Not Effected By Any Google Updates!!!

[SEO1]

Hi everyone

I see so many people complaining about Google and it's various updates ruining their businesses.

Well I am here to say that Google did nothing to ruin anyone's business.

Here are just two of my clients who have not suffered any bumps dumps bruises or any such mistreatment ever.

The first is a past client I consulted with in the Summer of 2004

Search google for police products and securityandsafetysupply.com has been in position 1, 2, or 3 since September 2004.

The next a client since Fall 2004

diamond brokers adamaunt.com postions 4, 5, or 6 since December 2004

Any ideas why none of my clients ever suffer due to these updates such as Florida, Hilltop, or Jagger???

Clint (not an seo expert) Dixon

...Live by Google,... Die by Google

[DaveN]

diamond brokers .. is on page 2 from here

DaveN

[SEO1]

Hi Dave

I would be willing to venture that is due to Googles localization and globalization standards.

Were you using .com or .co.uk??

Heck it could be better if I could just get them to switch to pure css and static html....

Thank you for the information as it helps to know how things are worldwide

Clint

[Marketing Guy]

I used TB and the results were as posted.

I'd guess some subject areas are more prone to turbulence during updates than others due to the amount of spam in the industry?

I've never had any drop in rankings from an update either (from around mid 2003) - I don't really push the boat out in terms of what I could probably get away with in SEO though.

MG

[Marcia]

I'd guess some subject areas are more prone to turbulence during updates than others due to the amount of spam in the industry?

And if you guessed that, you'd be right. Highly competitive or even moderately competitive keyword phrases are the ones that experience the volatility from updates, not non-competitive keyword phrases.

Those keywords are relatively non-competitive, so they wouldn't be subject to the effects of updates as others are, not even close.

[Chris_D]

Any ideas why none of my clients ever suffer due to these updates such as Florida, Hilltop, or Jagger???

I answered Clint's specific question, with a specific answer. Clint took exception to my post - so I have deleted that post (above).

So here's a much more general answer.

I'm with Marcia...... its about the level of competition for the specific search phrases.

<mod hat off>

As a general rule - the TOS of SEW forums explicity prohibit self promotion. See http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...faq_self-promo

If members ask specific questions, and provide sufficent information regarding specific sites for other members to provide specific answers (within the TOS of SEW) then in my book - that's a question asked and answered.

There are also TOS regarding code of conduct etc. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ode_of_conduct

Members need to understand that specific questions relating to sites (as opposed to more general questions) can result in factually specific answers relating to those sites. You may not want those answers posted in the public domain - for a variety of reasons.

If you don't want factually specific answers and advice posted in the forums -my recommendation is not to ask specific questions based on actual sites, and actual search terms, in the forums.

Just ask a 'general' question which doesn't identify a specific site & specific search phrase.

So the question could have been -

"Have any of your sites/ clients suffered due to recent algorithm updates such as Florida, Hilltop, or Jagger? Has anyone ascertained what specifically caused this suffering?"

</mod hat on>

Sincerely.

Chris

[Jill Whalen]

You may want to edit out your sites from the original post. The engines don't always take kindly when people "brag" about their rankings.

Just an fyi!

[SEO1]

I would delete the thing if I could

[Marcia]

Meantime, once threads are started and available for the membership at large, there's an obligation not only to the members who already took their time to respond to the post, but to the other members who may have an interest in the subject matter as well.

Any ideas why none of my clients ever suffer due to these updates such as Florida, Hilltop, or Jagger???

There are many people who wonder the same thing, why some sites are affected by updates and others aren't. Therefore, a thread that's started in a public forum for public viewing is not a personal statement, for which the person's own website would be the proper venue.

when people "brag" about their rankings.

Exactly, Jill. And the proper place for that is the party's own website, else it can be construed as being a topic raised for discussion - which is the logical assumption, particularly when a very pointed question is asked and specific sites given as examples

Posted publicly in an open forum, it becomes a topic inviting general discussion for the benefit and information of the entire membership, of all who view the thread.

