Is an SEO Degree Realistic?

I have an 18 month old son, which means I am exactly 18 months behind planning for his college education. I like to think that he will want to follow in the footsteps of “dear old Dad”, but if he chooses to follow in my foot steps, does that mean he needs a four year degree in SEO? It is hard to say what the future holds, but as for right now, I believe obtaining a degree in SEO is not only a waste of money, but a waste of valuable time that one could use gaining real-life usable knowledge in this field.

Before I get lynched for not adhering to societies ever-poplar mantra “You MUST go to college”, let me explain. SEO is an entirely separate entity from most modern careers, and here is why. Clients don’t care about your education, they care about results. Plain and simple.

It is sad that most of the modern world doesn’t function this way. Imagine how different our public schools would be if the focus when hiring teachers wasn’t who was most “qualified”, but who could actually obtain results in the classroom. Perhaps SEO is just ahead of the curve.

I only wish it were so easy, that I could go into a classroom and learn the secrets of SEO from a master. But the truth is, that simply doesn’t exist. If I were to take a course in SEO, I would likely be learning tired tricks of the trade, from someone who not only does not know this industry, but couldn’t have possibly been successful in it, because if he or she had, they certainly wouldn’t be wasting their time teaching in a classroom, they would be online, making money instead.

Imagine the absurdity of a textbook geared at teaching the art of SEO to students. Before the ink had dried, Google would have changed their algorithms, and the text would be rendered useless.

Instead of college degree, an internship in a successful SEO company would be more highly valued. And isn’t that what my son is getting already? An 18 year long internship in how to run a successful SEO company?

Perhaps this is the one and only job that focuses attention where it needs to be, on success.

So should you focus your time into taking classes in SEO so you can stand in the crowd chanting societies mantra “You must go to college…you must go to…” Sure, go ahead. But I will be here, in the School of SEO hard knocks, learning from mistakes, and enjoying the success that comes from working in an industry that focuses on results over education. Come on son, “Dear old Dad” has something to teach you.

Thoughts from Steve

I’ll have more to say tomorrow about the value of getting a degree, but wanted to add some thoughts specific to Brandon’t post here.

While I agree with Brandon that it ultimately comes down to results, I think he’s shortchanging what can be taught in school. SEO is at its core marketing and marketing principles can be and are taught. I disagree that SEO is an entirely separate entity.

Off the top of my head here are some things you can learn while getting a degree that could benefit an SEO.

• Marketing
• Writing
• Statistics and Analysis
• Programming and Coding
• Business
• Creative and design

True you aren’t going to learn the latest tricks of the trade, though that’s true of every industry. There’s much more to SEO than the latest tricks of the trade though.

I don’t run an SEO company, but if I were and I was hiring I think I’d look more for the person who could write well and understand statistics, analysis, and testing, and had a strong foundation in marketing, than the person who knew some of the tricks of the trade. Those tricks are much easier taught than the the more well rounded foundation.

I’m not trying to imply you can only learn these things through a degree program. You can certainly teach yourself to write, etc. I just want to point out that a lot of what an SEO does and should know to get the results they’re after, can be taught in school.

I’ll also argue that there are plenty of teachers who teach, not because they can’t perform in their industry, but because they enjoy teaching and think it’s valuable to help educate others.

I’ll have more thoughts on the general subject tomorrow.

Author Bio

If you weren’t able to deduce, Brandon Hopkins does not have a college degree, but he does have over 8 years of link building experience and owns DiamondLinks.net a link building service with a focus on getting results.

What is the Page Layout Algorithm Change?

In a nutshell, Google receives complaints from people that click on a link in the search results and land on a page filled with ads. The pages often have little content or content that is difficult to find. I’m sure you’ve landed on a few of these pages. I know I have.

As you might expect, Matt was pretty vague when it comes to the details of this change. Here’s the meat from the post in his own words:

…sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

Matt does later say it’s ok to have ads above the fold. It’s a matter of excess.

Having an ad above-the-fold doesn’t imply that you’re affected by this change. It’s that excessive behavior that we’re working to avoid for our users.

Let’s momentarily ignore the fact that “the fold” isn’t really a meaningful concept anymore, given all the different devices people use to access sites and let’s also ignore the hypocrisy in this as Google’s own search results often fail the test of too many ads above the imaginary fold. And why not also ignore the irony of an email, sent out by the AdSense team on the same day as Matt’s post, suggesting site owners surround their content with more ads.

What exactly does this algorithmic change mean for web designers?

Questions Matt’s Post Raises

The usual and understandable vagueness around this change raises some questions.

• What’s considered “the fold”?
• How much content needs to be “above the fold”?
• What does Google consider an ad and how do they determine that algorithmically?
• How many ads is excessive?
• Is this based on where ads appear in the code or where they appear visually on the page?
• Can Google algorithmically determine how the page appears visually?

Our best bet for answering the first is to use Google’s browser size tool. It won’t give exact dimensions, but it attempts to show where “the fold” is for most users. I doubt Google will ever be more specific than excessive in regards to how many ads is too many.

When it comes to how they distinguish an ad from an image they likely look for the image to be wrapped in an external link and for that link to contain some kind of tracking code. I’m sure this results in some false positives and some missed ads, but I bet they do a pretty good job with this overall.

To me the most important questions are the last two when it comes to how we should design and develop pages.

My guess is Google looks algorithmically at the code to find potential offenders and set a flag or some kind of score. They’ll send some of these pages to their quality inspectors who’ll visually consider if a page’s content is buried in excessive ads, which will further suggest patterns Google can look for algorithmically.

In the end Google probably looks at both the code and the visual appearance of the page to decide.

An Extension of Panda

As my gypsy friend Dave points out this change is likely an extension of the panda update, which also puts emphasis on quality content and user experiences.

In his post, Dave shared that reports from inside his SEO Dojo indicate the page layout algorithm has probably been in effect for awhile before its announcement.

While you’re at Dave’s site search for some of his posts on page segmentation. Of course, Dave isn’t the only one writing about this so here are a few other articles I collected when the news broke.

• Google Announces Above-the-Fold Algorithm Change
• An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater
• Google’s New Page Layout Update Targets Sites With Too Many Ads
• Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm
• From AdSense to SpamSense to Spam Cents

It’s All About User Experience

Again, this algorithm change is designed to demote sites that make it difficult for a user to get to the content and offer a bad user experience.

Regardless of the details and the right or wrong of it all, this change comes from the idea that users don’t want to have to spend time searching to find your content when they first land on your site or page.

“we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience.”

In the Search Engine Journal article I linked to above (the first in the list), Alan Bleiweiss notes that “SEO is about understanding user experience as seen through search algorithms,” which is a point I’ve been trying to get across for years.

• How To Help Search Engines Find Your Content
• How To Help Search Engines Understand Your Content

User experience is the key here. What can we do as designers to help people find the content?

