The hapless ramblings of an intoxicated web designer.

Today I watched this fascinating video from SEOmoz guru Rand Fishkin and thought I’d pass on my evolutionary thoughts on his concept. Keep reading for some useful tips.

Linkjuice river

As this video suggests, Google aims to pass link juice up the river to its apparent source. If Google is therefore seeing past our link hungry nature and identifying the true source of information, then surely it also makes sense that we, as publicists, need to be at this sweet spot.

So what if, as is usually the case, someone else is in that sweetspot? Well, you could try an innumerable number of tactics. You could spam links, leverage social media, you could black-hat that particular page, you could try to grow links organically. Most of the time you’ll fail at this. Why? Because the other site is older and, most likely, has done exactly the same as you with the above and possibly better.

So how do I take over then when someone else is so strongly positioned? Read on to discover how.

Being washed down the river

Most people are trying to go as far upriver as they can in Google’s eyes. We’re trying to be the first to spot a great article and link to it. Hopefully people will see our site instead of the original source and link to us right? Well, no.

At most this will place us slightly down river from the source. Pretty soon some big player will post their link and push you even further downriver. Everyone will link to him, if not the original source and you’ll, quite literally, get washed out.

Find the mountain source

So, how do you end this effect and stop getting your pages pushed downriver? Take a closer look at the ‘original source’. What’s special about this page, other than the fact everyone is linking to it? What if it had its own ‘original source‘? What if you were that original source of the ‘original source’? Now THAT would be something beautiful.

We all know Google loves links from similar content. The reason Google loves this content is because it’s trying to sniff out the source of the river; any scent is worth following up. So, what if we gave Google exactly what it wants - a really strong scent?

Practicalities

For those of you who don’t like reading long explanations I’ve made it very simple. Essentially what we’re doing here is transferring the ‘original source’ status from another site onto our own. As an original source we’re immune to the usual downriver complications.

1. Identify a highly popular article that could be improved upon.

2. Create an almost identical article, but in your own words.

3. Add to it, improve it, make it your own.

4. Find a way to post a valid link on the ‘original source’ page that has the original popular article. There’s many ways to do this. Check through the page source to see which links have no rel=nofollow. You will be surprised at the places where you can find these.

5. Carry out standard link building on your new page. Give Google the trust it needs to recognise you as the true ‘original source’.

I’d love to hear your feedback on this strategy. Is it a moral one? What other implications do you think this strategy has? I’d love to hear your views.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Today I thought I would discuss one of the lighter sides of search engine optimisation. Recently a friend of mine introduced me to a novel SEO tactic that I had, quite frankly, completely overlooked.

Pink hat SEO is the practice of pretending to be a female in order to increase the number of stumbles, diggs, reviews, etc that you receive. In today’s male dominated internet this can give you a significant advantage. People will always respond better to your ‘female’ persona.

Isn’t it immoral?

Well, strictly speaking yes it is, but I don’t think it harms anyone. I think there’s nothing better than a quick spike of testosterone to make people’s eyes pluck up and pay attention to the quality content that you’re offering.

The downside

Expect to receive plenty of PM’s that quite frankly you don’t want to read. Another perspective is that this is quite humorous and you can have hours of fun reading the silly chat up lines that people use!

How much do you benefit?

A great deal. You will be surprised at just how much of an impact it actually has.

My perspective

I think, in circles where you aren’t actively socialising and are merely looking for reviews, this is a good tactic. I wouldn’t use this in say a forum or other circle that I actively socialise with though because, quite frankly, it just wouldn’t feel right.

What are your views on this? Have any of you used this strategy before? I would love to hear your stories concerning this.

Popularity: 28% [?]

In today’s marketplace people seem to obsess greatly over pagerank. It seems you’re nobody without pagerank. Today I thought I would put this misconception to the test using a simple experiment.

Search engines use two tools to determine your SERPs ranking: pagerank and keyword density. In today’s pagerank hungry environment the vast majority of people seem to forget the keyword density concept. Clearly it’s much easier to understand a rating from 1-10, than a more abstract concept such as keyword density.

The reality though, is that you will see pages on the first page of SERPs with a very low pagerank (even for some highly competitive keywords). How is this possible? Here’s how…

So what is keyword density?

