I called Shari Thurow about her take on the new Google Print function, in which Google provides book results in their search results. Before we got started on the new function though, she gave me an earful on her opinions of the recent Google algorithm update.

The essence of her opinion? "I think Google got better."

She said that only one of her clients was affected by the Florida Update, an old client who used mirror sites without telling her.

Her thoughts on affiliate sites who lost their listings? "Boo hoo."

Look at the number of affiliates out there. They're all offering the same things, which loads Google up with duplicate content. Duplicate content diminishes user experience.

"If you're a commercial site," she says, "you should be buying ads."

When she begins design work for one of her clients she begins with a single question: "what does your site offer for free?"

It could be information, downloads, email service, search results, whatever.

Why would a search engine optimizer ask this question first? Because, in her words, "your website is the be all, end all of web marketing. That's what most search engine marketers don't get - they're reverse engineers, not designers. What they're doing is essentially spam."

Regarding commercial sites with good information, "they'll bounce back."

For the record, Shari believes that pay for placement services in the search engines, especially those that display ads with results, diminish the user experience.

New Keyword Strategy. During my conversation with Shari this morning she had some strong opinions about keyword strategy.

Here's the gist of what she said:

Every site should have at least 100 keyword phrases some of these will be better money makers than others. This way you're spread out, so if Google or anyone else changes their algorithm you'll still have some traffic coming in through the engines.

"Besides," says Shari, "optimizing your site for only one keyword is just spam waiting to happen."

__________________
Garrett French
Editor, WebProNews.com
http://www.WebProNews.com

"Here's the gist of what she said:

Every site should have at least 100 keyword phrases some of these will be better money makers than others. This way you're spread out, so if Google or anyone else changes their algorithm you'll still have some traffic coming in through the engines.

"Besides," says Shari, "optimizing your site for only one keyword is just spam waiting to happen." "
(emphasis mine)

OK, now I read what she said about 3 times now... am I so out of touch with SE reality, that the last 6-7 years of research on my part are now completely out the window?? Im serious! Am I reading this wrong?

I would greatly appreciate some one explaining to me what she just said. No, not being a 'smart aleck' here', just a biz man who has seen some negative changes in my rankings after I have had years of good to very good rankings and would love to know what is REALLY going on! Please help!

Lando

__________________
Marlin Fischer
Fischer Enterprises, Inc.
Krystal Air - Guaranteed Odor Elimination
1-888-2-KRYSTAL
www.krystal-air.com
webmaster@krystal-air.com

Hi Lando,

here is my take on it. Google now expects you to be more desrete when optimizing. If you focus on 1 keyword through the whole site (eg...a site with 20 pages). It would be quite obvious to Google and the reader cause of the copy and mata tags. You should focus on multiple keywords for each page. 3 tops.

Now what i mean by desrete is that you shouldn't put an identical keyphrase i the title, description and copy.

Lets say you were going for "eliminting pet oders" (something you can relate to)
Google expects you to:

NOT - have it in <h> tags unless you are using some of the words. Dont you dare put that whole keyphrase.

NOT - place the identical phrase in title and description. Use the words but not the phrase. You can in the copy but not too many time.

You will be penalized for the <h>tags.

I suffered big time when florida happened. I removed the <h> and the direct keyphrase. My placement is better than ever. #1 for serveral (5) keyphrases, not to mention the other where i'm 2-10.

hope this helped,

good luck

Yes I know the saying about assuming things, but here goes anyway. I would think that Sherri meant each site would have to have enough pages to be optimized for 100 phrases. Ideally this would be 100 pages each optimized for one phrase.

The challenge as I see it then is to find 100 good performing phrases for each client, which can be a daunting task. This is especially true for Google, where with 3.5 billion pages indexed, good performing phrases are hard to come by.

Another problem is working with clients that have a limited number of services. Many of my clients are very focused in what they do. If the client is highly specialized, and a small business this compounds the problem. How do we get them to pay for 100 new pages, can they afford it?

These will definitely be trying times for SEO as an industry, as well as the clients we are trying to help!

__________________
Andy Timmins
Timmins Networking - Personalized SEO and Internet Marketing Consulting
Free Term Papers and Website Content (Hobby Site)
<a herf="http://infoebooksource.com">Informational Tip Ebooks Site</a>

"Here's the gist of what she said:

Every site should have at least 100 keyword phrases some of these will be better money makers than others. This way you're spread out, so if Google or anyone else changes their algorithm you'll still have some traffic coming in through the engines.