• Make the main page heading the dominant element
• Use more minimalist design so content stands out
• Add less superfluous elements in general
• Use grids and strong alignment for clear content placement
• Clearly separate content from ads — make it clear which is which
• Use proximity to better organize page elements
• Make better use of space
• Adjust visual weights to create a clear visual hierarchy

In other words follow basic design principles. If we think about our visitors first we should be ok and not suffer from the page layout algorithm change. Quite honestly if you’re following basic design principles and paying attention to user experience you shouldn’t need to change anything. You’re likely doing the right thing now.

The above is all well and good when it comes to the visual side of things. How about when we’re structuring our code?

You probably want to place content as close to top as possible. That doesn’t mean it needs to be the absolute first thing in the file, but you probably want to get content in there above any ads if possible.

This is how things need to be done in responsive design anyway as, outside of complex css positioning, single columns will always show elements in same order they appear in html.

This will change when the flexible box model is more widely adopted by browsers and designers, but for now the order you see things in a single column layout is pretty much the same order things appear in the code so your html structure and visuals need to be in the same order.

And you probably don’t want to follow Google’s AdSense heatmap shown below, or at least understand you aren’t meant to fill every block with an ad.

Summary

As with all Google algorithm changes this one is long on vagueness and short on detail. The overall message is that too many ads obscuring your content is bad and will be treated as bad in the search results. If you try to stuff too many ads at the top of your page, expect a drop in ranking.

While the details aren’t specific you can probably use a little common sense in regards to what’s excessive and where “the fold” is. I’m sure before too long SEOs will be figure out some of the details and share them with us.

I applaud Google’s efforts in wanting to rank pages richer in content than ads, even if they wouldn’t always pass their own tests. Even more I’m excited that how a web page is designed is continuing to show more importance in Google’s algorithms.

Design matters and if you think real people first and treat your visitors well, you’ll probably find search engines treat you well in return.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the start of what I assume will be this year’s drop with what did happen last year and to speculate on why it might happen during the holiday season.

I’ll revisit this look at the stats in a couple of months when the hopefully subsequent return of traffic occurs.

The Numbers

In the image above the blue line is search traffic to this site from November 19 – December 19 of this year. The orange line is from October 15 – November 14, also of this year.

I made sure the two lines begin and end on the same day of the week, Saturday to Monday to better compare the numbers.

You can see how consistent search traffic is when we compare day of the week to day of the week. The gap seen on the left of the image is Thanksgiving weekend for this year. Other than those few days everything aligns almost eerily well until the last few days.

Starting on the 16th of December search traffic seems to be dropping off.

Below is a similar image showing last year’s numbers. It should look familiar with the Thanksgiving gap on the left and the traffic drop on the right. Last year’s drop started on the 14th of the month.

The two graphs are too similar not to think there’s something going on more than coincidence. What possible causes could there be for this annual drop in search traffic?

The graphs for total traffic (above and below) also show less traffic for the later month, but neither is as consistent as the search graphs alone. Neither referral and direct traffic show such a direct correlation.

The traffic loss is mainly coming from long tail keywords as total keywords sending traffic dropped about 15% between months.

Taking a look at the top landing page on the site the numbers, month over month, are nearly identical (13,548 – 13,465, a 0.62% difference).

Probable Cause

There are a several reasons I can think of to help explain what’s going on. Traffic naturally falls on holidays as you can see with the Thanksgiving numbers. It also falls on the 4th of July, Labor Day, etc.

The drop off here clearly starts before Christmas, but it’s probably safe to say many people are already in holiday mode and will be for a few weeks.

With the idea of holiday mode already starting, here are a few possibilities for what’s going on.

My blog posting is weaker — Traffic here always spikes on days i post and trails off over the days that follow. I’ve noticed the better the headline, the more traffic visits the post and the more the post then gets spread across social sites.

The increased sharing might lead to increased search traffic for a time, perhaps something to do with a freshness ranking boost.

Like many people I’m slowly drifting into holiday mode and perhaps my posting isn’t quite as good for a few weeks. This would more easily explain losses in referral and direct traffic, but it’s conceivable search traffic would fall off too.

People are searching less for information and more for product — Search traffic here is mainly people looking for information. You’d expect more product searches this time of year and since this site doesn’t have products for sale there should be less search traffic.

Does more product searches also mean less informational searches? Perhaps. It also makes sense the week leading up to Christmas would see the most product searches.

It’s possible this alone would account for the decreased traffic here.

Google (and SE’s in general) are tweaking results to favor products pages — For a few weeks on either side of Christmas this could make sense for them to do, while people are in the buying mode.

Is it possible that it’s not just more product based searches, but also more product based results to some queries that would be considered informational at other times of he year?

I tried looking for some kind of proof as I think this the most interesting of the possible causes. I couldn’t find anything though to indicate search engines might be showing different results this time of year.

I tried searching to see if others had suggested this might be happening without much luck. The two posts below allude to the possibility, though also without proof.

• Christmas boost to the Google coffers?
• Google boosts ‘product search’ for holidays

People in gift buying mode are paying more attention to ads — It’s also possible that during the holidays ads are capturing attention a little more than they might at other times of the year.

Maybe it’s not so much that search engines are showing different results, but that people are noticing different results or ads because they are more often in buying mode.

I think the most probable explanation is still as simple as people are going into holiday mode. From there everything else follows.

My own holiday mode attitude probably leads to post titles not being as traffic attracting and it seems reasonable that some are focusing in more on products for a few weeks than information.

The possibility that SEs tweak algorithms is very interesting, though I can’t find any proof so it is 100% speculation. It would make sense for them to do, especially as it’s last minute shopper time.

I wonder though if the holidays alone are enough to explain everything would the graphs be so consistent? Wouldn’t the change in search traffic be a little less consistent?

Summary

I should have expected to see the drop in search traffic this week, but I had completely forgotten about it. As soon as I checked Analytics, though I knew what was going on. Just as it did last year, traffic was about to show a holiday slump.

The drop appears to have started exactly as it did last year and it’ll be interesting to check back in a couple of months to see if that pattern continues.

I’m hoping it does since the end result was an overall increase in traffic that lasted all year. I’ll let you know what happens sometime in February. If for some reason I forget, please remind me and I’ll grab the stats.

How about you? Does your site gain or lose traffic this time of year? My guess is your answer will depend on whether or not your site is informational in nature or if it sells products.

How do you make sure that your site is one of the gainers when the next algorithm update comes along?

How to Build a Solid SEO Foundation

Over the years I’ve seen both positive and negative reports after algorithm changes. Casual observation suggests that those who lose have typically pushed the envelope a little farther than they should have.

Those with positive reports tend to be the people who focused long term by putting a solid foundation in place making their sites more resistant to changes.

What I want to present here are some basic concepts to get your house in order. What follows isn’t a recipe for seo success and it doesn’t contain any secret tips or tricks. Much of it won’t even sound like seo.

It’s simply a foundation to build on and it’s something you don’t need an advanced degree in seo theory to understand. However if you apply these non-seo concepts you’ll be surprised by how much traffic search engines send you.

My seo friends might notice I’m ignoring a few very important aspects of seo. I swear I’m not crazy. I’m ignoring them for reasons, which I’ll explain later in the post.

