Google’s View of Keyword Rich Domains
Published March 9, 2011 | 
There is a lot of debate about getting keyword rich domain names to increase your blogs ranking in the search engines. My opinion has always been that you can rank for any keyword, regardless of your blogs domain name. While having a keyword rich domain will help your blog to rank, having keywords in your domain name is not necessary.
Image via Wikipedia
Look at some of the biggest domain names out there: Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Twitter, etc. These are not keywords that would ordinarily rank well for their niches. But through branding, they have risen to the top of their fields. The names are easy to remember and when you hear them you immediately associate them with their niche. To me branding and not keyword packing your domain name makes far better sense if you are looking to build a long-term, high-ranking blog or website.
Google’s Matt Cutts recently put a video up on the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel that covers this topic and the way Google may handle these types of domain names in the future.
Many times these keyword packed domains are associated to the spammy sites that Google’s recent search engine algorithm shift looks to address. While a keyword rich domain may help you to rank in the short term, if you are not backing that name up with quality content then your blog will not continue to rank well.
BTW, if you are not subscribed to the Google Webmaster Help Channel, I would advise that you do. There is so much useful information there… Most of it done in a question/answer format.
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Posted in Blog SEO | 
Domain name, Google, google search algorithm, google webmaster help, keyword domain, Matt Cutts, youtube | 
7 CommentsAutoblogging is Dead
Published March 5, 2011 | For all of you autobloggers out there, I have some bad news… Google HATES your sites. If you haven’t heard, the latest Google ranking algorithm has dropped most autoblogs way down on the list or completely dropped them out of the rankings altogether. I’m not sure that autoblogging is completely dead, but this latest update definitely has put it on life support.
For those of you who paid a couple of thousand bucks for a recent course and software designed to churn out autoblogs… OUCH!
On a better note… It has really helped some of my blogs, including this one. I have never done any real off-page SEO on this site, but after the update from Google my last post on here (3 months old) jumped to the #1 position for its keyword phrase. Do a search in Google for “steps to increase alexa ranking” (without the quotes) and you should see this:
Click the image for a better view…
The good news in the latest Google update is that if you are churning out original content for your blog, you are going to rank higher, in most cases, than nearly all of the autoblogs out there. And if your site already has good content, it can rank for some older articles even if you have not posted to the site in three months.
Don’t get me wrong… You can still make money with autoblogs. Its just that you are going to have to end up creating hundreds and hundreds more to make up for the lower SERPs.
Another issue coming from Google is the new personal block list built into their Chrome browser. People using Chrome can block sites on an individual basis from their browser. This, on the surface, looks good for the end user but there is more to it.
My understanding is that Google is collecting this personal block information and it will, at some time, be integrated into their ranking algorithm, which could set off blocking wars between websites trying to knock heir competition down a notch or two… Yep, always the pessimist. 
The important lesson to remember from all of this is that Google and the other search engines are constantly tweaking and changing the way they rank sites and if you are not keeping up with the latest trends, your blog could be left behind in the rankings. If you look at things closer, this has always been Google’s plan for their search engine. They want the sites with original quality content, quality backlinks pointing back to their sites and plenty of activity.
Speaking of backlinks… I have some great info to pass onto you about getting .edu and .gov backlinks to your site in a few days, so be sure to check back in… You won’t want to miss it. Plus I am working on an article about buying domain names and how I picked up an 11 year old PR 5 domain for $5 last week! Talk soon.
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Your Blog Needs to Be Mobile Ready
Published August 26, 2010 | 
- Image via Wikipedia
In recent weeks I have been focused on having mobile-ready blogs because there is so much traffic coming to sites from mobile devices these days. Mobile devices, smart phones, internet ready tablets , etc. are all gaining in popularity for web browsing, so it makes sense to have a site that is viewable by those devices. If your site is not mobile compatible, you are losing a ton of potential blog readers and customers.
I’ve added the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin to all of my blogs which converts them to a format that is mobile friendly. It also supplies basic stats that show the percentage of mobile users that are viewing your site. To show proof of the traffic that you are missing if your blog is not mobile-ready, here is a list of statitistics from a few of my sites and the number of mobile hits that they are getting:
- 5% of your traffic is currently from mobile users. (this site first)
You’ve had 28941 desktop hits and 1780 mobile hits in the last 9.3 days.
- 10% of your traffic is currently from mobile users.
You’ve had 10730 desktop hits and 1233 mobile hits in the last 9.3 days.
