UPDATE: Inbound has now reconsidered and I am happy to sign up! W00t!

Here I am : http://www.inbound.org/users/view/rishil

So we all know that Inbound.org is the beast that Sphinn used to be back in the day. And its cool, I missed the sphinn community and article discussions in one place.

But I haven’t joined inbound yet. I dont hate them. But their registration policy keeps me from being a part of their community.

inbound and twitter

You can only register with them if you do it via twitter. However:

1. Why should I give you the authority to follow new people on my behalf?

I protect my follow non follow ration. And people I don’t follow directly, I keep monitored through clever use of Lists. I don’t want to wake up one morning and have strangers tweets in my stream. Do you REALLY need access to following people on my behalf?

2. Why should you update my profile?

I mean this one makes me go WTF? Why would I even think of giving a third party application, however well intentioned, access to updating my profile? What would you even ASK for that?

3. Post Tweets for me.

The only person who has the right to spam my twitter followers is me. I don’t want people being spammed from my account. And yes, I know spam is an extreme description, and I doubt you guys would do anything like that. But still….

So I guess my loss.

Till you dampen those Twitter Authorization policies, we will just have to stay friends. I just cant get into bed with you.
dancellups

I dont like mini posts, but this is the quote of the week as far as I am concerned:

“We sensed a subtle change in the force and we asked the force and it said Tatooine was not destroyed (these are not the algo updates you were looking for)”. ~ Judith Lewis

Background:
http://searchengineland.com/no-that-wasnt-a-google-panda-update-you-felt-142820

I haven’t really paid much attention to SEO blogs in the last three months. Part of that reason is that I am insanely busy working on new projects that have little to do with SEO. However that doesn’t mean I don’t check or test stuff.

This post is more of an observation and a working theory, but I may be either:

1. Completely off the mark
2. Be observing that others may have reported.

Background

In the past I have created many, many sites for testing purposes. And tried various link building tactics to these. More recently, I am laying around with niche or micro niche sites, and unlike before, the strategy is to first build it, add decent content, wait for a few long tail organic rankings and then pursue link building.

In the past, I have seen fresh sites jump in rankings, especially Exact Match Domains. Over time their rankings fluctuate, but not massively. I have seen sites that took longer to index and rank as well. But the latest movement has me a bit puzzled.

The situation

The site ranks for keywords, for about a month. Add links to it, it ranks for a week or two, fairly high, site wide (long tails etc all) jump and ranks fairly high for your target Kw that the link is built for, then it disappears from the top 100. Wait 2-3 weeks and it comes back up on a stable position, sometimes higher than the initial jump, sometimes slightly lower. Long tails improve, but not to the rate of the initial jump.

I have encountered this phenomenon on four separate sites, in different niches .

Link Building Sandbox?

Such shifts and movements are common in new sites, new links etc.

BUT: One of these sites had been an EXISTING site. Over two years old. Was on page two of google for the KW target, and I just bought it and started adding content.

I then caught a break and got a link off a high property site (not bought / requested – natural w00t!).

And the site displayed the EXACT same behaviour as my other micro niche sites.

See the details below (click for better resolution).

What have I missed in the latest algo updates that could point this out? I am just calling it the “New Link Sandbox”.

UPDATE

The suspects are the Transition Ranking Patent

See here:

• http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/08/google-rank-modifying-spammers-patent/
• http://www.seobook.com/rank-modifying-spammers

Summary

If your site tanks after you apply new links, DON’T PANIC.

]]> http://explicitly.me/link-building-has-sandbox-effect-transition-rankings/feed 0 http://explicitly.me/what-the-f-is-an-seo-these-days http://explicitly.me/what-the-f-is-an-seo-these-days#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:22:05 +0000 rishil http://explicitly.me/?p=1516

Lately a lot of bullcrap is being posted about SEO and what it means to be an SEO. From PR agencies to web designers, everyone in the digital space fancies themselves as an SEO. Frankly a lot of popular magazines, sites and blogs are posting misinformation about what an SEO really does. A number of REAL SEOs and people who really understand Search Engines consistently point out that this is just rubbish information published for page view journalism.

People are scrambling to redefine SEO, and many names abound*. James Carson’s post about the whole scenario is probably funnier than mine, but I want to drill some home truths in.

Let’s try and understand what an SEO’s Job really is:

ONSITE

1. Understand what the clients objectives are from a SEARCH ENGINES point of view

An SEO should get detailed briefs from their client – what they want to rank for, why they want to rank for those keywords, and what the monetary or non-monetary value of those rankings are. This includes taking clients ranking / traffic wishes and then running them against the right tools such as the current rankings a client has, keyword analysis etc.

