I haven’t updated this site in over 4 months, and before that there was a rather long content drought as well.  Yet, as of today this site remains in the #1 and #2 spots on Google for the targeted term of “purple widget”!

I think all of this simply goes back to my original point in creating this site, at least one of my points.  The term “purple widget” has low competition and very little search volume so a site dedicated so extensively to ranking for that term can continue to do so, even without daily, weekly or even monthly new content.  It was relatively easy (please note – I am a professional, do not try this at home) to get ranked to begin with and is relatively easy to stay ranked – for this insignificant term.

But if your site is competing for a term with any competition and that has any potential value to your business or traffic then to answer the question of this post – yes fresh content matters.  Don’t go 4 months between posts.

There is a lot of talk about links (aka “inbound links”) and link building in the world of search marketing and when talking SEO.  I’ll skip the commentary and common reasons/need for inbound links to your website and just leave it at – you need them.

But not all links are created equal.  And if you can remember back to high school – neither are prom dates.

So let’s take a quick look at some common types of links.

Bad directory links – There are a lot of lousy directories out – A LOT!  Google knows it and you should know it.  This is the girl that doesn’t really want to go to prom but her Mom is making here and since your Mom is making you go this is who you go with.

Good directory links – Okay, so you have to go to prom. This is the slightly cuter girl who doesn’t really want to go but knows she may regret it someday if she doesn’t so like you, she has to go.

Paid Links – Do I really need to explain what paying for a date means?  Hey, prostitution is a huge industry in the world and although many wish it would go away – it’s not.  Why?  Where there is demand there is supply.  And if nobody gets caught and nobody gets hurt – where’s the harm?

Reciprocal link exchanges – This one might be the worst of them all. This is taking your sister to the prom.  Okay – maybe some are like taking your cousin at least and a few get upgraded to your hot cousin from out of town and if you’re really lucky nobody knows and nobody ever finds out you brought a relative to prom.  But still – you’ll always know.

One-way links with just your URL – Beggars can’t be choosers.  This is your kind of cute friend.  If you take her you’ll probably have a good time but you know there’s no love connection – she’s your friend and that’s all – in the back of your mind you think you could have done better.

One-way links with good anchor text – Your really cute friend that you’d like to more than friends with – does she feel the same way?

Home page links – She’s hot, she actually said yes and seems to be having fun!  This comparison alone (like many others) could have several variations based on the content of the page, the popularity of the page and the type of link but this isn’t a white paper, it’s a silly blog post about chicks and SEO.

Home page link on CNN – Head cheerleader, and you’re losing your virginity after the party!

There are of course many other types of inbound links but the attempt at humor with the analogy to a prom date only goes so far.

I’ve excluded some real bottom of the barrel type of links (auto generated link spam, link farms, etc…) because nobody wants the image of those girls.  We know who they were (or are) and they might be fine for a quick bit of joy but afterwards you feel dirty and don’t ever want to go there again.

So today I take a quick detour.  There is a 1983 movie, Malice, that has a great – although lengthy – quote in it that I’ve liked.  Here is my SEO version of that quote:

“I am a Google expert, I am Yahoo certified in pay-per-click and search marketing, I have been awarded citations from seven different search marketing organizations, and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their website will be ranked # 1 on Google or that their keywords are the best or that they maximize conversions with a high ROI, who do you think they’re praying to? Now, go ahead and read your SEO 101 books, client, and you go to your church, and, with any luck, you might win the annual raffle, but if you’re looking for God, he was doing keyword analysis at his desk on November 17, and he doesn’t like to be second guessed. You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”

So just that quickly a page specifically designed to rank for a keyword – worked.  So another example that SEO does work.

Like is the point of this entire site, this particular example has little value as nobody is searching for Green Widget but the principals remain the same.  It just takes longer for highly competitive keywords.

In the next several weeks I’ll start working on some specific techniques to improve the ranking for Green Widget, as I did with Purple Widget when the main site first launch (still #1 on Google by the way).

As an SEO Specialist dealing with clients I have often heard “I need a magic bullet for SEO” and then I go on to explain that as many as……okay, you get the picture.
And it’s possible I was a bit overly literal with what clients say – they may never have used those exact words; it was for effect – cool wasn’t it!

