, or our competitive banter I don’t remember ever answering John’s question, so I apologize, and now thought I would take some time to fully answer John’s question here. John, a resounding YES, SEO does work, and here is why.

SEO is a process of getting your site into a format in which the search engines can scan it, quasi understand it, categorize it, then refer it to others when the search engines feel your site can deliver what the search client is looking for based on the text they entered into the search engine. Any of the search engines want to handle searches as efficiently and effectively as possible. They are attempting to earn the public’s trust and gain search traffic, ultimately so they can demand advertising dollars from firms who want access to the traffic the search engine attracts daily. This is why we have sections on a search engine results page, consisting of both organic (free) and paid (ads paid for to the search engine for positioning) search results. To keep the public’s trust, search engines must not unfairly mess with the organic search results, which are algorithmically based on a number of factors, including many of the resulting work we control/create in SEO processes.

In the past there were an enterprising, yet deceitful group, who learned to “game” the search engines, using what has been termed “black hat” techniques. These techniques essentially fooled search engines into believing some poor quality site actually had quality content, and reputable products or services which matched what the search clients were search for. Instead, when these pages were visited, search clients would find a bunch of nonsensical text coupled with paid text ads, ironically usually placed by the search engine which originally referred the searcher to this garbage site. This did not make the search engines appear proficient, and the black-hat site owners didn’t care. They were greedily hoping search clients would click on the paid ads, rather than the browser’s back button, so they could make some commission paid to them from the search engines. Very creepy. It would be like finding what appeared to be the best ad in the Yellow Pages for a plumber, then driving to the advertised address only to find a smelly, dark, smoke filled shop, with a greesy guy convincing you to take some pamphlets they had on real plumbers. Then the slime ball expecting the Yellow Pages to pay them for each pamphlet taken by the originally deceived client. It wouldn’t fly in the real world, and it shouldn’t have flown in search.

Who were the big losers in this game of search deceit? First, the searchers, who were looking for something, but made to go through junk sites to find it. Second, the search engines, who were attempting to provide clients with a relevant site, but instead delivered garbage, making the engine look bad, and hurting their reputation. Third, the firms paying the search engines to place the company ads on quality pages, which were instead placed on pages of non-sensical text, which unfortunately associated the firm with the junk site. In all, it was a very bad period in search, and ultimately called into question the search engine’s ability to decipher the good pages from the bad ones, and the effectiveness of good SEO technique. Now the good news, the search engines are now doing an excellent job, really since November 2006, of figuring out these junk sites and removing them from the search results pages, and search has become much better for it.

Now the search engines have a better ability of determining the quality of the sites they index, good SEO technique is more important than ever. Now solid SEO can actually have a bigger and better influence on your site’s performance, than was possible when the search engines results could be tainted by the black hats. Now we can be assured if we do the SEO work, which is most definitely work, then our hard labor will be rewarded, and our sites will perform better, since site quality is more identifiable. The search engines have essentially created a situation where those who work hard are rewarded, and those that still attempt to cheat are more than likely caught, and their offending sites punished. Just how it should have always been.

There are many wonderful, and quality SEO tools out there, but SoloSEO offers the most comprehensive set of online SEO tools, all in one place. SoloSEO gives you a location where you can manage all your SEO processes, from link building to keyword research, from content creation to online competitive analysis, and keeps it all organized for you. In fact, just having a SoloSEO account can improve your online competitive knowledge. SoloSEO offers monthly SEO related reports that can be customized, and sent to you on a monthly basis, via email, without you lifting a finger. With SoloSEO, you will not only know more about the online competitive situation of your industry, but you will have the tools at your disposal to flex some serious SEO muscle, and improve your competitive online position.

So there you have it John, SEO works, everywhere, and even in Hawaii (even if I don’t). SEO is becoming a better use of marketing time and effort because the search engines finally have their act together. To you John on a personal note, thank you for the conversation on the plane, and advice on what to do on Maui, thank you for the evening at Warren and Annabelle’s is was most memorable, thank you for the golf, it was a blast, and thank you for the question, it was an excellent one. We look forward to meeting up with you again soon on Maui (or here)! Until then, to you a heartfelt Aloha and Mahalo!

