Just over a year ago I wrote my first and only guest post, as an entry into Marketing Pilgrim’s annual competition.
At the time when I published the article, I joked that “I had been robbed“, you wouldn’t believe the number of comments suggesting a way to get my revenge, file DMCA, report to Google or recover my “stolen” article.

Climbing The Heights Of Mount Google

When you set out to climb a mountain, or rank for a competitive keyword
term, some methods are effective.

This is a simplistic look at climbing the heights of Mount Google.

Human Pyramid

A human pyramid might be suitable for those low hanging fruit, but this
method is unlikely to help you scale great heights. Not only is it hard to
gain great height, but the weak construction is easily eroded by
competitors.

Photo credit: S@TS

Belay or Blogroll

Whilst exchanging blogroll links can help lift you up to a certain level,
they can effectively anchor you to your peers. From an SEO point of view
they are more about securing your position than lifting you higher.
If you have achieved a certain height, there is nothing wrong with pulling
up a few team mates. They can then aid in a push for the summit, which can
be a very lonely solo trek.

Photo credit: dfinnecy

Grappling Hook

This is the “gizmo” mindset, that specific tools can blast your website or
blog to prominence, maybe as a clown from a circus cannon, or to scale the
walls of the Vatican in Mission Impossible.

Whilst I am a fan of some forms of automation, and it can achieve
significant results, those results are often short-lived.
Whether it is trackback and referrer spam, automated social bookmarking,
directory submission software, or other quick fix, the writing is on the
wall before you even start, only many are too blind to see it.

Not everyone gets a safety net, or is Ethan Hunt.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Teamwork

Teamwork is often the most effective method, especially if one member of the
team is already at the top of the mountain, and can pull you up.

Photo credit: JasonRogers

V.I.P. Ticket

It might not convey the same bragging rights, or sense of achievement, but
if you are a “big hitter” working for a major corporation, or have plenty of
funds to grease the wheels, there are faster ways to the top.

Photo credit: Photo Monkey

Highest Mountain

Don’t try to climb the highest mountain from the start, it will always end
in failure. Start on lower slopes, build experience, and if possible gather
together a solid team to help you scale the higher slopes of Mount Google.

Then again, who wants to be top of the mountain, and why am I writing a
guest post ;) Pull me up Andy!

2009 Competition

The 2009 Competition has just reached the judging stages – batch 1 & batch 2 – there are some good articles to read on all kinds of online marketing

Followup

As a guest article, I was a little disappointed in the results. Not so much my results in the competition, but overall traffic, appeal to Stumbleupon visitors, etc.

I deliberately chose a different style of article, more images, light weight/broad appeal content, but with a deeper message that might have not quite sunk in for readers.

I am going to try another attempt at the same article using diagrams and more specific wording soon.

Link to updates from Matt Cutts plus tips on how to continue PageRank sculpting effectively.

Has Google in one quick swipe removed all benefit of Dynamic Linking (old school term) or PageRank sculpting (when it became “trendy”), and potentially caused massive penalties for sites nofollowing links for user generated content and comments?

I have left a few comments on various blog posts over the last few days, especially on SEOmoz and Twitter, but though it important to solidify some thoughts here, and potentially add a little more perspective.

PageRank Sculpting Formerly Known As Dynamic Linking

The idea of controlling the flow of “Google Juice” around a website to pages that matter, or to other sites that matter has been around for a long time, at least as early as 2003 when Leslie Rohde (Stompernet Faculty) was calling it “Dynamic Linking”.

Those were the days before “nofollow” and you had to use Javascript to accomplish the internal linking control.

In the past I have linked to Michael Campbell’s Revenge of the Mininet which also provides access to Leslie’s original Dynamic Linking membership site. They are both now free, (Michael used to charge $79.95 for his ebook)

I am sure I have sent 1000s of people to Michael’s newsletter signup page over the years, but I am equally confident that 90% of the visitors didn’t sign up. I don’t receive any kind of payment recommending Michael’s work, or Leslie’s dynamic linking.

In many ways I look on at least a passing understanding of these groundbreaking ebooks as required reading for any of my SEO articles

From the comments I see on most SEO blogs, and even many of the articles, I am quietly confident that these seminal works haven’t been truly understood, and of course the content rarely gets referenced.

So I am going to do something unprecedented, and I hope Michael won’t mind – the page does appear in the SERPs

Here is a direct download link for Revenge of the Mininet

Once you get there, you can pick up a password to access Leslie’s Dynamic Linking site

Leslie has always had this great disclaimer

DISCLAIMER!

Some of the techniques and technologies described in the foregoing are not without their pitfalls and potential unintended consequences. If you are new to web business, inexperienced at search engine optimization, or do not feel comfortable with HTML and Javascript (at least at a rudimentary level), you should not attempt to employ the advanced techniques shown here!

Access The Source of SEO Knowledge

Michael Campbell

I have just given you access to 4 or 5 year old information that in all likelihood is more advanced than you will find discussed on 95% of SEO blogs and forums, and whilst I don’t from principle/ethics join any private SEO content area to avoid conflict with what I blog about, I am quietly confident that it would still be looked on as advanced content for members only, or not even covered in such depth.

But that is just a trickle of knowledge compared to direct access

Michael has had an internet marketing newsletter for years.
He also now runs a private membership site which is very affordable, and you can follow him on Twitter @dmcorp

Leslie Rohde

I am still eagerly awaiting an update to Leslie’s Dynamic Linking suggested on his SEO Software site.

A major update to this material is currently in process owing to some recently discovered changes in the way Google is processing links. Look for an announcement early next year (2009) — the changes will likely revolutionize on-site linking techniques … again!

Leslie also has an SEO Strategy blog, which he actually updates once in a while. I am going to have to explore the blogging platform he uses, Pebble. You can also follow Leslie on Twitter @leslierohde

There are 2 other ways to learn more from Leslie

1. Just before the New Year Leslie put together a new site “Optimize Recession” where he introduced the idea of “Zone Based SEO” – I mentioned it on Twitter.
   Zone based SEO might seem obvious at first, but it allows you to systematize and possibly even automate specific SEO campaigns, especially now it is possible to extract ranking positions from Google referrer data.
2. Stompernet – Leslie is one of the faculty at Stompernet, who now offer very progressive SEO and marketing training. Start off just by joining their newsletter and the 7 Deadly SEO Sins course plus free videos, and possibly get their “Stomping The Search Engines 2″ course for $1 (plus a trial to their Net Effect magazine)

The Death Of Dynamic Linking With Javascript?

Of everything that has been discussed about Google making changes to which links they will follow and count going forward, how they handle javascript is probably the one that is worth the most consideration.

The first I read about it was on Search Engine Land in an article by Vanessa Fox (who used to work for Google as a member of their webmaster team) covering Google Javascript Links.
(Note: I know that anchor text is very contrived, but SEO is about helping people find what they are searching for, not snake oil or gaming Google)

Having given a great link, I can justify grabbing a small code example

Some examples of code that Googlebot can now execute include:

• <div onclick="document.location.href='http://foo.com/'">

• <tr onclick="myfunction('index.html')"><a href="#"
  onclick="myfunction()">new page</a>

• <a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="window.open
  ('welcome.html')">open new window</a>

Javascript That Is Still Dynamic?

This will probably work

onclick=”myfunction(‘jkhhjstdysd’)

Have myfunction() within a file loaded in the header, or preferably in the footer for faster page loading. You would still want to use the CSS that Michael and Leslie suggest for usability.
Somehow define which destination ‘jkhhjstdysd’ refers to, and that could potentially be broken down into components.

If Google somehow cope with that, and possibly easier would be to just use pure external javascript that pulls in some XML, but that then complicates things if you want to mix real links with dynamic ones.

But this is moot if nofollow actually still works.

Does Nofollow Still Work For Dynamic Linking or PageRank Sculpting?

I am going to lead with the freshest insight I have read, Dan Thies (also Stompernet Faculty) thinks things are being blown out of proportion.

