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Another good way to test, grab your family, kids, friends etc..
Tell them to goto your site and find something, then ask them how easy was it and find out what wasn't easy an adjust.
Do this with at least 5+ people and you can have some actionable insight on what to alter.
Also to add onto what Andy has said:
There are people trying to make money off the removal of those backlinks, so in today's world unless it looks like a legit site, better off to just disavow, most likely they're going to ask for money.
Also, this might not be a competitor, it might be a scraper too, what has puzzled me from day 1 about penguin is, how can you punish a site that gets scraped backlinks? Often they use keywords anchor text and so forth.
So disavow, and keep up the monthly checks...
Google's trends are for all searches happening for that keyword.
Unless you're the only website relevant for that keywords, odds are you're not going to even remotely match up to what Google says is " trending ".
Even for your brand name, when you search you don't just get your website, you get your facebook, youtube, BBB an anything else, even if others have a company named something likeminded.
So your website isn't the only thing to get that traffic, you'd get the majority of the traffic, so it's possible that the trends match somewhat but highly doubtful you'd match up even in the 90% range.
Another way to look at it is, Google is giving you a idea of how many people searched for a keyword, problem is, everyone doesn't use the same keywords to get the same results. This is even true with brand names, if you have a two word brand name, people might search with it all as one word, or mispells it, even butchers the name but still gets to the results. In that case you didn't see there trend data unless you looked it up, so thats some extra numbers your way.
It's more of a guide for you to gauge how popular a keyword is and high likely it is that people will be searching for that keyword. It's not really meant to be used as concrete data for organic traffic comparisons. That's what benchmarks and historical data is good for.
Hope my long winded explanation helped some.
To add on to Gaston's Reply,
Wikipedia is up that Top 10 or 20 sites that could do everything wrong ( in fact some do ) regarding SEO and still rank number 1, Google's reasoning for this is basically, their too big to fail. If people started not seeing wikipedia pages, heads and traffic would roll.
So since Google knows that traffic will continue as long as certain sites are always listed, they will overlook their SEO issues.
I don't know for how long though, as I see pages from wiki that are awaiting deletion ranking on page 1 and 2 sometimes, not to mention the sometimes completely inaccurate information on some of wiki's pages, although rare doesn't boast well for SERPs relevancy.
So to put it in otherwords, Wikipedia is above the law...
Hello,
Got to remember that if you create a page for each keyword variation, that those pages are going to have horrible metrics and could even hurt ranking for that keyword because of such.
I have really seen great results when you focus all intent on the user, is making a bunch of pages that barely have content but target that keyword going to really help users?
It would be better off to try and target one page for many variations, especially if that page is going to answer the user's search query. That's really how you should be setting your pages up, the keyword they rank for should be keywords that contain info being searched for otherwise you're going to have bad traffic that could send bad signals.
You'd be better off writing blogs for those keyword variations and tying content and other pages ( like the parent keyword page ) into them with links to help add authority.
Brand terms are mainly for homepage, about us page and possibly landing page of a category parent. Otherwise using your brand ( unless in a blog post ) is kinda stuffing things and wasting space that could be used by other keywords.
It still takes place, and can be up to a page apart in ranking a site for one keyword and capitalized and lowercase as well lowercase results were 1,450,000 and uppercase were 2,430,000 that's kinda offputting since for many keywords, it's going to be a matter of preference of a user on how they will either uppercase or lowercase a search term.
It's sad 3+ years later it's still the norm.
While I do agree with the above comments, Backlinks aren't the only factors that determine rankings.
I have to respectfully interject that Backlinks while not the only factor, is a HUGE factor, and becomes even more so it seems when all other factors are met with quality.
Now also remember, RANKBRAIN DOESN'T TREAT ALL NICHES EQUALLY, it will decide on rankings for each niche by using different percentages of algorithms. So what works for one niche, isn't going to work for another always.
