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- May 16, 2011
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Here is a continuation of concepts related to the orginal post. The following mostly has to do with ranking and penalties. I know I called this a how-to-build-an-authority-site thread but its sort of grown into more of a how-to-get-penalties-removed thread. That's not such a bad thing -- most people produce penalized content so getting this info out there will be extremely helpful to you all.
The gist of things thus far is do not backlink while you troubleshoot your content.
Specifically, here's the issue. When you throw backlinks at something, it ranks. Imagining that you're playing a game of darts -- you get 100 points when you hit the center. When you haven't backlinked, that center cork of the dartboard is very small ... and you can adjust your content to where it hits the board and scores well.
Now the problem with backlinks is that it makes the board bigger. This larger dartboard, it is easy to hit it with a dart and "score" -- within a couple days you're in the teens, now yo're top ten, horray! But that ranking can be deceptive. As many SEOs experience, the rankings you gain at the beginning leave, it becomes a "google dance", or you get a notice of unnatural backlinks, etc. ... and the end result is that shortcut of getting fast automated links didn't work so well.
You ever have that happen to you before? Almost every SEO has. I'm going to tell you exactly what happens when this happens, and give you a method to avoid it. Because its time to start making some money, its time to start backlinking -- we can't wait on that forever.
---------------------------------------------------------------
EVERYTHING YOU READ AFTER THIS POINT MAY OR MAY NOT BE BULL****
---------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer time. The following is what I've perceived after years of troubleshooting content. I can't prove any of it, but I believe it makes sense and it coincides with the results I see when getting stuff to rank. So here it goes.
Did you ever notice that Google favors older pages? When you're talking about evergreen niches and stuff that's "not new", Google tends to give favor to the older indexed content. I strongly believe that age is a factor that Google uses as one of its 200+ factors in ranking pages. This age factor applies to content, and it applies to backlinks. Every time Google's bot visits your page and notices that yes, that content is still there, the links to that page still exist, it adds the ever-so-slightest +ranking to that page. This goes for both the page and its content, as well as when Google notices a link to a page. Aged links leading to an aged page are favored with Google.
This can work for you, but it can also work against you. When it comes to optimization -- balance is the key. There comes a point with Google that their algorithm says "Ok bud, this page of yours is reeeally optimized for your keyword here. That's just not natural, you've got a penalty now."
I think we all realize that, when a page gets too many exact anchors, it does surprisingly well, better, top 10, top 5 -- poof. Its gone. Perhaps it isn't even in the top 1000 results now. Whats up with that? Glad you asked, I'll tell you.
Google cached your page. It was keyword stuffed, which in terms of raw ranking = POWER. I've seen 9% density rank really well on extremely competitive terms, because this stuffing is power to rank for a term. Google cached the backlinks to your site -- all exact anchors -- POWER. Your site has an extreme amount of power to rank, unbalanced power -- and it is ranking well. Then it disappears. What happens is this -- Google cached your page, saw its links and applied its algorithm ... now you have power, power enough to rank really well. And then 2 or 3 days, maybe a week later, Google checks your website out again (same content ... +age modifier) now you have even more power. Google sees the same links to your page, they've aged (+age modifier), now your site is even MORE powered up. You quit backlinking a month ago, yet the work you did is still powering-up your website as it ages -- and it finally snaps.
Your website is like a cup, and optimization with backlinks and on-page content is like water. The higher your PA/DA (and PR), the bigger your glass is and the more water your page/site can hold. When your cup is full, it ranks. Even a small cup that is full (simply with onpage optimization) will rank at least in the top 100 -- even if the term is extremely cdompetitive. If you blast a page with exact anchors AND have it keyword stuffed at 5% keyword density, for a very short period of time it can hold a lot of water.
Periodically (maybe once a week, once every other week), Google runs a set of algorithms on your site to verify how much water you've got and how big your cup is. If you have too much water for your cup, you don't rank. Here's the bad part though, that water doesn't spill out. Your cup sits there, flooded under water and unusable (penalized), until that excess water is taken away. At this point, when your cup is too full -- you will have a negative modifier applied to your site, which ranges from perhaps -10 to -250, depending on how much under water it is.
