My website ownership experience - Page 66 - Business, Finances and Investing Forum

That's a super old variable that's been taken into account for a long time. In fact, I'm pretty sure their AdSense team has publicly said not to put ads above the fold (even though they contradict themselves a lot on this).

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01-20-2012 , 04:54 AM

#1627

Gullanian

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How do you guys find this out earlier, is there any good blogs that deal with this sort of stuff?

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01-20-2012 , 05:18 AM

#1628

Phresh

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Well like I said, AdSense has been saying that for a while. But it wasn't like an inside scoop about Google releasing it or it becoming a part of the algo. It's just been common sense and repeated that Google doesn't like it. I would assume people removed ads from above the fold and put more content up and their rankings came back.

Similarly, I had about 10 Amazon links in my sidebar and my rankings dropped. I removed them and put a single one to a search page and they came back. Could be coincidence, but I doubt it because I've read similar cases. Basically it enhances user experience and that's all Google cares about.

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01-20-2012 , 10:58 AM

#1629

cwar

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Yeah anything user experience related is being taken into account now post Panda. I usually get all my news from searchengineland.com and analysis from SEOmoz and following SEOs on Twitter.

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01-20-2012 , 12:17 PM

#1630

RollinHand

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I follow Barry Schwartz (http://www.seroundtable.com) on YouTube where he posts a SEO news show every Friday: http://www.youtube.com/user/rustybrick

Good and fast way to catch up on things.

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01-20-2012 , 01:11 PM

#1631

derosnec

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so, safe to assume the that Google algo punishes picture-heavy sites as opposed to those that have lots of words above the fold?

curious because i am creating three sites right now and two of them use a layout like this (typical big horizontal pic with three columns below it):

http://themeforest.net/item/wp-flexi...preview/137144

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01-20-2012 , 02:34 PM

#1632

cwar

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Quote:

Originally Posted by derosnec

It's not so much pictures (user friendly pictures are great above the fold, often ideal) its advertisements. Google has human quality raters so basically, if it provides value to your users then it's good for rankings, if not bad.

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01-20-2012 , 05:13 PM

#1633

Phresh

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Yeah, it's not so much NOT text above the pictures, just ads and other self-serving things. Picture sites are supposed to display pictures, so you're giving the user what they want, especially when they land there for **** like "funny pictures" or whatever.

But when it's plastered with ads, it gets downgraded, because it doesn't help the user experience.

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01-20-2012 , 09:35 PM

#1634

JoshK

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Gullanian

Interesting new ranking metric from Google:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...provement.html

I like it, seems like a smart move

Interesting!

When you run a google search how much of the "content" is above the fold?...

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01-21-2012 , 09:07 AM

#1635

Bullitos

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If I want to read about optimizing my conversion rates, which book should I get?

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01-21-2012 , 11:44 AM

#1636

cwar

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Books? Here is some great CRO stuff I like.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/without-c...to-abandon-seo
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.c...oz-case-study/
http://www.fivesecondtest.com/
http://www.crazyegg.com/home3
http://www.usertesting.com/

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01-21-2012 , 02:46 PM

#1637

bdaddy

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Quote:

Originally Posted by cwar

Books? Here is some great CRO stuff I like.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/without-c...to-abandon-seo
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.c...oz-case-study/
http://www.fivesecondtest.com/
http://www.crazyegg.com/home3
http://www.usertesting.com/

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/ The web clinics below the fold are REALLY good.
http://conversionxl.com/
http://conversionscientist.com/
http://unbounce.com/landing-page-exa...ng-page-sucks/

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01-21-2012 , 03:23 PM

#1638

cwar

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Nice links!

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01-21-2012 , 03:26 PM

#1639

alex23

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http://www.amazon.com/Conversion-Opt...7174000&sr=8-1

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01-21-2012 , 04:04 PM

#1640

derosnec

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somewhat related to the conversion issue - or at least not totally unrelated - i'd recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-Wor.../dp/0123694868

it's about how to create and present content for websites with the user in mind. it's part UX and part web writing guide.

i've read my fair share of web books and this one gets it right because it's full of lots of great examples using screenshots. you're not going to find platitudes or abstract or generic advice in this book. it's all details with specific recommendations. good book if you have some time to kill on a daily commute.

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01-21-2012 , 05:58 PM

#1641

Gullanian

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We're going to be doing a trial run affiliate scheme soon, I read somewhere that affiliate links pointing to your website can harm SEO efforts, is this true?

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01-21-2012 , 07:06 PM

#1642

cwar

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Gullanian

We're going to be doing a trial run affiliate scheme soon, I read somewhere that affiliate links pointing to your website can harm SEO efforts, is this true?

I haven't dug into this deeply but I don't believe so (there's nothing wrong with having an affiliate program in Google's eyes I don't think). They are not supposed to pass link juice but as of right now they often do IME until Google manually removes juice from your affiliate links (SEObook had this happen to them if I remember correctly).

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01-21-2012 , 09:29 PM

#1643

CharlieDontSurf

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Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 14,811

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwar

Yeah anything user experience related is being taken into account now post Panda. I usually get all my news from searchengineland.com and analysis from SEOmoz and following SEOs on Twitter.

Fav SEOs u follow on twitter?

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01-21-2012 , 09:31 PM

#1644

Gullanian

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Thanks for tip! Would also like some twitter SEO recommendations

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01-21-2012 , 11:28 PM

#1645

cwar

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Starter list that will kick you off:
@randfish Rand Fishkin
@tomcritchlow
@iPullRank Michael King
@mattcutts
@sengineland
@portentint Ian Lurie
@CyrusShepard
@RossHudgens
@dohertyjf
@gfiorelli1
@dan_shure
@yoast Joost de Valk
@aaronwall
@wilreynolds
@dannysullivan
@distilled
@JoannaLord
@jasonacidre
@willcritchlow
@rustybrick Barry Schwartz
@seobook

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01-22-2012 , 09:52 PM

#1646

alex23

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Need writers. Any other sources besides Elance, Odesk, Freelancers, Textbroker, and Writing forums?

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01-22-2012 , 10:06 PM

#1647

Phresh

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Gullanian

We're going to be doing a trial run affiliate scheme soon, I read somewhere that affiliate links pointing to your website can harm SEO efforts, is this true?

Not harm, but it probably won't help. I researched it a long time ago and don't remember more, but it's not going to hurt your site. I know having a bunch of affiliate links ON your page can help you lose rankings, but haven't heard much about them pointing to it.

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01-22-2012 , 10:42 PM

#1648

Gullanian

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Cheers thanks!

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01-23-2012 , 06:46 AM

#1649

Gullanian

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Curious to hear people's thoughts on how much an exact search term .com domain is worth (no hyphens), where the search term gets around 100k searches per month. Just the domain, no website is developed.

I know it's impossible to value but I'm new to domain buying and put an offer in that was shot down pretty quick, and was wondering what ball park I'm looking at.

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01-23-2012 , 10:53 AM

#1650

cwar

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Really depends on how monetizable that keyword is. For example a music term would be worth very little relative to like a stock/trading keyword. Is this 100k broad searches or exact? One words or two? I actually don't think a one word exact is going to be as worthwhile because the standard organic results are getting pushed out of one word keywords a lot more. I think people overvalue domains names currently and as soon as you ask there is always the effect of "yesterday I was selling for $100 but for you today I have the special price of $20k."

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