I am getting a search volume of about 18K queries. Keep in mind this is data gained over the past 12 months. Now take a look at the new Google released search volume data. Goto https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and enter the keyword seo… here is the results I got.

Notice the difference? Google gets 1.2 million search queries for a keyword Yahoo is only getting 20K for… that is absolutely amazing. I have seen this over and over in my rankings on Google and Yahoo… I can get 500 hits for one keyword on Google and Yahoo will send only a couple hits in a whole month.

Now that I have shown you the difference in the search volume between Google and Yahoo let me show you what this tool can really do. Okay lets start off by doing some keyword research for a laptop bag supplier which specializes in leather bags. So that appears to be our main keyword.
So lets enter that into the tool and get some suggestions.

Right away I find two additional keywords worth targeting…

leather computer bags and
leather laptop cases

In june the first keyword received 9,900 queries in Google and it averages 14,800. If you click the “Choose columns to display” dropdown menu and click “show search volume trends” it will show a graph depicting the trends… unfortunately and this is something I hope Google will rectify soon, but currently it only gives a graph bar for the trends when IMO mouseover should give a numeric value for each month depicted in the trends graph… but I can live without that for now.

What I do like about the current situation of the tool is it gives you the previous months search volume and the trend data and also the average data… this helps you to eliminate keywords which might have had a temporary spike in search volume in one month which you will likely not see again for some time. This is very important to me… another thing that I really like about this tool which really should be in ANY keyword tool is the ability to sort results by search volume or keyword in alphabetical order. But using this tool to find high traffic keywords and then comparing trend data will be highly useful to me in the coming months. I know I will be using this tool all the time!

Okay back to our results… I have compiled a list of part of the keyword suggestions google has provided, I did not bother to try and sort them or anything, I pretty much left them raw. And here it is…

Click this link for a larger image:

One thing that is interesting to me is the vast difference in the singular and plural searches for certain keywords. I have heard some seo claim that they are the same but this can be easily disproved by the fact that searches for the different versions produce totally different results(not in all cases obviously but in the case of the leather briefcase/s keyword it is)

I have taken a small list out of what google has presented in suggestions… I am using this only as a representation and not as a keyword research project for laptop bags. Again if you notice the singular and plural forms listed separately note that this is not a mistake and you as an seo should always make sure you rank for both versions.

Of course being a adwords tool it the tool gives some invaluable info on advertiser competition… if your a totally organic man(or woman) than you may feel this does not pertain to you but this can be a good indicator of the organic competition as well… keywords with low ppc competition are likely to have little organic competition as well. So keep this in mind when using this tool.

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE GOOGLE SEARCH VOLUME TOOL!!!
Okay my suggestions would be…
1.) Ability to select keywords and export only those selected keywords to csv or text file instead of having to export the whole list.
2.) The ability to delete keywords from the list which you feel are not related to your target. This could prove invaluable when creating a list of kewords to target as manually deleting later could prove a time waster.
3.) Actual search volume data in the trend graph… this can be guessed at but I always like specific and accurate data.
4.) The ability to form groups of keywords and export them together would also be nice.

These suggestions are not necessarily for Google, they are for anyone who will make a tool which queries the Google Adwords Search Volume tool.

So my overall opinion of this tool is, this is a great step in understanding the search volume of Google and the differences between that data and other engines. This can prove very valuable to you in your keyword researching. Like I said previously, this tool has now become my #2 keyword research tool. Keyword Elite is still my #1 as it is the fastest way for me to build a list of targeted keywords… however I will probably use the two tools side-by-side as they will save me countless hours and tons of money.

If you have any comments on this tool please comment. Feel free to email questions or comments regarding Keyword Elite as well.

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Okay first of all lets step back and take a look a the Google pagerank(toolbar that is). What google thought would be a fun little toy for webmasters has turned into a nightmare for them and their algo. What is the problem? Link buying and selling has become very popular, forums like SitePoint and DigitalPoint help flame the fire and promote the buying and selling of links. Many times these links are too hard for Google to distinguish. In other words Google sees them as natural and cannot therefore penalize them. Of course Google wants to keep their search engine as natural as possible and paid links tend to go against that process.