Well, keyword density is simply a measure of the % that each word takes up in each article that you write. If I use the word ‘density’ 15/60 times I will have a keyword density of 25% for that keyword. Search engines identify keywords as having a density of between 2-5%. Any lower and they will not register as keywords. Any higher and your content will be flagged as spam. I generally aim for a keyword density of around 3.5% so that I’m safely within the safe-zone.

In addition, search engines discount ’stop words’ such as ‘a’ or ‘the’ so you need to take this into account using your estimations.

The experiment

Ok well, I find there’s nothing better than getting out there and doing a real experiment! Firstly, lets pick a high competition keyword area, lets say ‘Google Adsense’.

Step 1: Keyword selection

The first stage was to select my keywords. In this case I opted for the following:

“make money from/using google adsense”

Step 2: Buying a domain

Domain names are really important. If they are keyword rich they can really help your search engine performance. I did a quick search and found:

“www.howtomakemoneywithadsense.co.uk”

I paid a grand total of £4 to use this for 2 years. It is important to remember to always register a domain for 2 years as search engines penalise/sandbox 1 year registrations.

Step 3: Choosing titles and headers

I always like to think of this as a separate stage due to its importance. Higher weight is given to keywords that are used within the title, headers and description. I carefully selected some keyword rich content.

Step 4: Initial content writing

The next stage was to just write some content. Use good writing and try not to think about keyword density too much. This will make your content sound natural and bring out all the natural variations that people use in their normal searches.

Step 5: Design the web site

For this experiment I’m using a single page website since I know that search engines give preference to landing pages and that the vast majority of sites have incredibly keyword-poor landing pages. I decided to use an open, web2.0 style to improve readability. The whole site from start to finish took 2 hours to make. You can see the finished site here.

Step 6: The keyword density tweaking

The final stage in the process was the keyword density tweaking. I tested the site using the keyword density & prominence tool from ranks.nl. I find this to be the best tool I have used up till now.

My initial results showed that NONE of my keywords were within the magic 2-5% density. Some were ranking around the 1.5-1-8% region, but would not have been identified as high prominence keywords by search engines. This is the typical result from unguided content writing. Almost there…but not quite…

The next step was to start reinforcing my keywords. I went through my content and made minor modifications that caused my keyword density for my selected keywords to shoot up:

What many long tail seo theorists don’t realise is that by using keyword clusters in your tweaking you can also achieve high prominence for 2 word, 3 word and even 4 word phrases. This is where I would expect to make my real volume in search engine hits:

You must be doing some promotion!

Yes I will, but a bare minimum. I will submit the site to Google Sitemaps and link to it from some forum signatures. That’s it.

Victory over a blind man

In a couple of months I’ll return with the results of this experiment. Hopefully it will indicate that you can get search engine hits from keyword density alone. I hope this will make a few people consider how little pagerank actually counts for without keyword performance to back it up.

I would love to hear people’s views and feedback on this experiment. For those who missed it you can visit the actual site here.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Here are just a few reasons why I use Stumbleupon every single day for my web browsing…

1. I love randomness

I don’t think I’m alone on this one. Many times I’ve sat staring at the google search window looking for something new. Sure, Digg and other bookmarking sites have some random content but often it’s the same old stuff. Stumbleupon gives me true randomness, and I’ve discovered sites that both make me laugh and make me record them in my del.icio.us favourites for later consumption. Often I find sites that are very valuable to me in my work as well.

2. It doesn’t involve me typing

I hate typing. It involves exercising my fingers…

3. I don’t find myself chatting to 13 year olds

Digg in particular is legendary for this one. Many of the web savvy generation are just going through puberty right now and are, quite frankly, a major reason why I don’t use Digg very much.

4. Stumbleupon tunes in to my tastes

I just love this concept. It’s very web3.0, I feel. I’ve noticed Stumbleupon has an uncanny way of finding sites that I will enjoy. Giving feedback is a great way of doing this, and the vast majority of sites I visit either get the thumbs up or the dreaded thumbs down.

I think many other users do this as well and so Stumbleupon is much harder to influence by a small pocket of cooperative digging.