"Besides," says Shari, "optimizing your site for only one keyword is just spam waiting to happen." "

Well, my take is that a keyword or a few keywords are definitely the holy grail to your website, but they aren't the only words/phrases that can and will draw valuable customers to you.

Note that she didn't say 100 phrases for each page, it's for a site. Use a toy store for example. You probably want a lot of key phrases that include toy or toys, of course, but you also want keywords that showcase all your individual products. It's not hard to get a large number of key phrases in this case very quickly for your site. (toys, toy, dolls, strawberry cheesecake, tickle me bubba, bob the demolisher, G.I. Moe, etc. etc. etc.)

It's nice to have #1 in 1 key phrase that brings in 100 impressions a day. It's nicer to have 100 #1 spots in key phrases that bring in 1 a day because you still get 100 impressions and if one of your key phrases loses rank you still get 99. If your #1 for 100 fails you lose it all. (You still want that 100, of course, but you've got yourself well covered to still pick up a good amount of traffic.)

I really don't think this means you shouldn't go after that best keyphrase, just be sure to get every good keyphrase that applies in your site as you are able.

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Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

I think what's being encouraged here is spam.

To say that you want to be #1 for a phrase with 100 impressions a day as well as be #1 for 100 phrases with 1 impression a day is silly. Why not go for being #3 for 1000 phrases with 1 impression a day? Etc, etc, etc.

All that's really being said here is optimize your site for as many keywords as possible. Which is kinda what got people into the position they are in today.

My take on it is this: Google is attempting to create search results that most closely imitate what an intelligent human being who knew every web page on the planet would recommend to a user when they asked for information on a particular topic.

As such, I believe that writing your pages as naturally as possible (in terms of language) while doing some simple optimization (e.g. site map, page names, directory names, meta tags, etc.) should be ideal.

Why try to fight Google? Why not try to conform to what they're attempting to do? If you really want to appear favourably on Google, then do what they say. Don't try to trick them.

Here are my tips:

• Have relevant, well-written, organized content on your site
  Include a site map, and various other things that Google recommends
  Link to meaningful, related sites with good content (don't be a link wh0re)
  Update your site regularly

Hopefully this should help to take some stress out of your life while still achieving good rankings.

Anyway, that's my take on this big Florida fiasco.

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Robin Eldred
Web Design & Internet Marketing by Apis Design
Websites that work

Thanks everyone. I agree with the discussion going on here, and I usually follow the proper protocol as some have mentioned, but kind of hard when I have one product! LOL in re: 100 !

If anything, I would think that using just about any 'keyword' (that's the impression I'm getting) you can come up with would be looked upon negatively. Sure I could use 'stinky', but not only is it a waste of time, the popularity of that term (ergo the chance of a searcher using it) is about zero to none.

Thanks again. Confession: I wasn't completely lost, but... wow!... sounded like it was against everything I learned in the past. I know things change, SE's all the time it seems(!) but it sounded soooo much a complete reversal.

I'll just keep my eyes and ears open on what's goin' on. I think I did misunderstand what was said to a degree, because I do agree and practice what has been said here. Anyway, it's great to be able to discuss things like this with like-minded people!

__________________
Marlin Fischer
Fischer Enterprises, Inc.
Krystal Air - Guaranteed Odor Elimination
1-888-2-KRYSTAL
www.krystal-air.com
webmaster@krystal-air.com

No... Not spam. Highlight of the content you have rather than trying to spam your full site with a small set of key phrases. If you have a section of your site devoted to dolls and that section includes this doll and that doll and the other doll, each page should be optimized for it's own content rather than trying to optimize all your pages for 'toys'. (Using my prior example of an online toy store.)

If you just optimize for those heavy hitting key phrases across your site then you aren't showing the content you have, you're just trying to get a high result in a specific phrase which, at best, walks the line between optimization and spam.

PlanHouse started this year barely within the top 200 results for house plan(s)/home plan(s) as our target key phrases and with plenty of work and trial and error and a great deal of help from what I've read here and elsewhere I managed to move up into the top 30. Florida knocked us back down closer to 60 or 70 and since then we've pulled back up into the 40's/50's and continue to work on that. This is great, but we realized fairly quickly that there were a huge number of opportunities we were missing and we've started to work on teritiary phrases such as 'acadian house plans' or 'acadian home plans'. (Yay! #3 and #2 respectively!)

