Keith Baxter Interviews Me About SEO
January 21, 2008
Keith Baxter did an interview with me last week on search engine optimization. In the interview Keith grills me about Google, site structure, links, social bookmarking, and other related SEO topics. Toward the end I make a special announcement that you'll want to get in on as well…
You can listen to it below by clicking the Play button. It's about 50 minutes long. Please leave your thoughts and comments about the interview (and the new look of my blog!) below.
Short on time, or want to burn this MP3 to a CD and listen in the car, or on your iPod or whatever? Right-click here and select Save from the menu to save the MP3 file directly to your hard drive.
Comments
106 Responses to “Keith Baxter Interviews Me About SEO”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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Jon,
Nice blog theme, but there's no link to the comments of each post from the home page. Can you fix that?
Also, think that you could add the "Subscribe to Comments" plug-in this time? I like to follow blog posts that I've replied to that way.
Thanks!
I like the blog theme and picked up some good ides from the interview.
Hi Jonathan,
yes nice theme, I see your also using WP for instant tag & ping benefits. You know your stuff about SEO and I commend you for openly exposing the lies that are spread to newbies just to get their dollars.
keep it rolling, your changing the landscape of seo marketing.
Rod Gardner
Thanks for the great feedback guys.
Chris:
I've added a comments link to the home page and installed the subscribe to comments plug-in. Thanks for the suggestions!
Nice Theme! VERY similar to mine… great minds think alike! I'll get to the video later.
Thanks for the audio. There's definitly some top quality content there.
Indeed a top quality content. Thanks for the audio mate.
Great interview Jon. Can you provide it as a mp3 download as well?
Gunter
Great stuff - Thanks for sharing!
Gunter:
Sure thing: right-click here to download it.
Hi Jon,
Love the new blog theme — nice and clean.
I, too, will 'tune in' to the audio later as it's nearly an hour long.
Keep up the good work.
Nick
Jonathan,
Thanks for taking the time to do this interview and elaborate on the points you made in your Search Engine Myths Exposed report.
The biggest thing that I've taken away from both is I don't have to go broke waiting for organic traffic because it's impossible to rank and takes so long it can't be done.
Thanks for unclouding my mind about SEO.
Reader for life,
Jeff
Thanks Jon
Excellent quality audio piece. And excellent information clearly presented
As usual Jon top stuff, thanks for sharing it with us.
Good information, can you provide it as a mp3 download as well? Off topic, what plug-ins do you use for your blog?
George:
I've added the MP3 download link to the post. Some of the plugins I use are DoFollow, Subscribe to Comments, Widgets and Feedburner.
Thanks
Hey Jonathon
Great interview, I feel like an idiot for not
studying your work this past year.
I would have been a lot further along.
Every one should listen, and more
than once.
Thanks
Ed mcQuate
Great post as usual John. You never fail to teach me something new! You really make SEO sound simple!
Hi Jon,
Great interview. One question. You said that having multiple links from one domain is not good because google will only give credit to one link per domain. Now if you have multiple links from one domain but they are all pointing to different pages of your site will those links count.
I have a service that I submit blog posts to with my links in them and I do have multiple links coming from one blog. However each time a new link comes from a domain it points to a different page on my site with different anchor text for the keywords that specific page was optimized for.
So do you think those links will count or only the first link that I got from blog to my homepage?
Thanks,
Steve,
P.S. 3waylinks rocks cant wait for the new system
steve:
Having links to different sites, or different pages, from the same sites does seem to still get counted as "different" links (in my experience). That's why I slowly post to multiple social bookmarking sites for each page of my sites. I need to do a full case study on that to make sure that I'm not just seeing what I want to see, though.
However, having multiple links on different pages of the same site to the same url never gets counted as more than one link.
Nice theme and helpful interview. Lots to think about so worth downloading and playing in the car.
