Getting to #1 in Google
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I see that your blog is ranked #1 in Google, and I was wondering how you did that with such an average blog?
Each day I perform an extensive examination of Google’s algorithm. And I do all kinds of complicated formulas for keyword density. It’s really something of a science.
I kid.
The big secret is that I just write in the same voice that I speak. I don’t really think about Google rankings, I don’t obsess about any kind of SEO stuff.
Instead, I write often, and I write original content. Apparently, Google has some unfair bias for sites with frequent content that is original.
So try that secret formula and you may be able to rank well, too, with an average blog. Good luck in your quest for such mediocrity.
- Posted in Ask Shawn Collins
What keyword phrase? He did not mention it. That’s sad. Well, lets do some checks.
mesothelioma …. nope
asbestos cancer … nope
loan consilidation … nope
auto insurance … nope
buy viagra … nope
free po*n (censored to prevent your AdSense Ads to turn into PSAs) … nope
Shawn Collins … yeah, that’s it.. doh. but Wait.
1. blog.affiliatetip.com
2. indent .. blog.affiliatetip.com/about
3. http://www.affiliatemanager.net
4. http://www.affiliatetip.com
5. not you
6. also not you
7. http://www.shawncollinsconsulting.com
8. http://www.affiliatesummit.com
9. not you
10. blog.affiliatesummit.com
uhhhh! Congratulation for having your properties ranking for your own name.
I am surprised that the NFL football player and lawyer Shawn Collins do not rank in the top 10. It’s a graphics designer and a clothing designer with the same name as yours instead.
Looking at the webdesigners website I predict that your sites will eventually kick him out of page one.
Affiliatething.com needs a bit more love.. oh wait, it points to affiliatetip.com and not to your podcast.
Your content at AskShawnCollins.com obviously sucks, despite the help of your blog feed content. It’s not on page 1, even though the domain name contains the entire keyword. It is outranked by a site that was hacked with Shawn collins in the title but a domain name that is completely unrelated. It returns now a 404 error. AskShawnCollins.com sucks obviously more than a 404 page. Must be, right?
okay.. other tests. Industry related terms. Things you write about etc.
affiliate tip … yeah… doh
affiliate marketing… nope (not even top 10)
affiliate marketing news …. nope
affiliate marketing information … nope
affiliate marketing resources … nope
affiliate marketing consulting … nope
affiliate marketing learning … nope (oh.. I rank #1 for that.. nice hehe)
affiliate marketing training … nope
affiliate marketing blog .. nope (honorable 3rd though)
internet marketing … nope
…
…
I don’t know… what do you think?
reply to this commentI tried searching for affiliate blog and was #1 yesterday, and #2 as I look right now.
reply to this commentShawn,
I think you’re right on here – original, high-quality content is the basis for SEO, and leads to natural link building and user retention. The coding-centric SEO issues are necessary but not nearly sufficient to rank highly ont he major engines.
Brad
reply to this commentYou’re #1 in Google right now as I check, but that’s not really the point.
The point is that someone who claims to be or wants to be a mentor to other affiliates shouldn’t be slamming an industry colleague in such a rude and annoying fashion. Carsten, I’d never heard of you until now, but I’ll be sure to avoid your site forever after. You’re rude.
reply to this commentGeez Carsten, who pee’d in your cereal? That comment came off pretty crappy, fyi. Was it intended to be so ugly?
reply to this commentHey Lisa,
Carsten is just kidding around. I don’t know his relationship with Shawn, but I’ve seen him on other boards. He didn’t intend it as offensive.
reply to this commentNo sense of humor. I know Shawn personally and also agree with him an most subjects. I do not agree with him on this one and wanted to make a point in a kind of funny way. I thought that this was clear from how I started my comment.
The keywords I started with are among the most expensive terms in paid search and also the most spammed ones in the organic search by black hat SEOs. Of course does Shawn not rank for those (I would have been surprised if he would hehe).
I also wanted to point out important terms he should rank in the top 10 for, but does not. Part of that is because of some basic issues with his site that are less a matter of SEO but search engine friendly site design.