Google has made posts on their blog regarding this, they have had Matt Cutts write articles about paid links and get the neighborhood watch started – a system where webmasters tattle on other webmasters – and attempt to convince webmasters that Google will catch you if you buy/sell links. Matt has written quite convincing articles on this but as always I question it. Google has for the past year and a half(specifically) been working at undermining the sale of links unless nofollow tags are used. But they have not been very successful… it is like gun laws, in the end the bad guys have their guns or in this case their paid links.

Sorry for going through all this as I know you want me to spit it out, you want the scoop on the pagerank flux. I had to lay the groundwork to explain why Google would go to these lengths, then I can explain what is going on. Please bear with me….

Google has been for a while now attempted to knock the wind out of the paid links kick. So far their success is really not something worthy of writing home about. So they have have finally done what I have been predicting was coming for a long time now. Google has discounted the PR to a greater extent then ever before in the hopes that it will knock a blow to paid links.

During this PageRank(toolbar) update we have seen reputed sites such as ProBlogger and CopyBlogger go from a PR 6/7 to a PR4. This is a big drop and it has gotten a buzz to say the least. We have seen many high PR sites drop to lower PRs yet none of these report seeing traffic loss or loss in rankings which proves this has been no mass penalization against paid link buyers/sellers only. This PR update is hitting all sites in the hopes that webmasters will get sca

Some people are correlating this PR update with recent changes in rankings. This cannot be… if they were related then ProBlogger would have lost TONS of traffic and rankings which he didn’t and so far nobody has… this PR update was an attempt at discrediting the PR so as to flush paid link madness out of the system. There have been serps updates recently as always seems to be the case around this time of the year. 1st SER lost a PR point – is now 3 even though it was predicted to be 6 and with all the new links it has gotten it should be – even though I have gained a good deal of positions. This update has been very good for me so obviously can not be correlated with the PR update.

For those of you chasing PR knock it off. You will waste valuable time you could be spending on gaining rankings. As always this update proves the utter worthlessness and and uselessness of chasing pr and its involvement in the serps.
Well these are my views on the recent PR update and they seem to add up for me. If you got comments feel free to drop them.

Before I published this article I noticed Matt Cutts post… he appears to be insinuating this was a penalization against those selling/buying links and that you should be careful lest you are hit too… this is baloney. Many of the sites which were hit don’t participate in buying or selling of links and there is no way they would be associated with such. Matt Cutts/Google is attempting to intimidate webmasters into quitting buying and selling of links.
Some seo are suggesting that this update was against blog-link farms as one blogger called it. I have one problem with this… if this is indeed the case then wouldn’t it be logical to see some sites lose more PR than others based on how many of their links are actually of this genre? It would seem so however of all the sites I analyzed it appears that it is a consistent drop as though it has nothing to do with the backlinks and I wholly believe just that. This PR update has nothing to do with backlinks… I am sure some of you will disagree and some of you will call me a nut and a liar and that is fine. I say what I believe and I say what I see. This is what I see. If someone can prove me wrong I am ready to hear it.

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When I first saw these I was a bit surprised at first and immediately began to see money.
I can see how Google showing movies in there search engine could be a gold mine to affiliate marketers. How is that?  Well just think about it, a webmaster can create a movie tutorial or review of a tool/program and then post it to YouTube and perhaps start ranking for various Google searches related to that video.

Searchers then find the video watch it and click for more info and get the affiliate link.  If done right a movie can be much more convincing then a article and the user is much more likely to sit and listen to a video rather then read a whole article.

I am not totally sure how Google ranks these videos or decides to rank them at all. It could be based on popularity at YouTube and or links pointing at the video.

I think the advent of this feature will make many webmasters happy and I am sure Affiliate Marketers will take advantage of this feature.  If I had the time and if my ISP wouldn’t kill me for it I would probably make up 5-10 video tutorials/reviews to put on YouTube.

What do you think of Google adding this ability to their search? Do you like the idea, are you against itor could you care less? Please post your comments and thoughts.

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The data I will be presenting will be based on my own research, and research done by other participants at SeoChat and 100 anonymous participants who were kind enough to donate their time.