A quote from the link below: " Within Google, there are a number of core algorithms that exist. It is RankBrain’s job to learn what mixture of these core algorithms is best applied to each type of search results. For instance, in certain search results, RankBrain might learn that the most important signal is the META Title. "
Read this and have your mind blown: http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/04/artificial-intelligence-is-changing-seo-faster-than-you-think/
Now in my niche, if you're 95% sure the rest of your SEO is on point, backlinks can alter serps ranking more directly than I've seen almost any other factor so far. I say this because I've been disavowing backlinks for one client for the past 5 months now, I see direct correlations between me removing bad backlinks and seeing keyword rankings improve. I have also seen than when one of our EPA backlinks were redirected ( while they did a redesign on the directory we were in ) our Domain Authority plummeted and our keywords took a bit of a tumble.
I've also seen competitors climb to page 1, using black hat backlink tactics, such as sitewides, article spinning and just using keyword rich anchor texts in articles for sites with DA of 20 - 40. They have a site that is a shell compared to others in the industry, really don't have anything else besides these backlinks that could be helping them, and that they do until penguin is re-released.
I understand many claim that I shouldn't be able to know this because there are just too many factors, but after a year analyzing my competition, backlinks are what gets them visible in our niche at least.
Top 3 factors for Keyword Ranking has been said to be:
I'm doing a bit of competitor backlink auditing and am curious how you view these domains?
I also am doing this for others as a comparison and growing reference maybe of domains that they can crosscheck with their own backlink profile and make sure these aren't on there, in preparation for penguin algo release to core.
Either chime in with known domains to be spam, and I will create a live list based on answers here.
Domain Domain Rating
directoryworld.net 64
prlog.ru 60
torchbrowser.com 60
jzip.com 58
localbiznetwork.com 58
gimpsy.com 54
pageonepower.com 52
nashvillelife.com 49
2thetopdesign.com 49
seocounsel.com 48
healthywealthyaffiliate.com 48
hollinslegal.com 48
On a working Disavow list either in root domain or extended url form
seocourt.com
wldirectory.com
onpaco.com
lostdirectory.com
ligginit.comligginit.com
alivedir.net
tiptopdirectory.com
onemilliondirectory.com
submittolinkdirectory.com
I've read that sitewide footer links even from parent company sites will only count as one, regardless of how many links they have, I was wondering if that was true as well?
I can also add that Google might also just insert it's own title tag for your page, and completely disregard you title tag you want. Why? Because they feel they know better, in my experience, they don't, it makes no sense to me at all why Google would basically slap your hand and say " No, bad, this is what we're using ". When it's your site to begin with.
But it is Google and at the end of the day, it's their search engine = their rules.
So all that can be said is, make sure your title tag is within character limits, and relevant, index it and wait. It's kinda like rich snippets and search bars for brand name searches, they choose when those show up as well, it's really odd how SEOs, SEMs and so forth squeeze themselves through Google's molds, yet Google just let's themselves hang everywhere without care.
But them be the breaks!
Just understand this ( Google > Us )
I tried adding onto a question already listed, however that question stayed where it was and didn't go anywhere close to somewhere others would see it, since it was from 2012.
I have a competitor who is completely new, just popped onto the SERPs in December 2015. Now I've wondered how they jumped up so fast without really much in the way of user content.
Upon researching them, I saw they have 200 backlinks but 160 of them are from their parent company, and of all places coming from the footer of their parent company. So they get all of the pages of that domain, as backlinks.
Everything I've read has told me not to do this, it's going to harm the site bad if anything will discount the links.
I'm in no way interested in doing what they did, even if it resulted in page 1 ( which it has done for them ), since I believe that it's only a matter of time, and once that time comes, it won't be a 3 month recovery, it might be worse.
What do you all think?
My question or discussion is why hasn't this site been penalized yet, will they be penalized and if not, why wouldn't they be?