We also realized that we weren't really letting the search engines in much farther than our front door, and our current efforts are to open the site, clean up the code to be sure it doesn't send broken HTML and make every page sing it's own praises, not just create a cacophany of house plan(s)/home plan(s). If a plan is a single story acadian home plan it should say so and those are the key phrases it should target.

Enough rambling from me. Don't even get me started on our new Gallery Listings and our coming Local Resources efforts. (But if you're curious, see where our site shows up for 'kitchen and bath jackson ms'/'interior decorators jackson ms'/'interior designers jackson ms'/'subcontractors jackson ms' --> The list goes on.) :)

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Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

Lando,

I had the same reaction as you expressed in your first post on this. It kind of explains why her clients weren't affected by this latest Google Dance. If she actually aims for 100 keyword phrases, one is bound to show up high in the results.

The fact of the matter is, obscure keyword phrases are not "money makers". You need to focus, not dilute. Also, keyword phrases are a small part of the equation. There are sites that appear in the top results that have absolutely nothing on their pages that would be attributed to the terms used in the search.

A good example of this is the recent prank in which some 32 sites linked to President Bush's bio page on the White House web site using the phrase "miserable failure". Using such tactics, I think I could easily manipulate a search result for a website in which I have no association. Of course, the keyword phrase would be just as obscure, and no one would probably use it to search. However, I could make it number one!

That is my point. A highly placed search result does not necessarily equate to traffic nor sales. It needs to be a result from a qualified search term. By that, I mean that a reasonable person would use it to obtain the desired result(s).

Commercial sites should have to pay to place ads? I don't agree. Why not just watch TV? You'll end up with the same basic ads: beer, cars, tennis shoes, etc. Those with the biggest bucks would create mega sites covering just about every popular search term to point you in the wrong direction. The person searching on the internet most likely already knows the big guys. They don't need to the search for them. It's the small-niche companies that people like to find.

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DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com

First, many phrases does not equal many obscure phrases. Getting #1 for monkey butt house plans, for instance, is not likely to be particularly beneficial to me. There is a line, however, between focus and spam and a grey area in there that we usually tread with SEO. When we do that and Google makes a change, sometimes we get stuck on the wrong side of the line.

I agree with the disagreement with commercial sites paying for advertising and, in theory, so does Google. That completely destroys the ideal of organic listings and doesn't enhance the experience of the searcher who then goes elsewhere because the listings aren't what he wants, they're what whoever has the most money wants him to see.

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Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

Jay Drake,

Fair enough. However, let me ask you, can you really conceive of 100 different keyword phrases for the average small e-commerce site that are not obscure and not spamming? I doubt it.

The fact that number (100) was even used smacks of spamming. Assuming that these "keyword phrases" are to be used in the content, you would have to be especially creative to make in also readable in context for the human visitor.

Now, let's say it's a very large e-commerce site with many different product categories, okay, yes I could see 100 different keyword phrases. I would still recommend focus. It is better to master a few main categories rather than simply show up on the radar for most of them.

__________________
DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com

The drift of the matter I notice is people's home page being kicked into some dark google abyss.

When I started my e commerce sites what I learned was to make each page on site an entry page to site.

Think the goal should be to first drive traffic to site and then hopefully people will find an eye appealing page with easy navigation and a reason to search furhter in site.

For example reading a newsletter from my local visitors burea found out that 79% of all visitors to area went shopping.

Eureka I added a shopping section with list of mall and stores in area.
I don't make a red cent from info in shopping section .
This section is most requested section of site and as a result I have been able
to convert visitors who used menu bars to see what else was on site into clients.

For those like me who are not web designers and can't afford one:
1. Do what Dell,IBM,Earthlink and man major players do-
outsource get a desginer in a third world partner and make him your partner.

Here is agreement with first designer $200 quarterly maintainence + 10%(average) of net profits.
He went from zero income to now over $1,800 + a quarter and growing.

What I get is 24/7 site maintainence,updates or anything I want on sites.
What designer gets is alot more than his per capita monthy income of $50 US.
Result is 2 happy campers.
Happy holidays

His quarterly

I think just about all visitors in Orlando shop. Is that 79% accurate?

I know Disney fairs quite well with the media hounds in Orlando.