This is why you can make a page at, say, 1.3% keyword density and 25% exact incoming anchors, and it ranks just fine for six months. After six months, it finally trips the overpowered, overoptimized algorithm -- because your page has aged and incoming anchors have aged to the point that now they're too much, whereas when you first made them they were fine. (You have more water, but you didn't work on making your cup any bigger by getting quality links and higher PA/DA). This is also why going in and cranking that keyword density from 1.3% down to .9% instantly gets your rankings back -- you reduced the extreme optimization that page had and it is in the ranking zone again.
This is also why someone makes a page at .7% density and 25% exact incoming anchors, and it doesn't rank at all, you forget about it -- but 6 months later its suddenly ranking. When you first made that page, it did not yet qualify for ranking because it was too weak, and not optimized enough yet so that it hit that sweet spot where it can rank. After 6 months of your content aging and your incoming anchors aging, finally that page is in the "rank zone" and does well.
This is why it is imperitive to always audit your site's ranking. You need to know when a page is acting goofy and not ranking anymore. It could be that the content having aged, and the incoming anchors having aged, have overoptimized your page. Lower your keyword density on your under-performing pages. By auditing, you keep all your content passing Google's algirithm with flying colors.
Now when you throw links at a page, obviously it does better. The problem is using the links as a crutch can hurt your site -- because your article that wasn't written very well ranks #9 with a bunch of backlinks. You think thats wonderful -- and you decide to link even more to it to get it ranking better. The problem is, if it were written properly in the first place, instead of #9 it might have been #3. You'll never be able to judge that if you're backlinking from the git-go.
Now of course, you can just make your cup bigger. How you do that? Get quality links. Up the pool of links to your site from different class-A / class-C IP addresses (the more the better). Get links from sites with higher PA/DA. This increases your own PA/DA, and PA/DA is a good description of what the "cup" is.
Thus far this thread has been about how to top-off your cup without making it any bigger. In future posts I'll fully explain about making your cup a super-sized slurpee. But for now, I'm emphasizing the balance of content -- because if you get your site fine-tuned with no incoming links, by the time you actually do get links its going to be a smooth, easy-ranking operation.
So here is a way to summarize everything above. You want to fine tune your content so, as you're playing darts, you hit that 100-point dead center without any other influence (backlinks). If you do this, when you finally get links, you will rank #1 much easier. If, however, you're throwing backlinks at it before Google even has cached the page -- you have no idea how good your content was. It now might be #8 -- and you don't know if would have been #1 with better content, or if being #8 is the best you could do with the backlinks you got. You're basically testing that your airplane can fly before you throw it in the air.
I troubleshoot content until it ranks. The above is my perception of what Google is doing. I have no idea if they actually do everything mentioned above, but if you treat your site like everything above is true -- you'll rank really well.
There's a problem now. You want to fine tune your site's content, but you also want to start getting links! How do you do that? Here's how I do it.
Once you start backlinking to your site, all new content will be vetted on a secondary domain. On another domain, you put the fresh content. There you can test the content and get it ranking well without backlinks. When it comes in at a place where you're happy with the result, you canonical the page to a new location (your money site) that has many links and a growing PA/DA. This content then does even better. Doing it this way, you can start backlinking to your money site now and still have the opportunity to test your content's ability to rank without links. I will start doing this on my current money site after I have 50 pages of content on it -- because it is starting to bring some good money in and I want that to start getting backlinks to the site fairly soon.
-----------------------------------------------
************ MY CURRENT MONEY SITE ************
-----------------------------------------------
I started this like November 22nd or so. I'm really busy on other projects and my job -- so I haven't done anything on this site except write the articles and audit pages approximately 3 times each. I thought I had written 30 articles for it, but some weren't published so my actual live article count is only 23.
I know for a fact that my particular industry averages around 15 cents a visitor (with the products I target, their price range and with my site setup & how well it converts). Currently my site is right on track earning just that much now that its gotten over 1000 visitors.
