Search engine myths exposed

Jonathan Leger www.SearchEngineMythsExposed.com Table of Contents Why I wrote this report Myth #1: Google Knows All and Sees All Myth #2: Google Will Not Rank Duplicate Content Myth #3: You Must Get Links From Related Subject Sites to Rank 15 Myth #4: Your Site Must Focus On One Subject To Rank 20 Myth #5: High PageRank Means Good Rankings 24 Myth #6: To Maintain Good Rankings, You Must Add New Content 31 Myth #7: The Biggest Myth: Ranking in Google is Hard 34 A Case Study On Ranking in Google 41 The Easiest Way To Rank In Google 47 Earn $2,525 by giving away this report! 48 About the Author 49 © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page Why I wrote this report I’m going to keep each section of this report as short as possible If you’re like me, you’re busy, and you don’t want to spend the next week trying to suffer through 300 pages of e-bloat in the hopes that you get a few nuggets of wisdom that you can really use This report is only as large as it is because of all the screenshots from Google, Yahoo and other sites I’ve included so you can see the facts for yourself With that in mind, feel free to skip this section However, if you’ve been struggling to rank in Google, reading the next few paragraphs will help you to see that I was in your shoes once, too That I got frustrated too, before finally seeing the light and cutting through all of the baloney I wrote this report because I used to think that ranking in Google was hard I thought it was hard because I was listening to all the “gurus” who talked about ridiculous things like meta tags, keyword density and PageRank I listened to them, used the methods they were hawking, and failed miserably So I turned instead to the search engine optimization (SEO) forums to see if what they had to say was any better than the “gurus” who had taken my money I read the posts of the “forum gods” that everybody bowed to, listening and trying to replicate their methods for ranking, only to meet with more failure In desperation I took the few things that I had found to be true and worked on them, ignoring all of the conventional “wisdom” that is still being spread all over the web about how to rank in Google No matter how much the nay-sayers protested, if I saw it was working I kept at it And you know what? Only then did I start seeing real results I was floored Had the “gurus” been lying on purpose to keep me from ranking? Were the “forum gods” doing the same, trying to stifle competition by spreading false information? The conspiracy-theories going through my head didn’t last long, because I had an epiphany about what was going on The “gurus” and SEO “forum gods” were repeating what they had heard, not what they themselves were doing How I know this? Because none of the bogus advice was backed up with facts, proofs and examples It was just empty words promising the world if you “did this” or “did that.” The nay-sayers were doing the opposite, saying “this” or “that” wouldn’t work because they didn’t think it would, not because they could prove that it wasn’t working for themselves or others © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page The “forum gods” could be forgiven, since they were just hanging out with nothing better to then spread their “wisdom” (I often wondered if any of them had jobs, or were still living at home with their parents They seemed to have an awful lot of time to post on forums.) The “gurus”, however, were more reprehensible They were selling bogus information without checking it out first If they had done the research ahead of time, then they would have quickly seen that it was false Apparently they were so busy taking peoples’ money and cashing their checks that they didn’t have time to actually verify the methods they were hawking Now, much of what the “gurus” are selling perhaps used to be true, before Google came on the scene and obliterated the competition Things have changed dramatically, and yet the information being hawked is almost exactly the same That’s why I decided to write this report It’s time to dispel the myths, get out of the 90’s and start proving the facts that work now It’s time for you to stop paying the “gurus” that aren’t proving that their methods work Okay, that’s enough of that Now let’s get into it © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page Myth #1: Google Knows All and Sees All This myth really burns me up Try this: post anything that goes against conventional Google-ranking wisdom to an SEO forum (no matter how successful you’ve been with it) and watch dozens or hundreds of people flail you about how wrong you are and how Google ‘surely knows how to negate that method.’ Will they offer proof of their nay-saying? No They just have blind faith in Google’s ability to know all and see all Blind faith is the only phrase I can use for this thinking, because it’s not based on reason or proof The conventional SEO wisdom teaches simply that Google is a deity which knows all and sees all But what is Google, really? Google is an algorithm And who created the algorithm? People created Google’s algorithm (Sorry nay-sayers, Google was not handed the algorithm from the Divine.) Yes, people wrote Google’s algorithm Are people perfect? No Then can Google’s algorithm be perfect? No Do people know all and see all? No Then can Google’s algorithm know all and see all? No! In fact, it never ceases to amaze me what Google doesn’t see One forum that seems to be more honest than the rest is WebMasterWorld.com I think it attracts a higher caliber of posters because it doesn’t allow signatures The people there are actually there to share information, and not try to pitch or sell you on something WMW has a forum dedicated to Google’s search engine, and I’ve been reading through it for a couple of years now It never ceases to amaze me how many complaints I read about how badly Google is performing in a variety of sectors and keywords How the sites ranking in the top 10 are all spam or Made For Adsense (MFA) sites These posters complain that they continually notify Google of the problem, and yet the sites remain in their top-ranking positions Now does that sound like the work of a Deity? It doesn’t, does it It sounds (*gasp* dare I say it?) like the work of people Yes, Myth #1, that Google knows all and sees all, is undeniably false So stop being afraid of Google Now let’s get into a few specific myths surrounding how Google responds to a variety of methods and tactics, starting with Duplicate Content © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page Myth #2: Google Will Not Rank Duplicate Content If you’re worried that using duplicate content is going to somehow get your site penalized, deindexed, or otherwise make your site fall out of favor with Google, stop worrying: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/06/duplicate-content-summit-atsmx.html The above post is from Google’s official blog Notice the second bulleted point, underlined in red Google says quite plainly that duplicate content won’t hurt your site © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page But is it possible for duplicate content to rank well? Absolutely Let’s talk about that Click this link and take a look at all of the duplicate content that appears in Google’s results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Get+Motivated+to+Create+New+AdSen se+Content%22&btnG=Search That link will search Google for the title (in quotes) of a blog post that I wrote and later submitted to EzineArticles.com quite some time ago There are currently 315 copies of the article published in Google: Now, if Google filters duplicate content, why is it that 315 results are shown, and not just one? Ever think about that? You might say, “Yeah, but you put the title in quotes That makes a difference.” Okay, here’s the link to the title without quotes: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Get+Motivated+to+Create+New+AdSense+ Content&btnG=Search © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page The top 10 results are very similar, with or without quotes! What does that mean? It means that Google is not filtering the duplicates! “That’s because it’s such a long query,” you say? Then let’s shorten it Let’s search Google only for “Motivated to Create Content”: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Motivated+to+Create+Content&btnG=Searc h © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page Oh look! The top results are still duplicate copies of my article! Or how about “New AdSense Content” (with quotes)? As of right now, six of the top 10 results are still for duplicate copies of my article (including the number two spot, shown above) What does all of this mean? It means that Google will rank a duplicate copy of an article After all, that article originally appeared on my blog, and yet my blog post is not in the top 10 for any of the search queries I've shown! Does that mean that you can just run out and publish thousands of private label rights (PLR) articles, or articles from free article sites and get a flood of traffic from Google? No, that’s not what it means Why not? In Google’s own blog post shown at the beginning of this section, Google’s representative said that “Google wants to serve up unique results and does a great job of picking a version of your content to show.” Let’s break this statement down into its two parts: Google wants to serve up unique results It’s Google’s goal to only show one copy of any particular article or page in the search results for a given query Having ten duplicate results of the same article for a query doesn’t help the person performing the search nearly as much as having ten unique articles for the searcher to choose from © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page In another blog post Google makes this reason very clear: “Our users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they searches In contrast, they're understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results.” http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicatecontent.html That leads us to the second part of Google’s own statement: [Google] does a great job of picking a version of your content to show Ah, yes Google picks a version of the duplicate content to display What they base that selection on? Primarily two things: links to the page and the title tag You see, when you search for a set of keywords (in this case an article title), Google will first check to see if any pages