Google PR

On 12 Sep 2006 09:29:25 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

hi all,

all else being equal,

The thing is, it isn't.

is Google PR the best single indicator of where
your site will end up in a search result page?

No.


thanks for your reply. what's a good way to measure SEO progress?

ROI.

if a
company is promising to help us with SEO, how can we measure their
worth/performance?

Against not having them help? There really isn't any set way as
everyone's circumstances vary.

also, i've been told that if you have a secondary mirror site with a
diff domain name, it might not be looked at favorably be the search
engines - true?

Yup. It's sooo simple: the cheaper your content, the less value it has. So
a copy is worthless.

yes, that's clear to me. but i've read on the web that if you simply
mirror sites, engines like Google will actually hold that agains you,
as a form of 'spamming'.

More to the point, what exactly would be the point? If you have good
content, do you not want people to be linking to it in one place,
instead of splitting that link potential, admired by Google, between
two sites? You could end up with two sites with 50 links each both low
in the serps whereas you could have just one site with 100 links that
was higher in the serps. It's pointless trying to get cutesy about
these things, just don't do them.

BB
--

http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...a-i137200.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...ngel-fish.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...aby-seals.html

On 12 Sep 2006 10:15:14 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

hi all,

all else being equal,

The thing is, it isn't.

is Google PR the best single indicator of where
your site will end up in a search result page?

No.

thanks for your reply. what's a good way to measure SEO progress? if a
company is promising to help us with SEO, how can we measure their
worth/performance?

Increase in traffic coming from search engines. Use your access_log to
measure this. However, this can take quite some time to grow. You might
also notice an increase in visits coming from Googlebot.

sigh - i guess it's the old 'which came first - the chicken or the egg'
dilemma. in order to get a higher ranking, we need to get more traffic
from search engines. but in order for that to happen, we need a higher
ranking.....

Get your site sorted with good content, make it all spiderable, brush
up your code, do a links campaign. Repeat.

BB
--

http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...a-i137200.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...ngel-fish.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...aby-seals.html

Big Bill wrote:

On 12 Sep 2006 09:29:25 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com
wrote:


John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

hi all,

all else being equal,

The thing is, it isn't.

is Google PR the best single indicator of where
your site will end up in a search result page?

No.


thanks for your reply. what's a good way to measure SEO progress?

ROI.

if a
company is promising to help us with SEO, how can we measure their
worth/performance?

Against not having them help? There really isn't any set way as
everyone's circumstances vary.


also, i've been told that if you have a secondary mirror site with a
diff domain name, it might not be looked at favorably be the search
engines - true?

Yup. It's sooo simple: the cheaper your content, the less value it has. So
a copy is worthless.

yes, that's clear to me. but i've read on the web that if you simply
mirror sites, engines like Google will actually hold that agains you,
as a form of 'spamming'.

More to the point, what exactly would be the point? If you have good
content, do you not want people to be linking to it in one place,
instead of splitting that link potential, admired by Google, between
two sites? You could end up with two sites with 50 links each both low
in the serps whereas you could have just one site with 100 links that
was higher in the serps. It's pointless trying to get cutesy about
these things, just don't do them.

yes, that makes sense. we did it because one URL was easier to remember
than the other, but if it's going to divert SEO, then we need to make
the changes. thanks.

BB
--

http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...a-i137200.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...ngel-fish.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...aby-seals.html

Big Bill wrote:

On 12 Sep 2006 09:29:25 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com
wrote:


John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

hi all,

all else being equal,

The thing is, it isn't.

is Google PR the best single indicator of where
your site will end up in a search result page?

No.


thanks for your reply. what's a good way to measure SEO progress?

ROI.

if a
company is promising to help us with SEO, how can we measure their
worth/performance?

Against not having them help? There really isn't any set way as
everyone's circumstances vary.


also, i've been told that if you have a secondary mirror site with a
diff domain name, it might not be looked at favorably be the search
engines - true?

Yup. It's sooo simple: the cheaper your content, the less value it has. So
a copy is worthless.

yes, that's clear to me. but i've read on the web that if you simply
mirror sites, engines like Google will actually hold that agains you,
as a form of 'spamming'.

More to the point, what exactly would be the point? If you have good
content, do you not want people to be linking to it in one place,
instead of splitting that link potential, admired by Google, between
two sites? You could end up with two sites with 50 links each both low
in the serps whereas you could have just one site with 100 links that
was higher in the serps. It's pointless trying to get cutesy about
these things, just don't do them.

yes, that makes sense. we did it because one URL was easier to remember
than the other, but if it's going to divert SEO, then we need to make
the changes. thanks.

BB
--

http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...a-i137200.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...ngel-fish.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...aby-seals.html

"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

John Bokma wrote:

[..]

we've been talking about traffic from search engines. how about
traffic from direct sources (i.e. someone punches in the URL, clicks
from an email signature). does all that count just as much? or is
traffice from search engines weighted more heavily?

Important question is: how is the SEO company going to cause users to
visit you direct?