I hope this article helps you better understand what effects Googles behavior factoring has on you site. Please be sure to post your comments and thoughts.

Okay first of all lets go over to SeoChat and notice a experiment which was started by a distinguised member gazzahk and the goal of this experiment was to determine if clicks to a site in the Google results can have a positive or negative effect on a Google ranking. Here is the official thread for the experiment.

Experiment #1 – Do clicks effect Google rankings?

To experiment this theory we asked the audience for particpation and got about 65 who stated they were participating. We took a site and page which was not currently being used for anything and which we were sure would asas not get any new backlinks.

We then found a phrase for which our test site ranked around the bottom of page 1(#10,11) for. We asked users to do this search and click on the result for this particular site. The site in the experiment was not using Google Analtyics so Google could not(I don’t think they could ) determine what the users did upon clicking into the site UNLESS they returned to Google which all participants were forbidden to do.

It took about 2 weeks to see a significant change, also not all participants entered at the same time which I believe helped keep the experiment looking natural.

At first we only saw a change of one or two positions so the site stuck around positions #10, 11, 9 and 8. But after about two weeks the site started improving much more considerably, moving upto position #4 and even reportedly #2.

Keep in mind two important things for this experiment. First this was a small scale experiment produced on a phrase which was not competitive at all. Secondly probably aside from the participants there were no other searches for this phrase so in Googles eyes 99.99% probably even 100% of the searches for this result ended in that exact site. This told Google that the other results were probably not what he searchers wanted so Google began moving it up.

I attempted to re-produce this experiment on a much larger scale for a medium competition level keyword with about 100 participants and I could see absolutely no change in positioning so my conclusion is that this particular factor, that is the Quality-Click-Analyis factor has a very small value and you will likely only see results if the majority of searchers are clicking that exact site or if the majority of clicks to other sites result in bounces.

So for those of you who were thinking about hiring Indians to click on your sites positions in Google you can forget that idea, I don’t see anything much less than 5-10K indians changing much j/k

So the results of that experiment are the following:

• For a company keyword search you will likely see your rankings rise based on the fact that most searchers will click your listing as that is what they want.
• For a medium competition level keyword 100 participants all over the world clicking on one listing did not make a noticable change in ranking, probably because there were far more searchers clicking the other listings.
• Likely the majority of clicks going to one site for a particular search would help google determine that site deserved a higher position.
• Hiring Indians to click your listings probably won’t help you much

———————
Experiment #2 – Google bounce factor… does it exist?
—————————–

Okay this experiment was slightly different. On top of asking participants to click a specific listing we told them to spend time at the site, browse around a bit, click links, pretend to be reading etc – Basically act as though you love the site in a natural manner.

On this site unlike experiment #1 Google Analytics was installed on all pages. Like experiment #1 the site/page was not being used and no links were gained before(about 1 year), during the process or even afterward. Never were the sites linked to for any of these experiments. We used three sites for this experiment as well as the data from three sites Google Analtyics accounts which were kindly offered by three webmasters at SeoChat.

For this experiment I had another 100 participants who helped make this experiment possible. I had hoped for something like 500 people and did not expect a significant negative or positive change in ranking based on just 100 participants.

Okay let me explain what this experiment was trying to prove. We were trying to prove that the Google Analtyics data was/is being used to effect sites rankings in Google. We wanted to prove that the Google Bounce factor actually exists and that visitor length on a site plays a part in ranking or the loss of a ranking in Google. So what did the data say? Read on…

I had the participants do their part of the experiment over a weeks time, similiar to the first experiment. They would click the listing, spend on average 7-10 minutes at the page and then would proceed to click related links(inside the site. No outbound links) on the site and eventually spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour on the site. They would then exit to a page on the site that was not watched by Google analytics but was still on the site. This way Googles last notice of the movement of that user was still on the site.

For the first week we saw no change and were beginning to think the phrase was too competitive and that more users were needed. After about a week we started seeing some changes. After a week and a half the site jumped 47 positions from about 80 to about 33. We believe that with continued experimentation we could have ranked it on the first page.