Also his change of platform and hosting several months back plays into this. Old URLs with tons of inbound links that do not exist anymore and return error pages, no meta tags (for better looking listing results), repetitive title tag (or half of it: “Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins” on every page) etc. etc. He has an old and trusted domain and a lot of good content, which grows every day. This helps a lot, but is just not enough for everything.
I just had a debate with that with Sam Harrelson at BlogWorld Expo and I hope that he has not exactly the same “SEO is BS” opinion as he had before. Not everything you hear about SEO is true, but it is also not completely BS. It’s something in the middle and depending on the niche you are in, is more or less SEO work necessary to help you rank where you should rank.
I don’t think that Shawn misunderstood my comment (please correct me, if I am wrong Shawn and I will apologize). I am sorry for the folks who read it and got it wrong.
People who know me, know that I am pretty much straight forward and also have a somewhat “dark” humor. It’s probably the German in me, I don’t know. We are not well known for our humor
Cheers!
reply to this commentp.s. I also pointed out some other issues with his sites where Shawn should look into, e.g. AskShawnCollins.com and Affiliatething.com.
Affiliatething.com should point to his radio show and podcast with Lisa Picarille at WebmasterRadio.fm. I actually expected that to be the case and was surprised that I got redirected to the affiliate program directory at affiliatetip.com.
AskShawnCollins.com should also rank for “Shawn Collins” and I was honestly surprised that it does not. That he does not signals to me a problem with that site.
I used pretty dark humor to illustrate the issues, but the issues are there and I hope that Shawn is grateful that I made him aware of them. Most people don’t care for those things and wouldn’t even tell you this, even if they come across issues like that.
reply to this commentOkay, 3rd and last comment
Yes, he ranks #1 for “affiliate blog”, but not for “affiliate marketing blog”, which is funny, because “affiliate marketing blog” is obviously his main keyword phrase, based on the title tags used across his blog.
I hope this clears up things. Lisa, your comment is honorable. Not many people step up to defend others. I am sorry that you got a wrong idea about me because of my comment and hope that my 3 follow up comments put your anger at rest.
You should check out my free resources site, which is not my business. I make my money as affiliate in paid search primarily. The site pays for itself through affiliate links (if they are available) and a bit more than that, which allows me to use that extra money to support others in this industry, who provide IMO value and should be supported, such as Sam Harrelson or Fraser Edwards (who does not need that kind of help anymore).
You can check out the editorial note to learn more about the what, why and how.
http://www.cumbrowski.com/Editorial-Note.asp
Cheers!
reply to this commentNo sweat – I knew that Carsten didn’t have a sense of humor.
> I also wanted to point out important terms he should rank in the top 10 for, but does not.
I did find your list of terms where I should rank to be fairly comical.
Outside of affiliate, affiliate marketing, and affiliate program, the search volume for other terms is pretty negligible.
> Shawn should look into, e.g. AskShawnCollins.com and Affiliatething.com.
I currently have the top 3 and 7 of the top 10 results for my name.
AskShawnCollins.com is nothing but a form – I don’t lose sleep over it’s lack of a presence for my name.
And my directory was at AffiliateThing.com before the podcast existed.
reply to this comment>No sweat – I knew that Carsten didn’t have a sense of humor
Haha.. hey it isn’t that bad. I only have a weird sense of it okay?!
> AskShawnCollins.com is nothing but a form – I don’t lose sleep over it’s lack of a presence for my name.
No reason to, but it would take very little to take another spot in the top 10 with that domain. Without the need to work hard and sweat for it. It’s better than that “hacked site”, isn’t it?
> And my directory was at AffiliateThing.com before the podcast existed
really? So did the name for the podcast come from this? Anyhow. I would suggest to point it to a page about the show and podcast with link to the RSS etc. Wouldn’t you agree that this makes sense now? I believe your show is more popular than the directory (and better known as
“Affiliate Thing”.. funny that you referred to the directory as “thing” heheh)
p.s. the other keywords (except for internet marketing) are less volume, but much more targeted. Since they are also less competitive, is it also easier to rank for them. If you start with targeting “Affiliate Marketing”, which is harder, you could “get” the other ones fairly easy as secondary keyphrases. But SEO is BS, right?