Here are the primary opinion pieces and coverage I have seen, though I am sure there were plenty more

Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting

Didn’t comment, was too busy looking for other coverage

Google (Maybe) Changes How the PageRank Algorithm Handles Nofollow

My comment on the post

I can only think that Google have been misinterpreted.

If I have a blog post with 300 comments, and have the links nofollowed (my blog is dofollow but example), then there would effectively be juice lost due to the comment links.

Links are valuable, because they add to the relevance of a comment made, because a reader can follow them to find out more about the person.
However they also form part of disclosure.

If this is only for internal links, there are major problems because often a link will be nofollowed because it points to a tracking link that is also blocked by robots.txt

Any sensible knowledgeable webmaster is going to nofollow those links, because they serve no purpose for Google in their current state, and who wants to turn them into hanging pages.

That may also be a workaround, if Google handles links blocked with Robots.txt differently

No Clarification Forthcoming from Google on Nofollow & PageRank Flow
My comment on the post

I can’t see any evidence that this is affecting external links.

Wikipedia is still a black hole of link equity. If this affected Wikipedia external links, we would see some effect, because due to recursive calculations through internal linking, it could potentially reduce their juice pool by as much as 30%

It would also affect the Ebay group with sites such as epinions.

If it has any effect, it will be internal links only.

The amount of juice lost could be similar to dangling or hanging pages, and due to many poor SEO articles suggesting robots.txt for duplicate content, Google Webmaster guidelines suggesting robots.txt for search results, and just ignoring obvious signals such as TBPR.

Yes, any smart SEO could spot the toolbar showing some green on pages blocked by robots.txt and work things out for themselves.

But the juice goes into the internet ether, and due to macro PageRank calculations, comes back.

If anything, this will help Google surface more long-tail content, and sites with lots of pages will benefit.

Live Blogging Of Matt Cutts @ SMX

You & A With Matt Cutts

Is What’s Good For Google, Good For SEO
Important to read both articles because it gives a clearer insight to the exact wording on lots of different issues.

Alternative Reactions

PageRank Sculpting is Dead? Good Riddance

PageRank Sculpting – Recent Matt Cutts Video

I have to strongly point out that this video was recorded before SMX, and maybe even a week or 2 before. It is on the official Google webmasters channel on YouTube, thus has probably been vetted in some way for accuracy.

Full Transcript

Matt Cutts on PageRank Sculpting

Rand, In Brighton, and that might be Rand Fishkin, I don’t know asks:-

What are your views on ‘PageRank Sculpting’?
Useful and recommended if implemented right, or unethical?

Well I wouldn’t say it is unethical because it is stuff on your website – you are allowed to control how the PageRank flows around withing your site.
Erm, I would say that it is not the first thing that I would work on.
I would work on:-

• Getting more links
• Having higher quality content

Those are always the sort of things that you want to do first.

But then if you have a certain amount of budget of PageRank, erm… you certainly can sculpt your PageRank.
I wouldn’t necessarily do it with the nofollow tag, although you can put a nofollow on a login page, or something that is customized where a robot will never log in for example, but a better more effective form of PageRank sculpting is choosing for example which things to link to from your homepage.

So imagine you have got two different pages.
You have got one product that earns you a lot of money every time someone buys, and you’ve got another product where you make… you know 10 cents.

You probably want to highlight this page. You want to make sure it gets enough PageRank that it can rank well.

So this is more likely to be a page that you want to link to from your home page.

So when people talk about PageRank sculpting, they tend to think nofollow and all that sort of stuff, but in some sense the ways that you choose to create your site, your site architecture, and how you link between your pages is a type of PageRank sculpting.
So it is certainly not unethical to have all the links come into your site, and you decide how to link within your site, and how to make the pages within your site.
Erm, I do think that having more links because you have great content is a better way to rank well because it is a second order effect to be sculpting your PageRank.

It can be useful, but it wouldn’t be the first thing that I would do.

Commentary on Matt’s video I will leave to my good mate Dave
PageRank Sculpting; its all old school baby

Response From Google After SMX About PageRank Sculpting

None…. yet – regard this as a placeholder

I do have some thoughts though:-

1. I think we need a strong statement that external links with nofollow would not cause PageRank to evaporate.
2. Nofollow is a simple solution for user generated content and comments, but if it has any effect of PageRank disappearing, we are going to lose the links on tons of blogs totally.
   It would be a sad day that an action by Google reduced the interlinking of the web.
3. I don’t want to encourage use of javascript for PageRank sculpting – it is not really very good for accessibility
4. Noscript – Nested embedded object items, containing links or thumbnails to source that may well be descriptive of content? This is needed if RSS Readers and web based email clients are going to continue to strip out video embeds.
5. Links that lead to pages blocked with robots.txt and other hanging pages really need to be nofollowed. I think we need to know that in that situation PageRank wouldn’t normally evaporate, but I can understand why that might not be confirmed.
6. I would love a much clearer indication of page size that Google will index as there are just vague notions that it can be more than 100 links per page.
   If a size is specified, is that gzipped?

Matt Cutts On PageRank Sculpting

Matt Cutts today (June 16th 2009) wrote a post confirming that Google now treats PageRank significantly differently than the original PageRank patent, and that links with nofollow, whilst they don’t pass PageRank to the linked page, also can reduce the amount of PageRank that flows to other links on a page.

Rank Fishkin has already responded with analysis
Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can’t Do It With Nofollow

I also missed this commentary from Matt Leonard on why this could potentially make life harder for niche sites

There are bound to be more posts appearing on Techmeme today

PageRank Sculpting Isn’t Dead – It Has Evolved

Lets take a look at my WordPress SEO Masterclass

Those Red links in the Sandcastle structure are not nofollow, they are oneway linkage.

It can be achieved with fairly simple coding, I even posted part of it over 2 years ago though the code needs to be updated for WordPress tagging rather than UTW.

This linking structure still works extremely effectively, but with one major caveat – internal & external links on the tag pages being used to channel juice back to the home page can’t be nofollowed.

If you are using default WordPress “ugly excerpts” they don’t contain any HTML content, no links to worry about other than the links to the posts.
Tag pages should thus be restuctured to highlight your best content, otherwise you end up with 3rd level push. 3rd level push in most cases isn’t a bad thing, if you don’t have a lot of comment links.

Rather than remove links that you previously nofollowed, the key is to add additional internal links to useful pages.

There are ways to handle the comment links, retain the benefit of having the comment content on your blog, and even keep giving your visitors a little link equity (dofollow links), though that solution will require significant programming effort.

Blogspot bloggers are now totally messed up, as even adding nofollow to their tag links isn’t going to retain juice.

Those who based their internal linking on my advice are not significantly affected by this change, and as this actually happened over a year ago, it is one of the reasons they have benefited.

The new PageRank sculpting could be looked on as advance information architecture, which was always the advanced PageRank sculpting

Expect a new WordPress SEO Masterclass soon, but it is unlikely to be free, and I would avoid following the advice of anyone who suggests conning your community using Iframes and Javascript for comments.

Update: Additional coverage worth a read @ Search Engine Land, Future Now & Search Engine Watch

Whilst this is theoretically possible, it is also unlikely.

To understand why the change has happened

• You have to understand SEO, external and internal linking, and have an advanced knowledge of how PageRank works. This gives me another chance to drop a very blatant affiliate link to Stomping The Search Engines 2 which is probably the best value (just a measly $1) high quality SEO training online. (http://andybeard.eu/Recommends/SEO-Training.html)
• You need to study Twitter Linking structure over a period of time – snapshot SEO is for cowboys – even what I am writing here isn’t going to be highly accurate, because I don’t have access to analytics, server logs etc, and telling a script to analyse every page of Twitter just isn’t viable

I am not writing this just for another opportunity to pimp an affiliate link, but I am sick of poor SEO information out there among bloggers. I have suggested SEOs need to clean up old information, but to be honest, this is about as fundamental as it gets.