During this time, while the experiment was being concluded the bounce rate was down to 13% and the average visit length went from 1 1/2 minutes to 12 minutes.

After the experiment ended and users stopped clicking into the site we watched as the sites bounce rate began to go back upto about 75% and the visit length to return to about 3 minutes. After about 9 days we saw the site return to a little better than it was before the experiment(around 78) – Again nothing was done with this site/page except for the experiment. It was basically a dead site.

So based on this site and my own research on my own sites I have determined the following.

• The Google Bounce Factor does indeed exist. Too many searches resulting in a click to your site which then result in a bounce could negatively effect your site.
• Somehow lowering this bounce rate, by providing what the users want most likely can indeed have a very positive effect on your site.
• Visitor length likely has a small effect on your rankings as well however in all experiments we could not accurately determine this as a fact. So it still remains speculation. However we are now positive the bounce factor does exist.
• Google Analytics data is INFACT used by Google to manipulate results in their search engine. By using Google analytics your data could have either a negative or positive effect on your site.
• The overall bounce rate for the site and each individual bounce rates for each of your keywords plays a role.

Many of you are probably thinking you should remove the Google Analytics code from your sites and stop using their service. This is debatable. It really depends on your sites data, is it that bad? If your bounce rate is much higher than 65% and closer to 75% and your average visitor length is very low I would recommend removing the code for now. Maybe use Clicky Web Analtyics 2.0 for a while until you can get your bounce rate lower. Also if you have a high bounce rate I would try and figure out why, try and fix the issue and then maybe you can use Google Analtyics again.

I am not sure on this, I have no evidence yet to support it but I also believe the data from your Google Analytics account may be used for Google Adwords positioning too. I don’t do enough PPC to test this however. If a Google Adwords guy would like to test that theory be sure to let me know the results.

Many webmasters have expressed their concern that this type of ranking factor could influence webmasters to hire users to click their listings just to raise their rankings. Well we have already determined that it is highly unlikely you will gain any ranking even remotely competitive based only on clicks however taking into effect whether or not the majority of users bounce and how long they stay on the site can have a effect on your rankings.

However the data also indicated that this isn’t a one-time thing. The data overall and overtime can continue to have an effect so you may lose your rankings if the bounce rate gets high again.

This research is based on the SeoChat experiment, my own sites and about 5 other sites who were kindly donated for use in this experiment. I awant to personally thank all those who participated their time, their sites and their analytics info. It was a great help in making this experiment possible.

If you have comments/questions please let me know.

If you have recently lost a ranking in Google I would be happy to take a look. Send an email to randy[@]1st-rankings.com

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See full screenshot

Google is always right

Maybe someone wants to send a note to Matt and ask what the favoritism is all about – Of course i’m not complaining but as long as we are such good buddies and all he could pass along a little link love you know

[This is indeed a real result from google for the search term 'seo blog'. Nothing has been changed.]

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Jennifer also believes this could temporarily make adsense profits for publishers drop, this could be true seeing as a good many advertisers will be out however I do believe too that it will help clean up the ad network and help promote more/better companies to use adwords. I am not too worried about it at this point, if I get rid ofAdsense I will either go ad-free or affiliate ads for tools I use.

There is one reason why I am writing this article. I wanted to link to Jennifer’s article for anyone interested in reading her thoughts but I also wanted to answer a question I get fairly often which is “do you recommend adsense arbitrage?” and “is adsense arbitrage white hat?”

I always answer this telling webmasters not to use it, now I can confirm why they shouldn’t use it. I promote some of Brad Callen’s tools, the ones I use myself, however I never promoted his e-book on adsense arbitrage because I always felt it was short-lived and there were better ways of spending your time which in the future will turn out more money then a temporary adsense income using arbitrage.

I have reiterated this point over and over to webmasters. Create your websites with users in mind, create a site that you would love if you were the user instead of the webmaster. Create a site that offers the user what they want, what they don’t know they want, options, innovation, quality articles, and get them involved. Don’t waste your time creating MFA sites and other schemes that will likely die out, spend your time creating a quality site and it will pay off.