It does not matter who poses the question - it's the ISSUE being raised by the thread that's the focus and the ISSUE raised is what needs to be addressed. If specifics have been posted, then that constitutes an open invitation to examine the specific sites in order to illustrate the principles.

[Marcia]

Moving right along on the subject, with the "membership at large" as the focus, let's continue with the discussion raised in this thread.

What Marketing Guy posted

I'd guess some subject areas are more prone to turbulence during updates than others due to the amount of spam in the industry?

I think we can look not only at some subject areas, in the broader sense, but also at the keywords and keyword phrases that are targeted as being financially lucrative, and therefore prone to *aggressive* marketing techniques in order to be able to compete.

Here are just a few simple metrics to examine, using resources that are publicly and freely available for anyone to use in evaluating the competitive level of different keywords when doing keyword research. Since specifics were given as examples, let's run with those in a simple illustration of comparisons.

police products
542 Overture searches
124,000 pages returned at Google for exact phrase

intitle: for exact phrase - 699
inanchor: for exact phrase - 357

police equipment
24,167 Overture searches
396,000 pages returned at Google for exact phrase

intitle: for exact phrase - 25,700
inanchor: for exact phrase - 745

OK - now lets look at a related, high demand consumer product:

pepper spray
39,605 Overture searches
2,580,000 pages returned at Google for the exact phrase

intitle: for exact phrase - 58,900
inanchor: for exact phrase - 51,400
__________________________________________________ _____

Looking now at the other niche, which would be B2B as compared to B2C:

diamond brokers
1,728 Overture searches
138,000 pages at Google for exact phrase

intitle: for exact phrase - 2,240
inanchor: for exact phrase - 500

diamond rings
151,699 Overture searches
7,280,00 pages at Google for exact phrase

intitle: for exact phrase - 172,000
inanchor: for exact phrase - 110,000
__________________________________________________ ___

Using just those simple figures, we can easily see which keyword phrases would be the most financially lucrative, and therefore subject to more aggressive measures taken in order to compete for rankings. Those measures - techniques, if you will - are generally what's targeted by filters turned loose during major updates, and are therefore prone to the major fluctuations and upheavals.

[SEO1]

Marcia

I will say it is a very good post in looking at pure numbers and where one would assume the money would be..

However from my perspective I don't want to drive untargetted visitors to my clients web sites

As an example for my diamond clients, we do not sell diamond rings...diamonds can be either cheap.... or expensive... and my partner and his network of brokers, deal in high end diamond stones. Think more custom than out of a showcase..in this case.

So a keyword like 'diamond ring' which the moderators thought was a valuable term... is in fact useless to this merchant, and while it may have seemed the more sensible keyword term to target...it is not.

Reasons for this are that anyone could be looking information for diamond rings, competition, students, wives to be, bargain shoppers, which might be good for dirtcheapdiamonds, but doesnt work for my partners.

Diamond brokers is a more targeted "buying term" from my clients perspective.

Oddly enough it seems you learn things working on the inside of different industies..where we had originally thought the diamond sites would operate in full e-commerce mode, one which would allow consumers to bid for their diamonds....due to consumer preference however we have instead found our websites are better serving as lead gathering entities, from which the brokers take the customers personal information and call and offer personalized service to the buyer.



As for the police products site ...it was a one time consult on three specific keyword terms the owner wanted front page results for. Again he found the terms to be the ones that converted best for his target market.

Looking at the site it is/was definitely not designed for full scale e-commerce sales in the b2c (business to consumer) sense,,but in my eyes a website that someone who was in law enforcement might consider buying from for a police squad or department, and not individual sales. (b2b)??

So while pepper spray might seem a good term it actually would only serve to bring tire kickers to the website.. which is not what the webmaster wanted.

Thank you for teaching me to keep the personal sides out... and i hope you've learned a thing or two on targeting customers :-)

Clint

[Marcia]

Clint, make no mistake - we all understand about proper targeting, and therefore target search terms that will bring the most targeted, appropriate traffic for our clients' sites, geared toward their intended target market. BUT...

