Issue #1010 – Want A Google Page One Ranking?

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Action Today: Want A Google Page One Ranking?
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Friday November 4th, 2011: Issue #1010
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Published by Trevor Greenfield. I always welcome your comments.
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Hi,

Silly question really, because we all do. The problem is that it
is easier said than done. Keeping up with what Google consider is
good and what is not is a constant battle. Today I want to cover
the advice that Google gave to it’s own human reviewers in a
document that became available recently.

Whether this document was leaked deliberately by Google as some
sort of exercise to improve the quality of websites or whether it
was indeed, as they are suggesting, leaked by someone who shouldn’t have
is still unknown. Either way the contents are very interesting.
Google have been increasingly using human reviewers to check over
top ranking sites to see if they provide good relevant
information for the searcher or whether they qualify to be marked
as spam and dropped down or even delisted altogether.

The document ran to more than 100 pages and by now has probably
been removed from their search engine completely. I understand
that certain people were asked to remove it by Google. Clearly
there is a lot of information in the document that I could not
possibly cover here but there are some key points in the document
that will have a major effect on whether your site gets ranked at
the top or not.

The overall impression you get from the document is that Google
hates affiliates. I don’t think that is true, I just think that
they dislike some of the tactics that we, as affiliates, have
used to date to get our sites ranked and the content of those
sites.

Google have 5 categories that they rank sites in which are;
vital, relevant, slightly relevant, useless and spam. For any
particular keyword there will be only 1 vital site. This site is
likely to be an authority site that has been around a long time
and has lots of on-keyword content. A site that is considered
relevant would again be of high quality, have good information
about the keyword, in fact be deeply informative, again be an
authority site with lots of pages, probably in excess of 100 and
have been around a long time.

Looking at the description of slightly relevant it is clear that
Google don’t consider this category to be good. Therefore the
place we need to aim for is relevant. A lot of their judgment
seems to be based on what the searcher intent was and whether the
site keyword delivers that intent. For instance if we have a site
that is optimized for ‘buy’, like buykeyword.com, than the site
must allow the searcher to buy what they were looking for and not
be an information site.

There is a lot of discussion about copied content, which is
clearly a definite no no now as are repeated keywords. Keyword
density doesn’t seem to play a part in ranking now so we can
forget about getting the right percentage of keywords to total
words in our content. Google want to see good content written as
we would if we were writing a normal piece of informative
content. They show an example of what they consider to be a good
site and it has lots of detail, quoted data, stats etc.

Google like to see price comparison information so for affiliates
it is now better to have more than one affiliate offer in the
same niche on our site and offer price comparisons. One key point
is that Google check to see if the images are hosted on the site
domain and penalize the site if they aren’t. With affiliate
marketing we normally use an image that is hosted by the merchant
to link to their offer which is obviously a problem now. We need
to host images on our own domain which will require extra work.

As I said there is a lot of information in their document and
much of it will become clearer as some of the SEO experts
decipher it. In summary I think this is what we need to do;

Our sites need to contain high quality, specific, detailed
content. They also need lots of it. What that means is that where
we have a typical 3 – 5 page affiliate site now we need to
research more keywords and create more content. We also need to
make sure that our content isn’t stuffed with keywords that all
hyperlink to an affiliate offer. Include comparisons and coupons
if possible. We need to make sure that our sites deliver what the
searcher was looking for.

Copied content is a difficult one. We can make sure that our
content is always unique but if that content is then copied onto
a site with more authority in Google’s eyes by someone else
then our site could get penalized. We need to review our content
for uniqueness regularly. There shouldn’t be more than 2
affiliate links on any one page and page content needs to be 600
or more words long.

Basically we need to be building authority sites with lots of
content that is written in a natural way. Membership sites,
because of this, are likely to be around at the top for longer.

+ + | | | + +

The question of getting a first page ranking on Google got me
thinking about the future of marketing on the web. We know that
millions of people are coming online everyday and many of those
are looking to the Internet as a way of making a living.

All of those people want a page one ranking for their site
otherwise they are unlikely to make any money (unless they go for
paid search positioning). There is only one outcome from this as
I see it and that is that marketing online is only going to get
more difficult. All of the tricks that we see being sold today
are examples of what is being done to beat the competition while
at the same time Google is working to nullify the benefits of
those tricks.

I can see that we are moving back to where we were when I first
got online back in 1996 when all websites were built on solid,
useful content that provided a great user experience. Some of my
sites from back then are still ranked, still getting traffic and
still producing revenues. My plans for the future are to go back
to building big authority sites, which means probably less sites
because they will take more work, but will be around for longer.

+ + | | | + +

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The Thought For Today
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“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of
setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore
will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced
that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you
closer to fulfilling your dreams.”

Og Mandino

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Action Help
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No man is an island. If we look at many of the success stories
online we see that they are partnerships. Look for others in your
field and try to identify ways of pooling yours and their skills
to mutual benefit. Whenever possible attend seminars and network.
Many of the most profitable JV partnerships have started at
seminars. Members of my family have often questioned me about
going to seminars saying “why do you keep going, you must know
all you need to know by now”. Ignore those comments like I have,
networking is where millionaires are made.

Find a mentor. Look for one or two mentors in your field and work
with them. You don’t have to buy a mentorship program in most
cases, just follow their advice in their newsletters or blogs. I
have mentors that I follow in different areas of online business.
For affiliate marketing, I rate Andrew Hansen as amongst the
best, which is why I recommend his unstoppable affiliate course.
You will possibly have different priorities but there will be
someone you can follow.

There is no more certain way to success than to copy those who
are already successful doing what you want to do.

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Products and services to streamline your business
recommended by Trevor Greenfield
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Reliable hosting for your niche blogs or website
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Unstoppable Affiliate
If you already have some online experience this will get you off

and running.
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Newbie to Millionaire
If you are a complete beginner, this is the course for you. It
starts at the most basic level and builds your knowledge from
there.
http://trevor.linktrackr.com/newbie

SEOPressor
Must have niche blogging plugin
http://trevor.linktrackr.com/SEOPressor

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Contact details
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Trevor Greenfield, Queens Rd, Kenilworth, Warwickshire,CV8 1JS,
UK.
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