I do have a fair understanding of SEO and linking structures, and I do monitor changes, not just the pretty toolbar PageRank Google updates every 3 months or so, or the ranking of my Twitter profile in the SERPs.

Here are a few of my more recent tweets on the topic:-

Changing account name and retaining some of your link juice

@ed Good to see the move accomplished – you might do well to fill up a page of tweets to yourself from Next Instinct (best of ed) = links10:26 AM Jan 10th from Power Twitter in reply to Ed

AndyBeard

A little basic SEO training

In case SEOs are forgetting something, external links+indexed pages = PageRank – content quality irrelevant7:40 PM Mar 25th from web

AndyBeard

The president would not be happy if I could game an indented listing

It should be very easy to make any twitter account appear as an indented listing of a high profile twitter user e.g. Barak Obama8:21 AM Mar 25th from web

AndyBeard

Twitter making changes to Meta Titles was not an April Fool’s joke, but the titles for individual tweets is far from optimal

If you add your twitter profile to every place you get links for your blog, of course it is going to rank high9:51 AM Apr 1st from web

AndyBeard

Whilst I might have followed people, that isn’t necessarily a vote

Dear @ev @mattcutts The people on my Twitter “Following” blogroll are not recommendations – pls nofollow/discount5:58 AM Apr 4th from web

AndyBeard

Little minor details affecting individual tweets, and maybe overall profile rankings due to the recent “replies” changes

@BradWest unfortunately that solution isn’t, as you lose the “in reply to” links10:31 AM May 13th from Power Twitter in reply to BradWest

AndyBeard

So What Changed At Twitter?

Quite simply, the default blogroll links

Previously they were based on 2 criteria

• You had to be following the person
• They were displayed in account creation order

Thus popular tech bloggers who had early beta access to Twitter, plus Twitter founders always made up a high percentage of the default blogroll links across the whole Twitter network.

Even accounts with just a few thousand followers would have a high pagerank if they were created early enough, because they most likely followed a few high profile Twitter users such as Robert Scoble, and Twitter founders, so they gained the benefit of very powerful links.

How Is The Twitter Blogroll Calculated Now?

I wish I knew so I could work out how to take the best advantage of it – seems almost random, other than you have  to be following the person.

What I do know is that is still doesn’t represent my personal choice of the best people to follow, and all the links should be nofollow unless I can determine who can be included.

About PageRank

The PageRank formula isn’t complicated math, but it gets applied recursively for the global internet, which is one of the reasons why Google needs huge banks of servers.

Google calculates PageRank constantly – rankings based on it and 200+ other factors change constantly

What appears on the Google Toolbar (Toolbar PageRank) is

• Just a rough approximation
• Can be manually overridden by Google in the case of a penalty
• Is only updated every 3 months
• Looks to be linear progression, whereas the real numbers are logarithmic in nature

Posts like this one on The Next Web or this one on So Web are correct that there has been a change in visible ToolBar PageRank, but the analysis of why it happened is certainly lacking.

Have you noticed how PageRank updates frequently happen around the same time as Google Engineers are at conferences?

I don’t think there is one “premium” WordPress Theme that doesn’t claim to be perfect for SEO “out-of-the-box”, so I thought I would bash some theme developer heads around and maybe knock some sense into them.

They might achieve 50:50 of what could be expected of a true SEO theme (though I haven’t seen the latest Semiologic Pro out in the wild), and potentially with the aid of 3rd party plugins currently available, they could reach 80:20.
However most claim they don’t need 3rd party plugins to achieve their eminence in WordPress SEO

That doesn’t leave WordPress SEO plugins off the hook, there isn’t one plugin that gets beyond 60:40 or with some tweeking possibly 70:30, depending on what factors you feel are important, or are aware of.

Awareness is certainly one of the problems…

First Link Priority

First link priority is something that was first raised as a concern at the end of 2007 in a number of tests carried out by Michael VanDeMar.

You May Be Screwing Yourself With Hyperlinked Headers

Single Source Page Link Test Using Multiple Links With Varying Anchor Text – Part Two

In mid-2008 there was continued discussion at SEOmoz, it was debunked by SEO CO, and “re-bunked” by SEO Scientist

Shaun also did some testing in October 2008 on first link for internal links.

Michael followed up with even more testing in November

Now around mid-August 2008 Stompernet were also starting to ramp up the launch of their new premium SEO training product, Stomping the Search Engines 2.

This product actually has some very personal history, as I was first expecting it to launch… in 2005 – I was pretty much a newbie online marketer, intrigued by SEO and blogging (I was already into internal linking in a big way) and approached Andy Jenkins to see if I could blag an early review copy.

That version never materialized, but I belive became a cornerstone of their coaching program and eventually Stompernet.

In Stomping the Search Engines 2.0, Module 4 Session 4C, Leslie Rohde talks about a concept called First Link Priority. This training occurs at 4 minutes and 9 seconds into the video.

Grab the 7 Deadly SEO Mistakes Course to learn more about First Link Priority

I don’t know how much Stompernet have tested this, exactly when they started their testing, or when they made this information available to their members, but lets give Michael VanDeMar the benefit of the doubt as the first person testing this, and Stompernet were probably testing this early 2008.

I have always stated you want the content first, before any navigation, but had assumed a nofollowed link wouldn’t be counted. For a long time I was using a nofollow link in my header, and many of the blog posts above came during my “blogging break”.

Now open a new tab in your browser, and visit a few blogs running premium WordPress themes that supposedly are “Perfect” for SEO, and have everything covered, and many are even heavily promoted by notable people in the SEO community.

There are 2 things you will notice:-

1. If they have some kind of header navigation, it appears in the source code before the content
2. Many of them use a home link at the beginning of the navigation, and some even nofollow the link in a vain attempt to stop the link counting for both juice and anchor text.
3. If you look at the source code, you will find they are still using SEO plugins of various types.

If you know what you are doing with CSS, you can have top navigation appear even in the source code for the footer of your theme.

Referential Integrity

I must admit the first time I heard the term “referential integrity” in connection with SEO was in a free Stompernet video which you can gain access to just for joining their mailing list, as part of their 7 Deadly SEO Mistakes series. It is a term normally asociated with databases, though I can understand why Leslie “borrowed” the term.

I loath explaining things in depth when someone else has already done an excellent job, thus I strongly recommend you sign up, as Leslie does a great job of explaining an “emergent property” that isn’t on any patents.

Grab the 7 Deadly SEO Mistakes Course to learn more about referential integrity

One major factor explained in Leslie’s video is what you say your own pages are about, not just the on-page factors, but also how you reference your own pages.

As “pagerank sculpting” was the big SEO topic of 2008 (something Leslie first taught in 2004), we could look on this as “keyword sculpting” or “topic sculpting” – please understand this isn’t exactly the same as siloing – very close cousins but not the same.

In many ways “topic sculpting” is repairing the damage caused by lazy webmasers using modern content management systems, pumping out content pages and internal navigation on auto-pilot, and only really caring about the links they received from external sources, often resorting to search engine spamming to gain referrential links with the anchor text they required.

That however is only the “confirmation” element in the above screenshot.

Definitions

Just to avoid confusion, I want to define the following terms

• Entry Title – The title you add in the text entry field above the visual editor in WordPress, that is then used in various WordPress functions to create default slugs, the “Entry Title” DIV on Posts and Pages, and is also used in wp_list_pages(), wp_list_posts() and even the default meta titles.
• Meta Title – this is the title that appears in the header of each page, and appears as the title in Google search results. Sometimes this is confusingly labelled as “page title” within WordPress SEO plugins.
• Short Title – A title that can be used as anchor text for navigation elements that is optimized for passing of internal reputaion or anchor text to the destination page.

I should also point out that the idea of Short Text isn’t new, other CMS solutions have had this feature for years, and the ModX community use it as a key unique selling point of why ModX might be better than WordPress.

WordPress Pages – Topic Sculpting

You have always had the ability to precisely define the anchor text of WordPress pages, simply by creating your navigation menus manually with a little HTML directly in your theme files, or using a text widget.

