Critique my SEO please (will pay with tits & ass)



Real Talk: Have you broken down the link profiles of everyone ranking higher than you and figured out how to match and exceed them? Assuming your domain isn't penalized and you have on-site optimization done properly, the next step is breaking down everyone outranking you and beating them.

This post covers it nicely: How To Steal Your Competitors Rankings


^^^ This.

Feel free to PM me. I'll take a look and offer any help I can.
 
Did I just accept payment for something I have no intention of doing?

I'm not quite sure.
 
Here's the answer I gave OP for anyone interested:

From the looks of things, you need to:

1) Up the exact anchor text for that main keyword if you want to try and rank for it, it's only at 7% currently. Shoot for 20-30% in general, but specifically try and match the competition.

2) Really push on-site interlinking. You show about 300 pages in the index, you should be heavily interlinking all of your pages to spread your link juice around.

3) I'm going to assume you don't have the cleanest link profile based on this nofollow/dofollow ratio: [was an image from ahrefs, but basically the root domain has 27,000 dofollow links and like 3 nofollow links] ...You probably want to focus on mixing in some better links, such as link network stuff, manual comments, or follow this strategy: The Link Building Empire (these aren't necessarily better links, but by using tiering, you'll at least eventually end up with some stronger links hitting your site)

Also, I would imagine those 25k dofollow blogroll links from blahblahblah.net aren't helping much considering how many other links are on those pages as well...

(OP has a sitewide from a site sending 25k dofollow links and the site sending those links has probably 50 other sitewides...no bueno when it makes up that large of a percentage of the link profile)
 
Shoot for 20-30% in general

Death sentence since the first penguin rollout and more so every incarnation it seems. I try to keep the TOTAL % of anchored links at under 30% and I often think that's too high.

Unless you're into churning and burning, then by all means, bump that up to 80% single anchor text and enjoy that brief stay at the top.
 
Real Talk: Have you broken down the link profiles of everyone ranking higher than you and figured out how to match and exceed them? Assuming your domain isn't penalized and you have on-site optimization done properly, the next step is breaking down everyone outranking you and beating them.

This post covers it nicely: How To Steal Your Competitors Rankings

the problem with analyzing the top 10 in your SERP is.. you get a mix of authority sites that can take a beating that your site will likely never be able to achieve.

the failed logic with "look at the top 10" method is, say your trying to rank for Raspberry Ketones. you use a tool to look at the top 10 and you end up getting Amazon.com, WebMd, Wikipedia, and say 1 Newspaper site and a mix of other non authority sites. You also get the churn and burn site ( oh hi guys ) and spammers that are ranking for maybe that week as well and THEN maybe a couple legit sites that are on your level.

when you look at the results including those authorities, your average will include those sites, who can take a hell of a lot more punishment ( anchor text %, # of spammy links, rate of links built, etc ) then a site like yours ( even if not new, but not an authority yet ). You also get the spammy site averages too, which will only rank for a few days mixed into your data which gives a false impression of what is really working and just shows you a loophole.

at best, you end up with dirty ass data that is not good for anything.

this is why tools and methods put into the hands of noobs are still just worthless data points. you need to actually know how to use the tools/methods before you start and whats going on in the background.

also, what if you look at this data the day before an algo change you never know that happens, like hummingbird? yeah... too many points to consider. just do good seo, dont try averages.
 
the problem with analyzing the top 10 in your SERP is.. you get a mix of authority sites that can take a beating that your site will likely never be able to achieve.

the failed logic with "look at the top 10" method is, say your trying to rank for Raspberry Ketones. you use a tool to look at the top 10 and you end up getting Amazon.com, WebMd, Wikipedia, and say 1 Newspaper site and a mix of other non authority sites. You also get the churn and burn site ( oh hi guys ) and spammers that are ranking for maybe that week as well and THEN maybe a couple legit sites that are on your level.

when you look at the results including those authorities, your average will include those sites, who can take a hell of a lot more punishment ( anchor text %, # of spammy links, rate of links built, etc ) then a site like yours ( even if not new, but not an authority yet ). You also get the spammy site averages too, which will only rank for a few days mixed into your data which gives a false impression of what is really working and just shows you a loophole.

at best, you end up with dirty ass data that is not good for anything.

this is why tools and methods put into the hands of noobs are still just worthless data points. you need to actually know how to use the tools/methods before you start and whats going on in the background.

also, what if you look at this data the day before an algo change you never know that happens, like hummingbird? yeah... too many points to consider. just do good seo, dont try averages.