Ok, you say that Google only counts one inbound link from a domain….That doesnt make any sense….You submit articles to Ezine just like I do….now everytime you submit an article your gaining links from ezinearticles.com…. Every article is on a page in the ONE Domain…right? Now I do understand why in the heck would someone buy sitewide links….I totally understand that part….but Google only counting one link on one domain is just not true…if so I would only have 3 links from Ezinearticles instead of thousands cuz in fact all those links are on ONE domain correct….also when i comment here and get a link it shows up multiple times in my google tools as a link….
Also when you said internal linking not being a fraction of important as inbound links….Heck look at WIKI thats really is what is powering them….they have great internal linking that flows the pages juice to each other really great…so I do not agree with that…
Jon:
Once again great information! The great thing about the information you present; it can be adapted to any scenario. The advice you offer and information presented does work if applied in the right context. We have experienced tremendous success in a relatively short time frame…and we have you in part to thank for some of the concepts we use in our business.
Thank you.
James:
You're misunderstanding what was said. Google counts one link to one individual page once from a site for any given query. So if you get 5,000 links to the same page of your site, using the same keywords by buying a site-wide link — you're wasting your money.
Of course you want to submit different articles to EzineArticles, making sure that they link to different pages on your site (or the same page with different keywords) or, best yet, different domains that you own.
Also, regarding internal links, Wikipedia has millions of inbound (external) links to its pages — that's why it ranks so well, not because of a few internal links. External links count far, far more than internal links. Why? Because it's easy to fake/spam internal links, but much harder to fake/spam inbound links from other sites.
Exactly…
And yes I do realize wiki has millions of links but if they didnt have their internal linking structure so well developed their juices wouldnt flow to their pages as well as they do….
I recently took a single word phrase."sauna" you'll see it number 4 thesaunadealer.com in Google thats my webdesingers site…….and took the home page and the subdomain to the first page of google…the subdomain got their first because a simple change in the sites internal linking…but it drops to page two and meets back up to the home page every couple of days….but its number 4….Our site has less links than everyone were ranking higher than….but most of our links are one way links…It was nowhere to be found it Google and less than two months later number 4……since I can get one way links on the fly any time and any amount i want by clicking a button…and were not talking about blog comments either real legit website links…I can make it happen….I dont disagree that inbound links are very important but internal linking does play a vital role as well….
I agree that it plays A role, but we apparently disagree on how big a role it plays. I keep my internal linking as viewer-friendly as possible in order to increase ease of navigation, and rely on external links for the ranking.
I'd rather have 1,000 visitors who know where to go on the page than 2,500 who click off because the navigation is designed for Google and not humans.
Of course, ideally the navigation should accomplish both, but when it doesn't make sense for that to happen I favor the visitor.
Thanks for this great interview.
I've got a comment regarding using keywords in URLs - some pages doesn't allow to have an anchor text when you make your link in the article - when that's the point you are losing some of the value (most of it maybe) from having good quality link with keywords in anchor text - but when you have some of those words (or part of your phrase) in the url itself, you still might get some of the value through this link. What do you think about this?
PS. And of course having such big brand name as Wikipedia or Yahoo or so can (and IS) be much more valuable than keywords in domain name.
Luke:
That is a good point. If you can't get any keywords in the links, your domain name may help make up for some of that. But honestly, if you're getting links from places that don't let you use your keywords, then you're getting links from the wrong places.
Jonathan:
Thanks.
You got the point again.
The small advantage may come when users post your links on their blogs (or other types of websites) as pure url only without anchor text (wich is common in my part of the world). But again - these links are not in my control like the ones when dealing with step-by-step active getting links by myself. So there we go - quality links are most important.
Jon, I think your being a little misleading and some viewers might think that pure link count will out rank others with less links then their site…Need to express quality, one way links seem to be better than reciprocal or blog comment spam…..or in that matter doing pay per post crap….
I myself took the sauna site from nowhere to number 4 in less than 2 months just by changing on site linking structure, and gaining one way links on sites I have access to…..and all the sites that we outrank have more links than us…..
Misleading? Hardly. The number of quality in-bound links is what wins, hands-down, every time. If internal links won the game, then I could beat you out by creating a 1,000,000 page site and just having proper internal linking structure. Talk about spammer-heaven…
In-bound links win. If the folks below you have more links, then it's the link quality that's at issue.