By Default if you use a widget or theme using wp_list_page() then the link anchor text will be the Entry Title for the page.

Some work has been done to optimize the anchor text pointing at WordPress pages – the Thesis theme has recently introduced ways to define specific anchor text, and there are existing WordPress plugins that achieve the same functionality, or possibly with more flexibility such as Page Lists Plus by Tim Holt.

Page Links Plus allows you to define the anchor text used for links to WordPress Pages

This still isn’t a perfect solution:-

• You might want to use multiple widgets contain 7 links plus or minus 3 (this would be a concept familiar to you if you have watched a previous Stompernet video series, and downloaded the Stompernet Scrutinizer)
• You will probably want different sets of links or widgets appearing on different pages – there are some clunky solutions available, maybe things will improve with WordPress 2.8
• If you are a geek interested in optimizing your conversion, you might even want to split test things – with the way I have created my split test code for WordPress, I can actually split test different widgets on the page, removal of widgets etc.

WordPress Posts Topic Sculpting

With WordPress posts, things become a lot more complicated, though the hardest part was realising it is a problem that needs to be fixed.

I have deliberately created the Entry Title for this post extremely long – you will see post titles used of various lengths on blogs. General advice from SEOs is to ensure you have keywords somewhere near the beginning as it was historically thought that the position of the keywords in links, headings and meta titles matters.

Shaun actually narrowed down the maximum length for anchor text to 55 characters last year.

Based upon my Entry Title, that would mean my anchor text for this post would be:-

“A Geeky Look & Some Simple Solutions To Achieving First”

Sucks doesn’t it?

But with a standard WordPress installation, using conventional blogging techniques, even using premium SEO optimized themes, that is the crap anchor text you end up with.

Yes I am using slightly crude terminology, but when I was at college studying engineering, we had a technical term for the material that Lada engine blocks were made out of… crapite.

WordPress could be likened to a Lada

Lada – Credit

A Lada can get you from A to B – technologically fairly simple, but an enthusiast can tinker with the engine, add “go faster” stripes, and get some performance out of it.

In many ways WordPress is similar

WordPress Post Anchor Text Usage

To understand all the complexities of title use in WordPress, you have to know where they can potentially be used, baring in mind the purpose for the links.

How Different Titles Are Typically Used In WordPress

(I created a nice, compliant XHTML table in Seamonkey composer, but WordPress without plugins hates tables)

The Simple Solution

Whilst everything above might seem extremely complex, there is in fact a very simple solution that can be used with almost every theme, without modification, other than a radically different approach to CSS styling and conventional post entry.

However this approach requires that you through aside any misconceptions that might have been falsely hammered into you that content is king, and you don’t really need to think about SEO, just create great content.

You need to think like an SEO & Marketer… just a little

Got it? Great!

Please forgive me, I really couldn’t resist using a provocative title in the example.

You don’t have to be quite so bold with your headline.

Your Entry Title would still ideally be H1 on single pages, and H2 on navigation pages, but styled to be a lot less conspicuous.

This method effectively forces you to use custom excerpts with HTML, otherwise you are not going to have much of anything to encourage clicks.

The Geeky Solution

There are plenty of intermediate solutions, many using custom fields, modified themes etc.

This is the personal solution I am currently using on Andybeard.eu

This is rough code… there are some CSS problems in Internet Explorer resulting in links being hidden, I am only currently handling navigation links from the home page and various archives, and I still need to add some simple code to check whether the Headspace WordPress SEO plugin is installed.

Here is the end result:-

Geeky solution to First Link Priority & Referential Integrity With WordPress

Headspace allows you to define custom meta data for each post, that then gives you a text entry box along with other SEO data entry fields.

This is actually vital for work-flow, having all the options you need to think about within a single panel, and because Headspace is a framework with plugin modules, it is possible to simplify the interface to only include the items you need, and then hide other functions behind the “advanced” link.

The Headspace WordPress SEO Plugin allows you to add custom meta entry fields that can be used in themes directly, or using filters

Here is some code to play with, taken straight from my functions.php of the child theme I use with the Thematic theme framework.

<?php
// Information in Post Header TOTAL REPLACEMENT
function gwo_thematic_postheader() {
    global $id, $post, $authordata;

    // Create $posteditlink
    $posteditlink .= '<a href="' . get_bloginfo('wpurl') . '/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&amp;post=' . $id;
    $posteditlink .= '" title="' . __('Edit post', 'thematic') .'">';
    $posteditlink .= __('Edit', 'thematic') . '</a>';
    $posteditlink = apply_filters('thematic_postheader_posteditlink',$posteditlink); 

    if (is_page()) {
        $posttitle = '<script type="text/javascript">utmx_section("PostHeader")</script>' . '<h1 class="entry-title">' . get_the_title() . '</h1>' . '</noscript>' . "\n";
	} elseif (is_single()) {
        $posttitle = '<h1 class="entry-title">' . get_the_title() . "</h1>\n";
    } elseif (is_404()) {
        $posttitle = '<h1 class="entry-title">' . __('Not Found', 'thematic') . "</h1>\n";
    } else {

$shortie = MetaData::get_custom ('shorttitle');
	if ($shortie == '') {
		$shortie = MetaData::get_page_title ($post->ID);
	}
	if ($shortie != '') {

        $shortlink = get_permalink();

		$shorttitle .= '<<a href="';
        $shorttitle .= $shortlink;
        $shorttitle .= '" title="';
        $shorttitle .= __('Permalink to ', 'thematic') . the_title_attribute('echo=0');
        $shorttitle .= '" rel="bookmark">';
        $shorttitle .= $shortie;
        $shorttitle .= "</a>\n";

// Open Div For Our Shortlink Tab
		$posttitle .= '<div class="short-tab">' . "\n";
// For IE
        $posttitle .= '<div class="tab-canv">';
        $posttitle .= $shorttitle;
        $posttitle .= '</div>' . "\n";
// End IE
// For All other browsers (SVG Object)
        $posttitle .= '<![if !IE]>' . "\n";
        $posttitle .= '<object class="tab-obj" type="image/svg+xml" data="data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns=\'http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\' xmlns:xlink=\'http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink\'><a xlink:href=\'' . $shortlink . '\' target=\'new\'><text text-anchor=\'end\' padding-top=\'10\' x=\'-10\' y=\'20\' font-family=\'Tahoma\' font-size=\'18\' transform=\'rotate(-90)\' text-rendering=\'optimizeSpeed\' fill=\'#888\'>' . $shortie . '</text></a></svg>">' . "\n";

// Fallback Old Browsers
        $posttitle .= '<div class="tab-old_canv">' . "\n";
        $posttitle .= $shorttitle . "\n";
        $posttitle .= '</div>' . "\n";
// End Fallback
        $posttitle .= '</object>' . "\n";
        $posttitle .= '<![endif]>' . "\n";
// End For All other browsers
        $posttitle .= '</div>' . "\n";

}
	$posttitle .= '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="';
        $posttitle .= get_permalink();
        $posttitle .= '" title="';
        $posttitle .= __('Permalink to ', 'thematic') . the_title_attribute('echo=0');
        $posttitle .= '" rel="bookmark">';
        $posttitle .= get_the_title();
        $posttitle .= "</a></h2>\n";
    }
    $posttitle = apply_filters('thematic_postheader_posttitle',$posttitle); 

    $postmeta = '<div class="entry-meta">';
    // $postmeta .= '<span class="author vcard">';
    // $postmeta .= __('By ', 'thematic') . '<a class="url fn n" href="';
    // $postmeta .= get_author_link(false, $authordata->ID, $authordata->user_nicename);
    // $postmeta .= '" title="' . __('View all posts by ', 'thematic') . get_the_author() . '">';
    // $postmeta .= get_the_author();
    // $postmeta .= '</a></span><span class="meta-sep"> | </span>';
    // $postmeta .= __('Published: ', 'thematic');
    // $postmeta .= '<span class="entry-date"><abbr class="published" title="';
    // $postmeta .= get_the_time(thematic_time_title()) . '">';
    // $postmeta .= get_the_time(thematic_time_display());
    // $postmeta .= '</abbr></span>';
    // Display edit link
    if (current_user_can('edit_posts')) {
        $postmeta .= ' <span class="meta-sep">|</span> ' . $posteditlink;
    }
    $postmeta .= "</div><!-- .entry-meta -->\n";
    $postmeta = apply_filters('thematic_postheader_postmeta',$postmeta); 

    if ($post->post_type == 'page' || is_404()) {
        $postheader = $posttitle;
    } else {
        $postheader = $posttitle . $postmeta;
    }

	echo apply_filters( 'gwo_thematic_postheader', $postheader ); // Filter to override default post header
}
add_filter('thematic_postheader', 'gwo_thematic_postheader');
?>

The modified section (for first link priority and referential integrity) is commented in the code (Begin / End Shortie Code)

The logic is fairly simple:-

1. If short title is defined, use it
2. If there isn’t a short title, but a meta title is defined, use that instead
3. Otherwise don’t display a short title at all and stick with the original entry title as the first link and anchor text.