Some of these publishers had both quality and low-quality/MFA sites and now they will have to use another ad network for their quality sites because I tend to doubt Google will reinstate many of these publishers very easily. Somebody also told me that Google is cracking down on publishers who get banned and try to get back in with different details. So i’d be careful going that route too.

Well here is the link to Jennifers article on Adsense arbitrage

If you have any questions/comments please post them here. or at Jensense.com

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“Similarly, with logs, we can improve our search results: if we know that people are clicking on the #1 result we’re doing something right, and if they’re hitting next page or reformulating their query, we’re doing something wrong. The ability of a search company to continue to improve its services is essential, and represents a normal and expected use of such data.“

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-does-google-remember-information.htm

Ahh so Google is identifying search patterns, they are looking at specific searches and identifying whether or not the mass crowd is getting what they want. Do they go five pages deep before finding the result they want or do they do another search? If they do eventually find it, is that page a good resource? Do most people who click on it seem to find what they want, in other words do they stay at the site for a good length of time? Maybe a good result buried on the 2nd or 3rd page may rise slowly to the 1st page if the 1st page results are less than desirable. Perhaps some of those sites who are offering nothing to the online community, who don’t even have real content, just computer generated mess, perhaps those sites will find themselves falling to lower and lower positions and more qualified sites taking their place.

Aren’t you excited? I know I am. This can only mean that Google will get better, more relevant search results which means good sites will gain more presence and bad sites will lose theirs.

But could this hurt good sites? Maybe Google isn’t smart enough to work this yet… Of course with anything there is always the chance the wrong party could be effected. This scenario is no different however I feel that the chances of this happening are very slim. Google is very good at rolling out new methods and I see this as no different. The user behavior factor will only be part of a big equation which will determine the quality and relevance of the site to the search made. You will not suddenly see your site drop because one person clicked in and clicked right back out. This factor will be based on overall performance and behavior not likely just one person or one click. That kind of factoring wouldn’t work.

A site may be a very good resource and may deserve many positions but perhaps just one or two of those positions it occupies are not deserved, perhaps they are irrelevant. In this case Google would use behavior factoring to determine that this site should not rank for this specific phrase based on the user response.

One thing you should know however is this. The factoring system Google is using is not a penalty. It is more of a filter of sorts. It is a way for Google to more accurately target the top ten results. However if a large percentage of the results you have obtained in Google have a high bounce rate your site could be subject to suspicion. I am not sure how Google would determine that but I am assuming that a site that has a high number of bounces for a large percentage of their site may see positions start to drop.

So what do you do about this? How do I make my site more targeted and relevant to what the users want? Well my suggestion is to go natural. First off begin writing lots of quality, relevant articles on your niche. Provide a button where users can submit questions which will be answered in an article. Figure out what the folks in your industry want and provide it. Instead of trying to rank in Google by submitting your site to directories and exchanging links how about ranking naturally?

Yeah I said naturally. This is where your content/site is a linkbait and attracts link by itself. I find that sites that are run this way tend to keep their positions better and gain more faster. I think this is partly do to the fact that all the links will be gained because someone thought the site was worth linking to. So the traffic gained by these rankings are more likely to stick around the site longer. That just seems to be the case with the sites I have tried this on.

A good way of determining your weak points in your site is by using a tool like Google Analytics. Google Analytics shows you your top content pages and your bounce rates, average length of visit and all that good stuff. You can use this data to identify which page brought the user, what the referring source was, what keywords were used to get there, how long the user stayed, what pages they traveled to and the amount of time they spent at each page and more.

Your probably thinking “If you think I am wasting time looking at that worthless data your dead wrong“ – Okay don’t but when you lose your rankings don’t go asking me why because I told you so.
This data seems meaningless, monotonous and useless. But if you really look at it you can determine alot. You can identify your weak points in your site. What pages do the best? What pages don’t? Why is that? Was it a useless/irrelevant keyword that brought the user? Perhaps your articles lack information, maybe they don’t actually answer the question that the user had. By looking at your top pages and your highest bounce pages you may be able to determine what you need to focus on. I know I have found this data very helpful to me. Sure it takes time, but so does fixing rankings that you lose, I prefer to fortify my rankings over attempting to re-rank.