Look at who is being you for "sauna":
http://www.saunas.com/ - 376 links
http://www.sauna.com/ - 93 links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna - 2086 links
Why are they winning?
http://thesaunadealer.com/ - 42 links
'nuff said.
Jon
Thats what I said….but you didn't say quality….you said links…
"I think your being a little misleading and some viewers might think that pure link count will out rank others with less links then their site…Need to express quality, one way links seem to be better than reciprocal or blog comment spam…..or in that matter doing pay per post crap…"
And I do realize that internal linking will never beat out inbound links not even on its best day….but it does help the juice flow from page to page….and if you use correct anchor text to those pages…that are the most user friendly as possible its win win
Then we don't disagree. I speak so much about "quality" that folks who read my blog and listen to what I have to say should realize I don't mean "spammer tactic links." In fact, even if they weren't familiar with what I've got to say, it would be silly to assume that I mean "spammer tactic links" when I say "links."
The 3waylinks.net site talks about quality over and over again.
My apologies if I failed to say the word "quality" in the interview. But that hardly makes what I said "misleading."
Hi Jon. Thanks for the interesting and helpful information, especially about SocialMarker.com. I'll be switching from Onlywire to SM asap.
Sharon Bray-McPherson
Jon…First off I know you dont use spammer tactics but u should of said quality one way links cuz some folks that listen to interview might just think if I got 100 links im going to outrank someone with 10 links….
Another thing i do not like about your 3waylinks.net and tell me if im wrong….some of the pages that are using the 3waylinks have 10 pages of links or more…..ok, say Im that guy with my link on page 10….now how is that going to be quality? Just because its one way doesnt mean its quality….If its one way link and buried on page 10 its not going to carry much weight at all….correct?
James:
I did qualify my statement about needing links when I said that the links need to come from diverse sites in diverse locations, and when I said that a site-wide link is not worth having. If someone reads into that that they can spam blogs and rank, then they're reading far more into it than I stated.
Also, a "page 10" link is considered quality by Google because we have 3,000+ page-one rankings that prove Google sees it as quality. As I've said before, it's all about what can be proven. Theory needs to go out the door when talking about Google.
So if one says "I don't think Google will see a link on page 10 as quality…" but the outstanding results of 3WL shows that Google does, in fact, see that link as quality, then which are you going to believe? The actual results or a theory?
To give a further answer, since each page of the links page has a link on it (page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10), then page 10 is still only 2 "clicks" away from the home page (home page -> links page 1 -> links page 10), and so Google doesn't see it as "page 10", but as "page 3".
Make sense?
Yes it does make sense since…I understand that the 10th page is still only two clicks away….
but one thing just because you have 3000 plus first page Google listings doesnt mean anything to me….if they are for low end keywords I can do that by using Ezinearticles, hupages, Squidoo, gather or whatever site I feel like leveraging that has authority….
My question is do you have any sites in the network that are on first page of Google that are in high comp….if you do I'd like to see….or even better do you have any sites that rank for one single word?
James:
The goal of 3WL is to rank for low to mid competition keywords that bring between 2k and 5k unique visitors per month. We are ranking for a whole boatload of those, yes (as well as some that bring in 15k+ visitors per month).
And sure, you could write articles and create squidoo pages, etc. to rank for those same keywords. But you need to think about how much your time is worth.
Let's say that you take 10 hours to create all of the links to your site to add up to the 250 links 3WL gives you for an individual site. You would have to repeat that process 50 times for 50 sites to equal out one 3WL account (which lets you have 50 domains in it). That's 500 hours or work — more than 3 months of solid 8 hour days working 5 days a week.
3WL will have cost you $141 for those 3 months — about $1.50 a day. Is your time really worth that little? Even if you consider the price over a full year ($564), that means your time is worth about $1.13 per hour to spend 500 hours creating all of those links.
For the folks in 3WL, their time is just worth a lot more than $1.13 an hour. That's why they use 3WL to do all of the work for them so they can focus on their business.