Here then is a simple (in terms of understanding) strategy for seo success.

Build an Accessible and Usable Site

This might not be so simple for the average person, but you build websites all day long, don’t you?

Accessibility is usually linked with helping people with disabilities, but more generally it means helping anyone and anything access different parts of your site.

For example you’ll add an alt description to images conveying important information so anyone who can’t see the image can still get the information. Search engines can’t see those images so that same description helps them get the information.

There are 2 important things your code needs to do where seo is concerned

• Help search engines find your content
• Help search engines understand your content

The more accessible and usable your site, the more it does both.

Follow standards and structure your site so it’s easy to crawl. Use semantic html, microformats and other structured microdata to help machines understand your content.

If you aren’t a web developer then you probably want to hire someone for this. Ask questions of your developer to know whether he or she understands accessibility issues.

Create Great Content

Search engines present results with content. They want to present the best content available. The word “best” is, of course, subjective.

What I mean by create great content is you should create the best content you can. Then make it better, and better, and…well…better. You get the idea.

No matter how good you think your content is you’re wrong. It could be and should be better. Your content can never be too good.

Be honest with yourself. Everyone says they have great content. Most people don’t. No matter what you think of the content on your site, keep working to make it better.

Search engines want to present the best and most relevant content in their results so that’s what you should be creating.

Promote Your Great Content

If you build it, he won’t notice unless you tell him. You have to promote your content in some way, not in a spammy way, but in some way.

Your goal should be to bring your content to the attention of real people who might like it.

It’s not about getting as many people as possible to quickly visit your page. It’s about getting the page in front of the people who are likely to be interested in what’s there.

The “how” will depend on the type of content and your industry.

One common tactic is guest posting. You create content similar to your own and place it on a site similar to yours. That other site becomes a marketing channel. It introduces your great content to a group of people likely to enjoy it.

Seek different promotional channels. Every social networking site can be a channel. Any place that lets you advertise is a promotional channel.

The basic idea is to leverage these channels to reach people you don’t currently reach on your site in order to let attract them back to your site.

Measure and Iterate with Analytics

You aren’t going to have the same success with every marketing channel and every piece of content.

Some marketing channels might not have audiences with a good match for your site or have an audience too small to make it worthwhile. Each requires different tactics for success and you may find you’re better working certain tactics and not so great working others.

You’ll also find that you’re better able to create certain kinds of content and that some topics have more or less search competition than others. You’ll rank quicker for some subjects than others.

You find all these things out through analytics. Learn which sites are sending you traffic. Learn which pages on your site are attracting more attention. Learn whatever you can and do more of the things that work and less of the things that don’t work.

Where’s the Real SEO Stuff?

So you’ve probably noticed the above has little to no mention of things like keywords and links, page titles, headings, and other on-page factors. These things and many others are important to seo, however I didn’t mention them for a reason.

For the beginner I think all the detailed talk does 2 things that often derail the seo effort before it gets started.

• It confuses people — There are so many factors to consider with seo and so much misinformation about them that it’s hard to tie it all together. You won’t understand the details of seo until you first understand a solid marketing foundation.
• It leads to micro focus — When all people read about is the tactics that’s all they ever think about. It’s why people ask how many keywords they can use in meta tags or what keyword density is ideal. This micro focus leads people toward things that are largely unimportant while they ignore the big picture.

That doesn’t mean I’ve completely ignored some of these seo things though. For example…

Links

I’m sure you’ve seen it mentioned somewhere that to rank well web pages need links. Guess what? That’s what promotion is. Along with the guest post you wrote came a link or two back to your site.

The best links are the ones other people build for you. When you create remarkable content people remark on it. They share it. And how do people share content online? By linking to it.

Once you’ve seeded things a little by promoting your content, the people who like it will share it and build links for you.

Instead of spending time asking someone to link to you, you can spend that time creating more and better content, making your site more accessible, and seeking new channels for promotion.

Keywords

If you write a focused article you naturally use keywords.

I’ve done exactly 0 keyword research prior to writing this post, but in time it’ll rank for phrases around some general themes on seo. Why? Because in writing a post about seo, I’ve naturally used words associated with the topic.

You want a product page to rank? What words will people use to search for a product?

• The product name
• A description of the product
• Product benefits
• Problems the product solves

The above are things a well written product page should be addressing with or without keyword research.

Now there is an important consideration in that the words you naturally use might not be the words potential customers naturally use. This is a major reason for keyword research.

In addition to the words themselves you want to understand the intent behind the words people use.

However if you pay attention to your industry and more importantly what your customers say about your industry, common words phrases will become part of your natural vocabulary.

I don’t want to leave the impression that you don’t need to do keyword research. You should be researching keywords and phrases. What I want to get across is that by paying attention to your industry, especially the customers of your industry, you’ll naturally be doing a fair amount of keyword research.

Summary

It may seem counter intuitive, but you can often do well with search engines when you stop thinking about search engines. Once upon a time seo success was based on knowing a few tricks for where to place a word or phrase in your code. That time is long gone.

Search engines want to rank content that people find valuable. Search engines are following real people and so you should too.

If your site appeals to real people; if you can find ways to get people to visit your site, stick around, and tell their friends, without a search engine having any part of the process you’ll find search engines end up sending you a lot of traffic.

None of this post should be taken as me saying seo isn’t important or that you should ignore things like keyword research and link building. You should be doing both.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s more important to build a solid marketing foundation by building the best website you can build.

Once you have that foundation in place you can work some of the nuanced details that is seo. They do work and can help you get even more traffic.

However if you never do anything you would call seo or hire someone to do it for you, you can still pick up search traffic, by following the 4 steps described here.

Create the best content you can and place it on the most accessible site you can build. Promote it through different marketing channels and then measure the results to adjust all of the above.

Today we’ll continue and conclude this discussion on the value of links.

We’ll look at the anchor text of links and link diversity and then offer some thoughts about putting everything together so you can better determine which link has more value for your site.

Anchor Text: What’s Being Voted For?

In an election what’s being voted for is known before the vote is taken. With links we need to ask what’s being voted for after the vote is recorded. What specifically is being recommended with the link?

Anchor text (the clickable words that make up the link) tell us what the link is recommending. So too do the words near the anchor text as well as all the words on the page doing the linking.

Search engines can also look at what’s on the page being linked to. If this page is about typography and it links to another page also about typography then the link is likely a vote for typography related words and phrases.

The closer we are to the link the more specific the words tell us what’s being recommended. The further from the anchor text the more general the recommendation.

Anchor text is still the strongest signal for what’s being recommended with any link. As such one seo tactic is to continue to use the same anchor text for every link you can get pointing to one of your pages.

If we think back to the cat and mouse game it’s not really natural for every link to a page to use the exact same anchor text. It might be a signal that something is being manipulated.

