How I Got Rich

A Tale of Two Sites

This post looks at two of my exact match domain sites in the same niche. One of which was badly affected by the April Google Penguin and Panda updates while the other held its page one positions and even improved its rank for some keywords.

 I am using the example keyword/domain ‘football boots’/footballboots.org.uk but it is just an example for the purposes of anonymity.

 Both sites are targeting the same keywords in Google.co.uk and are made using WordPress but have different themes.

 Domains:

• Site one’s domain is footballboot.org.uk
• Site two’s domain is footballboots.org.uk

Hosting:

• footballboot.org.uk is hosted in the USA by Hostgator on shared hosting
• footballboots.org.uk is hosted in the UK by Vidahost

Pre-April Rankings

Before the April Google updates both sites were on page one for the keywords ‘football boot’ and ‘football boots’.

 footballboot.org.uk was ranked #1 in google for ‘football boot’ and mid page one for ‘football boots’.  It also had good rankings for its inner pages like ‘Nike football boots’ and ‘Adidas football boots’.

footballboots.org.uk was ranked #3 for ‘football boots’ and mid page one for ‘football boot’ and some page one rankings for brand inner pages e.g. ‘Nike football boots’ etc. 

Post-April Rankings

footballboot.org.uk dropped out of the top 200 Google.co.uk search engine results for nearly all its keywords apart from very long tails. It is no longer ranking for ‘football boot’ and ‘football boots’.  For some keywords though it is one page one so I don’t think the whole site has been penalised. Just the good keywords I was targeting!

footballboots.org.uk is  now #2 for football boots (up 1) and also #2 for football boot (up a few spots ). Also improved page 1 rankings for brands pages e.g. ‘Nike football boots’ etc.

Let’s Compare the Sites

Content:

footballboot.org.uk: standard ‘about’, ‘contact’ and ‘privacy’ pages plus about seven brand pages like ‘Nike football boots’ etc. and also about 45 product review posts targeting model keywords such as ‘Puma King Football Boots’.

Most posts were about 200-300 words long with an image.  The titles were an exact match to the keyword I was targeting e.g. ‘Puma King Football Boots’.

footballboots.org.uk:   standard ‘about’, ‘contact’ and ‘privacy’ pages plus six posts each targeting a keyword such as ‘football boots’, ‘Nike football boots’, ‘Puma football boots’ etc.

Most posts were 500 words long with an image.  The titles were the exact match to the keyword I was targeting eg: ‘Nike Total 90 Astroturf football boots’.

Age:

footballboot.org.uk was registered in September 2009

footballboots.org.uk registered in October 2009 but was transferred to me in May 2011 as a parked domain and the first content was then added

Affiliate Links:

footballboot.org.uk: pretty much every page had an affiliate link and/or an Easy Content Unit

footballboots.org.uk: just an Easy Content Unit on the home page

Social Media:

footballboot.org.uk: Facebook page with 100 likes, Google + page, Pinterest and twitter account

footballboots.org.uk: nothing

Backlinks:

footballboot.org.uk: every type of backlink going: forum profiles, blog comments, Web 2.0s, article directories, social bookmarks, Youtube, pr blog posts, link wheels,

Total External Backlinks:

Open Site Explorer: 1317 backlinks from 399 domains
Majestic SEO: 1,760 backlinks from 585 referring domains 

Anchor Text:

According to Majestic SEO there were 122 unique anchor texts from the 585 referring domains
Open Site Explorer said: Linking Root Domains Containing Exact Match Anchor Text: 336

footballboots.org.uk: a few OK quality Web 2.0s each with Unique Article Wizard links going to them, a few UAW submissions direct to the site.  It also had some social bookmarks from Social Adr.

Total External Backlinks:

Open Site Explorer: 63 backlinks from 39 domains
Majestic SEO: 102 backlinks from 39 referring domains

 Anchor Text:

According to Majestic SEO there were 28 unique anchor texts from 39 referring domains
Open Site Explorer said: Linking Root Domains Containing Exact Match Anchor Text: 7

Some stats from OSE

Summary:

As you can see these are two quite different sites in terms of amount of content and number of backlinks.

footballboot.org.uk which got down-ranked was my main site in this niche and which I did the most work on.  This is probably why it got affected so badly: it was too over optimised. It had too many links, hardly any variation in anchor text and all the content was product adverts/reviews with affiliate links on all pages.

As it was well monetised I imagine the average time on site and pages visited were very low as people arrived, found what they were looking for and then click on the link to the merchant.  A good user experience in my opinion, but not what Google wants to see.

The smaller site that held its place in the SERPs and even improved a bit since the updates had only one affiliate link on it and hardly any backlinks in comparison. It did make use of tiered linking though, so although there weren’t many sites linking to my site there were lots of links pointing at those links.  This site didn’t have much content but the articles didn’t link to the products they were talking about.