in their index have links aiming at it containing the search query So when you search for “Get Motivated to Create New AdSense Content”, Google will first check the links going into the pages to see if they contain that exact phrase (or important parts of it) Now, almost no pages are going to have many (if any) links with that really long phrase in the anchor text So Google then has to default to looking for pages whose title alone matches the query That’s why all of the duplicates show up in the results when you search for “Get Motivated to Create New AdSense Content” – Google is relying on the title tag to find matching results due to a lack of related links However, the shorter our query gets, the more pages Google will find whose in-bound links match the search query Now Google’s hands are untied: it can start showing other results, and pick only the “best” version of the duplicate content to display And what determines what the “best” version is? The links aimed at the page, of course! Did you notice that the same result was #1 for “Motivated to Create Content” and #2 for “New AdSense Content” in Google? That’s because it actually had some links aimed at it from other sites that included the keywords © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 10 (Notice the “also try” keywords – “google bombing” and “google bomb”.) The effect can also bee seen at MSN Live: In order to counter such attacks, Google appears to have adjusted their algorithm to require that the page has some relevancy if it’s going to rank for the keywords This is a no-brainer, but just be sure that the page actually matches the keywords in the links to some extent (at least in the title tag and a mention somewhere on the page) Make sure your title tag contains the correct keywords While not 100% necessary, Google will certainly move your site up a number of notches in the rankings if you have the search query you’re trying to rank for in your page title For example, if you want to rank for “old time radio”, then the phrase “old time radio” really should be in your title tag I tested this with one of my sites and saw a jump of six ranking positions within two weeks when I changed my title to include the search keywords That site is now resting comfortably on page one This can present a problem if you want to rank one page for multiple sets of keywords, so you have to be a little creative and put some thought into it Let’s say you want to rank for three phrases: “old time radio” “old time radio shows” “old time radio show downloads” You want a title that contains all of the phrases, so this would work: “Old time radio show downloads” Now, that’s not perfect, since your second set of keywords has “shows” (plural) and not “show” (singular), but it’s a good compromise © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 35 Here’s the problem though: while your title tag certainly needs to appeal to Google, it also must appeal to the people performing the searches Having a great title tag will dramatically increase the number of click-throughs you get on the search results page So your ultimate goal is to find a title tag that appeals to both Google and a searcher For the example I used, you might go with something like this instead: “Thousands of free old time radio show downloads!” That way your title contains the keywords, but also appeals to the searcher That’s very important Get lots and lots of links Matt Cutts is currently the head of Google's Webspam team If you’ve done any investigating into ranking in Google, you’re probably already familiar with who he is He’s repeatedly stated that there are hundreds of factors in Google’s algorithm that determine how pages rank That’s right from the horses mouth, so no doubt it’s true However, I’m here to tell you that the importance of the hundreds of factors pale in comparison to the importance of the links aimed at your site No doubt if you were trying to rank for keywords like “real estate” or “stock market” you would need to make sure that you had all of the hundreds of factors taken into consideration When competition is very fierce, every little edge counts But for ranking sites in niche subjects that are less fierce, the only thing you need to focus on after your title tag is in place and your page has some keyword relevancy is links, links, links! Investing a lot of time in the hundreds of other factors is a waste of your time, time that you should be spending building up the links to your site However, not all links are created equal There are a few factors that you need to be aware of that my own research and results have shown to be very important The major “linking factors” are: Make sure your links have the right anchor text Make sure your links come from a variety of diverse locations Make sure your links don’t happen too fast (particularly for new sites) There are a few details to be aware of for each of these points: © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 36 Make sure your links have the right anchor text As I demonstrated in earlier examples in this report (such as in the section on PageRank not being a strong factor in ranking), it’s far more important that your links have the right anchor text than that you have a whole lot of