I believe as time goes on that user behavior will play a bigger and bigger role in search engines. So we best get used to it now, figure out how to run our sites accordingly and then we will have nothing to worry about and we will be ahead of our competition. Seo is all about adapting to changing times, if we can’t do that I think we are poor examples of seo and webmasters.

If you have questions/comments or just want to discuss this please comment on this post or send me a email. I love to discuss topics such as this. And a thank you to the folks who sent their requests in for a article on this. Hope this is satisfactory.

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What exactly is the Google visitor tracking and behavior factoring system(VTB factoring as I will be referring to it in the rest of this article)? Are you telling me that Google will be eliminating backlinks as a factor or replacing their value with a new factoring system based on visitors? If so how will our traffic effect our rankings and placement in Google? Why would Google use such a method?

Okay lets back up and answer one question at a time. I don’t believe there is a way to eliminate the power of the backlinks. There is no other half-way decent way to start the ranking process of a site without them. Google continues to use backlinks to rank sites and again I don’t see that changing all that much, but I do see this new tracking system having a large impact on our sites.

Now I am sure you want to know how your traffic will effect your placement in Google. The truth is I don’t rightly know, I can only speculate, however I got a good idea of how it will work and if your interested keep reading. When I write my articles I base them on facts, research I have done and my own sites. On this one I have seen evidence but not enough to prove anything yet. It is still speculation and I want everyone to understand that.

Now thats out of the way we can move along… …to the idea of visitor length factoring

We can all agree that Google has ranked less than desirable sites at the top, of course in a index of trillions of pages that is going to happen however one thing we all share in common when visiting these sites is a hasty retreat. Am I not correct? If so the perfect solution would be for Google to track visits to sites clicked while doing a search. Then track the length of the visit by determining how long the visitor stays at the site before returning to Google or perhaps they never return.
You shoul understand something however. One visitor will probably not make changes to your positions but a overall consistent statistic of visitors returning within seconds or a short period of time may tell Google your site is less than desirable. In such a scenario the webmaster will see his site drop overtime to nowhere.

That is the first part of this system or what I believe is the tracking system. The next part involves an inside man.

Inside visitor behavior factoring
Your probably wondering who this inside man is. Is it the google toolbar, or maybe it is a Google user account, or maybe a tracker placed on your computer….
Many ideas have been speculated upon. I believe only a few hold any value. The Google toolbar idea IMHO is out, the tracker placed on your computer is also out as that is a violation of privacy and could cause massive legal issues.

The Google user account is fine for tracking how long a visitor stays at a site but I see no way for it to identify what is done on a site. The only plausible way to track this would be through a tracking code placed on the site. This could be through analytics or adsense. I believe Analytics is the most probable way as it is already a tracking code. Now before you all go and burn your analytics accounts let me give you a few reasons why you should be happy about this.

If Google does indeed implement Google Analytics visitor behavior tracking it could be a massive benefit to your site. This is assuming you own a worthwhile, quality site. If this is not the case your best bet is to optimize for MSN and Yahoo! as I believe the first scenario of this system will begin to eliminate those types of sites right off.

If your site is quality and your visitors enjoy spending time there and perhaps you even get a good amount of return traffic you could greatly benefit from this system. If Google could identify this they could tell your site is well liked, so much so that your visitors even return often. Visitor activity throughout your site may also be included in this factoring. Do your visitors stay huddled at one page or do they move around? If so do they move from page to page rapidly or do they spend a considerable time at each page? What could this tell Google about your navigation?

There is another factor which I am unsure about. All of this has basically been my personal speculation but also seems very realistic to me. This last part I am unsure about or even how it would be done.

Visitor importance tracking
If such a factor existed or Google is planning its existence it would rely on the visitors importance value to decide how much of a influence there visit would cause. Again I am unsure how this would be identified. How would Google know one person is more important than another? Perhaps part of this would be based on search paths but who knows. If Google implemented such a factor and it worked it would take care of those attempting to increase there ranking by sending false traffic to their sites. Also keep in mind this isn’t just visitors reaching your site but what they do on your site and how long they spend on your site so it would be pretty hard to manipulate that without a tool or proxy. And I don’t believe Google would have a terrible time identifying that.