I think the users probably visited a few more pages on this site as there were no obvious links to the products they were looking for so they probably hung around for a bit longer trying to find what they were looking for.  Google probably liked this although I’m not sure the user did!

Earnings post Penguin and Panda

The bigger site, footballboot.org.uk made much more money than the smaller site as it ranked for lots of long tail keywords and specific products as it had more pages and much more links to the merchants.  Every page was monetised so a user was never more than a click away from a potential sale.  Prior to the updates it was getting about 100 unique visits a day and now it is more like 30. Earnings have pretty much dropped off complete now as it isn’t getting any traffic from the generic ‘football boot’ keyword.

The smaller site didn’t make much money but as it wasn’t heavily monetised that isn’t surprising.  Traffic is steadily increasing but it only gets about 50 unique visits a day.  The lack of monetisation has prevented it from making much money though.

Moving On

As a lot of my sites got hit I am ready to move onto to something else but part of me is still interested in bringing them back from the dead. I’ve decided to focus on recovering this site and then if it works try that approach on some of my other sites.

What I’ve done so far:

• Removed affiliate links from the home page and added an introduction article with links to the inner pages of the site which are monetised.
• Added new content: I’ve hired someone from ODesk to write news items on the niche and general non-money articles which I am adding to the site in a bid to reduce the ratio of money pages to non-money pages.
• Dilute the anchor text: the site that got hit has an appalling anchor text profile which I think was the main contributor to my downfall.  The only way I can think of to rectify this is to add more links with generic anchor text like ‘click here’ ‘this website’ and the actual URL.  To do this I have done a UAW submission which should get about 100 links with random anchor text. UAW doesn’t let you use the URL as a link which is a pain.  I’ve also built some more Web 2.0s with generic anchor text and have sent more links to my existing Web 2.0s with diverse anchor text. Finally I’ve signed up with a link building service that builds wiki links to your site each day called Wiki Whirlwind from the people who run Backlink Banzai. This service looks quite good as you can give it 20 urls (from more than one site if you want) and then input multiple anchor texts for each URL or choose their natural anchor text link setting which uses generic link text. It is hands off and set and forget so I will leave it running for a month at least. I only put five of my site URLs into it and the other 15 slots are building linsk to my Web 2.0s which link to this site.
• YouTube videos: I’ve been making a few simple YouTube videos for this site which gets another back link for the site and as these videos rank quite well they’ve also been bringing me some traffic.

I think that is about all I’ve done but my basic strategy is to de-optimise the site.  I feel the site has too many links and would rather not add any more but it is the only way I can see of to water down the anchor text. The new content might bring in some more long tail searches but I don’t really rate long tail traffic that isn’t related to a product that much compared to the exact match money keywords I was previously targeting.

Conclusion

I know this is a very small sample but I thought as I have two sites in the same niche targeting the same keywords it would make a good comparison. The outcomes are pretty much what everyone was saying before the updates and what people have been saying since:

• Keep the amount of links with exact match anchor text low.
• Increase the ratio of non-money pages to money pages.
• Keep the users on the site for longer (even if they don’t want to stay!)

So Over to You:

• Have you noticed anything else from comparing your sites?
• What are you plans for recovering your sites?
• Is affiliate marketing dead?
• What are your plans moving forward?

Services Mentioned in this Post:

• Backlink Banzai
• Easy Content Units
• Majestic SEO
• Open Site Explorer
• Unique Article Wizard
• Vida Host
• Wiki Whirlwind

Starting From Scratch

Well Google have finally dropped the long awaited but perhaps not quite so eagerly anticipated webspam update known as Penguin. They were kind enough to pull the trigger on this one on the day of my birthday making it especially memorable. They also did another Panda update on April 19 which was nice of them.

I’m not really sure what the update was targeting or seeking to correct or improve but I’ve read it had something to do with sites that were over optimised and had too much ‘SEO’. I guess this was in the form of too many links for the size of the niche and too many of those links having targeted, keyword intensive anchor text. Poor quality backlinks where also targeted I believe.

Whatever the update was doing it managed to annihilate the rankings of my sites.

My sites had managed to avoid the negative impacts of the previous Google updates until one of the Panda updates which happened on October 14 2011. That took out most of my sites wiping them clean of the front pages of the SERPs. Six months on and the rankings for a handful of my sites were starting to get back to how they were and my earnings were starting to pick up again when kaboom! Google struck again and blew those sites and more right out of the park.

I guess after the last update that affected me I should’ve seen the writing on the wall and realised that time was running out for me any my sites but as I’ve had hardly any time to spend on IM in the last six months I tried my best to get my sites ranking again but didn’t start any new projects that might’ve been more likely to weather the storms of future Google updates.