Some tips about keywords in anchor text:

• Try to have your main keyword phrases included in links back to the page
• Where possible vary the anchor text pointing back to your pages so they appear natural
• When others link to your page they’ll often use either your page title or url as the anchor text of the link. It’s a good idea to include keywords in one or both.
• Regardless of the seo if someone clicks a link for “WordPress Development” they expect to land on a page about WordPress development. Ideally make it clear what your page is about as quick as possible.

Link Diversity: How Many Votes Does One Site Get?

In an election we only get one vote. With links we can vote or recommend the same page over and over again. Which would you think has more value, 100 links from a single domain or 1 link each from 100 different domains?

If you consistently link to the same resource again and again it likely does say you find that resource more valuable than those you only linked to once or twice. Still it’s you voting for the same thing again and again. How many votes should you get?

It’s not too hard to see how one might stuff ballots by linking to the same few pages over and over.

On the other hand if lots of different domains are linking to a page it suggests the page is important. More people are voting for it. It’s harder to manipulate lots of people than it is to manipulate one or two. The single vote from many sources is likely going to be trusted more than the many votes from a single source.

All else being equal a link from a new domain is likely more valuable than another link from the same domain.

Putting it all Together

With everything we now know about links in mind how should we decide when a link is worth getting? How can we decide if the effort to gain a link is better spent doing something else.

First think about the indirect and direct benefits of the link. If CNN wants to write a profile on me any link it adds will be great even if those links have 0 seo value. A lot of people are going to see the link and potentially click on it. It’s a good link even if there was no such thing as a search engine.

Links providing good direct traffic will generally provide good search traffic as well. The reverse is not necessarily true. A link helping your page rank better may not result in good direct traffic through that link.

More links are generally better than less links. Realistically the goal is to get more of the right kind of links. Your goal is to increase the total value flowing into your site. That could be a few high quality links or many low quality links.

One link worth 100 link value is worth the same as 100 links each worth 1 link value. Each of those 100 links is less valuable than the single link, but together they add up to the same value. Which is easier for you to get? The one high quality link or the 100 low quality links?

• Directories—Does your listing need to be editorially approved? If not how honest is the recommendation? How much should a search engine value the link?
• Social media links—Most social sites add nofollow to external links. The links are easy to add. How much value should a search engine give the link?
• Forum signatures—Again there’s little editorial approval with forum links. How much trust would a search engine have in these links? How much value should it give to the link?

Let’s consider directories with a little more detail. A directory like Yahoo does editorially approve each listing. Yahoo itself is seen as a trusted and authority site. A link from the Yahoo directory is probably a good link. Compare that to Bob’s free for all link exchange directory.

How about article marketing and guest posting. Both involve creating content that’s published on other sites in order to acquire more links. In the former you write an article and then submit it to any number of article directories. In the latter you write a highly targeted article for a specific site and audience.

With article marketing the page and site where it’s published uses little if any editorial control. The sites are generally not filled with great content. They aren’t authorities. They do let you control the anchor text. The goal of article marketing has been to have your content end up on as many sites as possible to increase link quantity.

With guest blogging a great deal of editorial control is associated with getting published. The site in question is ideally an authority on your topic or at least has the most topical authority that will accept your post. Again you can usually control the anchor text. The goal of guest posting is to gain a few links from one very good source.

Which of the above is then the better tactic for building links through content on other sites?

Hopefully you now have a better idea how to answer the question and even better be able to justify why you think one tactic will work best for your site.

Summary

Links are important when it comes to which page ranks where. In an ideal world we might be able to consider all votes to be equal, however, linking on the web isn’t ideal and search engines need to apply some value scale to links.

SEOs use all sorts of tools to attempt to measure the value of one link as it compares to another. I find if you keep a few simple ideas in mind you can often see which links are likely to be more valuable than others.

• Ask yourself if the link can be trusted. What signal does it give to show it’s an honest recommendation?
• Ask yourself who’s doing the linking. Does a recommendation from this source count for more than other sources?
• Ask yourself what the link is saying. What is this link making a recommendation for?

If you can think about links in these general terms it can help you understand which link is more valuable and guide you about which tactics you can pursue for long term growth.

There are many more details in regards to the value of links than what I’m sharing here. Hopefully this post will make those details easier to understand should you decide to learn more. Hopefully it will also help you better decide on strategies and tactics for building links.

We’ll talk about trust and authority in links today and then next time we’ll look at anchor text of the links, link diversity, and offer thoughts for putting all this common sense to use.

Links as Votes or Recommendations

Google’s idea for using links to rank web pages came from scientific papers. The most important scientific papers are usually those cited most often in other scientific papers. Similarly links could be used as an indication of which web page was most important.

While the situation with links has certainly evolved and become more complex, the basic idea is still that links are how search engines find content and a link is a vote or recommendation by one web page for another.

In a simple election more votes for one side means that side wins. On the web if everyone could be counted on to only link to things they honestly recommend we might be able to rank pages based on which has more links.

Unfortunately we can’t always count on people to make honest recommendations.

We’re all biased in favor of our own sites, especially when money is on the line. Knowing that links are an important part of ranking many people try to increase the number of links pointing into their sites and pages in a way that really isn’t an honest recommendation or vote.

This brings us back to the cat and mouse game. More votes can’t win the election as people buy votes and stuff ballot boxes. Search engines need to do more than count all the votes. They need to sort through the votes to decide which ones are legitimate and which ones to throw away.

It isn’t a black and white thing either where votes are good or bad. It’s more a case of shades of gray where some votes (links) count more or less than others.

You also have to consider that each query typed is a different election, but the votes are collected en masse for all elections. Search engines not only have to decide how to value votes, but which election each vote applies to.

in this link = vote or recommendation concept, there are 3 different aspects of links that are looked at to determine the value of the link and which queries to apply the link to.

• How much can the vote (link) be trusted?
• Who’s doing the voting (linking)?
• What’s being voted for (linked to)?

Can You Trust the Vote?

If you’re looking for a plumber you might ask friends and family who they use and their experiences. Your friends and family may not have expertise in plumbing, but you likely trust them to give you an honest answer.

However your cousin on your mother’s side gets a kickback from a plumber friend every time he can send his friend a new customer. Do you trust him when he points you to his friend? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he’s an honest guy though maybe his recommendation is all about helping himself make some extra money.

Trust is important in links. Can search engines trust the motivation behind the link?

• Internal vs external—What others say about you counts more than what you say about yourself. A link from another site is likely seen as more valuable than a link from the same site. Internal links are still an important part of seo and link building though.
• Paid links—Is the link an honest recommendation or was the linker paid to add the link. Payment could be monetary or in trade a in a link exchange
• Good and Bad neighborhoods—Does the site linking to you generally link to good sources? Trusted sources? Do the sites linking to them come from trusted sources? The company you keep says something about you.
• Editorial control—Did you add the link yourself or did someone make an editorial decision to include the link. If a link can be acquired simply by filling out a form how much of an honest recommendation is it?
• Nofollow—When we add rel=”nofollow” to a link we are saying we don’t necessarily trust the page on the other side of the link link and please don’t count it as a vote or recommendation for that page

The questions above all go to trust in links. There are a lot more questions you can ask, but when you’re thinking about whether or not a link is a good one to get ask yourself whether or not a search engine would consider that link an honest vote or recommendation for your page.