In the thread title you declared:

Not Effected By Any Google Updates!!

indicating that while others are affected, you are never affected by updates. Then you proceeded to ask, very specifically:

Any ideas why none of my clients ever suffer due to these updates such as Florida, Hilltop, or Jagger???

So very simply, though we don't know about ALL your clients, all we can surmise from the two illustrations you provided is that you are not affected by updates because, regardless of targeting, which is NOT the topic you brought up, the fact of the matter is that the client sites in question are not affected by update fluctuations simply because the phrases targeted are not competitive.

The illustrations provided, with the numbers, were in order to demonstrate to you why updates don't affect your sites -which is what you asked in the first place.

Of course, we know that a site selling "hand knitted baby booties" will target that specific term, because it will reach targeted, buying customers; but neither will the site experience update fluctuations.

It isn't the customer targeting that's the issue, it's the whys and wherefores of why some sites are and some aren't affected by updates.

Marcia wouldn't that be targeting niche keywords, that could produce a high conversion rate?

If the site owner is happy with the ranking for those words, and happy with the conversion rate from those words, isn't that the important thing?

Personally as a e-commerce site owner I would rather rank #1 for a word that was searched on 10 times per day and produced 5 sales, than ranking for the most competitive words that seldom produced a sale.

IMHO conversion rates are what is important, not the frequency of the search term or how competitive it is.

IMHO a mod should remove the URLs if they are in violation of the boards TOS. However you have to be consistent. I see post in here all the time with URLs and no one ever says a thing.

I for one would like to see some hard evidence that the engines do not take kindly to people bragging about their rankings.

[Marcia]

Good post Connie, a very nice addition to this thread from someone with an online retailer's perspective.

If the site owner is happy with the ranking for those words, and happy with the conversion rate from those words, isn't that the important thing?

Connie, the site owner may not know the difference - many don't, unless they've studied on their own. For example, this illustration:

Of course, we know that a site selling "hand knitted baby booties" will target that specific term, because it will reach targeted, buying customers; but neither will the site experience update fluctuations.

That wasn't pulled out of thin air, that's based on someone with a very similar type site boasting about their SEO for getting them a #1 Google ranking for a specified 4-word keyphrase (similar to that).

Two problems with that - no one searches for that (0 at Overture), and more than likely it would be people looking for "how to" instructions who would search on it, since there are plenty of free instructions out there. The person simply didn't know any better, when in fact the two word phrase "baby booties" (something similar), though harder to rank for, does in fact get searches and could easily convert. No searches, no conversions.

What I did, just for the fun of it and without telling anyone (until here, right now) was, since I already had an appropriate link up on a relevant, related site to a friend who sells that stuff, added one single anchor text deep link with that exact phrase in it - which was apparently enough to put that person's page in the #1 spot for that search, and it's stayed there for well over a year - since it isn't at all competitive.

I just looked, it's sitting right now at #1 at Google, #1 at MSN, and #2 at Yahoo. The page does not have the exact phrase in the title, and isn't optimized for the phrase (partial match only) - it just happens to be totally relevant for the phrase. There are 917,000 pages returned at Google for the phrase, only 302 pages for the exact phrase.

IMHO conversion rates are what is important, not the frequency of the search term or how competitive it is.

Exactly - and often it's the low hanging fruit that converts best. BUT for highly competitive terms that are specific in nature, depending on the pricing factor (high priced items = lower conversion rate, generally), general terms won't convert as well as more specific ones.

Take "gifts" - those are stage one shoppers just out looking for ideas. "Gifts for men" gets more specific, but they're still window shopping for ideas. But you still may want the second term, because a certain number will convert if you've got items that catch visitor interest, though the more closely targeted the better the chance of having exactly what they're looking for when they've already shopped around and are ready to buy.

Sure, a very general term that's not competitive may bring in targeted visitors, but that doesn't have to completely rule out targeting more specific terms as well, in order to have more conversion opportunities. It can depend on how aggressive the marketer is willing to be.

Marcia wouldn't that be targeting niche keywords, that could produce a high conversion rate?