So as you can see from above ... is it worthwhile to write articles when you're averaging $322 per article (and haven't even backlinked yet)? Of course! Someday I will backlink and those pages will actually earn a lot more. I have no interest in flipping this site for a $3834, but as-is thats what I figure its worth without additional effort.
The gist of things thus far is do not backlink while you troubleshoot your content.
Specifically, here's the issue. When you throw backlinks at something, it ranks. Imagining that you're playing a game of darts -- you get 100 points when you hit the center. When you haven't backlinked, that center cork of the dartboard is very small ... and you can adjust your content to where it hits the board and scores well.
Now the problem with backlinks is that it makes the board bigger. This larger dartboard, it is easy to hit it with a dart and "score" -- within a couple days you're in the teens, now yo're top ten, horray! But that ranking can be deceptive. As many SEOs experience, the rankings you gain at the beginning leave, it becomes a "google dance", or you get a notice of unnatural backlinks, etc. ... and the end result is that shortcut of getting fast automated links didn't work so well.
You ever have that happen to you before? Almost every SEO has. I'm going to tell you exactly what happens when this happens, and give you a method to avoid it. Because its time to start making some money, its time to start backlinking -- we can't wait on that forever.
---------------------------------------------------------------
EVERYTHING YOU READ AFTER THIS POINT MAY OR MAY NOT BE BULL****
---------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer time. The following is what I've perceived after years of troubleshooting content. I can't prove any of it, but I believe it makes sense and it coincides with the results I see when getting stuff to rank. So here it goes.
Did you ever notice that Google favors older pages? When you're talking about evergreen niches and stuff that's "not new", Google tends to give favor to the older indexed content. I strongly believe that age is a factor that Google uses as one of its 200+ factors in ranking pages. This age factor applies to content, and it applies to backlinks. Every time Google's bot visits your page and notices that yes, that content is still there, the links to that page still exist, it adds the ever-so-slightest +ranking to that page. This goes for both the page and its content, as well as when Google notices a link to a page. Aged links leading to an aged page are favored with Google.
This can work for you, but it can also work against you. When it comes to optimization -- balance is the key. There comes a point with Google that their algorithm says "Ok bud, this page of yours is reeeally optimized for your keyword here. That's just not natural, you've got a penalty now."
I think we all realize that, when a page gets too many exact anchors, it does surprisingly well, better, top 10, top 5 -- poof. Its gone. Perhaps it isn't even in the top 1000 results now. Whats up with that? Glad you asked, I'll tell you.
Google cached your page. It was keyword stuffed, which in terms of raw ranking = POWER. I've seen 9% density rank really well on extremely competitive terms, because this stuffing is power to rank for a term. Google cached the backlinks to your site -- all exact anchors -- POWER. Your site has an extreme amount of power to rank, unbalanced power -- and it is ranking well. Then it disappears. What happens is this -- Google cached your page, saw its links and applied its algorithm ... now you have power, power enough to rank really well. And then 2 or 3 days, maybe a week later, Google checks your website out again (same content ... +age modifier) now you have even more power. Google sees the same links to your page, they've aged (+age modifier), now your site is even MORE powered up. You quit backlinking a month ago, yet the work you did is still powering-up your website as it ages -- and it finally snaps.
Your website is like a cup, and optimization with backlinks and on-page content is like water. The higher your PA/DA (and PR), the bigger your glass is and the more water your page/site can hold. When your cup is full, it ranks. Even a small cup that is full (simply with onpage optimization) will rank at least in the top 100 -- even if the term is extremely cdompetitive. If you blast a page with exact anchors AND have it keyword stuffed at 5% keyword density, for a very short period of time it can hold a lot of water.
Periodically (maybe once a week, once every other week), Google runs a set of algorithms on your site to verify how much water you've got and how big your cup is. If you have too much water for your cup, you don't rank. Here's the bad part though, that water doesn't spill out. Your cup sits there, flooded under water and unusable (penalized), until that excess water is taken away. At this point, when your cup is too full -- you will have a negative modifier applied to your site, which ranges from perhaps -10 to -250, depending on how much under water it is.
