Note: If you are unaware of The Project topic, please read the previous parts: The project: In the beginning (pt1)
So, the Ringtone-Search.net blog has been online for few weeks and I have more or less miraculously managed to write 11 posts, mainly about long-tail/niche topics. As for linkage I've been a lazy boy and done only few directory submissions. As expected, the site has managed to receive few 100% natural links from PR4/5 blogs - the value of good content/copywriting is something you can't beat. Hopefully it will receive some organic backlink-love in future also.
To summarize the spreadsheet below:
- Google: sandboxed... Comparing to other SE results I would say this site is definitely sandboxed. If so, the sandbox is related to age of incoming links and age of single pages, not age of domain (as domain is over 1 years old). Because the front page "dummy version" was indexed light years before any real content, I would put my money on link aging before page age . IMO an issue worth discussing...
- MSN... As expected, the site rocks in UK but is M.I.A in msn.com. Interestingly, the site has relative good starting points also in Finland (and other European MSN interfaces). So MSN is extremely heavy on favouring server location and domain name. It will be extremely interesting what happens when I start writing stuff with some medium and high competition keywords like "mobile accessories" and "Nokia ringtones" - will it success or not?
- Yahoo... seems to be a mixture of MSN and Google. IMO there is pretty clear geotargeting and also some level of dampening factors.
The traffic... So far it seems to be approx. 50 unique visitors/day which is IMO not bad regarding the age of site, niche topic and limited promotion. So where are the visitors coming from:
#1 our main site (we have a small, graphical rel=no-follow banner on article pages)
#2 seomoz (thanks for visiting)
#3 digg
#4 directories and minor tag based search engines
#5 trackbacks from other blogs
#6 technorati
#7Google and MSN (with even numbers)
And finally indexing... IMO nothing out of the ordinary in here: msnbot (237 requests), slurp (184 requests), Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (80 requests) and and googlebot (68 requests). MSN is by far the fastest to crawl and show results, Yahoo and Google seem to take at least 3-5 days between crawling and visible results.
As always, feel free to share your thoughts and comments.
2x - Yep it should be ok to use wordpress with all it's non search engine friendly default settings but it is not, why should an engine like google bent on destroying spam treat something like sitewide links differently?
"As for 10 latest posts, I tried the plugin and didn't like it. What I have in store is putting the sidebar on all pages someday".
What you describe there are sitewide links, I have modified a couple of my wordpress templates to only show the sidebar on the home.php and then use forward and back (by h1 title) on subpages.
When you are done beta texting the lame default wordpress template try Dagon sitemaps: https://www.seobuzzbox.com/dagon-wordpress-sit...
You see Google and others still like the way old .html websites work. What I describe is not spam, it is compliance. :)
I use that plugin. The Google Sitemaps Plugin for wordpress is great as well - generates your google sitemap through a nice admin interface.
What you describe there are sitewide links
Technicly it's a sitewide link, but I prefer term navigation bar ;)
A sitewide link (in SEO glossary/relation) is when you make a site wide link to external website for promotional purposes.
Yeah? Well I do not follow any "glossary" bud and make up my own rules and terms homeslice! :)
Thomas - Yes indeed.
Love
it!
... make up my own rules and terms homeslice! :)
...sigh... don't take this the wrong way Aaron, but in order to make things and people inside this industry work together, all must speak the same language. And it begins by defining common intepretions for generic terms like CTR,eCPM,backlink, reprocical, sitewide link, directory etc.
On semi-pro/professional level there is no room for homesliced rules /terms / interpretions. Period.
In permalinks try:
I Initially had that in test enviroment, but decided to drop it for better usability / accessibility....
I know numeric pagenames are far away from being perfect, but so are names like page-topic-goes-something-like-this-blah-blah.htm. I know there is also the possibility to manually define shorter pagename / hack the wp, but at the moment I prefer the current system.