By definition, the sites ranking highest for a keyword are doing good SEO
 
By definition, the sites ranking highest for a keyword are doing good SEO

How do you explain overnight bought PR6 domains from auctions ranking with a couple million spam links ranking highest then? I don't think that is good SEO.

Sorry, but I dont alwaya want their metrics in my data. Just the same as I dont want a page from Amazon that is just ranking in the SERP based on the domain authority alone.

Also, manually filtered SERPs. Your method and data doesn't work for any of those examples.
 
By definition, the sites ranking highest for a keyword are doing good SEO

Sorry, but I dont alwaya want their metrics in my data. Just the same as I dont want a page from Amazon that is just ranking in the SERP based on the domain authority alone.

Your both right. You need to study the top ranking sites because Google obviously thinks they are worthy, while using your better judgement on which sites you study. Ideally you want to focus on sites that are within your ability to meet & exceed.

Amazon can put a page up with a single word and rank that shit no problem without any external link building. Including that as a data point is going to really skew your conclusions in a non-meaningful way. You can use the ranking Amazon site in other ways (on-page for one) but not in a direct website comparison.
 
2) Really push on-site interlinking. You show about 300 pages in the index, you should be heavily interlinking all of your pages to spread your link juice around.

Are you talking main navigation, in-content, sidebar, header/footer or combination of all?

Based on my testing in-content links have the most effect, however I'm not sure if your recommendation is based on an existing poor navigation setup, or bad/lack of in-content linking.

Also what are your thoughts on keyword-rich internal links? I've noticed that you can and will be penalized if you get too crazy with them, even on legitimate websites. I try to link single words close to the exact match anchors I want to rank for, which definitely moves the needle.

Overall I've been focusing a lot less on exact phrases in both offsite and onsite links and more on context & depth, which has been working pretty well for me on the longtail side.

Head terms without spam is a tough nut to crack for me with all the recent changes and paranoia of penguin/panda.
 
Death sentence since the first penguin rollout and more so every incarnation it seems. I try to keep the TOTAL % of anchored links at under 30% and I often think that's too high.

Not even doing exact anchors at all anymore, but maybe because I've been traumatized.

Real Talk: Have you broken down the link profiles of everyone ranking higher than you and figured out how to match and exceed them?

Match and Exceed is a phrase that started in the bluehat era which IMO isn't relevant to todays SEO in the context it once was. This was a time when quantity ruled SERPs.

just do good seo, dont try averages.

There is merit to this.

If you're going to look at the top 10 SERPs and go running through their links for targets then you have to look with a fine-toothed comb and be very selective.
 
How do you explain overnight bought PR6 domains from auctions ranking with a couple million spam links ranking highest then? I don't think that is good SEO.

Sorry, but I dont alwaya want their metrics in my data. Just the same as I dont want a page from Amazon that is just ranking in the SERP based on the domain authority alone.

Also, manually filtered SERPs. Your method and data doesn't work for any of those examples.

As much as you and I hate this, we are not in a position to decide what good SEO is...the search engine's rankings are the only source of what is currently "good SEO". Like I said before, by definition, the sites ranking highest for a keyword are doing good SEO.

There are different types of "good SEO" and the definition depends on what you're going for. Per your example, that's good SEO in the rank and bank world. White hat projects that last a long time in the ranking is good SEO in the "what Matt Cutts wants you to be doing" sense.

There is no universal "good SEO" set of techniques, it's entirely niche dependent. What works for ranking for Payday Loans isn't what is needed to rank for medium competition product SERPs and what works for those isn't whats needed for extremely low competition SERPs where none of the ranking pages even have a single backlink.

There is no such thing as universally "good SEO" beyond the most basic set of best practices that won't guarantee rankings anyways. The bottom line is that good SEO is what your competitors are doing that are outranking you in your niche and SERPs.

Are you talking main navigation, in-content, sidebar, header/footer or combination of all?

Based on my testing in-content links have the most effect, however I'm not sure if your recommendation is based on an existing poor navigation setup, or bad/lack of in-content linking.

Also what are your thoughts on keyword-rich internal links? I've noticed that you can and will be penalized if you get too crazy with them, even on legitimate websites. I try to link single words close to the exact match anchors I want to rank for, which definitely moves the needle.

Overall I've been focusing a lot less on exact phrases in both offsite and onsite links and more on context & depth, which has been working pretty well for me on the longtail side.

Head terms without spam is a tough nut to crack for me with all the recent changes and paranoia of penguin/panda.

I was talking about in-content links, the overall navigation links looked fine to me.
 