I will repeat, the code is rough, and if the Headspace plugin is currently switched off, it will break your blog.

I used SFV Object, you could also use SIFR to replace and style text, or custom images that somehow dynamically style the text link, though make it relevant to the text link and article, and maybe use GD Library to add a text caption.

Here is the CSS I am currently using. It is broken in WordPress in Internet Explorer, at least using The Thematic Framework, though works in isolation on some simple test HTML.

html>body .tab-canv { display: none }
html>body .tab-obj  { display: block }
.home #content .post {margin:0 0 0 40px;}
.archive #content   {margin:0 0 0 40px;}
.tab-canv, .tab-obj { height:300px; width:30px; }
.tab-old_canv { font-family: 'Tahoma', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; }
.short-tab {position:absolute; margin: 0px 0px 0px -40px; max-width: 30px; width:30px}

<![if IE]>
.tab-canv { float:left; text-align:right; padding-bottom:20; filter: flipv() fliph(); writing-mode: tb-rl; font-size:18px; font-family: Tahoma; background-color: white; display: block; color: #888 }
.tab-canv h2{font-size:18px;}
.tab-obj  { display: none }
<![endif]>

Please make sure you check out The 7 Deadly SEO Mistakes from Stompernet – learn your SEO from the source

Special Note: This is the kind of content I will be preparing for private member access soon, and at least some of this content once I have refined the code a little, will be removed from the public.

Please check out the follow-on post in this series

Is Stompernet Wrong About First Link Priority?

As well as offering an alternative opinion about first link priority, you will learn how to run your own SEO experiments.

I had this feeling that PR5 was “Google Probation” as my link growth has been continuing and my Google Directory listing suggested PR6.

All paid reviews on this blog are blocked with robots.txt and I declare that is the case in my disclosure policy.

Thus we need to look at other potential problems (note these are potential problems, but nothing I can really change)

Linking To People Who Advertise

Some regular readers decided to purchase advertising – advertising links unlike many blogs are nofollow. I mentioned this to Google within my reinclusion request as an undefined grey area, and many blogs accept paid advertising from Google themselves, but don’t nofollow Google.
I don’t have a separate advertising department, but I am going to try my best to keep advertising separate from content. Many of the people advertising are among my most dedicated readers, and I am sure in part they are advertising with me to “give something back”. It is much appreciated.

I actually have another advertiser to link to in a post following this one – it is going to be totally natural for me to link to them, it is editorial and news I would be covering whether they advertise with me or not.

I am currently assuming this is not an issue…

Blogcatalog

I do some minor consulting with them, but additional coverage on this blog is not part of the deal.

Blogging social networks have been part of my core content for 15 months.

15 posts regarding Blogcatalog
47 posts regarding MyBlogLog

If you look at raw numbers, I have given Blogcatalog less coverage than their biggest competitor.

It is important however to look at the timelines, as a large number of the MyBlogLog posts were from before Blogcatalog was on the scene, and were during some quite turbulent times.

I basically give both of them coverage whenever they introduce something interesting – it doesn’t include every announcement

I don’t think I am really at liberty to disclose the exact financial relationship with Blogcatalog.

I am certainly not being paid to write reviews in much the same way Matt Cutts isn’t paid for writing about Google on his blog.

Then of course Jason Calacanis just loves linking through to Mahalo where he is a major shareholder.

Google are certainly in the wrong if they think my coverage of Blogcatalog is in some way against their current webmaster guidelines. I have pushed hard for clarification on the shareholder linking and paid links connection, but Google has never provided any feedback.

PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe

I have never been paid to write anything about Izea / PayPerPost – seriously

Izea have recently purchased advertising to promote RealRank – they have similar advertising on other tech blogs

I wrote an initial review about Sponsored Reviews that was paid, but that review is blocked by robots.txt

None of my coverage about ReviewMe, and sister services TextLinkAds, AuctionAds etc has ever been paid for.

As far as I am concerned I have a clean sheet here

Affiliate Links?

I have been a little lazy with those but that isn’t against Google’s webmaster guidelines

Dofollow

I am extremely rigorous in moderating my comments – this shouldn’t be an issue

Hub Pages Hublove

I certainly wasn’t paid to link through to Hubpages and take part as a judge.

Previous declarations

As previously explained, I have never placed an emphasis on selling PageRank and my reviews certainly consume a huge amount of time.

Webmaster Tools

I have just double checked in webmaster tools – my paid reviews are certainly blocked by robots.txt and I kept close control of them.

Even though they are blocked, they are ranking extremely well, as expected – in fact if anything the ranking has improved.

Signal For Future Penalty

I value the ~400 visitors Google sends me every day on this site, but unless they rewrite the webmaster guidelines… again, there is nothing I am to my knowledge doing wrong.

Ah well, at least some of my meandering thought process whilst writing this post has resulted in some new niche site ideas… stay tuned.

Update

That was pretty quick – showing PR5 again on most servers.
I did wait a few days prior to this post to see if there was some kind of update fluctuation as per my previous post regarding the updates. The items I highlighted still remain in the grey area, such as the dividing line between “Thanking your sponsors” (known to be a violation, and “editorial coverage” which probably isn’t.

I can understand why Matt Cutts might want to change what noindex does, it is not just Koreans making occasional mistakes, for instance I just noticed the whole WebProNews video blog is currently noindex nofollow. I am sure that is a mistake, it is easy to make in WordPress… just one click and save.

All in one plugins are dangerous if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve

Rel-nofollow, meta instructions and robots.txt are just tools.

Just because a tool is available to use in your toolbox, doesn’t mean you should use it. You don’t always need to use a big hammer to repair a TV set though sometimes a big hammer just isn’t big enough ;)

Inclusive PageRank Sculpting

Whilst I agree with Michael that nofollow has a purpose and I use it as a tool to achieve desired results, Shari raises some good points.

The Search Engine Land blog doesn’t use nofollow on links, but the “information architecture” is sculpted with a very flat profile. SEL is an information resource, and all pages are given almost equal emphasis.
That may not be true of a niche website, e-commerce site, etc – this is something that has to be determined on a case by case basis.

If you are looking at WordPress SEO in a competitive niche, for specific keywords, having a specialist toolset available is an advantage.
That page is blocked by robots.txt, but still ranks highly for reasonably competitive terms based upon anchor text within plenty of editorial links, and internal linking structure, domain authority etc.

Pages blocked by Robots.txt still accumulate Google Juice.

But you shouldn’t give a baby razor blades to play with, let alone a chain saw.

Less Important Pages Can Be Your Quarterbacks

My sitelinks are currently a total mess, and haven’t been updated since November. I have so many links on my front page that Google has a hard time to determine which pages are most important, and some internal pages have attracted a fair number of external links.

On many sites, a contact form, privacy policy, advertising page etc might be important to appear on your sitelinks, but less important in standard search results.

