PHPBUILT's Idiot-Proof Guide to Authority Site Building

TwistedSEO said:

Do sidebar links count as exact match internal linking? For example, if my keyword was red widgets, and I had a "popular pages" widget showing "red widgets" and linking to my page sitewide.

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I can answer this. Yes, and its low quality. The best kind are of internal linking are the links within the body of your context

Would you consider "tooth decay" and "enamel decay" to be duplicate content? I have a lot of articles like this on my site where people might now know the correct industry term for it so I have an article for the general name and an article for the industry accepted term.

Also when you are using all-in-one seo are you using the meta keyword and meta description features? Idk if these are a thing of the past or what.

emerica1184 said:

Would you consider "tooth decay" and "enamel decay" to be duplicate content? I have a lot of articles like this on my site where people might now know the correct industry term for it so I have an article for the general name and an article for the industry accepted term.

Also when you are using all-in-one seo are you using the meta keyword and meta description features? Idk if these are a thing of the past or what.

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Using alternate spellings certainly can help avoid mentions of your keyword. Enamel and tooth are good terms to swap, but even so you can reach stuffing status on "decay". Say something like "this will harm your enamel" instead of "will cause enamel decay" if decay is approaching 2% density.

TwistedSEO said:

Do sidebar links count as exact match internal linking? For example, if my keyword was red widgets, and I had a "popular pages" widget showing "red widgets" and linking to my page sitewide.

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Sidebar links of any kind contribute to keyword density, such as recent posts widget. You have to do some internal linking, thats why I like to use yarpp. I limit it to 4 links at the end of the article, and to very related posts (thats what yarpp handles). I wouldn't have dozens of template-injected links to your other pages, it really increases your keyword stuffing issues.

I've never used excerpts before but now I plan to use them.

How long are your excerpts? How many on your homepage?

phpbuilt said:

Sidebar links of any kind contribute to keyword density, such as recent posts widget. You have to do some internal linking, thats why I like to use yarpp. I limit it to 4 links at the end of the article, and to very related posts (thats what yarpp handles). I wouldn't have dozens of template-injected links to your other pages, it really increases your keyword stuffing issues.

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Thank you for your response. What I was actually wondering was if the page was internally linked from a sitewide menu (with exact match anchor), is the page considered as having a high ratio of exact match internal links, and hence requiring a lower keyword density for that page (0.5% instead of the usual 1-1.5%)?

Dude, you're blowing my mind here. Deoptimized some inner pages and all but two have jumped up into top 30 for the inner page instead of my homepage (which was ranking instead). Now I'm realizing my inter-linking anchors are way too optimized for my highest competition term, which refuses to dance top 100 despite having the most juice pointed at it. Deoptimizing those now, will report results.

EDIT: Something for followers of this thread to think about. Google considers contextual relevance, so one thing you can do to boost relevance without going overboard on anchors is to put your money term right next to the link. So let's say it's a web 2.0 or low PR page, you can do this "This is a website about money keyword generic anchor text."

PHP, what do you think about naked URLs?? I know they're good, but in Webmaster Tools they show up without punctuation. So www.MyWebsite.com/Key-Word-Phrase shows up as: www mywebsite com key word phrase

Given this, think its possible those naked URLs could hurt anchor text ratios if the exact keywords are in the URL???

Talleyrand said:

I've never used excerpts before but now I plan to use them.

How long are your excerpts? How many on your homepage?

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The reason I screw around with excerpts is they become the meta-description tag on your actual blog post. The meta description winds up being the snippet that Google shows most of the time when searching for your page. Therefore, it is worthwhile to type a good one -- this is your chance to get someone's attention to click through to your site. Be crazy, or be very accurate, you've got about 3 short sentences to solicit someone through to your site ... good excerpts vs bad excerpts could be the difference of a 50% increase or decrease of traffic.

Ultimately they also either go on category pages or your homepage. If they go on your homepage, noindex/follow your category pages. If you actually want your homepage to rank for something, create a static homepage and follow/index your category pages. Don't expect your category pages to rank very well unless you're on top of all your various excerpts so that your category page is not keyword stuffed (very hard to do).

Biggest reason to screw with excerpts is traffic boost by controlling your snippets in the SERPs.

Laubster said:

PHP, what do you think about naked URLs?? I know they're good, but in Webmaster Tools they show up without punctuation. So http://www.MyWebsite.com/Key-Word-Phrase shows up as: www mywebsite com key word phrase

Given this, think its possible those naked URLs could hurt anchor text ratios if the exact keywords are in the URL???

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My anchor texts, when I can control them, usually fringe around the widest actual longtails that I don't really think the page would ever rank for, but is still descriptive and still a keyword that I'd like to rank for.

If I want to rank my page for "dog training", my anchor might be "Obedient German Sheppard" ... I might have the word obedient in the article once. I might have the word German Sheppard in the article once. I'm not even trying to rank for it, don't even care if I rank for it ... but I use that as an anchor.

This goes a very long way towards solidifying all your potential longtails without repeating your main keyword at all.

Naked URLs I hear work great, sometimes I'll use them ... usually don't.

TwistedSEO said:

Thank you for your response. What I was actually wondering was if the page was internally linked from a sitewide menu (with exact match anchor), is the page considered as having a high ratio of exact match internal links, and hence requiring a lower keyword density for that page (0.5% instead of the usual 1-1.5%)?

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Yes, or it would even make sense to do a healthy 1.3% keyword density and just change the menu to not be exact anchor.

