Purple Widget – An SEO Experiment

One of the reasons for my purple widget SEO experiment was to gain more knowledge about blogs and how they worked and they performed in search engines.  I had a bit of an idea about both but sometimes I learn better by doing (and sometimes I learn by getting punched in the head over and over) so I’ve launched a few blogs including this one and am getting smarter (sometimes my head hurts).  One thing I’ve learned that definetely makes my head hurt is that WordPress sure comes out with new versions alot.  Seems like every time I log in to post (and I don’t do this as often as I should, but still) there is a new version I should update to.  Luckily, for lazy people (I mean effort economists) like me there is a great plugin called WordPress Automatic Upgrade that I absolutely love!  It gives me a link right above the WordPress notice telling me to update and then walks me through an easy 7-8 click upgrade process.  Presto, I’m upgraded for another 2 days until the next WordPress update. 

So why do I bring this up?  I’m glad you asked.

As you’ve already noticed I gave a link to the tool I find so valuable.  Not only did I link to them I used keyword rich text.  I would imagine that WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a pretty targeted term for them and since that is what my link says that URL will get some help being known as an WordPress Automatic Upgrade authority because they have another link pointing to them with that title.  Yes, a regular link without the keyword text would have helped as well but not as much.  So again, why did I bring this up?  Luckily for you, I have arrived at my point.

The bottom line is simple, the website http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html (hey another link to them!) created a great tool (aka – great content) and I (someone with a website) linked to them!  They didn’t ask me to, they didn’t pay me to (although I am not above this, but that will be the subject of a future post – should I be above it?), I simply linked to them because I wrote about them and I wrote about them because they had something of awesome value!

Now I’m off to upgrade WordPress again, automatically!

By the way, the fact that this entire post was about upgrading WordPress automatically those little links have even more value because the content surrounding the links is highly relevant as well.  Pretty cool, huh?!?!

Even though it has evolved from the single most important, easily manipulated method for improving search engine rankings it is still important that other sites on the World Wide Web link to your site.  It tells search engines that other sites think your site has value.  It’s a “vote” for your website.  And the more prominent and valuable the originating site is the more value it has for your site as a vote.  The art of link building is a unique and extensive part of SEO and this post will not begin to scratch the surface.  But I will point out a few basics of link building.

The first of which is to talk briefly about the basic kinds of links – again, this is not all inclusive by any means.  One of the most common, and in many cases the least valuable, is a link exchange.  You put a link up on your site for me and I’ll do the same for you.  There is some value as long as the links are related.  For example if your site is about basketball and I sell basketball shoes there is some value to each of our readers to know about the other site.  But since most of these types of links appear on link pages with dozens, if not hundreds of other links the value is very minimal and fading.  There are more effective ways to do what is still essentially link exchanging but for this post on Purple Widget I’m trying to stick to some basics.  Perhaps at a later date I’ll explore link building more in-depth.  

Another popular linking method that fooled search engines for about 5 minutes is what’s called 3-way or triangle linking.  My site A links to your site B and your site links to my site C.  Again, if your linking to related quality content there is some value but in many cases search engines can sniff out this 3-way triangle link so the attempt to have links appear as one-way is really not helping you much.  

Lastly in my very high level overview is the every popular one-way link.  Someone, hopefully an authoritative highly trusted website, sees something on your site of value to them and their audience and links to you.  One-way links (like all links) come in many shapes and sizes and can be secured in a great many ways but as you’ve probably figured out by now I won’t be going extensively into these methods.  The one thing I will say that is probably the most valuable advice I can give on link building: Having GREAT content with value to a wide audience will get you links.

One of the many, many methods of getting links is to comment on articles on subjects related to your site.  Many of the links provided by comment posts are “nofollow” so they’ll have no strict SEO benefit but they can gain you traffic and exposure and since you’re in a subject related to your site this exposure could lead to something more – like someone seeing your site and deciding to link to it on their site because you have great content!  So how does this relate to PurpleWidget.com?  I’m glad you asked.  This is one method I’ve begun to use for Purple Widget.  Recently when commenting on SEO articles I’ve been using the name Purple Widget as my name and of course this site as the URL with my comment.  And although so far I’ve only done it a few times it’s already working as Link Diagnosis shows 2 links back to me from these comments.

Similarly, your profile and signature in forums that you regularly (and being a solid contributing member is important) participate in can provide links to your site and Purple Widget will start doing this as well in the near future.

I know what you’re thinking – the title of this post is Link Building and Stuff and you’ve given us great link building info but where’s my stuff!!??!  Here it is….hope you’re not disappointed.

Let’s check our rankings.  Even though we all know there’s a lot more to SEO and search engine success than simply your rankings it starts with rankings and they’re fun to check here is where Purple Widget ranks today.

Term: Purple Widget
Google #1 and #2
Yahoo! #1
Live – Not Indexed Still
Ask #1 and #2

Term: SEO Experiment
Google #25
Yahoo! #22
Live – Still not indexed
Ask – Not in Top 50

See – that was fun!