What I hear most often after providing an excellent list of recommendations, best practices and SEO ideas is “great list….but….” and that’s usually followed by “what should we do first?” or “can you prioritize this list for us” which really means – we aren’t going to spend the time, money or resources to take your excellent professional advice to really help our website’s search engine visibility; instead we’re going to try one thing, not do it very well and then after giving it no time to work we’re going to blame you for failed SEO and tell everyone we know SEO doesn’t work.

Sound familiar? 

So what can we do?  Basically we talk until we’re blue in the face (does that actually happen – can you actually turn blue?) and hope they eventually “get it” and understand what SEO really is.  Hopefully we can also provide some case studies that show, when given the proper effort and attention over a sustained period of time – SEO absolutely works!

Lastly, if you can’t beat them – join them….here’s is the Purple Widget SEO Magic Bullet List!  Lists are linkbait – right?  More about linkbait another day and this post has way too many words to be a linkbait type list.  That and it’s really not a countdown type list – sorry to disappoint…..

Keyword Research
Keyword Research
Keyword Research
Yes, it’s there 3 times on purpose.  Why? Because it’s that important.  All the SEO in the universe really won’t help all that much if you aren’t focusing on the right keywords.  Afterall that’s kind of (or exactly) what this blog is about – at least how it started. 
None of the rest of what could be a magic bullet has little to no value without the proper keyword research to back it up.  And to prove the point that there is no magic SEO bullet since you can’t (or really, really, really shouldn’t) do any SEO without keyword research that’s 2 things – a second shooter if you will….

#2 Page Titles
I’m not sure I really want to number to these, but I did on this one.
Page titles are among the most important areas of real estate on your website.  Effective title creation is it’s own very long blog post but to sum it up:
This my Website is not a good page title.
Search Engine Optimization Blog | SEO advice, tips, techniques, tricks is a good page title. 
Also – make sure EVERY page on your website has its own unique, keyword rich, effective, focused title.

Great Content
See, told you I wasn’t numbering these.
Create great content.  Have stuff that people want to link to – not because you paid them, or traded with them, or begged them, or sold your sole to the devil to get.  Having great content (and ‘content’ can mean many things of course) will go a long way to taking care of many things that drive SEO.

Inbound Links
Although it has changed SIGNIFICANTLY over the past several years, links to your website are still very important in obtaining high rankings.   Quality is more important than quantity but you still need quantity – they just need to be quality links.  Like I said above – creating great content will lead to a lot of natural links.  
What are good links, what are bad links, what are link exchanges, how do I get more links, do I have enough links?  Those are all great questions and each one a subject of a blog post of it’s own – if not a dedicated website for each one.  Except maybe the last one – do I have enough links – the answer is no.  Link building is a long, challenging process but when done well can pay off nicely – in time.

So again – THERE IS NO MAGIC BULLET FOR SEO!
But, if you can only do a few things for now these are some good places to start.

Once again I thought about SEO.  Everyday I drive about 10 mph over the speed limit.  I know there are state troopers out there, or local police.  I see them sometimes sitting and shooting radar of course.  Yet, I still exceed the speed limit.  Maybe because I know of all the cars out there the odds are in my favor of not getting caught.  And even if I do zoom by a cop at 80 mph, maybe he isn’t really paying attention or doesn’t really care.  Maybe he’s a liberal and happy I’m driving a Prius so he lets me fly by….who knows.  And just as an aside, I drive a Prius because I don’t want to spend money on gas.  It’s nice that I’m saving the environment and all, but (despite a few social liberal tendencies) I’m no bleeding heart, the government must and will save us liberal I can assure you.  But today, seeing the state trooper car driving next to me I slowed down and stayed right at the speed limit.  So if the highway were search engine optimization, like it was yesterday, then the trooper is Matt Cutts.  If you don’t know who Matt Cutts is you have really stumbled onto the wrong blog.  Or you just really enjoy my ever so clever blurbs.

So do we speed (buy a link, stuff a keyword, etc…) even though we know the police (Google, Matt Cutts) are out there but since we don’t see them watching us we flirt with the white hat/gray hat/black hat line?  But as soon as we know we’re being watched (have a state trooper driving next to you) do you make darn sure you’re following every Google best practice?  