Simple Site Structure

Here we have a simple site structure, with 14 landing pages linked to from the front page. Of these pages, we have determined that 6 are unimportant, and 8 we would ideally like to appear in sitelinks.

The following are just a few examples of how we could arrange the linking structure.

I should point out the following:-

• It is much more complex than these simple diagrams because I haven’t included any 3rd tier (or deeper) pages
• I haven’t included any home links or links from a 3rd 4th etc tier to higher tiers
• Iterative calculations need to be thought about
• There are no leaks

Keep Them Out Of The Index

In this example the pages are so unimportant we want to keep them out of the index, and prevent them soaking up any Google Juice.

We nofollow links to them, and use meta noindex follow on the pages – this keeps them out of the index even if someone else links to them, but allows juice from those links to flow to other pages.
In this situation we should also ensure that there are no external links on the page using plugins such as my nofollow those dupes.

Not So Important Pages

Here we are thinking about usability – we still want those unimportant pages appearing in a site search or a more specific long tail search, but they are not key search terms.
Maybe some of these pages have an effect on site quality.

We nofollow links from the homepage, and maybe from the sidebar or footer throughout the site, but have a live link from the HTML sitemap.

When You Have Multiple Levels Of Importance

In this example we have 3 tiers of importance

• Pages we don’t want in the index or receiving any juice
• Pages that are important for navigation, but should receive less juice
• Primary pillar content aimed at competitive keywords

Our least important pages are still linked heavily, but have no juice being passed to them due to nofollow, and have noindex follow to keep them out of the index, but passing juice if they happen to receive a link.

Our low priority pages are gaining links from the HTML sitemap

Our most important pages receive juice from the home page, and possibly site-wide links.

Nofollow Is Not Required

Nofollow is not a requirement to enhance the flow of Google juice around a site, but it certainly helps.

In this particular case, we have some less important pages that are receiving a lot of jucie, maybe with site-wide links, not just from the home page.

However those pages are not as important as other pages on the site, and would not be our preference to appear as sitelinks.

We allow our unimportant pages to receive the blessing of a front page appearance, but the only links from those unimportant pages are to our most important pages. Juice flows straight through like a 100% efficient conduit.

If we only link to those unimportant pages from the front page, the total amount of juice they receive will be greatly reduced.

No Robots.txt

In these examples I didn’t use robots.txt once.

Robots.txt can be used strategically and in many cases is easier to implement than selective nofollow on links, or noindex follow on pages, but that doesn’t make using it “best practice”.

So Which Method is Best?

None of them, all of them (I just know I will get that question)

SEO is art, you can teach someone to hold a paint brush and all about perspective, but a true masterpiece requires creative talent and a lot of practice.

With my SEO articles I try to go a little further than just showing you how to hold a fishing rod or paint brush

Lots of people are reporting strange fluctuations, and PageRank 7 seems to be appearing and disappearing for many sites that really don’t deserve it.

I wouldn’t have written anything at all, but then I received a message asking for a link exchange with a PR7 site, and knowing what was happening on Digital Point, I thought I would spend 20 seconds investigating

Yahoo seems to report ~60 backlinks for a PR7

That is possible but so unlikely based on the actual link profile.

Just beware of people looking to benefit from whatever bug is in the current changes.

I must admit I have never been much of a fan of link exchanges anyway, or blogrolls

I am lowering the red flag

Carry on reading to find out why this isn’t the same as raising a white flag, and is far from surrendering to Google on paid reviews.

Robots.txt

I have spent a long time deciding on a course of action, and have decided that blocking my content using Robots.txt is ultimately better for me, and better for people hiring my services.

It also happens to be worse for Google than currently, but that is the beauty of this strategy.

It might be harder to rank, pages blocked using robots.txt still gather PageRank, and can appear in the index, though they would be looked on as dangling pages.

Ultimately links can always be redirected to a followup review which refers to the first, and that followup isn’t a paid review.

It is a little naughty, some people will sometimes receive editorial links within reviews and receive a trackback, but I don’t know of any spam plugin that checks robots.txt , plus the links will still be valuable in other search engines.

Google’s Achilles Heel With Paid Reviews

The only domain for which a client is paying for a review from is this one. When my content appears on other sites, there is a totally different editorial process, and links can in no way be looked on as paid links.

Content syndication is extensive:-

1. Social Bookmarking

Sites such as BloggingZoom encourage more than just a single line of description and rewritten titles on submissions, and not only deliver traffic from their existing user base, but also search traffic.

2. Hub Pages

Many content sites allow you to use syndicated content in the form of article feeds, and content is even picked up by larger sites such as Topix.

3. Authorized Syndication

You can arrange or organise for your content to be selectively syndicated on authority sites such as Andy Beard on WebProNews and even my WordPress SEO reviews published on SearchNewz.

Whilst I haven’t made it clear recently, I publish all my content under GPL, in fact I am switching to the GFDL with an invarient clause requiring a live hyperlink back to the original without nofollow – I prefer GFDL over creative commons because of this flexibility (for me) to be highly specific.

In future I am going to be actively encouraging syndication

4. Unauthorized Syndication

This is technically the same, but as long as people scraping my content are linking back to me, preferably with a followed link, it is great. I am not even worried about some light spinning of the content, as long as they state that the content has been modified and is only based on my original.

5. Indexed Search Results & Aggregators

This is the likes of Technorati, and feed readers that are indexed – I have no intention of blocking reviews from RSS feeds.

6. Multimedia

I use a lot of pictures and screenshots for my reviews, but this is going to increase – in addition I will also be creating podcasts and screencasts which will be widely distributed in their own right.

Hooray for Universal search!

No Nofollow = Editorial Backlinks

By not using nofollow in my reviews, it is most likely that syndicated copies of my reviews will provide backlinks not just for me, but also for my clients. The backlinks are editorial in many cases, someone has chosen to syndicate my content.

Unfortunately Google use backlinks to attribute content to an original source, but it is a whole lot harder if they can’t index the original. It will be interesting which site syndicating my work will rank highly, or how many.

Linking to Syndicated Content

This is something I haven’t decided on yet, but just like I can link through to my various social profiles, I do have the option to link through to my content on other domains after it has been syndicated.

Worse for Google

My content will still be in the index, filtered through an extra layer of editorial control, but there is going to be a whole lot more of it.

Google have made it clear that they are only worried about the existence of links, and not the time it takes to create content, expertise, and whether links within reviews were specified or given in an editorial capacity.

I honestly don’t like junk reviews written purely for SEO purposes, but as Google seem determined to impose the letter of the law rather than the spirit, throwing the baby out with the bath water, whilst I will comply to the letter of the law, I can’t see a reason why I shouldn’t sidestep the charging bull.

Nofollow is not the answer to Google’s troubles

Update

There seems to be some misunderstandings, and I need to clear them up.

1. The blocking hasn’t happened yet – it is the next thing on the todo list
2. I intend to get more search traffic from Google taking this action, not less.

Update 2

Robots.txt has now been modified

The list is quite short, but now I have a strategy in place, I will be writing a lot more paid reviews

Whilst this might be looked on as insignificant, some of those pages rank quite well for very useful terms, and are probably worth 2000+ visitors per month.

Update 3

Whilst the changes in robots.txt were quite straight forward, before making any reinclusion or reconsideration request, I thought it important to check the robots.txt within the Google webmaster console.

First of all I waited for it to be refreshed by Googlebot, which seems to happen approximately once every 24 hours.

There is an option to just copy and paste that refreshed data by hand, but waiting for it to be fetched is conclusive.

Next I entered in the URLs which need to be blocked by the robots.txt file, and checked them.

In theory Googlebot will now be blocked from crawling the “offending” pages, and I will be able to ask for reconsideration.

Photo credits
Lowering the Flag (modified)
Matador (modified)

Every single time I write a post mentioning PageRank, I get comments about PageRank not being important for ranking.