**What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: **
This still doesn't explain why I read that the indexing was less than desirable this time around and then saw a drop in DA ( BY 10 Points! ) While I've improved the SEO of our site, now I'm reading the indexing went great and the Drop in DA is basically our fault. Not sure what's going on, but still, doesn't make much sense, as I've seen half of my backlinks drop from being shown but have verified them still being there, manually.
So even in regards to the above mentioned, seems we're missing data that used to be there, and that this is the result of the drop. Bigger sites didn't see a drop least in regards to sites like EPA and BBB, however the smaller sites did see a drop in DA.
Just trying to understand all of this correctly and not speculate, can you bring me up to speed on what I may be misunderstanding?
Thank you
This is exactly what I was going on about, it's great for onsite and offsite PR.
See about turning some of your guides into infographics, summarizing the data into easier bits of digestible tidbits. In the world of scan happy folks with a perpetual 5 min attention span, longer is better for SEO but not always for the user unless it's presented in a way that keeps them engaged.
Break up text with interactive bits like links or downloadable pdfs, and even images like many others say. Video is always helpful, but balance is even more important. Like a bag of trail-mix, PR needs a proper mixture of content.
Google's trends are for all searches happening for that keyword.
Unless you're the only website relevant for that keywords, odds are you're not going to even remotely match up to what Google says is " trending ".
Even for your brand name, when you search you don't just get your website, you get your facebook, youtube, BBB an anything else, even if others have a company named something likeminded.
So your website isn't the only thing to get that traffic, you'd get the majority of the traffic, so it's possible that the trends match somewhat but highly doubtful you'd match up even in the 90% range.
Another way to look at it is, Google is giving you a idea of how many people searched for a keyword, problem is, everyone doesn't use the same keywords to get the same results. This is even true with brand names, if you have a two word brand name, people might search with it all as one word, or mispells it, even butchers the name but still gets to the results. In that case you didn't see there trend data unless you looked it up, so thats some extra numbers your way.
It's more of a guide for you to gauge how popular a keyword is and high likely it is that people will be searching for that keyword. It's not really meant to be used as concrete data for organic traffic comparisons. That's what benchmarks and historical data is good for.
Hope my long winded explanation helped some.
Also to add onto what Andy has said:
There are people trying to make money off the removal of those backlinks, so in today's world unless it looks like a legit site, better off to just disavow, most likely they're going to ask for money.
Also, this might not be a competitor, it might be a scraper too, what has puzzled me from day 1 about penguin is, how can you punish a site that gets scraped backlinks? Often they use keywords anchor text and so forth.
So disavow, and keep up the monthly checks...
While I do agree with the above comments, Backlinks aren't the only factors that determine rankings.
I have to respectfully interject that Backlinks while not the only factor, is a HUGE factor, and becomes even more so it seems when all other factors are met with quality.
Now also remember, RANKBRAIN DOESN'T TREAT ALL NICHES EQUALLY, it will decide on rankings for each niche by using different percentages of algorithms. So what works for one niche, isn't going to work for another always.
A quote from the link below: " Within Google, there are a number of core algorithms that exist. It is RankBrain’s job to learn what mixture of these core algorithms is best applied to each type of search results. For instance, in certain search results, RankBrain might learn that the most important signal is the META Title. "
Read this and have your mind blown: http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/04/artificial-intelligence-is-changing-seo-faster-than-you-think/
Now in my niche, if you're 95% sure the rest of your SEO is on point, backlinks can alter serps ranking more directly than I've seen almost any other factor so far. I say this because I've been disavowing backlinks for one client for the past 5 months now, I see direct correlations between me removing bad backlinks and seeing keyword rankings improve. I have also seen than when one of our EPA backlinks were redirected ( while they did a redesign on the directory we were in ) our Domain Authority plummeted and our keywords took a bit of a tumble.
I've also seen competitors climb to page 1, using black hat backlink tactics, such as sitewides, article spinning and just using keyword rich anchor texts in articles for sites with DA of 20 - 40. They have a site that is a shell compared to others in the industry, really don't have anything else besides these backlinks that could be helping them, and that they do until penguin is re-released.