links If you’ll recall, the site valleygames.com outranks Yahoo! Games for the phrase “play games” even though ValleyGames.com has only 21,639 links (according to Yahoo!), whereas Yahoo! Games has a boatload of links (150,014) That’s because of the anchor text So be sure that when you’re getting links, you have the keywords that you want to rank for in the anchor text if at all possible Warning! A word of caution is in order here You don’t want every link to your site to have the same anchor text Google sees that as link SPAM and will discount the links heavily So be sure that you vary the link text some I’ve found that if you vary your link text in a 60%/30%/10% fashion, that’s enough variety for Google to be happy In other words, if 60% of your links contain your primary keywords, 30% a secondary set of keywords and 10% a third set of keywords, Google won’t penalize you You want to be creative here, too Your secondary and third set of keywords can be selected in a way that they reinforce your primary keywords Using the “old time radio” example, you could select these three link texts: “Old time radio” “Old time radio shows” “Old time radio show downloads” Since the second and third keyword phrases start with the primary phrase that you want to rank for, that really helps to reinforce your ranking for the primary phrase without throwing a red flag in Google Make sure your links come from a variety of diverse locations If you already know what an IP address is, and a Class-C address, you can skip this next brief section If not, then be sure to read it How An IP Address Works An IP address is like the address to a house Each section of the IP address represents a larger area of virtual “space” For example, here’s an IP address and a mailing address we can compare: © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 37 Mailing Address 123 EZ St Beverly Hills, CA 90210 IP Address 192.168.72.3 Think of the “192” of the IP address like the “state” of the mailing address (California), the 168 like the “zip code” (90210), “72” like the street (EZ St.) and “3” like the house number (123) Each of those numbers, going from left to right, represents smaller and smaller blocks of virtual “space”, just like the State is a larger region than the zip code, and the zip code is larger than the street, and the street is larger than the individual building represented by the house number If all of your links come from the same “street”, so to speak, Google figures you’re up to something crafty But if they’re spread out across different “states” and “cities”, Google is more inclined to trust the links An IP address is broken down into “classes.” Using the previous example of 192.168.172.3: 192 Class A State 168 Class B City 172 Class C Street Class D House # Variety in Class C IP Addresses Is Important Google likes to see your links coming from a variety of Class C IP addresses at least, otherwise it will discount the links So if you have your own web server with even 100 IP addresses on it, but all of the IPs are in the same Class C (or even a couple of class Cs), don’t expect those links to help you nearly as much as if the links come from a large variety of Class Cs It’s even more complex than that, though If your links come from a lot of Class Cs, but they are “close together” in the realm of virtual space, Google can discount that, too So, for example, if all of your links come from virtual “cities” that are next to each other, Google figures something is up and discounts the links This means that it’s not necessarily enough to have links from dozens of sites on two servers from the same web host, even if the Class C IP addresses are not the same To help reinforce how easy it is to know where an IP address is located, try running the IP address of a few of your sites through this geolocation tool: http://www.geody.com/geoip.php If you know what city your host is located in, you’ll see that the site’s IP address almost always translates into that physical location © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 38 Let me give you a couple of personal examples I have two servers that I host with a particular hosting company in Dallas, Texas (The Planet) Notice how the primary IP addresses of those servers translate using the geolocation tool: http://www.geody.com/geoip.php?ip=70.84.20.226 http://www.geody.com/geoip.php?ip=70.85.202.162 Both geolocate to Dallas, Texas – the location of the host – and the hosting service is often known by the IP address as well So you want to make sure that your links are geographically wide-spread and from different hosts This is actually a lot easier than it might sound If you’re just going out and finding sites that you don’t own and getting links on them, chances are you’re getting links from lots of diverse Class C IP addresses registered at a large number of web hosts in a variety of geographical locations, so you have nothing to worry about The only time this is really an issue is if you’re trying to put links to your sites on sites that you personally own In that case you need to make sure that you have your IP addresses heavily diversified, both with Class C diversity and geographical diversity The problem with trying to create your own personal network is