5 comments Visited 3383 times May 15th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Google… Here they go again.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on May 1st, 2007

I read an interesting/alarming Associated Press article by Dibya Sarkar, AP business writer, in the local paper yesterday. Four states, including Arizona, California, Utah, and Virginia, have agreed to “free consulting services” provided by Google. Essentially Google is going to help these states make searching and finding online public documents much easier. While I am the first to admit the Utah state web site needs some serious help, I have been frustrated more than once looking for items which should be much easier to find then they are, I am not totally okay with the planned partnership. I will admit there have been occasions I have been navigating around utah.gov to no avail, not finding what I needed, and actually have attempted to use Google possibly find a page indexed in their SERPs, but with little success there either. Turns out states really haven’t done a good job making these documents truly public, there are those tax dollars at work again. But despite the mess, is Google the best way to go as “search consultants?”

There are those in the article who raised some concerns over Google’s occasional privacy gaffs, and the possibility that some private information might make its way to the search public. I think the hesitation is legitimate, none of us wants our Social Security number out there for the ID thieves to pilfer. So I too hope these states will be responsible and keep all private information private, even at the risk of holding some important documents back for now, before they go and throw the vaults wide open to the brutally efficient, ravenous spiders of Google.

From a business/SEO perspective this partnership also raises other concerns. Are we now going to be forced to compete for keywords against state governments and their Gigabytes of content to rank in the SERPs? Some industries will be hurt more than others, but off the top of my head I could see legal firms, business consulting firms, and accounting firms being big losers in search if all this content is indexed and added to Google’s already gorged servers. As more content pours online, competition for keywords is going intensify, and the situation may make search a more frustrating and difficult task if the SEs don’t change. This content boom adds a strong argument to the importance of categorized search ASAP. If the public is without a simple way to categorize search results, many businesses are going to find themselves buried in the SERPs underneath content created by their own tax dollars. How grossly ironic, how patently unfair.

Add comment Visited 2728 times May 1st, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Report Search Spam

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on April 27th, 2007

I was plowing through the myriad of blogs yesterday and found a couple of things I found interesting in Rand’s post called Identifying and Calling out Web Spam on Engine Blogs. While I find the endless online discussion of marketing spam, what it is, where it is, and the ethics of spam to be as about as dry a topic as there is, worse than reading the tax code, there was a couple of points in this post worth comment. One had really nothing to do with spam theory, but was generally good online SEO advice, but I did take issue with this point.

Rand states there is some unspoken, yet understood code of conduct amongst SEOs, that they simply do not report one another for spamming techniques used by some to improve site rankings. Silly. Rand doesn’t proclaim to be educated in the art of competition or business, but in SEO, so he gets a free pass on this affront to the very basics of competitive theory. To those of us who are running our own non-SEO business, if we find our competitors are benefiting in the rankings by utilizing spamming techniques, then we owe it to ourselves and firms to report them. I do not consider myself to be a SEO, just a business person who uses SEO techniques to help our businesses do better online. And I believe most of our readers are in the same boat, just business people trying to make a living. Unfair competition is never allowable, and the “aw shucks” response is rarely successful. Every one of us needs to join the fight to level the search playing field, making it as fair as possible for everyone to be successful if they compete respectfully online. If your competitors are up to no good, and gaming the SERPs, report them, and continue to report them until the problem is addressed. The unwritten SEO code of conduct can be adhered to by that little group, but it makes no sense in business, it is bad policy. Spamming is bad for the net, bad for the economy and flat out cheating in every sense. I am looking forward to the day when spammers are picked up and prosecuted in a court of law, just as is done daily to other lying, cheating, greedy people in the offline business world.

I would go so far to say, if you know your competitor well enough, and are friendly with them, it might be worth a phone call or email just to let them know what is going on with their site. If the competitor has an SEO working for them, they may not be aware the SEO is using spamming techniques to improve the company’s search rankings. This heads-up might solve the problem right there, and it will keep things friendly. If you aren’t friends, or don’t feel comfortable communicating directly, then report the offenses. When your competitor’s pages disappear into supplemental purgatory, and their rankings fall, I am sure your competitor will have a nice talk with their SEO guy to figure out why. Which will be where the SEO blames the SE algo, the tides, and global warming for the instant drop in the SERP results.

