Understanding Google's Algorithms

I would like to thank you all for taking the time to read and comment on this article. Means the world to me!

Thank you for writing it!


Question:

I'm trying to rank a cobrand high for a keyword but I know I'm getting hit hard with duplicate content penalties. Is there any way where I could get away with the duplicate content thing and still use the cobrand? Is my site forever doomed or if I keep chopping away at it will I eventually move up?

from what im seeing, some sponsors offer with their co-brands the option to write your own text and they will replace it. This may not be the case for you, and if so, it's going to be tough to rank the site, but it is do-able, your off-site seo is going to need to be properly, and daily. My first suggestion would be to ask the sponsor if text / title / description changes are an option and if so, go that route. They want you to rank well too, (more targeted traffic, more sales) so it shouldn't be an issue.

I'm trying to rank a cobrand high for a keyword but I know I'm getting hit hard with duplicate content penalties. Is there any way where I could get away with the duplicate content thing and still use the cobrand? Is my site forever doomed or if I keep chopping away at it will I eventually move up?

one of the best articles I have read in a long time about seo

Looks like great info for the beginners.

Anyone with links to advanced SEO for dynamic sites? That would be a real gem! Seems like the few that are truly knowledgeable, don't give it away.

Great thread with excellent info.

If you so many of you dick heads never abused the system in the first place, you probably wouldn't have to jump through so many hoops to get your sites ranked high. I blame every problem there is on the internet on most of you guys.

I FUCKING own Google:


Domain: 13 factors

1. Domain age;
2. Length of domain registration;
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous;
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk);
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info);
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP);
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain;
10. Domain IP;
11. Domain IP neighbors;
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)
13. Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools

Server-side: 2 factors

1. Server geographical location;
2. Server reliability / uptime

Architecture: 8 factors

1. URL structure;
2. HTML structure;
3. Semantic structure;
4. Use of external CSS / JS files;
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation, JavaScript, etc);
6. Use of canonical URLs;
7. ?Correct? HTML code (?);
8. Cookies usage;

Content: 14 factors

1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness;
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML);
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text);
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example);
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational, navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images (?)
12. Malicious content (possibly added by hackers);
13. Rampant mis-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word screeds without punctuation;
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases.

Internal Cross Linking: 5 factors

1. # of internal links to page;
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text;
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc);
4. # of links using ?nofollow? attribute; (?)
5. Internal link density,

Website factors: 7 factors

1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency;
3. Overall site size (number of pages);
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap;
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more important), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar);
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)

Page-specific factors: 9 factors

1. Page meta Robots tags;
2. Page age;
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits);
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level; (?)
6. Page load time (many factors in here);
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page);
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has);
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site);

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 13 factors

1. Keywords in the title of a page;
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title;
3. Keywords in Alt tags;
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text);
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links (?);
6. Keywords in bold and italic text (?);
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text;
8. Keywords in body text;
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site;
10. Keywords in filenames;
11. Keywords in URL;
12. No ?Randomness on purpose? (placing ?keyword? in the domain, ?keyword? in the filename, ?keyword? starting the first word of the title, ?keyword? in the first word of the first line of the description and keyword tag?)
13. The use (abuse) of keywords utilized in HTML comment tags

Outbound links: 8 factors

1. Number of outbound links (per domain);
2. Number of outbound links (per page);
3. Quality of pages the site links in;
4. Links to bad neighborhoods;
5. Relevancy of outbound links;
6. Links to 404 and other error pages.
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

Backlink profile: 21 factors

1. Relevancy of sites linking in;
2. Relevancy of pages linking in;
3. Quality of sites linking in;
4. Quality of web page linking in;
5. Backlinks within network of sites;
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar backlink sources);
7. Link profile diversity:
1. Anchor text diversity;
2. Different IP addresses of linking sites,
3. Geographical diversity,
4. Different TLDs,
5. Topical diversity,
6. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc);
7. Diversity of link placements
8. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
9. Backlinks from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from flagged sites)
10. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile);
11. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink profile);
12. Backlinks trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
13. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz;
14. Backlink profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc);
15. Backlinks from social bookmarking sites.

Each Separate Backlink: 6 factors

1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. Authority of a domain linking in
3. Authority of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)
6. Title attribute of a link (?)