So if you would rather be safe than sorry design your sites with the visitors in mind. Make them easy to navigate, provide the information they are looking for and even stuff they don’t know they want. Be the first to write about the latest happenings in your industry. Do anything to get the visitors there and get them involved in your site.
Oddly enough seo have been telling webmasters to do this for a long time. It may soon be worth more than anyone every thought.

Traffic from other sources besides the search engines will suddenly become more important, I don’t understand the webmasters who aren’t taking advantage of this traffic already. Get all the traffic you can, assuming it is half-way decent. I am not talking about buying traffic, I am talking about getting traffic from real sites, real visitors that do real stuff on your site.

Again I want to emphasize that these are all my personal speculations. Please feel free to discard them. I have however seen positive evidence that such a system is in beta. There have been folks since 2003 or maybe earlier who have believed this. Perhaps Google won’t implement it fully for another couple years. I personally am not taking that risk. I create my sites so that they are useful to the visitor, provide unique information and more importantly the information the users want. If and when Google does implement this I will be ready for it.

I know I have jumped around alot in this article and maybe I didn’t do the best job of presenting what I believe to be a revolutionary idea but I think you got the idea. If you got thoughts, comments or questions please post them.

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The subject I am talking about is your niche. What niche are you targeting and why? This can be the biggest factor in starting your quest for that coveted #1 position. So lets jump right in

Okay let me step back and explain exactly what I am talking about here. As I said before I am talking about your niche. What I really mean by this is the topic your targeting. Basically what your site is about.

Many webmasters build sites based on how many dollar signs appear behind it. If they can see money floating around they will chase it. They build MFA sites that are basically useless garbage. I believe this is a very poor show of webmaster qualities and will lead to disaster in the end.

Whats my niche?
Very good question and deserves a good answer. I’ll tell you right out. It is where your knowledge is. No really that is your niche. I can hear someone saying “humbug I rank very well in a niche I know nothing about”. Did I say you couldn’t? If you rank very well without knowledge you would probably rank even better if you knew more about it.
Again you do not need to know anything about a topic to start a site and rank well. But I maintain here that not only is it easier if you do but you will also turn over more traffic.

I also believe users can tell when a webmaster knows what they are talking about or when they are just copying from a resource. Many people including myself like to goto specialty sites where the webmasters not only know what they are doing and do it very well but are excited about it. That excitement shines through their work. we want to hear unique ideas and angles of looking at things, not that same old mumble-jumble everone publishes.

And I am not saying you shouldn’t have niches you are still learning. Not at all. I myself have some of those however they don’t perform as well as my specialty sites. What I am telling you is not to find a list of the highest paying adsense keywords and start a website for it. These sites have a tendency to die fast. Instead try and target an audience with information your familiar with. Become well known as a trusted authority on the subject.

There are many advantages to knowing your work. Such as linkbaiting. Creating a quality linkbait is much easier if you know the subject you are linkbaiting. Whether your writing an article or if your programming a tool, knowledge of the subject is very important.

If you want a quick, easy way to make money and are not interested in creating a useful site this information will do you absolutely no good. You must be interested in your users first, money tends to follow along. If money is your only interest BH seo is probably your best route. It is fast and can produce a lot of money and does not require knowledge of the subject.

However knowledge of your subject can allow you to answer questions regarding it. This can also raise your authority in the industry. I have found a few cool blogs that have implemented this technique. They have a little ‘ask me’ button and they will answer your questions in the form of a blog post. This can create an awesome user experience and happy users tend to share their experience with others.

And lastly is a very important reason to target a subject you know. I have begun to refer to this as “visitor action and behavior factoring”. I will talk more about this in a future article. This is basically a theory that Google is implementing a factoring system which tracks user behavior on a site and will actually rank a site based on that. High quality sites will likely keep their visitors for a long time, while Black Hat sites will not. The length of the visit will just be one of the details of this new factoring system. Again most of this is speculation on our part but there is great reason to believe such a factoring system is being implemented right now. Again I will be writing on that soon.