This is why you can make a page at, say, 1.3% keyword density and 25% exact incoming anchors, and it ranks just fine for six months. After six months, it finally trips the overpowered, overoptimized algorithm -- because your page has aged and incoming anchors have aged to the point that now they're too much, whereas when you first made them they were fine. (You have more water, but you didn't work on making your cup any bigger by getting quality links and higher PA/DA). This is also why going in and cranking that keyword density from 1.3% down to .9% instantly gets your rankings back -- you reduced the extreme optimization that page had and it is in the ranking zone again.
This is also why someone makes a page at .7% density and 25% exact incoming anchors, and it doesn't rank at all, you forget about it -- but 6 months later its suddenly ranking. When you first made that page, it did not yet qualify for ranking because it was too weak, and not optimized enough yet so that it hit that sweet spot where it can rank. After 6 months of your content aging and your incoming anchors aging, finally that page is in the "rank zone" and does well.
This is why it is imperitive to always audit your site's ranking. You need to know when a page is acting goofy and not ranking anymore. It could be that the content having aged, and the incoming anchors having aged, have overoptimized your page. Lower your keyword density on your under-performing pages. By auditing, you keep all your content passing Google's algirithm with flying colors.
Now when you throw links at a page, obviously it does better. The problem is using the links as a crutch can hurt your site -- because your article that wasn't written very well ranks #9 with a bunch of backlinks. You think thats wonderful -- and you decide to link even more to it to get it ranking better. The problem is, if it were written properly in the first place, instead of #9 it might have been #3. You'll never be able to judge that if you're backlinking from the git-go.
Now of course, you can just make your cup bigger. How you do that? Get quality links. Up the pool of links to your site from different class-A / class-C IP addresses (the more the better). Get links from sites with higher PA/DA. This increases your own PA/DA, and PA/DA is a good description of what the "cup" is.
Thus far this thread has been about how to top-off your cup without making it any bigger. In future posts I'll fully explain about making your cup a super-sized slurpee. But for now, I'm emphasizing the balance of content -- because if you get your site fine-tuned with no incoming links, by the time you actually do get links its going to be a smooth, easy-ranking operation.
So here is a way to summarize everything above. You want to fine tune your content so, as you're playing darts, you hit that 100-point dead center without any other influence (backlinks). If you do this, when you finally get links, you will rank #1 much easier. If, however, you're throwing backlinks at it before Google even has cached the page -- you have no idea how good your content was. It now might be #8 -- and you don't know if would have been #1 with better content, or if being #8 is the best you could do with the backlinks you got. You're basically testing that your airplane can fly before you throw it in the air.
I troubleshoot content until it ranks. The above is my perception of what Google is doing. I have no idea if they actually do everything mentioned above, but if you treat your site like everything above is true -- you'll rank really well.
There's a problem now. You want to fine tune your site's content, but you also want to start getting links! How do you do that? Here's how I do it.
Once you start backlinking to your site, all new content will be vetted on a secondary domain. On another domain, you put the fresh content. There you can test the content and get it ranking well without backlinks. When it comes in at a place where you're happy with the result, you canonical the page to a new location (your money site) that has many links and a growing PA/DA. This content then does even better. Doing it this way, you can start backlinking to your money site now and still have the opportunity to test your content's ability to rank without links. I will start doing this on my current money site after I have 50 pages of content on it -- because it is starting to bring some good money in and I want that to start getting backlinks to the site fairly soon.
-----------------------------------------------
************ MY CURRENT MONEY SITE ************
-----------------------------------------------
I started this like November 22nd or so. I'm really busy on other projects and my job -- so I haven't done anything on this site except write the articles and audit pages approximately 3 times each. I thought I had written 30 articles for it, but some weren't published so my actual live article count is only 23.
I know for a fact that my particular industry averages around 15 cents a visitor (with the products I target, their price range and with my site setup & how well it converts). Currently my site is right on track earning just that much now that its gotten over 1000 visitors.
So as you can see from above ... is it worthwhile to write articles when you're averaging $322 per article (and haven't even backlinked yet)? Of course! Someday I will backlink and those pages will actually earn a lot more. I have no interest in flipping this site for a $3834, but as-is thats what I figure its worth without additional effort.
I'm sure you've helped and inspired so many people with this post.