I go to your site directly and perform sometimes a site search only, but I am a returning visitor who knows your site. But not everybody does yet. A little bit SEO does not hurt to cover some more ground at the search engines, especially if it is for keywords that are right on target.
reply to this comment> really? So did the name for the podcast come from this?
We couldn’t come up with a name we liked, and ended up with this one, since nobody else had the domain.
Anyhow, I’ve got a database around it and lots of indexed links from the pages of that database.
Plus, I don’t think many people are tying it in.
> But SEO is BS, right?
I didn’t say that – I see SEO as work, and I write my blog for enjoyment.
reply to this comment> Anyhow, I’ve got a database around it and lots of indexed links from the pages of that database.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3aaffiliatething%2ecom
I have my doubt that those indexed links do you much good. Too bad that Google does not show anymore, if a page is “supplemental” or not. I would bet that most of them are.
>Plus, I don’t think many people are tying it in.
Hard to tell, but it would be good for branding purposes for sure and you might get additional traffic from it, if you put a supplemental blog up for it as well. Basically instead of posting it here that a new episode is available. You might even want to get transscripts for the podcast episodes, which would increase the content and value even more. Transscripting gets cheaper and cheaper nowadays.
> I didn’t say that – I see SEO as work, and I write my blog for enjoyment.
That’s right, Sam said that. But honestly, SEO is less work than you might think. If you just do a few things automatically and get used to, it’s actually pretty easy. You don’t compete in a too competitive niche and have a clear advantage because of the age and trust your top level domain has established over the years. That’s already a big chunk of the puzzle others, who do not have that advantage, have to compensate for by working harder on other factors.
We can chat about it at Affiliate Summit a bit, if you like to.
p.s. I am no professional SEO myself, but use the basics for my own purposes, because why would I want to miss out on the opportunity to get free and target traffic (even if it is for my hobby sites I maintain for fun or other non-commercial reasons).
I also follow things that happen in this space out of curiosity and because I got hit by Google once without trying to game Google and only concentrating on the sites content and value for the user. I would not have been hit out of the blue that bad, if I would have known more about what was going on in the SEO space at the time.
reply to this commentHey Carsten -
By the way, I just noticed that a definition I submitted a while ago to Urban Dictionary is now live (and you’re part of it):
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Info+Tithe
reply to this commentHehe.. I never heard the word “Tithe” before, but then I am also not religious.
I first thought that it is an artificial word, but Babylon (Babylon.com, my translator since 1995, they have an affiliate program with CJ) states.
Tithe
n. tenth part; tenth part of one’s income paid as a tax for the support of religious institutions
v. pay a tenth of one’s income to support the Church; collect taxes equalling one-tenth of each person’s income to support the Church
The article failed “good article” status btw. One editor was okay with it, but another wasn’t. The other guy has some valid points, but some are also a bit… mmh.. off. You can find the link to the comments of the review at the articles talk page. I tweaked already some of it.. the parts that made also sense to me.
I salvaged your Affiliate Summit logo btw. It was deleted, because it lagged a fair use rationale. I uploaded a new logo and updated it properly.
Cheers!
reply to this comment> The article failed “good article†status btw.
Is that a big deal? I can still find it in their search.
> I salvaged your Affiliate Summit logo btw.
Thanks
reply to this comment>> The article failed “good article†status btw.
>Is that a big deal? I can still find it in their search.
well, that status is visible in the article itself and is a sign of quality. It is also the status before “featured article”, which is the highest quality status an article can get. At that moment does it also become part of the rotation for being featured at the Wikipedia homepage.
Only 1,683 articles (1/1240) have the status of “featured article” and 3,102 articles (1/673) have the status of “good article” at the moment.
That says something, doesn’t it?
reply to this commentI feel much better about Carsten now and am glad to know I was wrong. The sense of humor just didn’t translate well in print. Now I think he must really be a nice guy – after all, he’s helping Shawn with his SEO!
Glad to know everyone has made up (or didn’t need to!).
reply to this comment