On a more positive note.

Rand claims his firm only reports on spam inadvertently in their blog posts, and gives four reasons. The 4 points really don’t matter to most of us, so its not big news. But point #2, taken as general advice, is an excellent reminder as to where we need to focus our online marketing efforts. He states:

You’ll have a far greater return on your productivity time optimizing your site, building content, getting links and conducting press & marketing than you will reporting your competitors for what looks like a paid link.

Okay, as mentioned above, forget the garbage about not reporting on your competitors concerning spam, it doesn’t take much time, so just do it for Google here and Yahoo! here, and protect yourself and your business. But when the majority of our online marketing efforts is spent working and implementing good solid SEO techniques, then we are going to see results and better our ranking over time, and these benefits become long term. That much is very true and it is very sound advice, it is nice to see some established SEOs suggest we focus on the basics.

Build your online business, as you have built your off-line business. Focus on quality, service, branding, and SEO the site the right way, and a sustainable, solid ranking is very probable. But make sure to protect yourself if competitors attempt to slime their way in above you in the SERPs, report them, and continue to report on them until they are buried in supplemental oblivion, where they belong until they get their act together.

3 comments Visited 4124 times April 27th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Google Categories – Changes to Competitive SEO

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on April 19th, 2007

Lee Odden blogged about Google Categories yesterday. I wasn’t able to duplicate the categories look, but it did get me thinking about the ramifications to online competition if categories in search become commonplace. As well as how categories might influence our SEO strategies as business owners.

Competing in the non-online marketplace has been a focus of research, and resulted in various competitive philosophies put forth by some of the most respected academic business minds in the world. Michael Porter of Harvard fame is one who has essentially dedicated his entire academic life to the concepts of competitiveness, and is seen my many (including myself) as the foremost expert in traditional competitive strategic analysis. But it is interesting to note, competing online is a different animal, and requires a different approach many traditional marketers aren’t quite comfortable with. Let’s take the shoe industry for example. Locally I can think of maybe a couple dozen places I could go and buy shoes, depending on what type of shoe I was looking for. So these local shoe resellers now compete against one another to attract my business. They buy newspaper and radio ads, do mailings, maybe rent a billboard, but they each attempt to get their message out to us, to keep us coming to them, and hopefully staying away from their competitors. But they now also need to keep our attention away from online shoe retailers, which is quite a different task, but important as more potential clients find online shopping appealing. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I bought shoes from a local brick and mortar store. I usually buy from Zappos.com… because I love the huge selection, the customer reviews, the free overnight shipping, and the free shipping on returns. It is a fabulous, no hassle system. Not to mention I don’t have to drive to the mall, deal with the crowds, or with my 2 year old daughter demanding to ride the “wee” (her term for slide) at the mall’s germ ridden treehouse (playground). It is a cesspool of all things icky (bless my wife for always having some Purell on hand to keep me sane).

So as more brick and mortar shops finally decide they also need to have an online presence, they will quickly determine the online competitive environment is very different, and can be intimidating. Not only are there far more competitors, as the geographical bounds are erased, but there are also non-retail sites competing for the same precious keywords. For example, if you type in “running shoes” in Google, you will see both online shoes stores, but also sites which review running shoes listed in the SERPs. So online retailers have to not only compete against more than just other retailers for keywords, but against information sites as well, as they attempt to squeeze onto the first SERP.

I have mentioned in previous posts that we use SEO techniques to improve our sites, so they perform better than our competitors sites. We pay little attention to other sites competing for the same keywords, who aren’t selling the same products, or are just informational sites. For example, we personally don’t care if Wikipedia ranks higher than our site for a particular keyword(s), since a potential customer can’t buy the products we sell from Wiki. We don’t consider Wikiesque sites an important aspect to our competitor focused SEO efforts. But how would Google’s Categories SERP influence competitive SEO efforts? In the Google screen shot in Lee’s post, we can see the categories listed as Comparison Shopping, Reviews, Stores, References and Others. I would be interested to know how these categories were decided upon, and if these will be the only categories for every search return, or will the search categories change based on the term searched? Is the order of the categories consistent, or will it change based on the keyword searched? We will need answers to these questions to properly prepare our SEO strategies. Obviously Google will need to be aware of those which will attempt to game the system and get their site listed in the top category, or in as many categories as possible, without regard to which category they should properly be placed within. I would imagine Google will only allow any given domain to be included in one category, period, or will have some protocol in place to best deal with these issues and how to police the system to hopefully be as efficient and relevant as possible.