I understand many claim that I shouldn't be able to know this because there are just too many factors, but after a year analyzing my competition, backlinks are what gets them visible in our niche at least.
Top 3 factors for Keyword Ranking has been said to be:
As a fellow eCommerce admin, I believe that the best PR / Outreach we can do, is in terms of customer assistance means, what I mean is, customer help aides, information funnels that better explain, then further breakdowns of those explanations.
Reach out to your manufacturers, services that use your products along side their own ( information for items they may use but don't focus on, ( example would be if you sold lawnmower accessories, reaching out to lawn services and pitch your information pages, if they like it, they'll link to it to spread to their employees maybe or even send to clients to further back up their quality ))
When selling items, we can't really reach out to other sites / services about selling our items, that doesn't get much in return, however we reach out to them providing information that relates to them, they feel you're doing some work for them and then become more receptive.
Think back to web rings / circles back in the early days of the internet, if they were done right, sites with relative content linked up and provided this inner circle of related sites that would play off one another's information.
It's the digital's age of scratching their back while they scratch yours.
I'm on this same path since we too cannot use noindex / nofollow due to limited backend interaction with Bigcommerce.
I like to block all cart related pages, which for ecommerce sites can be a boat load.
just to name a few, then you have the sorting and compare pages, they have to be blocked or a mess unfolds.
Just to name a few, in my case, I only want the meat of the site to be indexed and rank for. Otherwise one client's site was ranking terms that more related to web development than the niche industry they lived in. Plus with a limited index budget, why would you want google or anyone else to crawl pages on your site with no SEO value towards your niche?
Unless you sold carts as in web developed carts for ecommerce sites you wouldn't want much of that indexed anyways, and even in that case, those pages aren't too useful for ranking. At least from what I've gathered in the niche industries.
Another good way to test, grab your family, kids, friends etc..
Tell them to goto your site and find something, then ask them how easy was it and find out what wasn't easy an adjust.
Do this with at least 5+ people and you can have some actionable insight on what to alter.
I actually just talked with BBB.org ( Greater Baltimore Area ) about this backlink issues, since we found a few competitors who had " FOLLOW " backlinks while we did not, all this while we paid their yearly subscription. After asking why this was, the BBB.org ( Greater Baltimore Area ) Informed us that this practice of follow links for backlinks was going bye bye.
**They told us that all follow backlinks will be changed to NOFOLLOW links shortly. **
As for the when the listings would be changed, that was answered " Whenever the webadmins of that area get to it ". So seems they were giving one group of customers one treatment while giving another the run around.
I don't think BBB.org will be around much longer after this major tidbit is implemented, since the overall site doesn't do much more than act as a verified source and google and plenty of others do this for free.
Spend your money on something with a better ROI, in my opinion.
Homepages in general do this because we as people put forth the meat of the site on the homepage, sometimes it works for us but often in the SEO world it works against us. Homepages should be optimized for the brand name and keywords related to the company or person, almost like a lighthearted about us page without specifics.
Then you place the meat on the service or product pages, so they have the optimized keywords to signal to crawlers that this page is best suited in case someone searches this keyword.
I'm actually redesigning a site right now because their older site was basically targeting all their keywords on the homepage via product listings and summaries of those products, even though the product category pages had great content that was more indepth and relevant, the homepage is also naturally the highest page rank of the site, so seems to get chosen over lesser ranked pages for keywords they both have.
Take another look at your site and maybe list the primary and secondary keywords you'd want each page to rank for, and make sure those keywords are correlated.
The Plastic Surgeon example for keyword targeting would be:
Homepage - **Surgeon's Name, Company, Florida Based, Plastic Surgery Professionals ( etc ) **
Surgeon Service Page - Miami, FL Plastic Surgeons, breast augmentation, plastic surgery breast augmentations, And other longtail keywords related to this niche.
So when both user's goto the page from serps they stay and convert and when crawlers go through, they find the meat of a search query on the page you want them to find it on.