The more likely the link will be trusted, the more value it likely has in the eyes of search engines.

Authority: Who’s Recommendation is Worth More?

In a democratic election everyone has an equal vote. However when it comes to recommendations some recommendations count more than others.

Say you have two neighbors. One is a nobel prize winning scientist. The other is a plumber. The scientist holds several Ph.Ds, is well read, and in a general a very smart person. The plumber never went to college. He worked as a plumber’s assistant right out of high school and years later took over the business.

If you have a general question about how the universe works you’re probably going to ask the scientist. While there’s no guarantee he knows the answer, the odds are he’s going to be a better source than the plumber.

We expect the scientist to know a lot about a lot. However, if you have a question about how best to install a garbage disposal who are you going to ask? Probably the plumber. He may not know as much as the scientist about a lot of things, but he probably knows more about plumbing.

The scientist has general authority. The plumber has topical authority.

People ultimately have authority by displaying a certain knowledge or expertise. Assuming we couldn’t actually talk directly to them we might see people having authority based on how others suggest they’re an authority, For example the PH.Ds our scientist has earned are others saying he’s an authority.

It’s similar with links and websites. Those sites that have more and better links are seen as authorities. A site like Wikipedia is linked to from all over the web. Many different sites link to many different Wikipedia pages. The Wikipedia has general authority.

Sites like Smashing Magazine and Nettuts aren’t anywhere near as well known as the Wikipedia. Both sites are pretty well known in design and development circles though, and if you had a question about design or development you’d sooner check Smashing Magazine or Nettuts before checking Wikipedia.

While the Wikipedia has more general authority, both Smashing Magazine and Nettuts have more topical authority when the topic is web design or development.

• PageRank (PR)—Is a measurement of general authority. It’s a very general measurement at best as the PageRank (PDF) you and I see is often out of date and it’s not shown to us on the same scale as Google uses internally.

  PR only applies to Google. Other search engines have similar metrics, but they aren’t called PageRank.

• PR is not topical authority—No matter how trusted or how authoritative in general sites like Wikipedia, CNN, and the Whitehouse are not go to sources when I need to answer a question about PHP.
• Domain and Page—We can place authority in a single page or in an entire domain. We can say Wikipedia has a lot of general authority without making any judgement about any of it’s specific pages.

  Some sites may have one or two great pages that are the defacto source on a topic, but the site in question may have little other valuable content or valuable content about the same topic.

When thinking about a link ask yourself how much authority does the page in question have. Is the page an authority. Is it located on a site you can trust? Do you trust the page and site in general or only on specific topics.

You can usually figure out who the topical authorities are simply by paying attention to your topic. Odds are the sites you would go to first for information are the same sites search engines see as authorities.

Summary

Link data accounts for a significant portion of search engine ranking engines. Outside of low to no competition keyphrases, links are a necessity if you want to rank well.

More links are not necessarily better. It’s more link value we’re after and a few high value links can outweigh many more low value links. While none of us knows exactly how search engines might value links if we think about a few basic concepts we can generally predict which links will be more valuable for our sites.

At the core a link is still a vote or recommendation by one page or site for another. The specifics get complex, but always keep the main concept of link = vote in mind. While there are a lot of different factors that make one recommendation more important than another, most of these can be grouped under a few major ideas.

Today we looked at factors of trust and authority, 2 key components of the value of any link. If a search engine can’t trust a link now or perhaps won’t trust it in the future, it’s not likely to contribute much to ranking. If a search engine things one page or site more of an authority (either general or topical) it likely places more value on links coming out of that page or site.

Next time we’ll talk about anchor text, the clickable words that make up a link, and what value information the anchor text conveys.

This post is aimed mainly at those new to link building and its goal is to help make some general concepts easier to understand. Next week we’ll continue with some thoughts about what makes one link more or less valuable than another.

Very Brief History of the Search Engine Cat and Mouse Game

Search engines have a difficult task. You type in a few words and they need to quickly recommend web pages they think you’d like. There are 3 things involved in doing that.

• Search engines need to find your content
• Search engines need to understand your content
• Search engines need to prioritize content from across the web

Before Google this was mostly done through the words on your web page, whether part of the actual content or part of the code producing that content. The problem with that approach is that it was very easy to manipulate.

People would repeat keywords over and over on the page, resulting in a lot of nonsensical content. The net effect was the best content wasn’t always what you found at the top of the results.

Google changed things by adding links as a ranking factor.

Given how much money can be made by having your site rank well some site owners will always look for holes in any algorithm and attempt to manipulate rankings in ways search engines don’t care for.

That includes links. People observe what works and seek to manipulate those factors for quicker results. Search engines observe how people are attempting to manipulate things and seek to close the holes.

It’s an endless game of cat and mouse. Find hole in algorithm. Take advantage of hole. Search engines close hole. Find a new hole in the algorithm…

Think Like a Search Engineer

The above explains one of the reason search algorithms change.They don’t only change because of the cat and mouse game, however. They also change because search engines are always working to provide a better experience for end users.

The point is algorithms change. And with all that change there’s a lot of advice online, often conflicting advice. How can you separate the good from the bad?

One answer is to think like a search engineer.

If you can imagine yourself with the job of being a search engineer and thinking about what you might do to improve those algorithms you can often predict what will and won’t work in the future.

For example one tactic for link building has been link exchanges or reciprocal links. People agree to exchange links for no other reason than to gain links. Much of the time these links aren’t going to be useful for the visitors of either site. They exist solely for the seo benefit.

A search engineer isn’t going to want those links to improve how either site ranks since the links aren’t an honest signal for the quality of either site.

It stands to reason that search engineers would be working to lesson or remove the value of reciprocal links. A few years ago that’s exactly what happened and many people who built links mainly through link exchanges watched as their sites lost traffic overnight.

When it comes to links (or any seo tactic) ask yourself if it was your search engine would you consider that tactic a signal for finding quality content? Ultimately the goal of search engines is to return the best content they can in the results.

Anything likely to indicate content is good will probably be something that will continue to be good seo. Anything that doesn’t indicate good content is likely to not work at some point in the future.

Competition

There’s one last concept I want to mention to prepare us for understanding link value and that’s competition. How many pages you’re competing with for a given keyphrase impacts how many links you’ll need or what link factors are most important.

An example should make this clear.

Imagine there’s one and only one page on the internet about the subject of red widgets. We know it’s about red widgets, because both words and the phrase are used on the page and in the code.

Assuming the page has been indexed by a search engine it’s likely to be returned as the #1 result as it’s the only page on the subject.

Now imagine a second page about red widgets is also found and indexed. It includes red widgets on the page similarly to the first site. Search engines now need to decide which is the better result. They might look at:

• How often the phrase us used on the page and in the code
• Any emphasis of the words and phrase on the page and in the code
• Where are the words and phrase used on the page and in the code
• Are synonyms for the words and phrase used on the page and in the code

It might be enough to look at what happens on the page itself when there are only 2 or a few potential results.