And believe me I live by results I listen to no garbage on forums and I dont hangout their because its a waste…and SEO is just that someone who optimizes….see what works and repeat it…
But you say all these 3000 first page Google listings but have shown no proof of their market or niches….which if your going to say your protecting your networks site's thats just bogus…show 10 sites that rank for highly competitive keywords.
Jonathan
Nice to hear such a refreshing interview without all the BS and hype that every self proclaimed guru and his brother are peddling.
Mike
No-can-do James. I take network security very seriously. If you're a doubter, that's perfectly okay with me. We'll just keep enjoying the results ourselves and I'll leave the option open for others who would like to give it a try.
I will not open up my network to the scrutiny of those who have not agreed to my legally binding terms and conditions of the 3WL account.
The thing is Jon most of Ezinearticles, Hubpages, Squidoo's or any other sites will rank in a few days without building any links….
Heck I know of some sites that rank in just a few minutes for some nice keywords that people pay good money to Google for and I dont see no one using the site at all just Dog owners
and its awesome…and still undiscovered even SMARTS LOL!! 
And since I've got access to hundreds of websites at my finger tips it doesnt pay me $1.13 for building quality links…….T hink K ids
Jon Im not saying someone shouldn't join 3waylinks…because they should….they should pay that money for another part of their link profile…but to sustain high rankings over time for some highly competitive keywords it wont work alone….but it will help…but people should think before they lock their selves in for the life of the sites….at the fear of if they cancel they will lose rankings…great membership site Jon and your really about to add even more to it….1000….you could leverage it even better..ThanKs
James:
I've never said 3WL will rank you for super-competitive terms. Low-to-mid competition is the way to go in my opinion, because you can rank so fast and easily for terms that do great things to the pocketbook.
And I don't try to rank EzineArtilces or Squidoo lenses in Google because they are very poor converting pages. I'd rather wait a little longer to drive all of the traffic to my own sites for 10-times the revenue. But hey, we all have our own business models. Whatever is working for you, stick with it!
As far as being "locked in" — as long as its bringing the profits, who cares? It's all about return on investment to me. That's good business. And who knows how long EzineArticles and Squidoo will be around too? Or what if they change their linking structure to "nofollow", etc? There is risk and reward in any online business endeavor.
I agree that 3WL should be just one part of your linking campaign. I actually stress that to my members (especially those who want to rank for tougher keywords). The new beta coming out that grants 1,000 true one-way links will do wonders for everyone in the network to be sure!
Thanks for the lively discussion.
For what it's worth guys, I have been using 3WL's for a month or so now. I only have a few sites in at the moment but will be adding more soon.
I have what you would consider a competiive key word: '{snip: sorry Peter, the 3WL terms don't allow posting keywords}' and it is now ranked in the top 5 on the first page of google with 16,600,000 competing websites.
Peter
Thanks for the plug Peter. Just FYI, please be careful not to post the keywords you're ranking for with 3WL to public places. It's a violation of the terms and conditions.
Thanks again!
Look at who is being you for "sauna":
http://www.saunas.com/ - 376 links
http://www.sauna.com/ - 93 links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna - 2086 links
Why are they winning?
http://thesaunadealer.com/ - 42 links
'nuff said.
Jon
Nuff said
Well if tis nuff said…..you didn't state the top 10 or top 20
James:
The point is that the sites with more quality links are out-ranking you, thereby proving my point that, generally speaking, in Google the folks with the most quality in-bound links win. Focus on your in-bound links over your internal links and you'll be in good shape. Don't forget about the internal links, but don't focus all of your time on them.
State the whole top ten Jon or top twenty…nuff said if your showing link count of the sites….
and exactly quality not quantity….trade links in articles that have their own dedicated pages….not on newly built link pages when they can't be monetized…
You should always deep root a link in every article (as long as it's relevant!) for scrapers and sploggers who steal your content. They may make the effort to strip your "resource box" but often they don't touch the code in the body of the text in the RSS feed.
James:
My point is proven already. The sites with more quality links are beating you (quality = from the right places using the keywords they want to rank for).
It doesn't matter if the sites below you have more links too. They quite likely are targeting different keywords in their links, or their links are coming from sites considered to be of "lesser quality."