Next up for Purple Widget will be some press releases distributed via free pr distribution services.  Stay tuned!

A corporate blog, or any blog related to your website – no matter the subject can be a great tool for your website and your business.  In fact, somewhat like purple widget, it can BE your business.

But no matter what you’re using your blog for, don’t neglect it!  Don’t do what I’ve done, stop posting for nearly 3 weeks.  The reason search engines like blogs is because they provide fresh content, and they provide it often.  So when you don’t make it a priority having a blog doesn’t come close to the potential value it offers.  So when you’re going to start a blog make sure you’re committed to it so it can work for you the way it’s capable of.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back to purple widget business soon.

The good news is we’re # 1 on Yahoo for the search term purple widget!  The bad news of course (besides nobody really searches for purple widget) nobody uses Yahoo! anymore…

But, in about 9 days I’ve launched the website purplewidget.com, moved to Google ranking spot # 4 and # 1 on Yahoo.  Not bad and just getting started.

#1 on Yahoo for Purple Widget

And now, less than a week from launch this website is ranking for the term purple widget.  I see us ranking 4th in Google (which is realistically the only engine that matters)!

Purple Widget - Ranked 4th on Google

Sorry about the small image – still learning WordPress.  Click to view bigger!

Although Google is king, lets see how we’re doing elsewhere in just one weeks time:

Live.com – Not in top 50 – but that would be because we aren’t yet indexed by MSN Live Search

Yahoo! – Also not yet indexed.

It won’t be long, I need to create accounts on each sites equivelant to Google Webmaster Tools and make sure they know about us.  I may wait to do this in the interest of seeing how long it takes to appear without this step.

No resting on our # 4 ranking!  We’ll continue to work to not only maintain the ranking but to move up a bit.  I will likely lay low for a while on doing much in the interest of seeing what happens and explore a common scenario that sites report – spiking early with a ranking but them falling down significantly before working slowly back up to again rank high.  We’ll watch for a while and see what happens.

So in less than a week, purplewidget.com goes from nothing more than a recently registered domain name to the #4 search result on the #1 (by far) search engine.  Focused content specific to the targeted keyword is all it took.  The domain name doesn’t hurt either….I’ll explore that more in the future.  But what will it take to move up 3 more spots – and stay there?  We’ll find out in due time.  So that’s the good news – the bad news remains that the search term ‘purple widget’ provides no real value or traffic – but that’s my point.

Interesting happenings the past few days.  On Oct 3rd I reported that Google had all 16 of our pages indexed, a few days later they had just 1 and now they have 4.  Odd.  I’ll continue to monitor our indexing.

Randfish a very well known name in the SEO world, has written an article at his site SEOmoz that talks about what my site, Purple Widget is exploring.  How long does it take to get ranked?  Bottom line, it takes time.  He points about that you can get ranked more quickly for less meaningful term – such as purple widget (although he doesn’t use that example) but for terms with value that might actually drive traffic, it takes time.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/headsmacking-tip-8-give-your-seo-campaigns-time-to-take-effect

The entire Purple Widget website is now indexed in Google:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.purplewidget.com&hl=en

It shows all 16 pages that existed (before this post created a new page).

Of course we don’t rank in the Top 30 for the search term purple widget just yet – in fact we’re not in the Top 500 results, but it should be noted that my personal blog that links to this site is the # 24 result on Google right now for purple widget…this post just went up yesterday.

I believe we are seeing 2 things demonstrated here.  First, blogs are well liked by Google.  My personal blog carries little authority and is not updated too often.  Yet, only a day after a new article shows up about purple widgets it is not only indexed but a Top 30 result for that term.  My personal blog has been around several months – a very short time in terms of websites in the history of time – but it’s not brand new is my point.  Of course – just a reminder, as is largely the point of this SEO experiment, the term purple widget offers little value as a search term due to it’s excessively low search volume therefore it has little competition.  Secondly, we are seeing evidence that an element of ‘sandboxing’ is at play here.  Scotts2Cents.com is a relatively new and small site with low authority but it has been around 8 months.  And although indexed and clearly more content rich about purple widgets than my personal blog this site is not a Top 500 search result.  This is not surprising but an interesting note.

Purple Widgets is now LIVE in the Google index!  Only 1 page, but we’re there!  This isn’t a revelation by any means but still nice to see, took less than 3 full days:

Pages from your site are included in Google’s index. See Index stats.

Ironically it’s not the home page.  But that will change soon:

First Link to Purple Widget | Purple Widget – An SEO Experiment

Still haven’t been indexed by Google, no surprise – it’s still only day 3.  But I do nearly have a Facebook Fan Page ready for Purple Widgets but it’s not yet live so there are no links to Purple Widget on the web….until now!

I have posted a cute little celebrity video about voting on my personal blog Scotts2Cents.com and put a link back to here on that blog post.  So there is an indexed site out there in the world linking here now!  For those of you that just came from Scotts 2 Cents don’t worry you are not caught in some kind of black hole in the space time continuium.  The Internet as you know it still exists.  So register to vote.