2. Understand what opportunities and challenges the client / clients site has from a SEARCH ENGINES point of view.

The SEO should then take data from stage one above and run a number of tests, checks and analyse whether:

a) The client’s site is built the best possible way for SEO, structurally, architecturally, and has all the relevant mark-up that SEARCH ENGINES look for.

But Rishi, Web designers do this right?

Fuck no. Some do. Most don’t. When a web designer sings the mantra of building a site for users, search engine mark-up isn’t part of the job. Neither are the correct robots directives, meta data etc etc. These are ALL HIDDEN signals that on the surface can be accessed by search engines to display on search results. A really good developer who looks at the site from not only a user / experience point of view on site, and then tries to marry that up with off-site experience, builds the site with view of following the best possible guidelines from search engines, is a designer I would be proud to work with.

b) The clients site has the right keyword targeting in place on site. If you don’t have it on site, ranking for it isn’t easy. (duh)

But Rishi, Content Marketers do this right?

Fuck no. Some do, Many don’t. A content writers job should be to get the best possible content out there. Content that is useful, interesting, funny, insightful etc. Content that can be passed around, and has a stamp on it: “I am good shit. Read Me”. That’s a pretty good mantra for a content marketer IMHO, and I would be proud as an SEO to work with one who does just that. A good content team makes an SEOs job easier.

3. Once the initial onsite, work has been looked at, and married against the clients targets etc, an SEO’s job is to look at strategy.

What should be worked on as a priority? What is the cost benefit analysis of making certain changes, does the cost of development work potentially pay off against work that doesn’t need dev work? What are the biggest threats? (for example in a case I was working, the dev team decided to block 40% of the site from search engines via robots because they built that area to create multiple sessions, which were being indexed. My recommendations were to go for a proper dev fix, and open that area up. Traffic went up 30% once we did that (in two weeks!), and further growth happened in consequent months. )

OFFSITE

The SEO has to then understand what signals about the site search engines have, and how they help or hinder a clients site from ranking.

But Rishi, a good PR firm can get a lot of links and shares! We don’t need link building!

Let’s not get it twisted. Traditional SEO is still about SEARCH Engine signals. Those signals were traditionally purely links and anchor text. Now, of course there are suspicions and tests in the wild, as well as theories that social activity around certain content and urls help them index and rank faster. I don’t dispute that.

BUT, an SEO still needs to get anchor text. While traditionally we used to hammer anchor text links, we now know that these can cause penalisation or ranking drops. So an SEOs job is to understand how google’s algorithm changes, and how those changes affect the way he or she works.

A good PR firm CAN get a lot of brand signals. But if you over do those, you can STILL cause penalties. You still need a clever SEO to guide that mix of signals. Along with other external markup, such as local listings, google plus etc etc. A PR firm that has a dedicated SEO resource, that has experience in purely SEO, would be one worth working with. A PR firm that has SEO as an “add on service” I would be wary off.

Finally

photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramotion/5188784967/sizes/m/in/photostream/

There are many, many more avenues that I haven’t covered above. However, the CORE function of an SEO is defined by their job title: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION. Which in detail means:

Make a series of changes on and off a client’s site in order to rank it for a set of keywords and phrases that can drive valuable traffic to it, within a cost that is either immediately justifiable, or has a longer term return on investment. The SEO should work with all other disciplines in marketing to identify and maximise opportunities, making sure that their strategy and the SEO strategy are working in line to benefit the client, and the clients objectives.

/the End.

]]> http://explicitly.me/what-the-f-is-an-seo-these-days/feed 0 http://explicitly.me/funeral http://explicitly.me/funeral#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:56:55 +0000 rishil http://explicitly.me/?p=895

Please note that the funeral and Wake for Jaamit are on Friday 03/12/10

The Funeral is at 2.00, however the family have requested we get there by 1.15. Please note, that previously we were unsure about numbers, but we have confirmed there is room for anyone wishing to attend the actual funeral, and the family would love it if pople can join them.

Funeral Location: Gunnersbury Cemetery 143 Gunnersbury Av, London W3 8LE (at the Chapel)

Wake: Ealing Town Hall in the Nelson Room Friday 4pm, New Broadway, Ealing, London W5 2BY

Please share with as many people as you can, and do let me know if you can attend either.

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