But if it makes you happy:
http://superiorsaunas.com/ - 29 links
http://www.sunlightsaunas.com/sauna.html - 56 links
http://www.infraredsauna.com/ - 429
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-sauna.htm - 102
Now, before you get all excited that your point is proven:
superiorsaunas.com's links are almost all with the text "Superior Saunas" — so of course they won't rank for the term "sauna" as well (it's not in any of their links). Search for "Superior Saunas", and of course they're #1 because of those links.
sunlightsaunas.com's sauna page has a few links with the term "sauna" in it, but most have "SaunaCompany provides wellness products" — so of course it's not going to beat you, since you're using "sauna" in your links. Search for "SaunaCompany" and of course they're #1 because of their links.
infraredsauna.com's is targeting the phrase "infrared sauna(s)", not just "sauna" in their anchor text, so it's not a surprise that it's easy to beat them even though they have 429 links. Google values a few links with the target keywords over a lot of links with a different set of keywords. Search for "infrared sauna", however, and they rank #4.
Finally, wisegeek.com's sauna page is using "what is a sauna?" in most of their links. Search Google for "What is a sauna?" and they rank #1 (no surprise there).
So again, it's all about the number of in-bound links containing your keywords.
Jon
Since your a programmer put together a membership network of sites…(you've already got 3way and the http://qualitycontent.net) for more links and content for the sites…..
Push content with quality links in articles on monetized pages to the network of members…people can come to qualitycontent and get good quality articles to push to the network…just an idea
I've thought about doing something like that, but just haven't put the scripts together for it yet. My passion is really in helping other people rank well in Google, and watching that happen in such a great way with 3WL is very exciting for me.
I use it for my own sites, of course, and to great effect. I'm jut not sure I want to take the time to build a crank-out-the-sites system.
Jon said
"Now, before you get all excited that your point is proven:"
ok, here we go lol
Jon said
"So again, it's all about the number of in-bound links containing your keywords."
infraredsauna.com's is targeting the phrase "infrared sauna
I see sauna in this one Jon..etc..
I dont know about you Jon but I see sauna in everyone one of their keywords….:) just not the exact keyword phrase…so say exact Jon keyword phrase….the anchor must be exact
James:
You're trying to convince people that I've said something I haven't.
If you want to rank for "sauna", "sauna" needs to be the anchor text for your links. If you want to rank for "infrared sauna", you need to use that as your anchor text, etc. I've preached this for ages on this blog and in the 3WL, etc.
This round-and-round is tiring me. Unless you have something substantial to contribute, please stop posting comments. Any further comments that do not contribute to this blog post will be deleted.
It seems that you're trying to "catch" me in something — why? What is your motive here? I'm beginning to wonder. It feels like you just like to argue, even if our opinions aren't really at odds.
Jon:
"I'm jut not sure I want to take the time to build a crank-out-the-sites system."
The members would already have the sites….members could monetize the pages with whatever affiliates, kontera, adsense etc…and since the members sites would always have fresh, unique, qualitycontent getting published daily…..it's what Google loves right?
It seems that you're trying to "catch" me in something — why? What is your motive here? I'm beginning to wonder.
No just be exact because some might think link count is better and not know that quality links are it ….and some might think just because the keyword is in their anchor that they'll rank for it not knowing it must be exact…heck look at the postings on the forums say like DP…they dont know nothing…..they think higher page rank or high link count and they"ll out rank you…be more clear…
I've been quite clear, thanks. Just read this blog.
Great content Jonathan.
I got burned badly several months ago using the statistical product Keith mentioned. 3waylinks.net works well… will you send info about the beta you mentioned to your regular list? If not, please put me on the beta list if possible.
Thanks,
Fred
Fred:
First, thanks!
Second, I won't be mailing my full list about the beta, because you have to be an existing 3WL member to participate in the beta. Once the system goes out of beta, I will be sending a mail-out, though.
No worries James. If you were willing I was interested. If not, no biggie.
@James Dean - great idea in theory, but you are looking at very high number of traffic for passive readers just to click on that link. Then, the conversions are an even smaller amount.