As much as you and I hate this, we are not in a position to decide what good SEO is...the search engine's rankings are the only source of what is currently "good SEO". Like I said before, by definition, the sites ranking highest for a keyword are doing good SEO.

There are different types of "good SEO" and the definition depends on what you're going for. Per your example, that's good SEO in the rank and bank world. White hat projects that last a long time in the ranking is good SEO in the "what Matt Cutts wants you to be doing" sense.

There is no universal "good SEO" set of techniques, it's entirely niche dependent. What works for ranking for Payday Loans isn't what is needed to rank for medium competition product SERPs and what works for those isn't whats needed for extremely low competition SERPs where none of the ranking pages even have a single backlink.

There is no such thing as universally "good SEO" beyond the most basic set of best practices that won't guarantee rankings anyways. The bottom line is that good SEO is what your competitors are doing that are outranking you in your niche and SERPs.

Why are you preaching to the choir Darrin? I have been saying this for years about each SERP being different.

I dont think anyone here debated what is or is not working per niche. No one said anything about me just looking at things white hat or black hat.

We are simply pointing out, taking a coder's view of SEO is not the correct "1 size fits all" view to every niche. Coding up things and looking at averages like "well you need 20% anchors" isn't going to fly regardless if you only looked at this one guys niche or 30 and came up with that example. This is the problem with coders that dont do SEO, that then code up tools for noobs to use. The noobs get data that just isn't workable, and at best nice to think about and generalize with, but not actually helpful in the real world.

If this guys niche was Raspberry Ketones or Viagra and you took the coders approach to SEO and looked at the averages for anchors and links velocity and words on the front page, you might end up taking averages for a SERP where 4 out of 10 spots were all rank and bank, thus making dirty your averages of what "Good SEO" that you are saying actually is. This logic and info doesnt benefit your customer 7 days later when those sites are all penalized bro.

Also, "Good SEO" has nothing to do with authority sites that might also make up 4 out of 10 spots in that same SERP, where you have dominate domains like Amazon, Wikipedia, and even some leech authority sites that can take a damn good beating of % of anchor text and link velocity or any other metric you average out. Amazon or HuffingtonPost can take a 30% anchor text ratio and thousands of spam links in 1 day from Xpression Engine.. your typical client site will not and will get butt fucked pretty hard from the averages you gave.

Again, throw away your coder perspective and give this man some real solid advice about SEO and not averages based on some flawed code working in the background that doesn't take these considerations into favor.

Dont take this as harsh. Your a good man Darrin, but the info you gave this guy was pure garbage.

Even the guy that partnered with you on LayeredLinks and SerpIq, that does SEO day in and day out is telling you your number was a death sentence for the anchor ratio....
 
Death sentence since the first penguin rollout and more so every incarnation it seems. I try to keep the TOTAL % of anchored links at under 30% and I often think that's too high.

Unless you're into churning and burning, then by all means, bump that up to 80% single anchor text and enjoy that brief stay at the top.

I didn't say 80% though, I said 20-30% on average, but base it on the SERPs you're facing.

Anyone who doesn't want to make it through the next offline penguin filter, take this advice.

Here are the exact anchor percentage breakdowns for this keyword in order:

1) 23%
2) ~ 24% (it's an phrase match domain so it's a bit skewed)
3) 0% (very very strong domain, no backlinks to actual URL at all)
4) 0% (even stronger domain, about 14 backlinks to actual URL)
5) 0% (0 links, blogspot hosted domain)
6) ~ 32% (another phrase match domain, but 12% of links were direct exact match anchors, rest were the URL which obviously has the keyword as well)
7) 0% (Extremely powerful domain, only 20 links to actual ranking URL)
8) 0% (a shorter tail variation of the keyword makes up 51% of anchors to this URL...think "payday loans" vs. "cheap payday loans"

There are two youtube videos in the SERPs as well which I left out because we all know those rank a bit differently than normal web properties.

Now, you could argue that if you follow the lead of these sites (and my advice) you'll get smacked by the next Penguin, which could very well be true. But at this point, it would be in your best interest to try and follow suit because:

1) Your competitors are ranking and you are not
2) Not 1 of us has any fucking clue how Google is going to bend us all over next

"Good SEO" is, like the algorithms themselves, a moving target. What is good now wasn't good 3 years ago and definitely wasn't good 6-8 years ago. The only proof of what is working that we have to work from is what is currently ranking high for the keywords we care about.

All SERPs are different, all niches are different, all ranking conditions are different, and all ranking timeframes are different. There is no such thing as universally good SEO techniques.