These comments very rarely differentiate between toolbar PageRank and the PageRank of whatever kind Google stores on their servers and upgrades on an extremely frequent basis for every page. I know from first hand experience that the toolbar PageRank has very little to do with rankings, and is manually manipulated based on Google’s commercial goals.

PageRank By Any Other Name…

The Ranking Factors article at SEOmoz in many ways skirts around the issue, referring to Toolbar Pagerank, and then ignoring the concept of what is real PageRank by splitting things down into multiple related items.

• Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
• Global Link Popularity of Site
• Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
• Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
• Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
• Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
• Topical Relationship of Linking Site
• Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain

The only direct question specific to PageRank was:-

• PageRank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page

Aaron Wall in answering this question actually gave a response hinting at the real importance of PageRank

The toolbar is perpetually outdated, but Google uses PageRank values to help set crawling priorities and to determine if a document should go in the regular or supplmental index.

Some Simple Questions

• Can a page rank without a Title tag?
• Can a page rank without any internal linking?
• Can a page rank even on a new domain?
• Can a page rank without direct external links?

Ultimately with almost all the ranking factors, it is a balancing act, but with PageRank or however you wish to describe “Google Juice”, it becomes a little more fundamental.

No PageRank, No Google Juice = No Index

I realise if you take a purely theoretical stance, that if you created a 1000 page site full of original content, and then point Google to the sitemap for that site, that Google might index the whole site, and if you remove that link, some of the pages might remain indexed for a short or long period of time.
I haven’t done the test, but a random surfer in theory could land on one of the isolated pages, if Google chose to keep the unconnected pages in the index.

PageRank Flow & Real World Indexing

I need a real world example to demonstrate how important juice flow around a website or blog is important, and I decided that Michael Martinez effectively was asking for this by saying:-

I do absolutely nothing to make SEO Theory “SEO friendly”. It is better indexed in Google than most SEO blogs.

Take that for what it’s worth.

I am always up for a challenge, especially when Michael went on to say

My complaints about the poor quality of Google’s search results stem from Google’s willful, deliberate segregation of the Web into two categories: Preferred Pages (Main Web Index) and Supplemental Pages. Preferred Pages are always shown first in search results regardless of how much more relevant the Supplemental Pages may be to queries.

Actually Google seems to have 3 types of pages

1. Main Index
2. Supplemental – apparently being phased out, but it could be all FUD, on that I agree with Michael on
3. Not Indexed

Michael forgot about the pages that are receiving so little juice, Google doesn’t even bother indexing them, even on sites that are “better indexed than most SEO blogs”.

It is possible that Michael is doing some kind of indexing test, or he could also have selectively decided that he doesn’t want his old content in Google’s index.
Thus I am not going to link directly to the following pages which would damage his test results.

That being said, Michael did ask to be quoted on it, and to quote him I am sure he would want the person doing the quoting to provide good, if not conclusive evidence for or against his stance. I am not going to claim conclusive evidence, but at least I have spent a little time on this reply.

Michael links to his date based archive pages from every page in his sidebar, thus they should be receiving a fair amount of juice. However that juice doesn’t flow very deeply and he only has 5 posts on each page of his archives.

If you go just 3 pages deep, Michael starts to have indexing problems.

http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2007/02/page/3/

Every article listed on that page is not in Google’s index… at all!

http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2007/02/14/5-ways-to-launch-new-multiproduct/

Not Indexed By Google

http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2007/02/13/yesterydays-seo-advice-at-todays-prices/

Not Indexed By Google

http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2007/02/09/how-to-end-search-engine-slavery/

Not Indexed By Google

http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2007/02/08/how-to-build-long-lasting-trusted-value/

Not Indexed By Google

http://seo-theory.com/wordpress/2007/02/07/best-kept-secrets-in-seo/

Not Indexed By Google

It seems the content on Michael’s SEO Theory blog isn’t as well indexed currently as you might expect, but as I mentioned earlier, that might be due to experimentation

I Have Pages Not Indexed As Well

I decided a while back it would be hard to write a post like this without having some pages of my own to point out, so I did a number of things.

• I didn’t make extensive structure changes to improve things based on my WordPress SEO articles
• I switched off translation plugins
• I don’t include unique article descriptions
• When I upgraded to WP2.3, I didn’t include Custom Query String, so my archives are not as flat as they used to be – I should note there are a few versions of CQS now available for WP2.3+ including Custom Query String Reloaded
• I have been using underscores with my tag_pages rather-than-dashes

I had a tough choice back in October, after being hit with a sizeable fake Toolbar PageRank penalty (currently -3) – continue making changes to my site structure to improve search engine performance, or keep the site relatively unchanged.

It is hard to say whether the penalties are/were material unless you bite the bullet and not make changes required by Google.

The only change I decided to make was to not include CQS when I upgraded to WP2.3+ – I decided that this would allow me to eventually provide some examples of pages falling out of the index, and then I would be able to demonstrate how I improve site structure to fix the problem.

With the changes Google made to the reporting of supplemental results, or if you believe them removing supplemental results altogether, it did take a little while for things to settle down.

I was waiting for a little deeper indexing activity to be visible, and then to wait a week or so for that activity to show in results. I did point out a few months ago that Google Webmaster tools provides these indexing charts, but the scales are still broken.

http://andybeard.eu/2007/01/mybloglog-social-networking-opportunity.html

Not In Google Index

The big difference is that I had to go back 7 pages in my January archives from last year to find a page that was no longer in the index, and my date based indexes are not on my sidebar on every page of this domain.

http://andybeard.eu/2007/01/page/7

Related Links Are Transitory

Related links certainly help passing juice to older related content, but eventually even if you list 10 related pages, and use very specific control of related pages using a plugin such as Simple Tags, the related posts become superseded.
I will probably end up tagging this post seo, wordpress, linking, linking structures, pagerank, ranking factors

I have used most of those tags in the past, thus it is most likely that I will get 10 related posts, but also that some previously related posts will become displaced on the list, and that change will not just happen on this page, but all pages on this domain that are related.

Deep Linking to Older Content

Deep linking to older core content always brings a little fresh life back to them, and gives them a fresh injection of Google juice. Once you get to 500+ pages of content, it becomes harder and harder to give life back to all of them, and thus only what you class as “pillar” content gets a much needed burst of life.
There is a constant ebb and flow, 2 steps forward, one step back.

Temporal Factors

Maybe there are temporal factors taken into account by search engines, and some kind of temporary PageRank assigned to new content.
What I do know is that if content is buried deep in your archives, so deep that it doesn’t receive any juice and isn’t indexed, then a link from that page is totally worthless.
An old link on a TBPR PR10 domain that is buried deep in the archives might still have some value, whereas being 30 pages deep on a blog that receives very little link love, or maybe an archived forum post, isn’t going to be worth much, if anything.

Google may remember old links that have lost juice for a period of time after they have been removed. Donna has spent some time looking into this.

To Be A Contender, You Have To Be In The Game

If your pages aren’t in Google’s index, they can’t rank for anything, even long tail queries.

To be in Google’s index, pages really have to have a certain undefined amount of juice, no matter what other factors you gain merit for.

Thus PageRank is the primary Google Search Ranking Factor, because it is the only factor you 100% have to fulfil to have a chance for your pages to rank in Google’s search results.

To give you a good parting analogy, all plants need water – different plants thrive with different amounts of water, and you can give a plant too much water – I don’t know if you can have too much Google juice, but you might have too much over a short period of time… a downpour which washes away the soil.

Adage Power 150

Over the last few days for instance I noticed that Advertising Age have rejigged their Adage Power150 which I previously discussed a few months ago. It is great to see that Google PageRank has a lot less importance, and the inclusion of Yahoo link data, but there is an over reliance on Technorati.

Technorati is easily gamed, because they count links from the sidebar and footer, which can easily be encouraged by creating widgets and WordPress Themes. They do try to clean up their own Top 100 list, manually removing blogs that seem to have an overbearing number of links from viral content.
There are also some aspects of how a theme is designed that have a huge affect on how many links Technorati claim from a single blog, or the number of blogs that Technorati think are at a single domain.
Technorati currently accounts for 70 of the possible 150 total points a blog can receive, and the top ranking blogs can gain close to a full quota, unlike PageRank for which only 6 or 7 points can reasonably be attained.

