Slightly Shady SEO | Blackhat is Back, Baby.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Some of it is recycled garbage and the author knows it. Some of it is misconceptions. Some of it is outdated. Everyone’s guilty of putting out some of it; as SEO’s we’re more or less shooting in the dark trying to figure out the intricacies of an algorithm that is fiercely protected and constantly updated.
Also (and this is important), there are occasionally glitches in the Google algorithm (In that case, nofollowed links passing anchor text power)

So sometimes we have to experiment, and throw SEO knowledge we previously hed dear out the window.

Why is Experimenting with the Search Engines So Difficult?
Any scientist will tell you a proper experiment requires that you have only one variable. Unfortunately, we cannot do this. You can’t directly clone sites to test, as the duplicate content algorithm will throw off your statistics. However, if you modify the content for each test site, you have added in a new variable, and the entire experiment starts to lose it’s reliability. So how can we go about testing the search engines without a sufficient amount of control?

What Variables Can we Control?

1. Anchor text
2. Template Design
3. Internal/Outbound Links
4. Number of Pages
5. Link Velocity - Link Velocity is how quickly your site gains links, and how many appear each day. It’s best to try and achieve a upward slope, followed by a downward slope

Variables we Can Tentatively Control

1. When are Where the Links to our Various Sites Appear - We can’t determine where our links will stick, and their internal standings. But by being careful about where we try and gather our links from, we can gain a degree of control.
2. Content/Keyword Density - We’ll cover this more in depth later, so we can get similar content that should rank the same, without setting off dupe content filters. And by the way, I know keyword density is a crock of shit in it’s normal context, you’ll see what I mean later.
   
3. Domain Names and File Names -Obviously, we can’t have multiple sites using the same domain and expect them to evaluate properly.
4. How Quickly Links are Discovered - Even if we drop links in the same locations, we have trouble getting Google to find them at the same time. However, we can help this

Variables we Cannot Control

1. Google’s magic dance that no one really understands (err the unknown elements of the algorithm)

How to Control our Variables the Best We Can- How well we can control these variables will make or break our experiment. In reality, we control the majority of the variables in some fashion, but without proper control on these, the data is worthless.

1. When are Where the Links to our Various Sites Appear
   • Unless you are testing the effects of different links on your site, this is a doozy. You may have to sacrafice backlink quality for this control. It’s important that any link created is easily replicatable, and that we attempt to control the number of internal links linking to the page with our backlink.
   • Even things like digg are not perfect for this, as the articles showing up on different “upcoming” pages can impact how much juice gets passed to our specific backlink page. However, by using sites like digg/propeller for the experiment, we gain a large benefit. They have SO many outbound links on any given page, they pass the same amount of juice to pretty much any page(not very much). By submitting using the same tags/category/user, this variable becomes much more controlled.
     
   • If you’re only testing 1 or 2 sites, you can get away with directory submissions, but you lose a bit of reliability. Submitting 2 nearly identical sites to the same directory in the same day will almost assuredly get one link accepted, and one denied. So a 1-2 day gap is needed. This affects our domain age/backlink age in Google’s eyes, and throws off the results. It’s necessary in some cases though.
2. Content/Keyword Density - Probably the most important and overlooked variable in experiments like this
   • Make a list of any and all acceptable uses of your keyphrases, or anything topic-specific. Especially verbs. Note how many times you’ll use them per page, and overall content length.
     For example, let’s say you use the line “We provide SEO services to businesses in the Detroit/Metro area, and throughout Northern Ohio.” The words underlined are the words that must appear together, and the exact same number of times. The words in italics are the words that need to stay the same relative distance from these underlined phrases. Within a sentence or two. In addition, we try and keep all of this in the same order.
     So if we were to write a permutation of this sentence, it might be: “Only one group provides SEO services to businesses all around the Detroit-Metro area, and in the are of Northern Ohio.”
     By using somewhat generic phrasing, we can dodge the duplicate content filters, while keeping our important key phrases in the proper amounts, areas, and orders without setting off the duplicate content filters.
3. Domain Names and File Names
   • Perhaps filenames shouldn’t be listed here, as we do control them completely. But domain names? Yeah. Launching multiple sites on one domain(via subdomains) is unacceptable, as no one is 100% sure domains vs. subdomains are handled. So we need domains that will provide no benefit or penalty. Try just gibberish letters on the same TLD when you’re testing a new variable. Nowadays, having a keyword in the domain provides you with a significant bump, so we can’t take that risk. In reality, avoiding vowels might be a good idea, just to avoid accidentally containing a small word someone might search for.
4. How Quickly Links are Discovered
   • Obviously, we need to submit these links at the same time to the same places.
   • If you’re submitting to social news sites, make sure you use the same tag, categories, and user names. First and foremost because different tags hold different PR(link juice). Secondly, because when the search engine crawls those categories/tags/user profile, it will see all the links at once.
   • If you know of links that you can’t control in the method above, consider submitting them directly to Google, or pinging the URL if they have RSS.
5. Template Design - Oh yes. There’s more here than you think
   • Google handles different link locations differently. A footer link for example, in theory is not weighted as heavily as one in the header, or a link that (somehow) appears in the content part of every page on a site. So when designing your templates, make sure that the links to the various locations are in the same areas.
   • Same link frequency: Internal Link Juice is a complex and interesting beast. It is absolutely imperitive that each site has the same basic structure, with the same number of internal links to each page, from the same locations. With the same anchor text. There’s really no way to avoid this.
   • Avoid altering how you display menu. Complicated menus such as Javascript, or drop-down CSS may set off Google filters about hidden CSS text(aka ghetto cloaking), or may not get crawled at all. Static HTML is the friend of experimentation.
   • Does your template have titles/subtitles? Check to see if they use h1/h2. If they do, you’re going to want to make sure all the templates you use do.
6. Number of Pages
   • Google judges sites based on number of pages. Odd as that sounds. Ensure they’re the same, unless this is what you’re testing.
   • One important note: Just because you create 3 pages of content does not mean that there IS 3 pages of content. If you’re using wordpress, there’s many, many more. Remember that each tag, each category, and each entry in the archives creates a new page that could offset your careful balance.

Remember. What separates a real SEO from the stumble-exchanging circle jerk that infests our lower level is the desire to try something new, and to figure things out on your own. It’s also what moves this industry forwards. With that said….get ranking!

Regards,
XMCP

PS: If you missed it yesterday while you were with your family or other craziness, we still have a lot of Yahoo Directory Listed Domains that are up for grabs. And this time I fixed it so it’s harder to just copy/paste the whole list into a bulk-registerer and swipe em all up. Spread the love, and share it with your friends.

Posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 11:03 am in the category:google, seo. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.