As for SEO-purposes, I do know that keyword-rich.htm is recommended/most effective solution, but I do also know that the scy doesn't fall if you don't use it ;)
Sinse your blog theme is highly focused I would also remove the noisy archive link...Use a plugin to show your latest 10 posts......Also makes your post slugs H1's...
One part of this test is to see how search engines behave on something I consider a pretty out-of-the-box wp2 setup (with minor modifications) and then compare it to "more heavily modified" version. But it's an issue I'll discuss more in later parts of this series ...
The archive is about to go some day, but I'll let it remain for a awhile...
As for 10 latest posts, I tried the plugin and didn't like it. What I have in store is putting the sidebar on all pages someday.
As for h1 and other headings... the xhtml semantics say pretty clearly "page should have only one h1", and by default wp has reserved that for blog name. IMO it seemed possibly the dummest SEO related issue with default wp installation, but once again there are unexpected positive sides... For example one of the search engine referrals I keep seeing regurarly is "nokia connecting people ringtone"... the 3 first come from an emphasized content a single page has, the last word from h1... So with right kind of copywriting this can prove to be a source of interensting traffic... On the downside is of course how it seems to affect adsense targeting (lots of premium mobile content ads); but I think this will change in time as G learns more about the site.
it just needs more time, links, buzz and less noise.
I know... the best comment I've received so far is "what is mobile information society? A corporate buzzword? I don't understand what this blog is about..." It matches so perfectly with a recent ProBlogger article.
very interested to hear more about domain age versus site age...
I agree ;) It's on my writelist for future topics...
Thomas - https://www.seobuzzbox.com/seolinks.html
You will become addicted to watching others links with it...hehe
2k - Also makes your post slugs H1's...
Thanks Aaron! Ive been using the searchstatus plugin but this one really takes it real time! Looking forward to trying it later...
In permalinks try:
/%postname%.html
or
/%postname%/
If you are writing about "ringtone 1" the post slug "ringtone-1" and the url will appear like this:
(https://www.ringtone-search.net/ringtone-1.htm... (for /%postname%.html)
or
(https://www.ringtone-search.net/ringtone-1/) (for /%postname%/)
Sinse your blog theme is highly focused I would also remove the noisy archive link and even the categories and put it all within a sitemap. Use a plugin to show your latest 10 posts.
I am looking @ your blog and it is not being ignored at all, it just needs more time, links, buzz and less noise.
2k - great to read case studies like this - very interested to hear more about domain age versus site age...
Aaron - excuse my ignorance but whats SEOlink cursor - sounds useful!
If I run my SEOlink cursor over your title URLs I see that you are pretty much #1 in google, yahoo and msn for ALL those long low competition phrases. I have new blogs that do not even get that, site age is a factor?
If you asked me all that blog needs to do is robot training in the form of continued useful content, then natural links. It offers something fresh and new so you also have that, looks good to me.
I will write something up and link to it, thanks.
Yo' 2K do you got a real name or something? I hate linking to spammers if you know what I mean. ;)
Email me...
Hi Aaron,
If I run my SEOlink cursor over your title URLs I see that you are pretty much #1 in google, yahoo and msn for ALL those long low competition phrases
The screenshot above is live results gathered this morning. And as it shows, the #1 positions exist only in msn.co.uk and few other european msn dc's. Especially on Google the site is very dead (not within 100 results for keywords listed)
site age is a factor?
Personally I doubt this, but I do have another blog project almost ready for launch. All the other aspects are similar except domain age which will be about 1 month old.
Yo' 2K do you got a real name or something? I hate linking to spammers if you know what I mean. ;)
Yep. Rand wrote a short introduction way back when I began writing here, also some other sites have bits&pieces of me....
Personally I prefer to use my nick in public forums etc. online communities for two reasons: 1) when I write under 2k I represent a business, not a a single person. 2) the alias 2k is way more simpler than my real name (especially for non-finnish folks)....
As for my hat, I wear a white with a shade of grey on one corner. So you can consider me as the opposite of gman ;)
...almost forgot... send you some mail...