How about when the number of indexed pages about red widgets becomes larger. Is the page that mentions the phrase one more time really better? Does that one bolded occurrence of the phrase really improve the quality of the page?

As more and more pages are competing the importance of links increases. When no pages have any links pointing to them the one that gets one or two regardless of where those links come from is probably the one that ends up ranking best.

When more of the competing pages start acquiring links search engines have to look deeper than the sheer number. They have to start asking some questions about links such as:

• Can we trust all these links equally?
• Which factors of the link offer a better signal of quality?
• What is this link really indicting?

Search engines have to start ranking the links themselves. They have to create some link value scale to determine what any link is really suggesting about the page it points to.

Summary

I want to leave things today with the idea that different links have different values associated with them. Hopefully this post has helped you understand why that needs to be the case.

Next week we’ll pick up and start talking about what might influence the value of a link in the eyes of a search engine.

For now understand that search algorithms evolve and are constantly changing. A cat and mouse game exists between some exploiting holes and search engineers then closing those holes. If you can imagine yourself as a search engineer you can often predict what seo tactics will and won’t work.

Know too that as competition increases search engines need to dig deeper into what they measure. More doesn’t automatically win the game. Quality matters. Some links are more valuable than others.

Next time we’ll look at individual links and talk about why one link is seen as more valuable than the next.

This problem usually isn’t obvious, but whenever I have some time, I like to test content to see if one converts better. So with that, let me give you a real life example.

Traffic is Only Part of the Equation

I have been a client that I perform link building services for. My client is a limousine company and there are about 12 other limo companies in his local market. Out of these 13 limo companies, he is one of the newest.

In SEO, being 10 years behind is a steep hill to climb. For most of my clients, they see a little traffic when they break the top 10, good traffic when they’re in the top 3, but they’re amazed when they hit the first spot in the search result.

For this client, it took us about 8 months from creating his website to getting him ranked #1. The problem was that when he got to number 1, he was only receiving about 1 new limo rental per week from the website.

When he called me and explained that he was seeing his website ranked #1, but nobody was calling, I checked his stats. Analytics were proving that people were visiting his website, in fact he was getting about 100 searchers from Google per week, that’s about a 1% conversion ratio, which is horribly low in this industry!

Design Problems

I had done my job well, but there was still a problem. I looked at his website, and it was embarrassing. There were 7 words misspelled, 4 grammatical errors and the page looked like it was from 1999.

If you think I’m exaggerating, I can tell you honestly that his phone number was flashing and his page was a left menu with a frame for the content!

It wasn’t as bad as the image above, but it was close.

After meeting with my client, I helped him redesign his website to a very clean and simple design. When his new design launched, he called me the very next day and told me that he had received two calls on the website phone number.

That week he received 7 calls total and over the last 3 months has averaged 5.2 calls per week. Last month he purchased two new Hummer H2 limos to keep up with the demand that has come from ranking #1.

Design Solutions

We made numerous design changes and enhancements. While I can’t disclose the exact changes, I can give you some “information” that might help you in a similar way.

• Make calls to action clear—Designing a website that sells is at least worth a whole post. If you’re interested in a follow up post about creating calls to action, let me know in the comments.
• Eliminate the unnecessary.—With my clients website, he really liked the social media interactions on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

  He liked them all so much, that he had latest updates from each of his accounts and his website was very focused on this aspect.

  While this shows that you’re involved in the community and highly reachable, it can be confusing for someone who comes to your website to look for a way to contact you.

• Make your phone number obvious—My clients number one goal was to have people interested in a limousine calling his receptionist. He didn’t care about emails or using the contact form (although we still have those).

  A successful website visit always ended in a phone call. To that end, we put the phone number in a big bold font in the header, in the footer, on the contact page, and even at the bottom of his blog posts.

Summary

My point in all of this is to demonstrate that being ranked #1 is only part of the equation. Have you split tested your landing pages? Have you tried a different color scheme? Is your website content selling your services? Are your competitors offering a new or different service that you should address?

I love discussing content, design and SEO so if you have any questions, post them in the comments below! If you haven’t already done it, make sure and grab the easy links like Ezilon, DMOZ, and Wikipedia (if your city-industry has an entry)!

Brandon Hopkins owns AfterHim Media, a Fresno website design company that specializes in link building and ranking #1. Contact Brandon if you want to rank #1 for your keywords!

Instead I analyzed and researched, and ultimately chose to wait before doing anything rash. Doing nothing turned out to be the right choice as my search traffic has not only come back, but increased by about 15%, all from me changing not a thing.

What Happened?

2010 was a pretty good year for me in terms of traffic growth into this site. It hasn’t all been search traffic, but search makes up anywhere from 35–45% of the traffic here depending on the month. For most of the year traffic had steadily grown, punctuated by an occasional large step as I found new sources to market the site.

The week of Thanksgiving, traffic dropped as you might expect. I didn’t think much of the drop and expected it would return the following week and then perhaps see a similar dip as we approached Christmas and then New Year’s.

While traffic did come back, it was a little less than I expected based on the weeks leading into Thanksgiving. Traffic then took a nosedive a little earlier than I would have thought to see any decline. I could pinpoint the drop to December 14th.

Over the course of about a month (Dec 14 – Jan 13) traffic from search engines (mainly Google) was down 20% over the previous month.

Some of this was expected, but again it happened earlier than I thought and the drop was also greater than expected. What’s worse is that once the holidays ended traffic didn’t seem to come back to the same level where it had been. It was about 10% less than where it had been prior to Thanksgiving.

While in the middle of the traffic loss I had to decide what to do.

Research and Analysis

Instead of panicking I went with 2 other courses of action.

• Search the web to see if anyone else was reporting similar issues and even more to see if anyone offered a cause and a solution
• Dig a little deeper into the numbers to compare to previous years and see if the data could reveal more about the possible cause of the traffic loss

The first didn’t lead to much. A few people reported traffic loss and one or two started seeing the loss about the same date I was seeing it. However there was nothing to indicate a possible cause and no solution.

Through Analytics I found I was mainly losing traffic from long tail keywords, which I found troubling. I wondered if perhaps Google had made an algorithmic change that was no longer favoring this site on many long tail phrases.

Earlier in the year Google had made such a change, now commonly referred to as their May Day Update. Lot’s of sites lost long tail traffic at that time. This site wasn’t one of them. In fact the May Day Update started sending more traffic my way. It didn’t seem logical to think that 7 months later I was finally being affected by that change.

Looking at the numbers

For comparison here are traffic numbers in terms of visits and the associated number of keyword phrases sending that traffic between mid October and mid February, the last 2 years.

In both years numbers are up significantly after the middle of January. Last year the dip in December was marginal. This year it was quite significant.

Also note that while I’m showing the numbers from mid January to mid February here, those numbers didn’t exist at the time of this analysis. Note too that last year’s January increase can be explained by some high quality links I had gained during December.