Well that time is here. I will give it a few days and see if my sites bounce right back to page one but I very much doubt they will. I have no reason to think this, I just have a hunch. I will focus on a couple of sites as before and add the odd article and backlink but the majority of my time from now on will be spent on a new site.

My New Site

After watching Nate’s 60 Minutes to $100 Days video course I have been getting my plan together to build a big authority site. This is something I should’ve done from the start but now I have the incentive to do so. In the past its been too easy to put off starting a big site as money was coming in from the niche sites so why bother putting the effort into a bigger site. Well now I’m ready.

I’ve picked a hobby or interest of mine which is fitness/exercise/gym related and will be starting my site any day now. I chose this niche or topic for a few reasons:

• I’ve been going to the gym and training for many years now so its a genuine interest.
• I know quite a bit about the subject.
• I read books, magazine and websites on the topic for my own enjoyment.
• There are loads of products and courses and other ways to monetise this topic.
• I read/post on a few forums already so have access to some people interested in the niche already.
• Its a massive niche and although its already busy it is a big pie with slices for everybody.

I’ve already written a few articles but need to decide upon a domain. The site will be targeting amazon.com to start with but can also promote ebooks, apps and many other products that are either digital or physical. I could even use adsense on some of the pages. Following the guide set out in the 60 Minutes course I will be spending one hour a day on this site which will be spent writing content for the site. I won’t be doing any link building for a while. The aim here is to add good content to my sites targeting long tail kewyords with little competition.

I want this to be a site I can be proud of and put my name to. When people ask me what I do I will be able to say I run a site called “Winning Workouts dot com” (hopefully I will have a better name than that!) rather than I have lots of little websites about things like left handed potato peelers, battery powered automatic sewing machines and so on.

I am excited about this new start. I am also nervous in case all this work doesn’t pay off and I get no visitors or the site gets a Google slap in a future update. I will be looking for other ways to get traffic like list building, social media etc.

I hope the earnings from my existing sites keep trickling in until the new one takes off otherwise there could be some very uncomfortable months ahead!

If you’ve got any tips on getting a site back from the dead please let me know!

How did the latest round of Google updates affect your sites?

Why I think my sites were affected: I think I have about 50-75 sites in various states of completion. Not all of them were hit although the majority were. I have a few sites in the same niche targeting the same keywords so I have managed to come to a few conclusions about why some of my sites were hit and some weren’t:

• Sites where not every post or page had an affiliate link on didn’t seem to get hit as hard as my sites that were pretty much 100% pages with affiliate links on. My affiliate links were cloaked but Google can still see them.
• When it comes to content my sites mainly all had original content or at worse product description rewrites on them. I wasn’t doing anything ‘sneaky’.
• Sites I’d build no links for didn’t seem to get hit as hard as those with loads of links. Although the sites without links weren’t ranking that well to being with. Non diversity in anchor text is something I am very guilty of!

If I had to draw a conclusion from my sites I’d say sites with realistic amounts of backlinks or backlinks done through a tier of Web 2.0 sites and that had more pages without ads/affiliate links than pages with affiliate links seem to have done better out of this than others. Kind of what we already knew was coming but what can you do?

Google Panda Update 3.3 – Google’s Changing Backlinks

This latest email from Rappin Matt of Matt’s Marketing Club might be of interest to some of you and it sounds like it’s the death-knell of back linking as we know it:

Well, looks like Google is getting ready to roll out Panda version 3.3. You can take a look for yourself at the 40 updates Google is making to search here:

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html

Basically, if you go through the changes, you’ll notice that Google is mostly tweaking things that help the placement of their own content.

“Improvements to travel-related searches.”

(When you search for stuff related to travel in Google, you’ll notice they give top billing to their own service, even above the paid ads! Coincidence?)

“International launch of shopping rich snippets.”

(Translation: Google Shopping will now be featured above organic results on a world wide scale.)

“Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search.”

(The Google Images placements will be a lot more intrusive.)

Anyway, the list goes on and on. But the biggest news that should conscern us SEO people who rely on search engine traffic is this:

Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.

This comment has set the SEO community abuzz over what change Google is making to backlinking, since backlinks are pretty much the lifeblood of SEO.

My own personal theory – Google is going to be removing the “Pagerank” factor from it’s backlink evaluation.

I don’t have any proof to back this up, but that’s my gut feeling.

Why do I feel this way?

Well, dealing with Google’s Quality Score with my own websites, it seems to me like their “Quality” algorithm is far better in finding the kind of sites Google likes than it’s PageRank algorithm.

After all, Panda is all about finding “Quality” websites.