Despite all the potential headaches Google might face, I like the idea of searches organized by category. And what I like most as a business person is through a search engine category system, the online competitive environment would more closely mirror the non-online competitive world. Now retailers could compete to be included in the Stores section of a SERP, and Wikipedia and others will be relegated to the References or Reviews sections where they belong. Also, as a searcher out to buy a product, hopefully it would be possible to set my preferences to drop the sites in the Reviews, References and Others sections, so I would just get a page full of retailers for me to peruse, perfect! Then, if we also throw the whole concept of Local search into the discussion, all of a sudden I could see the same couple dozen local shoes stores mentioned earlier listed on a locally-based, shoe oriented SERP. That would be pretty cool, I still won’t buy from them, but it would be pretty cool. As they now would compete against one another, as they have been doing in the “real world” for quite some time. Pretty interesting stuff.

3 comments Visited 4537 times April 19th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Accidental Page 1 Ranking for One Word Keywords

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 27th, 2007

Have you ever found yourself ranked for a popular one word keyword that you never intended on ranking for? Maybe we’re an odd ball, but the top one word keyword (besides our company name) that drives traffic to our site is “tagged“. That’s right folks, as in tag you’re it. Last year I created the Blog Tag Tree and it drew in literally thousands of links, many of which used the anchor text of “tagged”. Obviously this wasn’t one of those keywords in my keyword glossary, so I found it interesting how much traffic we actually get from this pretty unrelated keyword.

Content alone isn’t going to make it happen, links with specific anchor text is needed.

What one word keywords do you “accidentally” rank for?

5 comments Visited 3749 times March 27th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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How to Get a Double Listing in Google

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 16th, 2007

Step 1 – Pick a topic that you can write a series of posts/articles on.

Step 2 – Start each post with the same topic name.

Step 3 – Give each post its own unique title appended to the topic name.

Step 4 – Name the post using both the topic name and title.

Step 5 – Write useful unique content.

Presto! Well, it worked for me, so with the right phrase it should work for you.

I didn’t intend to get a double listing by starting this series of “Starting your SEO Business”, but it’s a nice bonus. For every search I see it in the top 10 (in Google) we take 2 spots with the double listing. Try this query to see the double listing for yourself:

» start seo business

11 comments Visited 13920 times March 16th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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How do the Presidential Candidates Rate for SEO?

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 13th, 2007

A recent article posted on Slashdot looked at various website design points of the top 6 Presidential Candidates. Here I compare SEO statistics of the top 6 Presidential Candidates’ websites: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain.

I will compare SEO statistics and information about the age of domain, length of domain registration, domain characteristics, backlinks, Technorati links, .edu links, Alexa Rank, Page Strength, indexed pages, supplemental results, name search on Google, other search terms on Google, and pay-per-click. The order of candidates is listed in order of “rank” within each category of statistics.

Age of Domain

This comes from either Alexa data or WHOIS data. The age of domain is important in SEO because older sites typically hold more credibility and trust with search engines.

Hillary Clinton – 22-Oct-2001
John Edwards – 16-Jul-1998
Barack Obama – 28-Dec-2004
John McCain – 17-Jul-1997
Mitt Romney – 08-Feb-2002
Rudy Giuliani – 17-Nov-2006

Length of Domain Registration

This statistic looks at how many years the domain has been registered for beyond the create date (based on WHOIS data), and the candidates are listed in descending order of year that the domain expires. It’s considered good SEO practice to register a domain for a longer amount of time (5+ years)

John McCain – 15 years, expires 26-Jan-2017
Hillary Clinton – 15 years, expires 22-Oct-2016
Barack Obama – 11 years, expires 28-Dec-2015
John Edwards – 11 years, expires 14-Jul-2009
Mitt Romney – 8 years, expires 08-Feb-2010
Rudy Giuliani – 2 years, expires 17-Nov-2008

Type in Domain

Everyone except Rudy Giuliani has a perfect type in domain for their name, so you can just type in their name, add the .com and you’re at their site. This may hurt Rudy a little, but his last name is hard to remember how to spell for many so perhaps joinrudy2008.com is better in some ways.