I hope this article has encouraged you to start a website on a subject you have some knowledge in. I would be happy to answer any of your questions regarding this.

Copyright © 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

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We know that Google gives more value to a site that is linked to by other related authority sites. This is a proven fact. If you don’t believe me you had better start from scratch and learn seo from step #1. Just in case you are at that point I sugges you read SeoMoz, SeoBook, SeoChat Forums, and of course our seo blog.

But I have an idea that involves what you link to not what links to you. Yes thats right outbound activity.
We know that when we link to a bad neighborhood site that this can effect our authority, resulting in a penalty or worse case scenario a ban. But not mant people think of the effect a positive link can have on their site. A outbound link to another related authority site, does it have value? Heres my theory. Since alot of webmasters see linking out as a bad thing which will link PR Google could use this as a factor. Does this mean linking out to 500 related authority sites will raise my rankings to the 1st page? I don’t think so and I am not even saying it will raise your rankings at all. What I am saying is that I think it will give you more authority and value.

Why would Google use this as a factor?
Well why wouldn’t they? Again as I said before a good deal of webmasters won’t link to anything unless they believe they have some direct benefit from it. So those who do link out will likely be only linking to sites that they as webmasters see as useful and authoratitive and want to share those resources with their visitors. If a site only links to related authority sites this could tell Google you know what sites hold the authority in that niche and don’t mind letting your visitors know. That can be hard for some of us.

There also some cons to this idea. One of them is paid links with natural html tags. This means a paid link which is not using nofollow tag or redirect. One that Google will probably value unless their algo decides it is paid. In the above scenario this would still be considered a outgoing link of value as long as it is directed at a related resource. So if Google is not finding all the paid links and dis-crediting them then they could be valued as natural links and this could effect your site positively when your site doesn’t deserve it. I believe Google is working on this.

Do I have prove that such a factor exists. Yes and no. I have tested it on a couple sites of my own and so far all tests are positive. One test was made on a site I have not added a new outbound link on in month. I added a few links to the authority sites in that specific industry. I saw a small increase in a ranking which had not changed in over a year(I have slacked on that site). Again keep in mind I am not saying this will raise your ranking. For this site it did appear to. I am also planning a test for this seo blog using the same scenario.

Now you guys will all go out and link to everybody. I don’t recommend this. What I do recommend is find out what the authority sites are in your industry. Link to them and see if it doesn’t help you. I do this with SeoMoz, SeoBook and Seochat. I have been doing this before I even thought it might have value. Why do I do it? Because they are the authority sites. The owners know seo, they provide correct info and do the research themselves. There are seo, and I won’t name names, who seem to think they can get by on the coat-tail of someone else. They have this idea that they can just ‘think’ and the rest will work itself. That is why I link to the above sites. I respect Aaron Wall, Rand and SeoChat members: EGOL(awesome guy. I respect him and his opinions greatly), Fathom and others very much. They were actually were I learned most of what I know today. I say know because it isn’t just an opinion it is research. Yes all of us at times have comments and opinions for which we have done no research but overall these guys can be taken at face value. If you want to learn seo follow these guys around. I can’t think of a better way….

And I am going off-topic here a little. I just wanted to pass that by you and see what everyone else thoughy. I wrote an article similiar to this and submitted it to Youmoz(seomoz members blog) but alas there was formatting issues and it didn’t get disvalued. I was hoping to get a bigger response as Semoz has a few more members than I do… just a few

If you learned nothing else just remember this. Linking to a related authority site is not a bad thing and will not hurt you. You don’t have to worry about PR leakage or anything. Share and share alike. Don’t believe for a minute that if you horde your value others are just going to link to you.

There is one last thing about linking out that can be beneficial. It doesn’t have anything directly to do with Google but maybe in the long run it does. If you are a small site and you link to the authorities they may check their logs and notice the traffic from it. If they can see your not afraid to share a little link love even though you are getting nothing in return they may link to you or atleast have a higher opinion of you. It is a simple method which may gain you some good backlinks. For products/service sites you may feel like this would be a conflict of interests and in some cases it might. But it is a suggestion anyways and if you think you can spare a space on your site try it out.

Copyright © 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

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