But surely, if your site target shoppers in Orlando you will get lots of traffic to your site. Offer travel packages, affiliate with plane ticket companies, Disney merchandise, that sort of thing. You could actually profit well from those that your not making a red cent off of now. Just place the right banners and links. Try adwords, too.

See you at the bank... or Disney at that..

- Jarred

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Bido.com

Yes ,
79% is accurate according to the official visitors bureau.
Vacation packages are offered and we do make money on plane tickets and many other area of sites.

The shopping pages will produce minor ad revenue down the road(it's in the plans).

Tell me what you think about my site:
http://orlandotouristinformationbureau.com/
it's not the official site but visitors do add excellent service and they're happy is what counts.

Thank you for your input.
Happy holidays

Well, first I'd have to guess (a bit of assumption here) that the number 100 wasn't a particularly thought out one-size-fits-all sort of number. That said, I have to disagree with your sentiment of lots of key phrases being a spamming attempt. If you use a key phrase that describes yout content then I would say you are not spamming. If you have one or two key phrases that you stuff into your page for the purpose of gaining a higher search engine ranking rather than to give your visitor a rich and valuable experience you are spamming.

Now to back this up a little, marketing isn't just getting people who are looking for what you have to offer to buy. It's also about getting people who aren't looking for what you have to offer to see it and want it. Walk through any retail checkout stand and see what they're trying (with great success, I might add) to sell simply by putting it in view. Does this mean you should just try to get keywords that don't relate at all? No! It's not particularly cost effective for a pet store to have a freezer at their counter with frozen pizzas in hopes that their customers will go buy some fish and then see the pizza and want to buy it, and they'll certainly not wander into your store in hopes of buying pizza in the first place. (Unless they're really strange...)

There are opportunities, however, for most small e-commerce sites to expand their search engine presence to draw people in using SEO techniques and good, quality, related content. PlanHouse does this on a fairly large scale. At our heart we are a house plan design studio, but we recognize that our product (house plans) is not the only thing that people search for when they are getting ready to build, so we try to get our name in front of them when they look for builders, specialized items, concrete finishers and anything else we can in the new construction industry. And in all that, we work hard to be a good resource so that our visitors will look on us favorably and hopefully come back to buy their dream home plans from us.

I think Lando's site could benefit from some of the same basic ideas of getting out in front of people who aren't necessarily looking specifically for a product to eliminate odor. First group I can think of right off the top of my head, and straight from his web site, really, are fishermen and their family. Start with good quality content such as articles or press releases geared toward the fisherman and the people who put up with the odors associated, generate key phrases from your content, get links from the media and sites related to fishing and profit from the new subsection of people who need you. I figure this will net you at least 3-5 (or more) new key phrases. Repeat process as able. (I'd definitely go for the pet odor next, if not first!)

A cup of marketing and a dash of diversification. Your site is not a one trick pony even if you only sell one product. :)

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Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

This will make your site well balanced.

touristips said something very important

"When I started my e commerce sites what I learned was to make each page on site an entry page to site".


I have a Mexico information site. It averages 460 visitors per day. The main page represents 8% of the entries. www.mexico.us

__________________
Geoffrey Gonzalez - www.ahorre.com www.hipoteca.net www.abogada.com www.1800beisbol.com www.mexico.us www.1800huatulco.com

Jay Drake,

You started on topic regarding my comment that I find it difficult to comprehend 100 keyword phrases and ended up somehow comparing it to selling pizzas in a pet store and impulse-buying displays at the POP. Maybe you think I was implying that the 100 phrases would somehow be unrelated to the content of the hypothetical e-commerce site that would use them.

Let's get back on track and clarify this discussion. If it's a site that sells flower pots, I cannot think of 100 different keyword phrases that someone would reasonably consider in searching for such a site. Even if I could, I think the majority of searchers would use...are you ready?..."flower pots". I would therefore focus on "flower pots" as a keyword term.

I would find it a waste of time dreaming up terms such as "bloom kettle" and "holder of vegetation" because no one would search that way and I suspect if someone did, they would not have the intelligence to make a purchase. This does not mean that the flower pot site wouldn't have enough savy to also sell hangers for the pots, plant food, seeds, etc. The main business of this example is to sell flower pots.
Focus.