Possible Causes

While neither searching nor analysis shed much light, I did have some thoughts on what the problem might be.

• Normal loss of traffic during the holidays—I had expected less search traffic around the holidays, just not as much as I was seeing.
• Search loss was tied to referral loss—Referral traffic had also dipped, though not quite as much as a few sources that had been sending consistent traffic stopped. Mentions on Twitter and Facebook were also down some. I thought perhaps there was a connection.
• A significant algorithmic change favoring sites that weren’t mine—Since I didn’t find much when searching online I assumed this didn’t happen.
• A loss of indexed pages—Since long tail traffic was down i thought perhaps a number of pages might have been removed from the index or maybe there was some kind of duplicate content issue. I couldn’t find any evidence of this.

In the end I found nothing conclusive or even promising as a possible cause and solution. Given that anything I would have done would have been based on a guess, I felt taking a wait and see approach was the best option.

I planned on more research as more data came in.

Traffic Comes Back

Waiting was the right choice as you can see in the data above. It took a little longer than expected, but the lost traffic came back. In fact it’s been steadily rising ever since and is now up about 15% from pre-Thanksgiving levels.

Once again let me remind you that I did nothing to bring the traffic back.

Naturally I’ve done things to market this site, including some things to increase search traffic, but I haven’t changed anything significantly from what I was doing back in the fall. Just continuing with what I had been doing.

My guess is that in the end what I observed was normal holiday traffic loss for a site like this one. The links gained last year might have masked a similar drop. I’ll have to pay attention next year.

What I Might Have Done

Had I been in panic mode I might have made some rash decisions. I might have

• Begun mass rewriting of page titles and content across the site
• Restructured the site content
• Attempted to fix an imaginary duplicate content issue
• Spammed the web for quick links

The problem with any of the above is that as my waiting clearly showed there was nothing wrong with the site. At least nothing wrong causing this problem. I’m sure there’s plenty of things wrong with the site not tied to this problem.

Making changes could have done more harm than good. I hope you’ll agree that spamming the web is never a good option, but even the other things I could have done weren’t necessarily good options either.

I would have been trying to fix a problem that didn’t exist. Fortunately I chose not to.

Summary

Every business has its ups and downs and that includes how much search traffic is flowing into a site. While no one enjoys experiencing the downs the worst thing you can do is panic when they happen.

What I mainly want you to take from this post is the lesson to never panic. Sometimes through no fault of your own things will take a turn for the worse. If you panic when it happens you could make things far worse and cause the problems you hope to solve.

When things go bad do try to figure out why. See if the same bad things have happened to others and take a deeper look into any changes you might have made. If you’re sure there’s a problem ask others to take a look as well.

However if you don’t find anything conclusive don’t rush to take action for the sake of doing something. Sometimes the best strategy or tactic is to do nothing.

We need look no further than last week’s post on helping search engines find your content for an example.

In that post I used hiking trails in the mountains as an analogy for search engines crawling links. Through that analogy the post uses words like hiking, trail, and mountains several times. Does that make it relevant for those words? Not really. Most people searching for hiking trails in the mountains aren’t going to want to land on that post since it won’t offer anything useful to them.

That post is relevant to keywords around themes like information architecture, search engine spiders and crawlability. Someone searching around those topics might find the post useful.

Can we help search engines understand what a single post is really about and even more what a site as a whole is about through site structure alone? If we can do both we have a better chance of ranking for the words and phrases where our content meets what people are looking for.

One technique for helping search engines understand your site better is siloing.

The image above and the one further down the page are screen shots from the Webmaster World thread that I believe was the first to discuss the idea of theming or siloing

What is Siloing?

Siloing (or theming) is the idea of organizing your content into several high level keyword themes that become the main sections of your site.

Inside those keyword themed sections you build vertical silos (a hierarchy of related content) and then develop internal linking to control how link equity (link juice, page rank) flows within and between each section.

These silos allow you to reinforce different keyword themes in each section and make it easier for search engines to understand what your site is about. Through silos of content and internal linking you create more keyword relevant pages for search engines and just as important make your site easier for people to understand and navigate.

There are 2 kinds of silos you can create.

• Directory silos
• Virtual silos

From the outside looking in, both types of silos appear the same. The main difference is behind the scenes in how you organize the content on the server. We’ll cover both in a little more detail below.

Additional Resources

Most of the thought about siloing comes from Bruce Clay, though I think the idea originated with Brett Tabke at Webmaster World. Below is one of the Webmaster World threads from 2001 discussing themes and a number of articles from Bruce Clay’s site.

I’d suggest reading through all of the articles listed below when you have a chance as most of the ideas about siloing probably come out of the articles below.

• Webmaster World Thread on Theming
• Theming Through Siloing
• Siloing Revisited
• Building a Web Site Theme with Silos
• Building a Web Site Theme with Silos, Part 2
• Building a Web Site Theme with Silos, Part 3: Folder/Directory Structure
• Building a Web Site Theme with Silos, Part 4B: Link Structure
• Building a Web Site Theme with Silos, Part Five: Keyword Rich Content
• Building a Web Site Theme with Silos, Part Six: Site Maps
• Siloing – How to Theme a Web Site for Clear Subject Relevance

How to Build Silos

Since we’re building silos around keyword themes, the first step is naturally some keyword research. One of my favorite PDFs about keyword research is the one provided by Pole Position Marketing on Keyword Researching and Selection (PDF).

The PDF talks about starting your research by finding core terms or themes instead of looking for specific words or phrases. These core terms will become the top of our silos. It’s how you’ll organize your content into sections and these core terms will likely become the links in your top level navigation.

Once you have your core terms you’ll dig deeper discovering longer and more specific phrases that will be used further down in the silo. In effect silos are like pyramids. Your main theme is at the top of the pyramid and you have a single page targeting the keyword. As you move down the pyramid you have additional content targeting more specific keywords around the same theme.

The further down the silo or pyramid and the more specific the keyword phrases, the less competition for each phrase and the more likely your page can rank well, pull traffic, and attract links. The equity from these links works its way back up the silo reinforcing the main theme along the way and helping your upper level pages rank for the more generic keywords targeting them.

Your upper level pages end up with the most internal links pointing to them and thus acquire more link equity, which they send back down the silo. Link equity continues to flow up and down inside each silo.

This should become clearer as we talk about directory and virtual silos so let’s talk about each.

Directory Silos

In a directory silo the relationships between pages are created by grouping similar content under the same directory. When linking inside one silo you can link to any page within that silo (within that directory). When linking between two different silos or directories you only want to link to the main landing page (the top level page) of the silo.

For example say you’re building a sports themed site. You might have content that relates to each of the 4 major U.S. sports leagues, baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.

All your baseball content would be in a single directory named baseball. At the top of the directory would be a landing page for the section, likely targeting the generic word baseball. Inside the directory you could have additional subdirectories based on your keyword research. You might have a subdirectory of content for baseball teams and another for baseball statistics.

Similarly your football content would all be located in one directory with various subdirectories based on the keywords your discovered for that theme. Same for your basketball and hockey sections of the site.