that it’s very, very expensive to it right (not to mention a management headache) I have tested this by having a large number of sites on the same server interlinked, and seeing that Google virtually ignored the links in its rankings for the linked site But it never fails that when I gain links through a natural network of diverse sites on diverse IP addresses, Class Cs and web hosts, Google eats those links up and ranks my sites very well Make sure your links don’t happen too fast (particularly for new sites) I’ve found Google to be wary of new sites that appear and sudden have hundreds of links aimed at them Google assumes (probably rightly so) that links gained in this manner are not “natural” links, and those links are put in what has come to be called the “sandbox” The links sit in the sandbox for many months before Google applies their link juice to the linked site I have tested this by aiming hundreds of links at a brand new domain The sites will initially jump into the search results after the links are crawled, ranking very well But after approximately 2-3 days of ranking the domain disappears from the results when Google dumps the links into the sandbox Because of this “sandbox effect”, you need © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 39 to make sure that your links grow slowly, especially if you have a new site There is a bit of mythology surrounding Google’s sandbox as well, though What I’ve read from the “gurus” and the “forum gods” almost always states that Google will always sandbox hundreds of links suddenly appearing This is a myth I recently performed an additional set of tests, aiming hundreds of links to sites that are already established and have a number of links aimed at them already When I did this, within two weeks the sites were ranking great, and have held onto those rankings for some months I actually performed the test on my established sites first, which led me to believe that the sandbox was all mythology But after repeating the test on a some brand new sites, I realized that it wasn’t completely mythological, but rather was primarily an issue to be aware of for newer sites (or older sites with few links) My tests and their results really make logical sense if you think about it Google has no reason to trust a new site It hasn’t been around long enough to establish any authority or reputation, and so Google is naturally more cautious about ranking those sites when links suddenly appear in large number But more established sites are already trusted by Google, having built up authority and reputation over time, and so Google doesn’t seem to mind if those sites suddenly receive a lot of links The solution, as stated before, is to acquire links more slowly In the case study that follows, I’ll give you the details of a site I created from scratch and got onto the first page of Google in 10 weeks using this method If you’re already thinking, “Yeah, but how can I get hundreds of links to my sites?” Don’t worry, I’ll share with you an easy way to that, too So, to recap, make sure your links contain the right link text, are from a variety of Class C IP addresses from a variety of web hosts in diverse geographical locations, and make sure your site doesn’t acquire links too fast (especially if it’s new) © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 40 A Case Study On Ranking in Google I want to share with you one example of ranking a niche site starting from scratch by following the linking advice in the previous section I created a brand new, ten page niche site from scratch in mid-August and applied my new linking technology to it The site is related to a certain kind of fitness equipment took me about hours total to create the little site (including all of its content) I added links at the rate of to per day over the course of about two solid months (as recommended in the previous section to avoid the Google sandbox) In the end the site had 250 links aimed at it from a wide variety of completely off-theme sites The next pages contain my traffic stats, followed by my AdSense income from the site over the last 4.5 months Take a look at the progression of traffic this little site has received from Google since August 15th: August © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 41 September October © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 42 November December © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 43 Here’s a chart of the site’s traffic growth: Yes, this one site went from zero to over 2,300 unique visitors from Google in just 4.5 months Considering that this site took only hours to create, that’s really astounding It’s on page one of Google for both of the major keyword phrases I was trying to rank it for Now let’s take a look at the AdSense revenue from the site © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 44 What has the revenue been for this one site? Here's the AdSense channel history: © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 45 And here’s a chart of the income growth: This one little 10 page niche site earned more than $150 in December from AdSense At $150 a month, this hours of work will earn me $1,800 in the next 12 months The site isn’t particularly fancy and the content, while