5. Stumbleupon seems friendlier

I get the feeling that Digg is a bit, ummm, elitist. The fact that the whole rating system is much more behind the scenes makes Stumbleupon users much less mercenary, I feel. There’s also no apparent ‘elite class’ for people to be jealous of.

6. Stumbleupon is bigger

It’s a little known fact, but Stumbleupon is actually much larger than Digg even. More hits are sent out from the stumbleupon toolbar than all of the Digg topics put together. Digg receives a higher profile simply because it’s legendary, but somewhat temporary, Digg spikes get a lot of attention. Stumbleupon’s day-in day-out hits often pass by, under-the-radar so to speak.

7. Stumbleupon has a more diverse usership

You’d be very surprised at the kind of people who use Stumbleupon. There’s a far higher proportion of women, non-geeky, less tech-savvy people who use stumbleupon. Using a toolbar is far easier than visiting a website. Often the toolbar will be recommended from a friend to people who are otherwise oblivious of the bookmarking ‘revolution’.

8. I don’t end up reading top 10 lists..

..like this one. Digg is famous for its top 10 lists. Top10 lists are a great way to grab attention and summarise content. Unfortunately, after a while, they do begin to grate on people.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Today I came across a new site that might spell the end of Digg and, quite possibly, for tales the end of social bookmarking altogether. Diggxchange is a new service that allows users to collaboratively exchange diggs with other users. All you need to do is register and send a few diggs out and you’ll get those diggs flooding back.

As a site it looks pretty basic and I’ve had a few problems with loading speeds. This doesn’t fool me though. The concept seems like the next step in the spam arms race that seems to be overshadowing the internet. I expect very soon to see a site that allows exchange of diggs, reddits, stumbles, you name it, all into one.

How can they stop it?

Well basically, I don’t think they can. I’ve read quite a few understandably poisonous blog posts describing how all the users will be banned from the bookmarking sites but really it doesn’t take a genius to realise that by mixing in a few (or even a majority of) randomly selected innocent bystanders into site output you can prevent the bookmarking sites from taking action. How can you ban all the users if you will be mostly banning innocent people?

Natural evolution

I think the internet is a true expression of Darwinism. The weak shall perish and, judging from Digg’s front page content, I won’t be shedding many tears.

One of the wonderful things about this is that, as the bookmark sites die, so will those who prey on them. Just like the mammals taking over from the dinosaurs something better, something more intelligent, will rise from the ashes and inherit the netosphere.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Today I installed the dofollow plugin for wordpress by Kimmo Suominen. This popular plugin removes the default rel=’nofollow’ microformat from Wordpress visitor comment links. It’s just one of a range of plugins available. Andy Beard, a leading supporter and member of the dofollow community, has kindly put together a comprehensive guide to removing the nofollow from a wide range of blogging engines.

So why did I take this step? Here’s just a few reasons…

1. So not to deceive my visitors

I think that the vast majority of people who see the ‘website’ box on my comments form will believe that they are receiving the full value from that link. Therefore without removing the ‘nofollow’ I am, by default, deceiving my visitors. This isn’t acceptable to me.

2. Show appreciation for participation

I think comments enrich the content. Many times I have read an article and scrolled down looking for a quick link to something relating to the topic. Comments also show that my posts have authority and have been approved/disapproved by the wider online community. This mandate is incredibly valuable.

3. I’m not an information dead-end

Call me a hippy, but without outgoing links your users will have to go back to square one and open Google, Stumbleupon, etc to search for more relevant information. Just like a river, current has to flow out as well as in from a website for it to become a major pathway on the ‘blogosphere’.

4. Nofollow is a plaster over a bullet wound

Nofollow should be a perfect solution to the blog spam problem. Unfortunately it has proved far less than sufficient. There is still great value in standard click through traffic when spam posting is automated. Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress has stated that nofollow is a failure.

5. Spam filters work better

Spam filters aren’t perfect, but they are still pretty damn good. I don’t mind occasionally pruning the few bad apples that slipped through the net for the benefit of my other users. There’s a fairly comprehensive guide to spam filtering and other techniques on Sixapart.

Popularity: 36% [?]