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DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com

<snipped for brevity>

Well, the comparison to the pet shop is what not to do. Don't optimize your (I'll use your example) flower pot site for completely unrelated search terms just because large numbers of people search using those phrases. DO try to get results in related phrases that your target market will be searching under, but have content to back that up! Your example is a really great one. Selling is not all about your product. It's about appealing to your customer. Make your site useful to the person who is interested in flower pots. What are your flower pots used for? I'd bet flowers, gardening, etc.

Yes. It is important to focus on your primary key phrases, but you wouldn't only advertise in flower pot magazines or flower pot television shows, right? You need to be visible where your customers are looking, whether it's specifically for your product or for products/information that relate.

In all this we have to remember that content is king. Given good navigation structure there is never too much content. If I sold a flower pot to someone who was searching for mulching techniques, I still sold a flower pot. If your site is useful to it's visitors it will earn links, popularity, rank and ultimately visitors and sales. This is the organic model that Google seeks to create. Their first interest is aiding searchers in finding what they need so they'll keep using Google.

So... for flower pots, your primary focus will be 'flower pots'. If you have just one kind of flower pots then you also need to focus on the specifics of that flower pot. (terra cotta flower pots.) If you have more than one type, you automatically have more search phrases. Make sure that all the pages get indexed by the SE's. Make sure they say what they are and don't just all say 'flower pots'. Now that the primary goal is reached, figure out how you can attract your customers. Write. Write. Write some more. Articles sell products. Flower pots are an interior design item. They are a gardening item. They are an item that you need when you buy potting soil. Think outside the pot.!

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Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

First, I can tell you that from now on I won't be using Google for my searches. Hey Google..."See YA!"

I don't believe in "buying" serch rankings. Who the hell does Google think they are, the only search enging out there? Guess I'll start using other search engines. Maybe I'll get bumper stickers and t-shirst that say "F*** Google". Besides, look at it this way, if people start paying for it, then the price will just go higher and higher. You must remember that the consumer has the power.

I don't understand where this particular statement comes from. I use Google as a searcher because it works. I find what I need in the least amount of time by searching Google or a Google affiliate.

Can you buy better listings in Google (and every other search engine)? Yes. But they're defined as paid. As a searcher I ignore paid listings. Why? Because they aren't there because of their merits. They're there because of money. I'd like to think I'm more savvy than the average searcher in this, but I'd also like to think I'm not that much more savvy.

Don't use Google. Don't optimize for Google. That's your perogative. The fact is that Google is doing what it can to help the searchers which give it the most value to those searchers through providing the best search results and as such they will have the traffic that we all want and need to do business on the web. </rant...>

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Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

Hint: Debating with the "I hate Google! Google ruined my life! From now I'm using www.search-engine-no-one-ever-heard-of.com and telling all my friends so we can bring Google to its knees!" crowd is like going into a Linux thread and trying to point out some of the things Microsoft has done well and/or some of the vulnerabilities or downsides of Linux - not only are you speaking to those-who-will-not-hear but you're also dodging rocks and tomatoes on a trajectory to your head at the same time.

__________________
Psychology Mental Health & Self-Help Forum
Online Counseling & Therapy | Mental Health Directory

Here, here...well said Minstrel.

I might add that you should not confuse the above statement with dodging ronnies. They are completely safe and have no ill side effects when hit by one. *-(doh!)

__________________
Web Design & Development News
The BoG Reborn

I have alot of this to say about this first post by Garrett.

Google from one has made a mess of their results now. Take a real close look at the most popular keywords. For example. Type in person search into google search. You get the big boy sites like ussearch.com, and you also get alot of junk pages like college people searches that will locate someone that works for that college.

Google tried to cut spam and I agree with google on that part. But they also cut alot of good sites that had alot of information.

Also I disagree with all sites should be free, and no charge. (You get what you pay for as the old saying goes) Try a search on big screen tv's, best buys on books, hosting, (We all know what free hosting is.. So if everyone has free hosting. Then what) See what you get from them results.. What do you want to get a big screen TV for free? Or would you like to learn about how big they are? We can then all say..why do we need the internet then- if all urls are free pages only.

Google has made it easy now (WIth the florida update) to take out anyone that sells the same thing as you. Just upload about 200-1000 junk pages, (Can use a generator) then point all them pages at the site you wanna take out! HUH Google really never thought about that did they! The bad thing is that this will work, tested and done...


Google will most likly sell to Microsoft after this update, and then we will loose abother engine. Unless they change the index back but I do not see google to change the index back. I would like to see Yahoo, or some of the smaller engines take over.