I may discuss in closed door meetings internally some “risky” techniques but I’m sure not going to stand up at an SEO conference session that Matt Cutts is sitting in and say “I’ve found a way to get one over on Google by doing this….”

So what did I do?  I finished moving to the right to exit, switched to the GPS Nav system in my car and asked for an alternate route to work.  Since my in car GPS doesn’t have traffic I pulled out my G1 cell phone and quickly (and safely of course) pulled up Google Maps with the traffic overlay turned on.  In just a few minutes I knew that the traffic only lasted a few miles and so my detour needed to only take me a few miles down the road and I could get back on the highway that was the best route to my office.  I was a bit frustrated by my in car nav system that kept giving strange detour directions as I traveled on what I knew to be the best route since I am familiar enough with this part of town to take this short detour.  Now I know, from experience that my GPS Nav would have gotten me there and perhaps even quicker but it just kept shouting (okay, it doesn’t literally shout) turn here, turn here as it reset everytime I passed it’s recommend turn and took my own strategy.  A few minutes later I was back on the interstate and at work only a few minutes later than normal.  It’s entirely possible that I would have arrived at work at exactly the same time had I just sat in the traffic waiting for it to clear – remember my Google Maps on my cell phone showed it only lasted a few miles – but maybe not.  Of my many pet peeves, sitting in traffic is one of the bigger ones.  Even though my detour may have taken a few minutes longer I was moving the entire time and not just sitting there.

I promise I’m headed to a point here related to search engine optimization but I want to make a few observations first.  Actually just one and I’m not sure why really but here it goes.  I recognize that what I call traffic here in Kansas City would be a dream for most people in most big cities in the US.  We have a few spots that get bad, but even that is nothing compared to major cities and with where my office is located and my house I drive a 24 mile route that is very low in traffic.  A 22 minute drive on a Sunday morning (with no Chiefs game) is only about 30 minutes at 8:00 AM during the week.  So, no traffic.  That’s why when I see any I try to avoid it – I’m spoiled.  I’ve lived in Las Vegas where traffic is constant and a nightmare at it’s peak.  I’ve driven in LA in traffic a few times (and never will again if I can avoid it) so I know that any complaint of a 10 minute delay because of traffic here will get very little sympathy from many. 

As promised…..my point…..

So, traffic is just fine – moving very smoothly and quickly.  A few lane changes here and there to keep moving since idiots continue to just use the left lane for their own personal day spa of driving – THE LEFT LANE IS FOR PASSING ONLY!  Sorry.  Refocused now.  I need to slow down sometimes to adjust to things around me, then speed up when the opportunity is there and all the while paying attention to everything and being safe.  Had a detour, used two different tools, adjusted and despite several detour options – all of which probably would have helped me – stayed on my planned path with patience, found my way back to the main road and continued onward.
So now for a moment pretend I hadn’t told my little driving to work story and read the above again.  Does this sound like an SEO plan?  As I was driving, and detouring I started to relate it to SEO (yes, I think about SEO too much) and it prompted this post.  I’ll drive home again tonight and back to work again tomorrow.

SEO is like driving in traffic.  Be safe, slow down when needed, speed up when available, be ready for detours and aware of options, use tools available, stay focused, get back on course.  And then do it again the next day, the day after, then again the next day….etc, etc, etc…

And just to make one final point, I record all my gas mileage and maintenance.  Reporting is important in SEO too  ;)

If you came just for clever analogy and story you can stop reading.   But because I haven’t in a while I’m going to a quick recap of rankings here for Purple Widget.  I’ll do a more in-depth look rather soon (or not so soon if I’m being honest) but here’s where we stand today.

Term “purple widget”

Google #1 and #2
MSN Live #1 and #2
Yahoo #1
ASK #1 and #2

So like I said when this blog started.  I can rank you #1 for purple widget, but if nobody is searching for purple widget it won’t do you any good.
Total Visits last 30 Days: 33
Visits from Search Engines: 14

As always, thanks for visiting PurpleWidget.com!  You may now start holding your breath until my next post.

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!

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.