Archive for March, 2006

I knew this day would come sometime….Stuntdubl’s moving on.

I really feel lucky to have had Todd on my team for the time he was with us, and I know that whatever future he chooses that he’ll be a success. In my opinion Todd’s one of the very best SEO’s in the world, and beyond that he’s a great guy to be around. I’m going to miss our chats on the balcony here talking about the latest forum and blog news that we’ve been reading.

I think this past year we’ve learned some from each other and I think we’re both better for the experience.

I’m going to miss you Todd – but I know that Great Things are in your future!

See Todd’s Goodbye to We Build Pages on stuntdubl.com

Popularity: 34% [?]

Yea, yea, I know that 99% of my readers also read SEOMoz.org, but I still gotta point out a great article by Michael Martinez in SEOMoz about high quality links vs sheer number of backlinks.

Michael starts with:

I have to admit I almost gag every time I read a forum discussion that starts out with a variation on the following:

I have a (insert topic here) Web site with a couple hundred quality links. The site is (insert number of months) months old but it still seems to be sandboxed. My competitors all have (insert some number here) backlinks and their pages are (spammy/unprofessional/incomplete/duplicate content/icky). But they rank higher than me. Why is that?

and towards the end he states:

The point is, if you don’t trust the source of your links for your own surfing, that’s a pretty good indication of what kind of quality you’re getting with your backlinks.  High Quality Links are not easy to get.  They may indeed cost you money, but they aren’t priced on the basis of PR.  They are priced on the basis of a business model that doesn’t take search engine placement into consideration.

and everything in the middle is good thoughts to chew on.

Check out the whole article by Michael Martinez on High Quality Links.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Last month I set up an advertising arrangement with a nice old site. I’ll call this site "Big Site A".

In researching "Big Site A" in the wayback machine I saw that it had a kinda shady history long ago. By shady I mean that it once had been selling links to some questionable websites on many of their pages, so I wasn’t sure if the link value was still passing, so I did a test.

The Test:
I found a nice subpage on "Big Site A", and found another site that we work (Smaller Site B) which had relevant content on it that I thought would make a nice voting test.

I used a 10 word phrase as the link text from "Big Site A", linking to a relevant sub page on "Smaller Site B".

"Smaller Site B" ranked #7 for that 10 word phrase prior to testing. Once the search engines indexed the page on "Big Site A" that linked to the relevant sub page of "Smaller Site B", the page went from #7 to #2 overnight.

Results:
Yup, though "Big Site A" had some shady history in it’s past, it still passed link value. Good Deal.
Sure, it was a nice relevant link for click throughs, but knowing it’s passing some link love makes me feel even better.

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Technorati Tags: link building, links, google, yahoo, seo, sem, internet marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing

Popularity: 38% [?]

Andrew Johnson just did a great interview with Markus Frind.  If you’re not familiar with his name, perhaps you’re familiar with plentyoffish.com. If you’re not familiar with either his name, or his site – then you should  familiarize yourself with both – why?

Because he’s making $10,000 a day with Adsense! Read the interview here.

Markus also has a thread on Webmaster World called "How I made a million in 3 months"

Speaking of Adsense, I see that Corrupt DMOZ Editor has a post about the adsense blacklist site that’s been making news this week.

…. on another side note… if any of you ever wondered, yes, we do adsense on some sites…and we do some affiliate sites as well…we do much more than SEO for clients….I think any SEO company would be crazy to only service clients and not do some of their own stuff as well. In fact, this year I’m hoping that our own sites will generate more income than client income.

Popularity: 32% [?]

With the high rate of attacks on women in secluded parking lots, especially during evening hours, the Minneapolis City Council has established a "Women Only" parking lot at the Mall of America. Even the parking lot attendants are exclusively female so that a comfortable and safe environment is created for patrons.

Below is the first picture available of this world-first women-only parking lot in Minnesota.

Sorry to all the women I’ve just offended….at least I know most SEO’s are guys, so I’ll get more chuckle’s than hate responses

Popularity: 27% [?]

I was over at Dan’s blog (I Hate Google) reading older posts I’d missed, when I saw his reference to the $39 Experiment by Tom Locke…maybe it’s because it’s after 2:00am, but it had me chuckling here.

So, of course, my next thought after my amusement was "how many links did this net him?"

Yahoo (at the time of this writing) is showing 3,170 backlinks to his site….if you take that into account as well, his $39 experiment payed of VERY WELL…well, if he has a value for links.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Co Citation – A major search engine ranking factor that few SEO’s understand. 

What is Co Citation?
I found a nice page on sourceforge.net that gives a nice definition of co citation.

Bibliographic Co-Citation is a popular similarity measure used to establish a subject similarity between two items. If A and B are both cited by C, they may be said to be related to one another, even though they don’t directly reference each other. If A and B are both cited by many other items, they have a stronger relationship. The more items they are cited by, the stronger their relationship is.

Now it’s past 11:00 pm, and my designer has gone home for the night, so here’s my chicken scratch of co citation.

 Sites A, B, C, & D are said to be related via co citation. They don’t link to each other, but sites that link to them, tend to link to the other sites. 

Let me try to put this in more SEO english by showing you Good and Bad examples of co citation.

Let’s pretend you have a site about sunglasses and you’re on the hunt for backlinks. Let’s say you bought a link on a page where you’re link looks like this:

By doing this, the search engines will think that your site must have something to do with prescription drugs and gambling. Why? Well, because the search engines look at the pages that link to you, and they say "Who else does that page link to" because they figure they must be related. So your sunglasses sites is now thought to be related to gambling and drugs. That’s your neighborhood you’re putting your site in.

Now let’s say that you buy lots of links…and let’s say that the gambling sites also buy lots of links…and let’s say that on lots of pages where you buy your links, they also buy links…now you’ve got some serious co citation going on…even though you never link to each other, your backlinks keep appearing together on other sites…now you’re considered similar to the gambling sites (this is bad for rankings).

Now let’s look at some Good Co citation:
Getting a link from a directory page, like say a Yahoo Directory page for Sunglasses, is Great for your co citation….why? Because the other links on that page are all about sunglasses, and if you’re listed on that page, then the search engines will give you the co citation of "sunglasses" (by looking at the other links on that specific page that links to you). Now let’s say that you’re also in DMOZ with a lot of the same sunglasses companies are were in the Yahoo Directory pages…now you’ve got some serious co citation…and this time, you’ve got it with the right types of sites (other sunglasses sites), so you’re getting into the "Sunglasses Neighborhood" via lots of co citation with other sunglasses sites (this is good for rankings).

Want to know your websites co citation?
Hey, it’s actually pretty easy….the engines actually show you. It’s one of those things that people see every day, it’s just that most people don’t know what it is.

Yea…it’s that that "Similar pages" link next to the "Cached" link (You can also search in Google using the Related command (related:www.your-site.com)).

You ever wonder what those Similar Sites are? That’s your co citation! That means that the web pages that link to you, tend to link to those sites as well. More often than not, the top ranked sites have good co citation (related sites as their "Similar Pages").

If you’re trying to rank high, keep in mind your linking neighborhood and your co citation. On the pages where you’re getting links from, who else do those pages link to? Are the other links on those pages related to your site? Is that co citation something that will help or hurt you?

What are your thoughts on co citation?

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Technorati Tags: links, link building, google, yahoo, seo, sem, search engine optimization, internet marketing, search engine marketing, link popularity

Popularity: 65% [?]