good, is not fantastic Yet look at how Google has rewarded it with traffic and AdSense dollars! Why? Because I followed my own advice: I selected the right title tags The page content has relevancy to the keywords I added a variety of link texts (60%/30%/10%) slowly The “hard” part of ranking a site is getting enough links to the site But I’ve taken care of that, too I promised I would tell you how I it, but you may already know what I’m going to tell you about… © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 46 The Easiest Way To Rank In Google So you want to know how I rank my sites in Google with ease (including the case study site in the previous section)? Here it is: The easiest way to rank in Google is to automate your link building To this, I created a service that now has more than 4,500 live web sites that have traded more than 1.2 million links This link trading has resulted in more than 2,360 pageone rankings in Google for the keywords selected by the website owners How is this possible? Because the service automates the trading of 3-way links instead of reciprocal links Google has largely discounted reciprocal links (where site A links to site B and site B links back to site A) However, Google loves 3-way links (where site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links to site A) Google sees a 3-way link not as a reciprocal link trade, but as one-way links That’s why the system is so powerful, and why it works so well The system was designed to follow all of the methods I’ve laid out in this report, and it does so automatically It only takes about 10 minutes to add a site to the network, and once a site is approved by a human reviewer (very important to maintain a quality network) links start getting added to the site daily Read more about this powerful system at: http://3waylinks.net/ If you’re serious about ranking in Google quickly and with as little effort as possible, you’ll sign up for an account today and join the hundreds of other webmasters on Page One of Google! An account lets you have 50 sites in the network, so the return on your investment is incredible As an example, if you create 50 sites that repeat my $5 a day AdSense revenue in the case study example, that’s $7,500 a month on autopilot! © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 47 Earn $2,525 by giving away this report! Did you know that you will earn 25 cents for every person you refer who downloads this powerful report? PLUS you’ll earn 25 cents for every person they refer who downloads the report Think about that Let’s say you only refer 100 people who download the report That earns you $25 right there But if each one of those people also refers 100 people who download the report, you’ll earn $25 for each of their efforts as well! If each of the 100 people you refer turn around and refer 100 additional people, you’ll earn $2,525 total! $25 for your direct referrals plus $25 for each of the 100 people that they referred: $25 + ($25 x 100) = $2,525 Now that you’ve read this report it should be easy to convince people to download it, and the signup page is very convincing – your reading this is proof of that! To promote the report, you can send a quick email to your mailing list about it, or post to your favorite forums (if it’s allowed), or post about it on your blog or web site If you already have an account, get your referral link by logging in at: http://searchenginemythsexposed.com/?action=login If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up for one for free at: http://searchenginemythsexposed.com/ © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 48 About the Author Jonathan Leger has been a full time Internet Marketer since the fall of 2004 He is also a programmer and web developer, and has created numerous products well-known in the IM world A few of them are: Instant Article Wizard 3WayLinks.net Real Traffic Exchange Site Super Tracker OffTo.net He is also the original creator of the $7 Secrets scripts (which he sold to Don Morris) Jon runs a very popular Internet Marketing blog, where he regularly posts advice and case studies His in-depth experience in Internet Marketing, search engine optimization and software development make him uniquely qualified to review the real potential of products in the IM niche On a more personal level, Jon is married to Natalie Leger and has a daughter, Janelle, both of whom he loves very much He is an avid student of the Bible and is active in his ministry work as well as his secular work © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 49 ... tickets”: © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 28 Here's the PageRank of the sites, from #1 to #10: PR6 PR7 PR6 PR5 PR7 PR5 PR5 PR8 PR7 10 PR8 © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page... shorten it Let’s search Google only for “Motivated to Create Content”: http://www.google.com /search? hl=en&q=Motivated+to+Create+Content&btnG=Searc h © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page... links are to this site: https://siteexplorer .search. yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.articlebuild er.net&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u © 2008 SearchEngineMythsExposed.com | Page 18 The pages linking to