Weighted by whom?

--
John Need help with SEO? Get started with a SEO report of your site:

--> http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 17:14:35 +0200, GoBruins <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

all else being equal, is Google PR the best single indicator of where
your site will end up in a search result page?

If all other things are equal, PR is a single parameter. It can't be
"best" then, as it is the only one

Best,
Borek
--
http://www.chembuddy.com
http://www.ph-meter.info
http://www.terapia-kregoslupa.waw.pl

John Bokma wrote:

"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

John Bokma wrote:

[..]

we've been talking about traffic from search engines. how about
traffic from direct sources (i.e. someone punches in the URL, clicks
from an email signature). does all that count just as much? or is
traffice from search engines weighted more heavily?

Important question is: how is the SEO company going to cause users to
visit you direct?

sorry - i was talking about the proactive measures we could take, such
as word of mouth, adding our URL in our email signatures, etc.

Weighted by whom?

by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. Do they actually take
into account the number of hits and traffic that a site gets, even
though it wasn't generated by a search on Google, Yahoo, etc.?

--
John Need help with SEO? Get started with a SEO report of your site:

--> http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

John Bokma wrote:

[..]

we've been talking about traffic from search engines. how about
traffic from direct sources (i.e. someone punches in the URL, clicks
from an email signature). does all that count just as much? or is
traffice from search engines weighted more heavily?

Important question is: how is the SEO company going to cause users to
visit you direct?

sorry - i was talking about the proactive measures we could take, such
as word of mouth, adding our URL in our email signatures, etc.

Ah, ok. You can track URLs by creating a special version, which redirects
to the real thing. Of course this is not fail safe. But for example you
could promote on business cards etc. a version without www, and on the
Internet use a version with www. And redirect the former (301) to the
latter.

In mailings you can use something like:

http://example.com/?via_email

Some people even use:

http://example.com/?some_unique_tracking_id

but this might scare of even piss off people.

Again, redirect this crafted URL to the real thing. Same can be done with
RSS and even Usenet posts (signatures).

All this info can be read back in the access_log (Assuming Apache and
extended log format).

Weighted by whom?

by the search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. Do they actually take
into account the number of hits and traffic that a site gets, even
though it wasn't generated by a search on Google, Yahoo, etc.?

Good question. I don't know. Google can see which sites one visits by
monitoring the Google Toolbar (when one has enabled PageRank), and even
measures how fast one changes from one URL to another (which doesn't mean
that the person is actually reading of course).

--
John Need help with SEO? Get started with a SEO report of your site:

--> http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

On 12 Sep 2006 11:15:19 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

Big Bill wrote:
On 12 Sep 2006 09:29:25 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com
wrote:


John Bokma wrote:
"GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

hi all,

all else being equal,

The thing is, it isn't.

is Google PR the best single indicator of where
your site will end up in a search result page?

No.


thanks for your reply. what's a good way to measure SEO progress?

ROI.

if a
company is promising to help us with SEO, how can we measure their
worth/performance?

Against not having them help? There really isn't any set way as
everyone's circumstances vary.


also, i've been told that if you have a secondary mirror site with a
diff domain name, it might not be looked at favorably be the search
engines - true?

Yup. It's sooo simple: the cheaper your content, the less value it has. So
a copy is worthless.

yes, that's clear to me. but i've read on the web that if you simply
mirror sites, engines like Google will actually hold that agains you,
as a form of 'spamming'.

More to the point, what exactly would be the point? If you have good
content, do you not want people to be linking to it in one place,
instead of splitting that link potential, admired by Google, between
two sites? You could end up with two sites with 50 links each both low
in the serps whereas you could have just one site with 100 links that
was higher in the serps. It's pointless trying to get cutesy about
these things, just don't do them.

yes, that makes sense. we did it because one URL was easier to remember
than the other, but if it's going to divert SEO, then we need to make
the changes. thanks.

It's often the case that the answer is to point out that the original
question was wrong. :-)

BB
--

http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...a-i137200.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...ngel-fish.html
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/mats-...aby-seals.html

On 12 Sep 2006 10:15:14 -0700, "GoBruins" <adventureforth (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

thanks for your reply. what's a good way to measure SEO progress? if a
company is promising to help us with SEO, how can we measure their
worth/performance?

Increase in traffic coming from search engines. Use your access_log to
measure this. However, this can take quite some time to grow. You might
also notice an increase in visits coming from Googlebot.

sigh - i guess it's the old 'which came first - the chicken or the egg'
dilemma. in order to get a higher ranking, we need to get more traffic
from search engines. but in order for that to happen, we need a higher
ranking.....

Or gain more rankings (more SERPs), as long as the traffic is relevant
to the site do you care if it's from what you consider the most
important search phrase(s) or a bunch of phrases you never thought of?

David
--
SEO Services http://www.seo-gold.com/expert-seo-consultant.php
Ode to Ethical SEO http://www.totallyduh.com/ethical-seo-expert.html