Analyse This!

The Serps competition has been interesting to see how different
strategies work with google. It has certainly saved trying out
different permutations.

Howerver here is something that puzzles me, I'm currently trying to
boost my page for the term:

backcountry snowboarding.

There are around 119,000 pages, so not hugely competitive but it will
do. I was somewhere in the top 20 until recently when I noticed that
my page has dropped to around 50. It has a PR of 3, and the term
Backcountry Snowboarding in the title and the text. I've not done
much SEO until I noticed the drop and I'm still waiting to see the
effects. There is a lot of good content on my page, which just goes
to show that content isn't everything.

But let's look at the top three:

No 1. is currently Amazon. I've noticed amazon book links popping up
all over on Google recently. The page has no PR (as shown by the
google toolbar anyway), Backcountry Snowboarding is only part of the
title which will dilute its SEO. After that, very little relevant
content except for the book they are selling

No 2. Is a freakin Japanese site - almost no relevant content to
English readers. It does have a PR of 4.

No 3. The two keywords are not in the title and it has a PR of 4, it
does have a lonely link across to a page called
backcountry-snowboarding.html

No 4. PR of 3 has a title stuffed with words which should dilute the
SEO, lots of links to the backcountrystore and a few links with take
backcounty snowboarding as the query text.

No 5. PR of 0, the first one with some useful information although
the keywords are not in the title and it has huge quantities for
Javascript cruft before the relevant content.

This seems a bit weird to me. Does anyone have any good insites, as
they will apply for many other search terms I feel. Maybe the PRs are
not accurate?

I can tell you this ... I had a PR0 for the longest time , but my site still
ranked #1 for a lot of my keywords/phrases ... In 2 search phrases , with
over 600,000 matches , I was #1 , and Microsoft was #2 ... yes , with my
bigass PR0 !

So does PR have a lot to do with it ? I'm guessing not ...

I have PR5 now and still continue to be ahead of companies that have PR8,9
etc ....

Take that Bill !

David D.


"David Off" <david.off (AT) voila (DOT) fr> wrote

The Serps competition has been interesting to see how different
strategies work with google. It has certainly saved trying out
different permutations.

Howerver here is something that puzzles me, I'm currently trying to
boost my page for the term:

backcountry snowboarding.

There are around 119,000 pages, so not hugely competitive but it will
do. I was somewhere in the top 20 until recently when I noticed that
my page has dropped to around 50. It has a PR of 3, and the term
Backcountry Snowboarding in the title and the text. I've not done
much SEO until I noticed the drop and I'm still waiting to see the
effects. There is a lot of good content on my page, which just goes
to show that content isn't everything.

But let's look at the top three:

No 1. is currently Amazon. I've noticed amazon book links popping up
all over on Google recently. The page has no PR (as shown by the
google toolbar anyway), Backcountry Snowboarding is only part of the
title which will dilute its SEO. After that, very little relevant
content except for the book they are selling

No 2. Is a freakin Japanese site - almost no relevant content to
English readers. It does have a PR of 4.

No 3. The two keywords are not in the title and it has a PR of 4, it
does have a lonely link across to a page called
backcountry-snowboarding.html

No 4. PR of 3 has a title stuffed with words which should dilute the
SEO, lots of links to the backcountrystore and a few links with take
backcounty snowboarding as the query text.

No 5. PR of 0, the first one with some useful information although
the keywords are not in the title and it has huge quantities for
Javascript cruft before the relevant content.

This seems a bit weird to me. Does anyone have any good insites, as
they will apply for many other search terms I feel. Maybe the PRs are
not accurate?

David D. wrote:

I can tell you this ... I had a PR0 for the longest time , but my site still
ranked #1 for a lot of my keywords/phrases ... In 2 search phrases , with
over 600,000 matches , I was #1 , and Microsoft was #2 ... yes , with my
bigass PR0 !

So does PR have a lot to do with it ? I'm guessing not ...

It does, but not as a value of it's own. What most people in this
newsgroup don't seem to understand (quite astonishing for SEO's) is the
basic nature of PR: it's a multiplier. So (to put it simple) you take on
page characteristics and then multiply them by a factor based on the PR.

And than it's easy to understand that 0 on page elements multiplied by a
PR factor still leaves you with nothing.

Google for a paper called "PageRank Uncovered" for some basic understanding.

Piet

Anders Reizen wrote:

David D. wrote:

I can tell you this ... I had a PR0 for the longest time , but my site
still
ranked #1 for a lot of my keywords/phrases ... In 2 search phrases , with
over 600,000 matches , I was #1 , and Microsoft was #2 ... yes , with my
bigass PR0 !

So does PR have a lot to do with it ? I'm guessing not ...


It does, but not as a value of it's own. What most people in this
newsgroup don't seem to understand (quite astonishing for SEO's) is the
basic nature of PR: it's a multiplier. So (to put it simple) you take on
page characteristics and then multiply them by a factor based on the PR.

And than it's easy to understand that 0 on page elements multiplied by a
PR factor still leaves you with nothing.

That I can understand, but for some of these sites it is 0 x 0. It
doesn't factor.

David Off wrote:

Anders Reizen wrote:

David D. wrote:

I can tell you this ... I had a PR0 for the longest time , but my
site still
ranked #1 for a lot of my keywords/phrases ... In 2 search phrases ,
with
over 600,000 matches , I was #1 , and Microsoft was #2 ... yes , with my
bigass PR0 !

So does PR have a lot to do with it ? I'm guessing not ...



It does, but not as a value of it's own. What most people in this
newsgroup don't seem to understand (quite astonishing for SEO's) is
the basic nature of PR: it's a multiplier. So (to put it simple) you
take on page characteristics and then multiply them by a factor based
on the PR.

And than it's easy to understand that 0 on page elements multiplied by
a PR factor still leaves you with nothing.


That I can understand, but for some of these sites it is 0 x 0. It
doesn't factor.

How fresh are these sites? The first month (give or take a day or two) a
brand new domain gets indexed it doesn't have a PR or PR is not
calculated for the results.

During this period pages show up based on on page elements, to give the
site a change to get inbound links and prove itself.

After that period PR is calculated and counted. Many sites (read:
allmost every site) drop in the SERPs after that period. That's why all
the bragging about "my new site is in the top SERPs allready" really
doesn't say anything else than that the SEO doesn't have a clue.

Just wait a month or two and see what happens than.

Piet

Anders Reizen wrote:

How fresh are these sites? The first month (give or take a day or two) a
brand new domain gets indexed it doesn't have a PR or PR is not
calculated for the results.

Thanks for reminding me about the google PR paper. I read it a while
ago but it reminded me that the toolbar is not that accurate. Still I
come back to the point that there are a lot of links to Amazon popping
up these days and I get the feeling that Google has manipulated the PR
to favour some sites.