Backlinks

Backlinks, or inbound links, are how many sites link to your site. These figures are from Yahoo.

Barack Obama – 119,909
Hillary Clinton – 79,219
Mitt Romney – 39,245
Rudy Giuliani – 38,236
John Edwards – 15,498
John McCain – 7,428

Technorati Links

This is used as a measure of popularity in the blogosphere world. The more the better.

Barack Obama – 6,527
John Edwards – 4,952
Hillary Clinton – 3,710
Mitt Romney – 1,756
John McCain – 670
Rudy Giuliani – 342

.edu links

Links from educational institutions are regarded as passing more weight or confidence as a backlink, and are highly desirable (and hard to get).

Hillary Clinton – 97
Barack Obama – 87
John Edwards – 35
Mitt Romney – 33
Rudy Giuliani – 21
John McCain – 0

Alexa Rank

I know Alexa isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting comparison. The lower the number, “the better”. The number represents the rank of the website out of the top websites on the Internet in terms of traffic. The most visited site on the Internet is ranked 1. A zero (0) means either an error or not enough traffic to rank.

Barack Obama – 12,581
Hillary Clinton – 18,727
John Edwards – 33,485
Mitt Romney – 129,490
John McCain – 178,788
Rudy Giuliani – 0

Page Strength

John Edwards – 6.5/10
Hillary Clinton – 5.5/10
Barack Obama – 5/0
Mitt Romney – 4/10
Rudy Giuliani – 3.5/10
John McCain – 3.5/10

Indexed Pages

Google and Yahoo both give a different number of pages in their index, so I’ll show both, Google/Yahoo.

John Edwards – 4230/66
John McCain – 457/155
Hillary Clinton – 387/1133
Mitt Romney – 309/157
Barack Obama – 148/525
Rudy Giuliani – 91/34

Supplemental Results

If pages show up as supplemental results (use this query, just change domain) it means they aren’t carrying as much as weight as they could be and their rankings probably suffer. The figure shown below is supplemental/total indexed, as well as what percent of pages are supplemental results out of their total number of indexed pages (both from Google). Lower % is better.

John Edwards – 260/4230 (6%)
Mitt Romney – 71/309 (23%)
John McCain – 104/457 (23%)
Barack Obama – 35/148 (24%)
Rudy Giuliani – 38/91 (42%)
Hillary Clinton – 168/387 (43%)

Name search on Google

If you type in the candidate’s name in Google, where does their “official” election site come up in the SERPs?

Hillary Clinton – 1st result
Barack Obama – 1st result
John Edwards – 1st result
Mitt Romney – 1st result
Rudy Giuliani – 2nd result, 1st is Wikipedia entry
John McCain – 33rd result, 1st is his Senate page

Rankings for name, party, etc

Terms searched for included: presidential election, presidential candidates, 2008 elections, compare candidates, and candidates issues. The top 100 results were checked for each search term. If no ranking is listed below, the candidates site does not rank in the top 100 for that term.

Barack Obama – #35 for presidential candidates, #66 for candidates issues
Hillary Clinton – (none)
John Edwards – (none)
John McCain – (none)
Mitt Romney – (none)
Rudy Giuliani – (none)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Terms searched for included: presidential election, presidential candidates, 2008 elections, compare candidates, candidates issues, democrat, democratic party, republican, and republican party. Certainly there are many others I could have typed for but these are ones I thought would be critical to any PPC campaign.

Barack Obama – presidential election, presidential candidates, 2008 elections, democrat, democratic party,
John McCain – presidential election, presidential candidates
Hillary Clinton – (none)
John Edwards – (none)
Mitt Romney – (none)
Rudy Giuliani – (none)

Obviously we are very early on in the elections, but certainly SEO efforts should be underway if they are going to occur at all. In some ways it is evident there are definitely SEO strategies in place, but what about the lack of PPC? What are some of your observations?

Also check out my post from yesterday about what Analytics programs the Presidential Candidates are using.

5 comments Visited 7163 times March 13th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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