I for one like the old days when infoseek was king. (2-5 mins and your url was live for free) But everyone took advantage of this and filled the index with junk.

I do not and have never agreed with googles pagerank system as for one it is not fair. What about the little people? You could have a site with over 1 million pages of great information, if there is knowone that links to you SORRY SAYS GOOGLE !! YOU SUCK!

I agree with you ronnie now I hate google. They used to be a good search engine, and had great results. But from of the things that I have searched for I see more spam, and junk then I ever did before.

Thanx all.

If you do not believe me about this.. Do your own test.. Generate a bunch of gate pages, point them at a site, upload, then submit to google. Wait 2 months and watch where that pages rank goes...

Google had no idea what they did!

Where did I ever say that I hate Google? You also mentioned other inferences in the same paragraph that appears that I may feel that way too.

Now if you are in aggreement with the post I made prior to yours, of which, I was in aggreement with something that Minstrel said...then please say so. But even so...nowhere in that post did I mention that I hate Google.

If you are in agreement with something else that I said in another thread in regards to Google, then say so also and cite me the passage...for I do not remember ever writing down anywhere that I hate Google.

As for the spam...I have not seen any more than usual. Whether they are cutting down on it with this new algo, is anybody's guess at this point. Everyone has a different opinion on that issue...and the jury is still out.

What people usually do though when they make broad claims, is they also post a few examples of why they think so. So I invite you to throw out a couple of examples of why you think there is more spam.

When you do come back and explain the problems that you are having, I want you to know that I think are two different and distinct types of spamming goin on at Google.

One type of spam is where a hundred or so sites appear to flood the results such as the "As Seen on TV" one page wonders with little or no content. These pages number in the 10's of Millions if not 100's.

Then there are the other types of spammers who use deceptive javascript (or other forms of coding) to redirect their overloaded pages of keywords to affilliateship sites.

In both cases, I have seen them come and go in the rankings at Google...they do not stay there for very long. I have not seen one last any longer than a month, and when it is all over...guess who is still there.

You made reference to this in another thread, and I will be over there shortly to address it...no need to do that here too.

But you did raise the point that it is possibly true to some extent of what you say may be correct. For you (the gateway page) pointed a finger (link) at me (my website) by inferring that I said something (linking text) thereby making me look like I did something wrong (Google infraction). So I invite you (contact the gateway owner) to clarify what you said (retract my link) so that I can go on being another upstanding member here at WPW (get back on Page One with all sorts of neat and fancy quotations cited from my posts)

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Web Design & Development News
The BoG Reborn

Interesting and likely entirely incorrect. First, I'd like to know how it is that you generated test results of how gateway pages affect a target per the Florida update over any length of time such as the 2 months you cited at the end of your post. If you created such gateway pages 2 months ago and now those sites you targetted are knocked down there are numerous possible reasons for this, some related and some completely unrelated. Simply put, such an experiment is hardly scientific proof of flaw.

You do not agree with Google's link popularity concept? Crazy. If you have good information and a well developed site, people will link to you. Doesn't matter how big or little you are.

It should be noted that it is much easier to yell and scream about the tyranny of Google's changes than it is to take the time to figure out what's actually going on.

__________________
Jay Drake
jdrake@planhouse.com
www.planhouse.com

I agree, Jay - Magnum's claims are incorrect and ludicrous. I'm not sure I've seen the thread ronniethedoger mentions but I'm sure others have disputed his claims there too. He's just simply wrong: you can't bring down a competitor's site by pointing pages there. As has been said elsewhere, if that were possible, everyone who wasn't #1 would be doing it to everyone who was #1.

__________________
Psychology Mental Health & Self-Help Forum
Online Counseling & Therapy | Mental Health Directory

The thread is here http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...ghlight=#53341

Everything you just mentioned is re-iterated over there too. The individual in question has only made just these two posts.

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Web Design & Development News
The BoG Reborn

Garrett:

I enjoyed the bits of the Shari Thurow interview you posted recently. What Shari's advocating (using more keywords) is something I've been stressing for a long time. I don't know that focusing on one search term is "spam waiting to happen," but it's a very weak strategy.

Getting traffic from search engines takes more than just ranking well for one search term. What you want is to have your site appear on as many relevant searches as possible. That means uncovering all of the relevant keywords and building content around them, writing naturally so that you rank well for more search phrases.