Emails to a targeted list is a better approach, wiith higher returns. You can refer to Jon's $7 report on what kind of numbers you can expect.
My results are similar, with a smaller number of readers, but the pecentage are about the same. (Industry average?)
FYI, on a recent campaign, I had 7% click on the ad (a picture gif), and 0.3% conversion rate.
Jimson:
I've managed to get a lot of click-thrus from articles as well, but like you the conversion rate to sales has been very low.
Jonathan, I've got a couple of questions about something that I didn't hear you and Keith discuss in the interview, if you did and I missed it, I apologize.
My questions are:
1. I've read some SEO "experts" who say that we should use the no-follow tag in all of our internal links. Of course, then there are those that say to only use the tag on links that are of no importance to the engines, like the privacy policy, terms of use, etc. What do you think?
2. When internally linking to a redirect url, should the no-follow tag be used?
Sharon Bray-McPherson
Hey Jon,
Just listened to the interview. Great info and advice as always.
Now I've got to find the time to read all the posts since my last post! Wow, there's been such a lot of activity on this blog in such a short space of time.
Nick
Great post Jon. I think James Dean is a little mad because there points are no so great. I am sorry James but your postings are very confuse. You only discus the same point. (Internal Links and more Internal Links). Its not logic, thats all.
James (Dean),
You're like a dog with a bone, my friend.
It's a case of WHAT's right, not WHO's right.
Let it go gracefully and do us all a big favour.
John
I've had great success with conversions in articles…Make the article interesting to read and long tail specific and very targeted anchor text..
137 url clicks and two affiliate sales, I'd say that isnt bad at all…
Hey Jon!
Thanks for the very valuable information you shared. This is a very helpful indeed.
Wendyl
Jonathan;
I am a member, so I assume that I’ll have the opportunity to participate in the beta. Also, you may find my latest blog entry interesting.
Thanks,
Fred
This is simply a wonderful interview. Very practical advice and tips.
Sharon:
1. I think that's silly. Why would you not want Google to pass link value between pages in your own site? Nonsense.
2. Google has basically said that they want you to mark all PAID links as "nofollow". Otherwise they've made no statement to that effect.
Thanks jonathan for sharing this interview… this really will be success for me
Jonathan Leger said:
"1. I think that's silly. Why would you not want Google to pass link value between pages in your own site? Nonsense."
Thanks Jonathan. I thought it sounded self-defeating also. Just one more reason why seo is so confusing. From now on, I'm going to consider you as my SEO "expert".
Sharon Bray-McPherson
Thanks Sharon. I appreciate that vote of confidence.
And thanks to everybody for the great feedback on the interview!
Nice them Jon. Thanks for the email to this post about SEO interview.
its good to be true
You know after all these comments and the interview and I don't think I heard anyone talk about the age of the site itself and what type of role it plays….I did hear Jon talk about the silo format…which I do use on some sites I build…But what about age….
What do you think about age Jon? I think it does play a role because if the site is aged and has a wide link profile and hasnt did shady crap it does help…you can shoot 30 or 40 one way's at the site and outrank lots of sites really easily for major keywords…
So can a site that is 3 years old easily outrank a site that is 6 months old…if they had the same link profile? I think so….what do you think?
Domain "Age" plays a very important role in getting good Google ranks, in my opinion. Luckily, my site is 6 years old.
Jon,
As always- I love the interview and blog posts. This is really good stuff and I always walk away from your posts with something new.
That out of the way, I use 3wayLinks for my sites and have seen the best results! When I first started with 3way I was a bit frustrated with my rankings— all my fault because I failed to optomize my pages for the proper keywords. Now that I have that down, my sites have jumped up in ranking beyond my original expectations. I'm really excited about the beta test that's coming, too.
But here's my question. Once 3way has done what it is expected to do, what other link services out there in your experience will enhance the power of 3wl?
Also… and I might have missed it due to the lengthy (and interesting!) discussion between you and James Dean… but doesn't page rank have some value in ranking? The reason I ask is because on 3WL anything above a PR4 doesn't count against your quota. So I assume that you do put some value in Google PR, right? Like I said, I may have missed it, but if you could clarify that would be great! Thanks again for your blog, Jon.