- 3% of your traffic is currently from mobile users.
You’ve had 16185 desktop hits and 544 mobile hits in the last 9.3 days.
- 10% of your traffic is currently from mobile users.
You’ve had 3267 desktop hits and 365 mobile hits in the last 9.3 days.
- 5% of your traffic is currently from mobile users.
You’ve had 8045 desktop hits and 478 mobile hits in the last 9.3 days.
- 7% of your traffic is currently from mobile users.
You’ve had 3922 desktop hits and 326 mobile hits in the last 9.3 days.
That is 4300 plus hits that I would have missed out on in just the past nine days alone!
Included in the WordPress Mobile Pack is the ability to link your mobile-ready blog to their Mpexo directory for mobile sites. Having your site listed in that directory helps, but all sites get mobile hits. Here are the stats for a new site that I am developing for a client and just put online a week ago:
- 1% of your traffic is currently from mobile users.
You’ve had 1680 desktop hits and 25 mobile hits in the last 7.1 days.
This site has very little content (4 posts and 2 pages) and has not been added to the mobile directory but it has received 25 mobile hits in a week without any promotion.
Many popular websites like Twitter and Facebook are mobile friendly and actually encourage their users to interact with mobile devices. With the number of people using these devices on sites that you are (or at least should be) marketing your blog on, does it not make sense to have a site that they can move directly to and view while still using their smart phone or other mobile device?
Now you probably want to know how to monetize this traffic… Admob is a contextual ad site just for mobile devices. How big is the mobile ad market? Google recently paid $750 million for Admob! The money from your mobile ads is probably not going to be as good as your regular site where you have more flexibility in your ad types, but it is a way to profit from that traffic with relative ease.
To close I just have one question: “Is your blog mobile-ready?”
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Posted in Blogging, Social Marketing | Facebook, Google, mobile ready blog, Smartphone, Twitter, wordpress mobile pack | 7 Comments
The importance of quality backlinks in your SEO strategy should be at the top of your list. We can all find other blogs to comment on just by doing a keyword search in Google’s blog search; but how do we get those high PR, .edu, .gov, and .mil links back to our blog? Its actually pretty easy if you know the right search strings to use.
There have been a few products that have entered the market explaining some of those search strings, but very few people willing to share any of them for free.
Image via Wikipedia
But, before we get started with the search for quality sites, let’s look at a tool that will make your work easier.
This item is a plugin for Firefox, called Search Status… Still using IE? Dump it! Firefox is a much friendlier browser, with its many available plugins, for SEO work. I just downloaded Firefox 4.0, and this plugin still works… So you know its cool.
Some people will tell you to use SEO Quake, but I would advise against it for two reasons. First, they do not have an updated plugin for Firefox 4.0, yet. Secondly, some marketers have had problems with Google locking out their IP address temporarily from the search function when using site specific type search strings that target .edu, or .gov domains and using SEO Quake. Why? Ask Google…
Search Status will show you the Alexa, Compete, mozRank and Page Rank for each site that you are on. It will also highlight no-follow links, so you can easily identify blogs that are do-follow and give your backlink more juice in Google. Once we have this installed we can move on to finding quality sites to leave comments and gain backlinks from.
There are a couple of sites that shorten the learning curve for finding .edu, .gov and .mil backlinks. The first is SearchEdu. This site will allow you to search all three extensions, without having to know to add in site:.edu, site:.gov or site:.mil in the search string.
You will still need to add in a search string like:
You get the idea… Anything that is a common phrase on sites that allow you to post a link, you can do a search for with your keyword and find high quality contextual places to post your link.
One of my favorite search strings is: “this site uses commentluv”. This will find blogs that use the Comment Luv plugin, which normally provides you with a nice do-follow link to your latest blog post. Unfortunately there aren’t too many .edu, .gov or .mil sites that use the plugin, but it can be used for normal .com, ,net, etc sites, too. Just look for sites that have a high Page Rank… I try to look for PR3 or better sites, but will comment on most anything to get a do-follow link.
The other site is Free EDU Blog Finder, which searches Google’s Blog Search for .edu blogs. You still need to add your keyword to get the most from your links in terms of context, although many marketers believe that any .edu, .gov or .mil backlink is good for Page rank regardless of the context and/or do-follow/no-follow status.
There you have a few ways to get quality backlinks to your site. These type of links will not only improve your SERP, but also play a major role in building your page rank. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and get you some backlinks!
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