My own experience through this most recent update is fairly instructive. I have a few different websites for the different parts of my online business presence:

* Inside Out Marketing (www.insideoutmarketing.com), which is a content portal where I can post my articles and keep them up to date, link to good resources, and generally share lots of free information for the good of all mankind.
* SEO Research Labs (www.seoresearchlabs.com), where we offer low-cost keyword research reports for webmasters, site designers, and SEO/SEM consultants.
* Canned Books (www.cannedbooks.com), where I sell my "SEO Fast Start" e-book.

Of these sites, only one of them has a well-developed theme, lots of content, and all the stuff that search engines like, and that's my "Inside Out Marketing" content portal. This site has dropped in the rankings for several "big ticket" search terms, like "search engine positioning." However, the overall traffic from Google has not decreased a bit. If anything, it's up a little since the "Florida" update began.

Not only am I getting as much or more traffic, the quality of the traffic is much better. Prior to Florida, only about 80% of the Google referrals were going to what I would consider "relevant" pages. That is, 1 out of every 5 visitors was not finding content on my site that fit what they were searching for. Since the Florida update, more than 95% of the referrals is relevant, so now only 1 of 20 visitors Google sends my way is going to be disappointed.

This is happening because pages from my site are appearing in search results for a lot more searches. Search terms like "hide email from spam spiders," "Teoma ranking," and "froogle feed format" are bringing people directly to pages on my site where I'm offering them the kind of information they're looking for. A lot of "generic" search terms still deliver really bad results on Google, but they're clearly doing a great job for my visitors.

So that's the good news for me. The bad news has been losing our top ranking for "keyword research" for SEO Research Labs, but that's another one that Google got right. We might do a great job, but it never made sense for us to outrank Wordtracker in the first place! All I did was build a well-structured page, send out a few articles on keyword research, and within a couple months my site was sitting at the top for our primary search term. It shouldn't be that easy.

With the new Google (and more on that question is coming your way soon), I believe that it would take months of dedicated effort for us to topple Wordtracker from their rightful place at the top. Which is exactly as it should be. They've earned their reputation, the web knows it, and Google is at last rewarding that.

Dan Thies, SEO Research Labs
http://www.seoresearchlabs.com

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Why is that though? Is is because that the results are more relevant now -- or you are showing up in the results more for a variety of searches -- or is Internet traffic up quite a bit as a whole thereby sending everyone more traffic as a result (could be the time of year in some cases)

I keep hearing the same things here and there. Search results are better and traffic is up. Of course mixed in are the "I disappeared from the face of the Earth" people, but even those people often come back and say that their traffic is up or unchanged.

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The Florida dance has basically got everybody at out of the woodwork.

By the many post seems like a google mushroom cloud(filter) has ereupted into a chaotic mesmeizing(non magnetic) effect on who is in top 10.
Who is their and who has been vaporized??

On one of my sites still top 10 for different keyword search but not what I wanted.....google abyss 'no sunshine "

So I looked back after being kicked to curb for that search term and looked at those that weren't thrown uder the bus and noticed that my main competitior
still remained.

Funny thing is that I was surpised to find that http:travelwand.com has used sub domains names(which google isn't filtering) based on rankings.

Had the oppurtunity to email her about dynamic link pages and was told she had freinds at Google.

Hello google will you be by friend and not let that slop pass through.

To google on the clock people
How can I become a friend of google without having to sell out my relevant content.

Mr. google since you wanted to set the prom date of 11/17 you forgor to invite
your freinds and believers.

Since you are neutral who did you invite?


Google is not broke in terms of alo/fils but it seems you guys are ready to cash out.
Don't get me wrong about taking the money and run !!
It's been done before!!

Is your ship listing from side to side as your attempt to monetize vs. new dance Sounds like an insider scheme wonder .

After all it has been quoted that their is a high fence between research results and marketing at google.

Marketing at google only gets paid if ad revenues are produced.
Garret's chuckle with Shari was deplaned by marketing.

I imagine marketing at google is looking to be a revenue generated site.

That is why they can offer say I'll get you here or there ads,ppc,etc.

Let me say this:
Google is looking for revenue otherwize who would buy stock!!

Just hope they don't wind up the same way go.com did (busted).

To the Florida dance cooridinater guess what we reject your new filter .