SEO Mindset:
PageRank plays a small role in raking, yes, but it's very small. The reason I don't count anything against the quota that's PR4 or above is because pages with higher PR get crawled faster (and more often).
So having a bunch of sites with good PageRank ensures the entire network is crawled in a timely manner, which means Google will pick up the link values quickly.
Thanks, Jon. I knew there was a reason, but wanted clarity out of curiousity. Keep up the good work and I look forward to the up-coming beta-test!
Jon what do you think about the silo structure? I think its powerful stuff because if you think about it…it will give you the utmost relevance to your pages making your on page optimization very powerful….so in reality I believe you would need less links considering your pages would be more relevant to Google….
What do you think?…..or is it still just links
Hey Jonathan,
I am visiting your blog for the first time. Really I was 'introduced to you' by another marketer to download the "Search Engine" Ebook. The contents rocks.
Now, for the audio I am having problem. The line is breaking and not loud at all. Please check - though I am not sure if the problem is from my own PC.
Thanks for your assistance.
makingyouricher:
That's the first I've heard of the problem. Try downloading the MP3 from the link below the player and see if you can play it locally. I warn you, though, it's big (about 46MB).
Jon,
As always, valuable content that complements and supplements your SEO Myths book.
One question about the anchor text of incoming links: does Google only look at individual words within this anchor text, or parts of words?
For example, if the anchor text were "infrared saunas", would you also rank for both "sauna" and "sauna", or just "saunas"?
Thanks for your response Jonathan.
Ooops - 46 M? I stand no chance at all. Can't download it because my connection is slow. Maybe the same connection was responsible for the break in voice.
Anyway I will try again. Thanks quite appreciate your kindness
This theme is so nice and fresh. I will enjoy stopping by a lot more. No bookmark buttons?
Hey Jon,
I really enjoyed that audio, and I took lots of notes during it!
I am already starting to see results due to basically unregistering from all of the other 'guru' lists and focusing on what you say!
Thanks a lot.
Alex
Nice clean, content oriented, minimalist theme ya got here. Couple of notes:
1. 'Additional plugin' (Windows Media Player 11) required to listen to the audio on Windows Vista - Firefox 2.x. Would've been better to embed a flash audio player. I wonder what Mac or Linux users experience?
2. The subscribe link in the navigation doesn't do what I expected, which is to subscribe via RSS. Since it's an email subscription link, I'm surprised too that you didn't make it even more appealing to subscribe to the newsletter by including a short blurb about the benefits and make it clear what your free offer is.
3. The RSS button above the fold (top right) is small and easily missed.
4. Navigation: I've never been a fan of dated archives, they don't convey meaning. I don't have the patience to dig through them, I want to get to what I want quickly. The nice search box at the top helps some, but an archives by category would be better. Also, popular posts by category would be a nice touch. Related posts at the end of each article would also be good.
5. RSS feed options: If you're using feedburner, it displays all options or defaults to the user's preference on their system. You could free up screen real estate by removing this section altogether (especially if you make the RSS icon at the top bigger and more appealing). With the space you save, you might put in a "Free tools" links section instead.
I hope this is helpful. Thanks for not canvasing your site in advertisements, animated banners, and popup windows. Your focus on good content and a positive user experience has earned trust points with me and I'm sure many others.
Blessings on your journey, may it be prosperous.
- Zen Glen
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Hi Jon, this is the first time I'm posting on any of your blogs although I have read almost all of them.
Going back to the discussion earlier on having multiple links from one domain to the same url and using the same keyword as useless for SEO. So say I've posted comments to your blog at jonathanleger.com or blogspot.com using the same keyword as anchor text everytime and pointing to the same url everytime, is only one of those links picked up by Google then?
digital:
All the links are seen by Google, but only one is used in ranking your site, yes.
Great interview about SEO.
Hi Jonathan
Just listened to to the interview - you makes some very interesting points.
My questions is related to digitals question.