Laubster said:

Now I'm realizing my inter-linking anchors are way too optimized for my highest competition term

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Incidentally folks, this is why many sites have a problem ranking for their main term.

Often times, SEOs will name their website after their main keyword. As such, every page of your entire website then links to your homepage, as a H1 tag (very powerful), as the first link of your page (very powerful) with the exact keyword you're trying to rank for. Is your site 50 pages? Congratulations, you have 50 overpowered links pointing to your homepage -- got to rip your main keyword out of navigation and not use it as the name of your blog.

This is especially 100% true if you're not even in the top 200 results. You're overoptimized, reduce it and you'll start ranking.

phpbuilt said:

The reason I screw around with excerpts is they become the meta-description tag on your actual blog post. The meta description winds up being the snippet that Google shows most of the time when searching for your page. Therefore, it is worthwhile to type a good one -- this is your chance to get someone's attention to click through to your site. Be crazy, or be very accurate, you've got about 3 short sentences to solicit someone through to your site ... good excerpts vs bad excerpts could be the difference of a 50% increase or decrease of traffic.

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Now let's say you have an authority site with a lot of posts. You put your excerpts on the homepage with category pages noindex/followed. There would probably be at least 12 excerpts on the homepage. That would equal twelve internal links. Is that not excessive?

Talleyrand said:

Now let's say you have an authority site with a lot of posts. You put your excerpts on the homepage with category pages noindex/followed. There would probably be at least 12 excerpts on the homepage. That would equal twelve internal links. Is that not excessive?

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The typical wordpress model of showing the latest posts on the homepage is a horrible model. There is no way your website can ever settle for its main keyword because the keyword density of that main keyword will always change. If the perfect density for the homepage happens to be 1.3%, and you're at 1.3%, you're ranking #1 for your main keyword and very happy.

Then you post another post, you happen to have the main keyword in both the title and the snippet. Boom, your page goes from #1 to #15 because you went from 1.3% density to 2% density. People call it the "google dance", my opinion is there is no such thing. People change their homepage and the keyword density is screwed up, so you're penalized.

People link to their main website with too many anchors and they think there is a "google dance", when in all actuality your incoming anchors are being penalized -- later some of those drop, or new anchors come in that aren't exact, and your site bounces back again.

Its not a "google dance", its a balancing act between proper keyword density and overoptimization.Anyways, if you ever hope your homepage to rank for something stable, you need to make it a static page and not show all the latest posts, instead link to a sitemap from the homepage so all your inner articles get an equal amount of PR from your homepage.

The smartest thing you could possibly do is link to your inner pages from homepage in-content. If you had a 2000 word homepage which briefly described your 10 categories (linking to them) and then also linked to the best 2 articles in each category, in content -- without keyword stuffing, thats the best homepage you could ask for.

By the way everyone, if I could amend that original article, where I talk about promoting your site and blog networks, I'd say this.

Before I gauged the various risks of public networks as thus:

Blog network that advertises itself on blackhat forums and generates backlink reports: 100% threat
Blog network that advertises itself on blackhat forums and doesn't generate backlink reports: somewhat threat
Blog network that advertises itself on blackhat forums, but has limited signup and closes when full: limited threat
Blog network that barely advertises itself, except through word of mouth: virtually no threat
Blog network that you own yourself: no threat

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Right now, from what I've seen with the fallout of Anglo Ranks and the stiff penalties those sites have received, along with the recent video of Matt Cutts saying they were going to continue taking down public blog networks, I would rephrase my original threat assessment as follows.

Any link package you can buy, where those links come from domains owned by the link builder: big threat
Owning your own blog network: no threat

Of course if there's a smartass that comes in here and posts "Oh but they don't actually own the blogs, they just broker links onto the blogs" (you know who you are), if anyone or any thing owns that blog and is selling link packages, whether brokered or whatever, its a severe risk.

If you're going to buy those types of link packages, don't do it to your main money site. The penalties I'm seeing from Anglo Ranks being targeted are extremely severe. Keep your money-site link building activities to web2.0s, social sites and your own personal, private blog network.

very helpful and valuable thread. Thanks for sharing, Php. I started to build a silo site recently and all of my pages are indexed; but on one is in top 100. i checked my keyword density and it seems all of my pages are over optimised. i will make changes today and report late. Looking forward your next valuable threads.

very helpful and valuable thread. Thanks for sharing, Php. I started to build a silo site recently and all of my pages are indexed; but on one is in top 100. i checked my keyword density and it seems all of my pages are over optimised. i will make changes today and report late. Looking forward your next valuable threads.

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Siloing or Theming ?! . There is a huge difference. You don't have main navigation. No widgets. Only linking to articles within the Silo. No out links ?!

phpbuilt said:

The typical wordpress model of showing the latest posts on the homepage is a horrible model. There is no way your website can ever settle for its main keyword because the keyword density of that main keyword will always change. If the perfect density for the homepage happens to be 1.3%, and you're at 1.3%, you're ranking #1 for your main keyword and very happy.

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What do you recommend for letting visitors know of site updates, reviews etc?

Right now, I have posts containing site update info and product reviews that auto post every 2 days for fresh content and I have the recent posts widget set to let visitors know of fresh content and product reviews. It is set at 25 posts (yeah I know way too much).

So to sum it up - what I have is 25 keyword rich titles (some with exact anchor text as my main page) rotating every 2 days. What would be the best way to keep visitors notified of reviews, etc without killing my serps due to over optimization?

Phpbuilt, just wanna say thanks for all the help man. It's be really useful for me