So it just makes sense that Quality Score will replace PageRank when it comes to determining how valuable a backlink is.

In short – a backlink from a website Google deems High Quality will carry much more weight than a website with a high “Page Rank.”

Couple this with the fact that Google has slowly been weeding out it’s Pagerank tracker from its services – like the Google Toolbar – and you can see why I think this is the link evaluation factor that’s on the chopping block.

This is why it is SO IMPORTANT to learn about Google’s Quality score and how it evaluates websites. Backlinking is about to get a whole lot more complicated.

To your success,

Matt

P.S. If you want to repost this article, feel free to. Just be sure to toss a backlink to the group at:

http://groups.google.com/group/matts-marketing-club

Good old Google! Time to start work on the community site you’ve had on your ‘to do’ list for the last few years…

Was there a Google Update last night?

Update: seems like it was my SERP tracking tool giving me problems rather than my sites getting dropped. Whoops!

I’ve just been checking the ranking of some of my sites in Advanced Web Ranking and it seems like quite a few of them have been banished from the SERPS. I guess this Google update would’ve happened between February 22 & 23.

Anyone else noticed anything going?

Google Panda 2.5 Strikes!

None of the previous Panda updates have affected my sites except for one site which got knocked down a few places or pages depending on the keyword. It didn’t take that long for the site to return to number one though although it was my biggest earner at the time and I lost a few quid.

Now though, after what I presume is the release of Panda 2.5, my sites’ rankings have been decimated! I checked a few sites the other day to see where they are in the SERPs as I do fairly regularly and I saw they had lost their number one spots for some of their main keywords. The morning I noticed the drop in rankings was the morning I was leaving for a weeks holiday in Malaysia. Not a good way to start a trip!

I was taking my laptop with me but wasn’t expecting to do any work as my sites were doing ok. Now that they are all falling out of the SERPs that plan might have to change.

This month was going pretty well and I’d had quite a few days where I made over £50 but since the drop I’ve only made a few pounds.

I haven’t had much time to read up on what has happened. Has anyone else noticed anything?

What are people doing to try and claw back their rankings? It looks like Amazon has come out pretty well of this from looking at the niches where I have sites.

Never a dull moment eh?

Another Google update?

Has Google done another mini update recently? I ask because quite a few of my sites have made jumps in the SERPs. Anyone else noticed anything positive or negative?

Cheers Google!

Google Panda hits the UK

Well it looks like in the last few days the latest Google Panda/Farmer update has been rolled out to the UK.

I think the main point of the update has been to downgrade sites with low quality/non-unique content.

Site with backlinks from sites that have low quality content may also have been hit as those links get discounted.

So how have your sites fared? Mine seem to be ok so far as far as I can tell.

• http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/12/googles-panda-update-rolls-out-to-uk/

Another stick for Google to beat us with!

Looks like Google will be ranking pages on how quickly they load (if they aren’t already?).

Use their tool to find out how you can improve your sites before they get the chop in the SERPs:

• http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/

Saying that I just ran it on one of my sites and it pointed out that I was resizing images with HTML so I am off to resize their actual size and save some space.

Thanks Google!

Return of the Google Sandbox Update

The other day I wrote about how it appeared my site had been sandboxed by Google. This happened after adding about 30 new pages/posts to the site.

After adding the content the website dropped out of the SERPS but just five days later the site is back on page one with pretty much the same rankings for its targeted keywords. Hopefully the new content will make a difference and the site will move up a few ranks to get to the top half of page one but we shall see.

Meanwhile I have been continuing the work on getting links for my ‘three websites of the month’ in a bit to get them ranked better in the SERPS. I’ve been doing a lot of article writing and submitting as well as social bookmarking and getting some basic link wheels built. Although none of these approaches to link build are new or special I think they are better than what I was doing before which was nothing!

I’ve not seen much movement in the SERPS for those three sites I am working on but hopefully its just not been long enough to see the results rather than there not being any results.

Update: 3 days later and my site is back out of the SERPS. Seems my time on page one was limited. Where will end?

Return of the Google Sandbox

Its been a while since one of my affiliate marketing sites disappeared from the SERPS, or maybe its just been a while since I noticed it happen! I recently added about 30 pages to a new site that had only about five pages on it already. I also submitted the website to a couple of social bookmarking sites and wrote a few articles and submitted them to a directory. Before doing this the site was on the bottom half of page one for three of the main keywords I was targeting it at. This sounds ok but in reality it was only getting about 10 hits per day and had made only one sale.

I guess that this surge in content has brought the site to Google’s attention and as it is a fairly new site it got sandboxed. In the old days this used to fill me with dread but now I am more relaxed about it and hopefully it should return to the SERPS in a better position than before it got sandboxed.

Fingers crossed….