You will notice that a lot of the Yahoo references show zero – values returned from an API need to be cached and discounted if they are zero, or return a number that is a significant change. I have seen Yahoo numbers drop from 30K links down to less than 9K, only for them to rebound.
It should also be noted that Yahoo also give credit for nofollow links from places like Delicious, Stumbleupon, and even blog comments. Not all links are created equal.

There is a bonus with the changes – I have gone from around 30 on the list to 17 or 18, and Adage is a low but consistent traffic source and has certainly extended my reach with new subscribers.

Top 100 Make Money Blogs

Another list that sends traffic daily is Mark’s, but again it suffers from a number of anomalies.

First of all PageRank plays a visible factor, or I am sure Yaro would be placed a few points higher, he used to be a PR6, and whilst it might not affect position so much, I have highlighed the other sites that currently have a penalty.

There also seems to be a problem with the Technorati rating on a number of blogs being much lower than it should be. I am not sure if this is a canonical domain problem, or some kind of new factor being applied to specific domains for data accessed by API.

Niches

Many niches don’t link out as much as meta blogging and technology blogs, and those in related niches such as venture capital.

As an example regular reader Lucia also has a knitting blog – I know that at times she gets 3 or 4 times as much traffic as me, even without social media influence.

PR3 (I remember it being a 4?), Technorati rank 44,000 (141 blog reactions), Alexa around 200K

The current statistical measures people use just don’t relate to the vast majority of bloggers.

Existing Stats Are Not Accurate?

Alexa is based upon toolbar usage – though their own toolbar isn’t very useful for many people, webmasters in the meta blogging niche can recommend the highly useful Search Status toolbar for Firefox that feeds Alexa with the same data.

Compete used to suffer from poor uptake of their Firefox toolbar because of problems with Firefox, but when Compete was added to the Search Status toolbar, again meta blogging and SEO blogs saw a boost.

With Technorati being used as a factor in so many monetization services, various methods have been used to boost links from other bloggers. Whilst they might get manually edited out of the top100 blogs on Technorati (and I have written how to avoid this several months ago), their numbers still get reported through the API though there is no guarantee that will last forever.

What would top bloggers do if the API for Technorati starts to report zero for anyone that Technorati feel is gaming the system?

Quantcast

Quantcast is accurate, but only if you include their tracking code on your blog and get “Quantified”

If you don’t, you end up claiming they are inaccurate in your end of year stats ;) – sorry Rand, I couldn’t resist that one.

If you compare our data and the SELand data to what Compete, Quantcast or Alexa are reporting, you can see how tragically inaccurate those services are. Sadly, that’s no anomally. Everytime I get access to a client’s visit data, I’m always curious to check the three and have not once found accuracy, even on a relative basis. Third party traffic metrics still have a very, very long way to go.

Just to give you an idea of what happens if you don’t add tracking code to get quantified, here is a comparison between this domain and DoshDosh, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land & SEOmoz.

note:the Quantcast images will display much clearer in a feed reader, they are limited on display width on the blog and forced to a smaller size

Search Engine Land traffic is directly measured, as is my own, the other sites are just a panel estimate. As SEL effectively makes the others almost invisible, lets replace SEL with Marketing Pilgrim

You can see some clear traffic spikes in the panel estimates, probably due to click traffic from other sites which have Quantcast code embedded such as Digg

In fact of the major social news and bookmarking sites, only Digg and Propeller are Quantified.

Why IzeaRanks IS Needed, But Might Be Rejected

When you create a page on a blog to help you sell your advertising inventory, how can an advertiser trust the traffic figures you give them, and why should they have to research whether you in some way gamed the statistics?

If you are a large publisher and it is a significant advertiser, you might be willing to give them access to some real statistics, such as Google Analytics through shared access, or your advertising administration system might provide reasonable stats to advertisers. As an example B5Media use Valueclick – I would hope Valueclick have some tools to provide statistics that can be verified before an advertiser makes a purchase.

Certainly Problogger isn’t listed as Quantified

For smaller publishers it would be possible for them to use existing services like Quantcast, but they don’t, because using Quantcast isn’t being encouraged by the people that count… the monetization services and advertisers.

For all the negative publicity Izea has had due to their PayPerPost service, one thing remains clear – they are an advertising company looking to help bloggers make money. They are not a competitor.

I would be more worried if I was placing tracking code on my blog if Izea in some way were a competitor creating content, such as Performancing with their Metrics service, which Izea themselves almost purchased though then it was a different animal, and not just a branded version of an existing tracking service.

I am a firm believer in not making things too easy for competitors, well with this blog I don’t care so much, but certainly for niche sites. I don’t worry too much about monetization services gaining stats, and I never looked on MyBlogLog having access being a problem. I am not sure if Blogcatalog are collecting anything, but again, they are not exactly running a blog network.

The IzeaRanks interface is honestly pretty basic compared to what is offered by Quantcast as far as raw traffic stats, and you are certainly missing all the segmentation data (though I am not sure how reliable that is).

Izea’s “RealRank” is based upon the following factors (from their announcement)

• 70% weighted towards visitors per day
• 20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
• 10% weighted towards pageviews per day

I am not sure whether Izea have come up with a way to have only “Real” pageviews and visitors counted, as many stats packages have problems with the pre-fetching of pages from Stumbleupon causing massive errors.

The active inbound links is an interesting statistic. Links that deliver real traffic. It is relatively easy to build up links and gain PageRank from obscure sites, or to game rankings with themes and widgets, but those links rarely get clicked on by visitors. Even blogrolls are pretty much ignored by visitors unless you have an unfair advantage of your sitename starting with the letter A ;)

Many people state that the value of RealRank will be based upon how many bloggers use it. That is partially true, but the real traffic and unique visitor values will be valuable to advertisers even if just one blogger signed up for the service.

I am disappointed that Izea are not doing anything with feeds, though it is much easier to do that with WordPress blogs than blogs on Blogspot, especially with the way Google have now integrated Blogger and Feedburner. The technical skill that would be needed to feed a feed into izea and back out to Feedburner would cause countless technical support problems, and Izea have enough technical support problems with some of their other services, and no end of headaches.

There is an API, I am sure some smart people will jump on it and use it to provide something useful, though I am not sure how quickly that will happen. The usage restrictions of 5000 calls per day is generous.

It is true that Google might currently look on javascript from Izea as an indication of writing paid posts, but hopefully with Social Spark that will be cleared up. Social Spark will offer total transparency. If you are doing nothing wrong, it probably isn’t going to be a major problem even if Google clock up even more false positives for a short while. If you are doing something naughty, you are probably going to be caught anyway.

Do You Have An Advertising Sales Page?

If you have an advertising sales page on your blog, have no doubt that advertisers will start to expect the availability of real statistics, not something you quote from AWStats.
AWStats typically reports around 6x as many page views compared to javascript based tracking on my blog, and quite a few more unique visitors.

You could include Quantcast, but you might as well include IzeaRank at the same time especially if some smart people come up with a way to present the stats effectively.
I can see Paul’s point at Mashable, that Izea maybe should have concentrated on the whole of the internet, and not just the blogosphere, but you could argue that the BBC or the Washington Post should be included in the Technorati Top100 as well, because they offer RSS feeds.

In my mind the individual rating of blogs by RealRank is meaningless unless it it put into context of their topical niche, such as I could compare Mashable with Techcrunch on Quantcast and discover that neither are quantified, so the statistics are totally worthless.

I can understand why Darren doesn’t necessarily need it, or other B5 Media Blogs, but many niche bloggers do need something they can use to demonstrate their relative worth. Just a week ago a key tip from Shoemoney on Darren’s blog was about a clear advertising page.

Is there a difference between clear and transparent/honest/uncoloured ?

How much creative license should people use to sell advertising?