You keep your way I'll take the (internet highway)

To the rest of us check your competitors sites sourse code and please emulalte google friends to prove a (temporary)point.

So, going back up to the 3rd posting of this thread, about the <h> header tags. So, supposedly are they bad to use now? Or only bad if you use some other copied text within the tag's bounds? Is there a safe way to do it? Still learning here, thanks for any input.

No, <H> tags aren't inherently bad - what the poster was referring to was basically using the same keywords over and over on the same page and embedding them in <H1> or <H2> tags for emphasis - I don't see anything new about that as a target for penalties: such practices have always been discouraged but I guess it is now being penalized more consistently.

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I'd say it's because we're showing up on more searches, that are more relevant to our content. I look at the logs, and I see a lot more search terms than ever before, like twice as many. But the number of "off topic" referrals is way down.

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Our site, www.HPAdesign.com, is a marketing tool for our architecture firm. We also use the site to sell our house plans online.

I have spent countless hours optimizing the site to achieve top 10 rankings on our major keywords which are "house plans," "new house plans," "cape house plans," and "colonial house plans."

The thing that frustrates me most is that most of the sites that compete with us in this space have gone unaffected. We, however, seemed to have been dropped altogther. Or so I thought. I few days later we popped back in again...but were showing up somewhere between 80 and 100.

Over the past few weeks we have been listed, then not listed, then listed again, and so on. So, I really am in a quandry. I have compared our homepage with those of the top 5 that show up under "house plans" and simply don't see all that much difference. I just don't know where to begin.

If our site whould show up in the listings and stay there, even at 80+, I could work on imrpoving the page. But the listing is dropped and added every other day, so attempting to figure out what optimization needs to take place becomes a daunting task.

It has hurt our sales so significantly over the past weeks that I am leaning toward starting to use CPC advertising again...at least until I get this Google mess resolved.

I just find it very aggravating when I do a search for "house plans" and sites with bird houses, dog houses, and tree houses get in the top 20 while my site has been dropped altogether. All-the-while, Google is telling me that it has improved the filtering algorithm. Whatever!

Your site doesn't appear to be particularly well optimized. I found no heading tags on your home page, for example. You're only using one of the key phrases you mention in your title tag. You do have lots of keyword repetition in tiny gray text, which may actually be working against you with Google. "House plans" is used 28 times. That may be a bit excessive.

• Four things I would do right away:
• Take a look at the incoming links for the sites that outrank you, and make sure you aren't missing any good links from vertical directories. You're probably being outlinked by these sites that are ahead of you.
• Do an "allinanchor:" search on Google for your targeted search terms, and see where you rank - I bet you aren't in the top 30 on most of them. This search shows you which sites have those keywords contained in their incoming links.
• Revisit your home page, and see if you can't work in some heading tags (h1>,<h2>,<h3>) for your headings. Your designer should know how to use a cascading style sheet (CSS) to make this fit within your design. While you're at it, ask the designer why there are 60 blank lines at the beginning of the source code for this page. It might not hurt, but it certainly doesn't help.
• Consider broadening your keyword strategy. Targeting so few search terms, with so little content, is a very dicey proposition.

I think you need to accept that some searchers looking for "house plans" are looking for bird houses, dog houses, and doll houses. "Home plans" and "floor plans" might be a bit more targeted, and less crowded. The data from Wordtracker certainly indicates this is the case:

Nos Count Predict Keyword
--------------------------------
1 16641 16825 house plans
2 3960 4004 home plans
3 2368 2394 floor plans
4 1593 1611 houseplans
5 1201 1214 house floor plans
6 992 1003 log home plans
7 765 773 dog house plans
8 645 652 small house plans
9 614 621 home floor plans
10 554 560 modular home plans
11 534 540 free house plans
12 401 405 bird house plans
13 395 399 log home floor plans
14 354 358 home bar plans
15 324 328 victorian house plans
16 304 307 free dog house plans
17 287 290 kitchen floor plans
18 283 286 luxury home plans
19 267 270 country house plans
20 264 267 beach house plans

Dan Thies

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Dans,

Thank your for your comments. I will absolutely take them under consideration. Unfortunately, I am the web designer as well as an architectural designer so I do not have as much time as I would like to spend on the web site as I would like.

With regards to my web skills, I am completely self-taught. So, I do truly appreciate your input. It is forums like this one that have allowed me to have such great success so far.

I will work through this bump-in-the-road.

Thanks again.