By keeping each theme separate from the others you build silos on your site. Any page in your baseball section can link to any other page inside the same baseball section. If the page wants to link to something inside the football section it should only link to the top level football page, which is the landing page for the football section.

You link only within the silo or to the very top of a different silo.

Virtual Silos

In a virtual silo the relationships between pages are created through links alone. This is the main difference between directory and virtual silos. In the virtual silos you don’t actually need to place content from different themes in different directories. All the content can be located in a single directory or any other structure you want.

You do need to link between pages the same way you link with a directory structure. Again you can link to any page within the silo or to the landing page of a different silo. The silos though, are created through links alone and hence they’re virtual. The concept and the linking is still the same as in the directory silo.

Personally I prefer the directory silo, since it makes things easier on you. It’s easier to see what content is part of what silo when those pages are physically located together and separate from the pages in another silo. It also makes naming files easier and creates some well formed URLs practically by default.

Take the baseball section of the sports site above. You’d probably name the main folder for the section (the silo) “baseball” and inside have folders named, teams and statistics. Your teams folder might then include pages named new-york-yankees.html and colorado-rockies.html. All pretty logical and easy to keep track of. Your pages will now have URLs like.

• domain.com/baseball/teams/new-york-yankees.html
• domain.com/baseball/teams/colorado-rockies.html

You can probably see just by the URLs how the keyword theme for the section is being reinforced. Imagine each of your specific team pages (30 in all) will link back up to the top of the section with the anchor text “baseball teams” reinforcing that phrase for the main baseball teams page. Your team pages and statistics pages link back up to the main baseball landing page, reinforcing the main keyword and theme.

Additionally you can leave a breadcrumb trail on the specific team pages that might look something like:

Sports > Baseball > Teams > New York Yankees

This way every page inside the silo links back up to the top reinforcing the main keywords in the silo as they do. Your most competitive phrases will end up with the most internal links pointing to them sending them the most link equity. Those links will also have optimized anchor text again helping them to rank.

Tight Linking in Silos

When all your pages are grouped appropriately in directories or linked to appropriately to create virtual directories, you have a tighter silo. If you allow linking between silos, from one of your baseball team pages to one of your football team pages, the silo becomes looser.

The tighter the silo the better the chance of ranking for your theme specific keywords and phrases. You can target your more general keywords by consistently linking back up the silo.

Sometimes it might make sense to link directly between pages in two different silos. maybe between teams playing in the same city. You don’t however want search engines following those links or passing link equity through them. You want the link equity to stay inside the silo as much as you can or send it to the very top of another silo. We’ll discuss one way for doing this in a moment.

By maintaining a tight silo you make it easier for search engines to understand what every page inside the silo is about and what keywords are relevant to those pages.

PageRank Sculpting

PageRank Sculpting became the thing to do a couple years ago when Google seemed to endorse the practice. SEOs would use rel=”nofollow” to control the flow of link equity (PageRank) within their sites. In some ways this could be seen as an advanced form of siloing where you weren’t necessarily as strict with where you linked, but you were strict with your use of rel=”nofollow”

The use of rel=”nofollow” was one way to deal with the problem described above, that of linking across silos when it made sense for people, but not sending any link equity to the other silo.

Unfortunately Google changed how rel=”nofollow” works. Originally it was assumed that adding it meant all the PageRank on the page would just be divided by the links that didn’t have nofollow applied. Google later changed it so that some PageRank did flow through the nofollowed link, only it didn’t go anywhere. In essence you now lose some link equity by using rel=”nofollow”

Better not to have the link at all from an seo perspective

If you do want to try siloing I wouldn’t recommend using rel=”nofollow” for PR sculpting. You’ll likely do more damage than anything else. You can try using other methods for conserving and controlling the flow of link equity in your site, but do know these are advanced tactics that may or may not work quite like you expect and may cause more harm than good if you’re unsure what you’re doing.

Additional Resources

Below are some articles that discuss the good and bad of PR sculpting.

• Matt Cutts on Nofollow and the Siloing Solution – Bruce Clay post
• PageRank sculpting – Matt Cutts post
• Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can’t Do It With Nofollow – offers additional ways to sculpt PR that don’t involve nofollow
• Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless – Why it’s pointless to be sculpting PR at all
• How To Get More Pages Indexed With Nofollow
• Dynamic Linking & Nofollow – Practical Examples, Diagrams, + FAQs

Do Silos Work?

That’s the key question isn’t it? If silos have no benefit why bother going through the trouble of setting them up? I wish I could give you a definitive answer about their effect on search engine ranking, but I can’t. The seo community is split on the subject as a simple image will show.

Above are the results from a Bruce Clay survey earlier this year. When asked if siloing was an important seo tactic the responses were split between the 2 extremes of it being important and not important.

I’ve yet to see anyone perform a test or study to show whether or not silos are effective. They certainly sound like they should be effective, yet in all I’ve read about them the one thing always lacking is evidence.

Then again when someone as knowledgeable about seo as Michael Gray runs a series on siloing your website and begins the series with the following quote I tend to take notice.

One of the more powerful tools an SEO can use when setting up or fixing an existing website is siloing or theming.

Proof or no proof I think it makes sense to consider siloing. First it’s hard to see how they could hurt. If there’s even a chance they help why not use them if there’s no associated risk?

However the main reason I think it makes sense to set up themes or silos in your site structure is they’re user friendly. They make it easier for real people to understand and navigate your site and in the end it’s real people who are most important.

Think about what you’re doing when you create silos on your site. You’re organizing content around related themes and linking to related content. Isn’t that something you want to do anyway? Siloing will just make you think a little more about the words people might use when searching for your content and make you a little more disciplined in regards to internal linking.

Additional Resources

Below is Michael’s 5 part series on siloing your website. This series will be less on the theory (though it’s still there) and more on the practical advice. Definitely worth reading, though I suggest you first read some of the posts listed above and understand the theory.

• How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead
• How To Silo Your Website: The Breadcrumb Trail
• How to Silo Your Website: The Content
• How To Silo Your Website:The Sidebar
• How To Silo Your Website: The Footer

Summary

Helping search engines understand what your site is about and helping them understand what content on your site is relevant for which keywords should be one goal of information architecture. You can accomplish both through the tactic known as siloing or theming.

The idea is to organize your site at the highest level around several keyword themes. Each theme becomes a section of your site and you build a hierarchy of content inside each section as a silo. Silos freely link within and link only to the top of neighboring silos.

The seo community is still divided about the effect of silos. Some swear by them and others think they aren’t so important. If you have an existing site structure in place I wouldn’t necessary tear it apart to rebuild it as a series of silos. On the other hand if you’re designing a new site or planning to restructure the content of a site anyway you may want to consider a silo approach.

There really isn’t a downside to organizing your content in silos and they serve a major upside in that they’re user friendly. Regardless of how search engines see your siloed site, your audience will likely find it more usable. That alone should be enough to consider using them as a structure on your next site.

Have you used silos? Have you found them to be effective?