Sure, right on! But the niche keywords can only result in conversions if they bring in searchers, which is why we have to look at those figures to estimate the potential when evaluating keyword choices.

[SEO1]

Hi Marcia



I knew you know about targeting terms as well and yes we went off topic again...sometimes we free thinkers can't be corraled so easily and we venture off...

Though I find the conversion convo more fun ..... getting back to the point

I could really care less about my own long term achievements and have more than enough clients and own web sites to keep me busy and financially happy that I do not need to self promote.

So what I wanted to know is what others experiences are, what keyword terms, how competitive they felt they are, and for how long have the terms been ranked consistently on the front page no martter which update.

Oh and Marcia they were only two of many....

and if we can continue the importance of conversion in another thread somewhere I would like to see that

Clint

[Robert_Charlton]

Originally Posted by SEO1

So what I wanted to know is what others experiences are, what keyword terms, how competitive they felt they are, and for how long have the terms been ranked consistently on the front page no martter which update.

Clint - In my opinion, anyone who posts his or her specific rankings on a public forum is being extremely foolish. Anyone who posts a client's rankings (or for that matter a client's url) is being irresponsible.

Here's a thread that elaborates further on that subject...

SEO Competitive Keyword Success
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=1168

The factors that Marcia cited are the basic indicators of how competitive a particular search is. She's right on about the reasons for fluctuations. In my experience, it is quite possible for a site to be well established for a competitive search and not fluctuate during some updates, but that of course depends on the nature of the update, the nature of the competition, and how well established a site is.

For more on what's competitive, read this thread, which has some good stuff in it...

What is Keyword Competitiveness?
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=4374

[SEO1]

Robert

I'll repeat again I could care less about the self promotion.The moderators can delete the URLs'.

Further if you read this, since you quoted me

So what I wanted to know is what others experiences are, what keyword terms, how competitive they felt they are, and for how long have the terms been ranked consistently on the front page no martter which update.

I did not ask for URLs here did I?

Next just for kicks why in the SEM industry would we hide our results??

Are there other industries where people hide their success??

Could you clue me in on some ??

Are you naieve enough to believe a search engine could destroy your rankings if you were an SEO who published their results?

What about SEM firms who do not try to get their sites ranked well?? How could the search engine punish them ??

Do you think they would destroy a clients results ??

And this will fall under the basis of following Googles webmasters guidelines, 10 things, do no evil, etc.

Clint

[SEO1]

Robert

The first link I found droll the second I've read before and it was good to refresh again.

However the question still remains unanswered...

[Marcia]

Are there other industries where people hide their success??

Could you clue me in on some ??

Sure. The affiliate marketing industry, for one, in which you'll find many who are among the TOP-notch, most capable SEOs you can find, many of whom have chosen to no longer work with client sites, but prefer to stay with promoting just their own instead.

When people find valuable niches, which is one of the prime prerequisites for success and profit in that industry, why on earth would they want to broadcast it to the world?

Are you naieve enough to believe a search engine could destroy your rankings if you were an SEO who published their results?

The engines are not naive. They know full well that those who pursue the most aggressive tactics, which are the ones they're concerned with, will NOT reveal their specifics in public. Some won't even let their own mothers know what their sites are.

My guess is that the engines are savvy enough to know that when people are publicly boasting about their rankings, it's just liable to be nothing more than a teenage boys' locker room competition they play called "Mine's bigger." The grown-up big boyz with the big ones don't need to boast.

However the question still remains unanswered...

If you're referring to this question, from the original post:

Any ideas why none of my clients ever suffer due to these updates such as Florida, Hilltop, or Jagger???

Then yes, it has been answered.

[SEO1]

Hi Marcia

I Forgot the affiliates.. and I could add in Adsense sites.

But Macia... thinking of those you know running affiliate programs, have they suffered during these updates or did the get by without any bumps.

And how could I ask about what to do with terms that are in much much harder competitive counts???

if I dont use the keyword term but say how many competing pages and the current position wouldn't that be bragging as well??

And I really need help on this...

Clint