You said in your interview:
"…people don't realise, Google only counts one link from a domain…one"
I would tend to disagree with you on this.
Do you have any proof to back up this claim?
Cheers
Aidan
Aidan:
Yes. I've tested getting sitewide links and found them to only as helpful as a single link on a single page. I've also tested getting multiple links from the same site to the same page that were not sitewide.
Think about it: if this was not true, you could just buy a sitewide link on 10,000 pages and rank for just about anything.
Google prevents this from happening by only applying one link from each linking domain to a particular page for any given search query.
For clarity, I'm not saying not to get multiple links to DIFFERENT pages (or using different keywords for the same page) from the same site. But multiple links to the same page using the same anchor text is a waste of effort.
Hi Jonathan
Good answer; you are dead right (of course) Spot on with your last paragraph - 100% agree with you on this.
That question was a test - and you passed
You have my attention now.
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
Hi Jonathan
I hope you will go through this and answer my question.
This is regarding duplicate content.
As you have said in the report duplicate content does not penalise.
However i have seen it does.
I ranked No 2 for a keyword on a product selling website. The product went out of stock and i replaced with another product. I changed half of the content with a duplicate content given free for that product. I checked that the keyword density remains the same as before. Within a week i went to the end of the first page.
I checked that google had cache teh new content.
Then i replaced the duplicate content with new content and waited till google cache it. I didn't see any improvements in rankings because once it gets down it is difficult to get the same rank again.
So, my question is
I spend thousands of dollars on content to build websites with 1000 articles and also some niche websites. I have all your softwares. I do not use Instant Article as it consumes some time so i prefer to get original and unique articles done by experts as i need in bulk.. (Remember - Bulk)
So what do you suggest? Should i stop spending this amount and use duplicate content to build website?
or should i use a mix like some duplicate content pages and some original
If duplicate content does not penalise, then i should not waste so much of money and rather use articles from diretory or other websites. I should spend more time on ranking then building
What do you have to say? I have followed your guidelines and would appreciate if you can answer this and let me know if i should spend thousands of dollars from now onwards or stop it. Don't recommend Instant Article Software as i use it and my target is 2000 articles a month.
John:
I've never suggested that you shouldn't create unique content. Let me quote from the report itself to answer your questions:
"That’s a compelling reason to have unique content: the competition for ranking is less fierce. Think about it: If you have a page of unique content, and your page is just a little less optimized than another unique page optimized for the same keywords, your page may rank #2, just under the better-optimized page at #1. That’s still great!
However, if you have a page of duplicate content, and your page is just a little less optimized than another page of duplicate content for the same keywords, the better-optimized page will rank well, but your page won’t be in Google’s results at all for those keywords. That’s because Google selects the best duplicate page to rank for a given query, and leaves the others out completely unless there’s just not anything else unique to display that matches the query.
All that said, just because it’s harder to rank duplicate content does not mean Google won’t do it. They make it clear on their own blog that this can and will happen if the original article is not well optimized but a duplicate copy is."
Hey Jonathan,
I finally got a chance to listen to the interview. It was great. Thanks a lot. I hope I didn't sound pretentious earlier when I was talking about your website design. Had no idea you were a programmer/designer!
One question: I don't know if you've heard of Trackback Spider. If you are familiar with it, I was wondering what your thoughts were on it.
- ZenGlen
ZenGlen:
No worries.
And yes, I've heard of Trackback Spider. I've spoken to Jared on the phone about it, actually.
My thoughts are these: according to Jared, it works, but it's black-hat, and very black-hat at that. It puts bogus trackbacks on other people's blogs in order to get one-way links into your sites.
Jared doesn't mind admitting that it's black hat, and he doesn't mind using black hat tools. But I would not personally recommend using something like that.
Jon
[…] by oltean on February 14, 2008 SEO Interview with Jonathan Leger Jonathan Leger, an SEO expert was interviewed by Keith Baxter last week. In the interview, Keith […]
I really enjoyed this audio Jonathan and learned how to pronounce your name. Also, your clarification of the importance of diverse inbound link building was great.
Andy