Visitor Profile and Behavior: 6 factors

1. Number of visits;
2. Visitors? demographics;
3. Bounce rate;
4. Visitors? browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other listings)

Penalties, Filters and Manipulation: 12 factors

1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing;
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag;
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam);
5. Cloaking;
6. Hidden Text;
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner (?)
11. Past hackers? attacks records
12. 301 flags: double re-directs/re-direct loops, or re-directs ending in 404 error

More Factors (6):

1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools;
2. Domain presence in Google News;
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search;
4. Use of the domain in Google AdWords;
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics;
6. Business name / brand name external mentions.











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2bet, your 2bet.com site shows a webair landing page. Did you let it go?

Nice post Marketsmart, very thorough.

What's your take on targeted regional searches with geographically targeted domains. Does Google take into account the geographic location on the data center where the site is hosted at all? Obviously a .co.uk will get preferential treatment for uk based searches, but does a co.uk hosted in a uk data center carry weight over a .co.uk hosted on a us data center? Are they digging this deep?

i have another question about networks of sites

everywhere i read ways people are trying to hide from google that a certain site is part of a network with some other sites

but what about if youre trying to make a network of sites? is there a penalty for linking your own sites together, and by that keeping them around your network?

id imagine people visiting more often and clicking around would outweight the disadvantage of links coming from a single owner - im not talking about different ips, i mean if sites are on different ips and different servers a lot of people are saying to link them up so they dont look like a network, but why?

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking, however, there are search engines who still do so it's a good idea not to abandon keywords, just don't spend too much time on it.

BTW cool article.

ya 2 misconceptions, domain age and meta keywords, both arent a factor

domain age:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1_1NQWQJ2Q

Very very easily.

If it is indeed a factor, it can't have too much weight placed on it. Anyone with access to a large quantity of proxies could goto town. Best watch your torrents and email attachments, because it would be fucking trojan city. Well, I guess that's the case anyways...

ok i have done a split test
i put up a 2 minute tube site clip vs 10 minute clip
same pr, same links, same on page, same keywords, same base movie

the 10 minute clip ranked higher

The above is very true, but I would like to add that if Site A gets gets 5 new backlinks on week 1 and all 5 are on the same ip and using the same title/anchor, you get +1

Spreading your linking building out based on IP and C-class setup , especially when the servers are spread across the world is going to give you the most juice. Anytime network wide link spots are bought, even if you choose 5 seperate title/anchors, it's still very easy to be flagged for spammy link building and going to effect your SERPS in a negative way. Buying quality links, using various title/anchor tags and having them added at a slow rate, especially when doing multi network buys, is the key. Soon as google realizes that your buying links, your in trouble. I see people buying links on a steady bases that buy on sites that not even indexed, 10 days old and already have 55 outbound links.

Bumping this question because it's similar to mine.

I have sites on a range of different hosts, mostly to spread out the risk of hosting being down, but also because I'm still testing out which host would be best for dedicated.
I also have different IPs according to niches on some hosts.

But I'm wary of linking the sites up too much in case they are seen as trying to game google, which, believe it or not, wasn't my intention.

I'm fed up with thinking 'can I link to this site or not?' each time I link up my sites.

Allowing that google can see anything they want to see (especially with affiliate codes, same registrar, etc,), do you think it matters that much to link those sites up as I choose, rather than trying to hide the network, just in case?

Great thread.



The 30 seconds?



He is addressing registering domains for 10 years helping over year to year. There is no question that the age of a site is a relevant factor.



I noticed that around 1995.



Did you put a 15 and 20 on the other one to see if it went to the top?



I was waiting for this post. Great article Bobby.




No need to link them all together, but they can link to your money site.

A very important step on SEO and bedrock for a good optimization is On-Page optimization.

I would like to presents some of the important on-page ranking factors keyword based, for a good on-page optimization.

Interesting read

Bump for a good thread.

great read. Thank you

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking, however, there are search engines who still do so it's a good idea not to abandon keywords, just don't spend too much time on it.

BTW cool article.

Great read Bobby thanks. I need to get with you so we can finish the stuff we chatted about a couple months ago. Just never enough hours in the day it seems.

Where can we go to find good keywords (and longtail keywords) to target?

Now that that famous one... Overture? was it called?... is gone and they want $199/month for any of the long tail results.