Yeah, stupid. I’ve found when you make a mistake the best thing to do is to own up to it, and then find something interesting you can learn from it. Aside from learning to check the stats on my blog more than once every three months, I’ve also learned that the robots.txt file actually works. Yeah, in fact it works really, really well. This graphic says it all:

That’s what happens when your robots.txt settings look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Not all that different than:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Wouldn’t you say? But it’s quite different. It’s the difference between having your site almost completely de-indexed or having your site indexing marvelously. So kids, learn from my mistake and don’t do this at home, at work, or anywhere else unless you actually want to avoid the search engines.

You see, I’m in a bit of a unique situation. I’ve got Domain A, and my associate has Domain B. My associate owns the content on Domain A, but wants to move it to Domain B, and then he wants me to 301 redirect Domain A to Domain B. But just temporarily. After two months, I’ll remove the 301 redirect from Domain A and will do with it as I please. However, my interest in Domain A is primarily based on its current value, which is substantial, and I’m concerned that after two months of 301 redirecting it elsewhere that the value will have disappaited like so many programmers around the continental breakfast table at a conference once the muffins run out.

So, if anyone has the definitive answer to my question, I’d love to hear it. If not, I’ll probably take the risk just to find out what happens, and then report back here upon completion of the experiment.

Recently, I reworked the structure of the mwi.com website, and so Google has had to figure out where all the new content is. As a further experiment I did not use 301 redirects, just to see how long it would take Google on its own to figure things out.

The result was that the mwi.com site dropped in the rankings. This was to be expected. And I expected I would see a drop in traffic and therefore leads, and I sure did. Here’s how traffic has change during the past month, comparing the first 11 days of December to the first 11 days of November.

“utah web design” – 15 vs. 6, a drop of -60%

Considering our ranking and traffic from other terms have dropped as well, it’s no wonder the number of leads I’m receiving, that is, people who filled out our online request for proposal form, has also gone way down.

Am I worried? Not really, I know it’s a temporary bump and like I said, I was expecting this. But what’s to be learned from this is that:

1. Ranking matter. Even moving down from #1 to just #4 or #5 can make a big difference.

2. 301 redirects do make a difference. Use them. It has taken Google a long time to figure things out, but once I’ve used 301 redirects they figure it out in a hurry.

Frankly I’m a bit worried. After telling the client it would take months to get rankings like this we just got them in a few days. We made it look too easy. I’m really stumped as to why all this happened so fast, based on my other experiences. Has anyone else had a similar experience? If you’ve had a website get ranked well this fast did it last or was it a temporary bounce?

Background
We used three different articles for the same website and distributed them using three different article distribution services. Although the articles were different all-in-all this should be a good indicator as to which service performed better. To analyze the results we took 5 different unique sentences in the article and searched for that specific phrase in Google and Yahoo. Different sentences bring back different results; that is why there is a range of pages indexed.

#1 Article Marketer
Service Level – Free
Date Article Distributed for SEO: April 25th, 2007
Google – pages with the article indexed: 0
Yahoo – pages with the article indexed: 0
Overall – What can I say more? This one is out of the question. I doubt even their paid service is much better.

#2 iSnare
Service Level – Paid $10 (for 5 articles)
Date Article Distributed for SEO: April 25th, 2007
Google – pages with the article indexed: 120-217
Yahoo – pages with the article indexed: 38-70
Overall – iSnare seems to be pretty good, and it is extremely inexpensive. The articles did get distributed to many pages in just 30 days, although some of the pages were extremely low quality they are just as good as the competition.

#3 The Phantom Writers
Service Level – Paid $35
Date Article Distributed for SEO: April 30th, 2007
Google – pages with the article indexed: 1-3
Yahoo – pages with the article indexed: 3
Overall – This service distributes the article on Yahoo message forums. There were only a few pages that picked it up so far and they were not of the best quality. It seems to be ok, but I think there are better options out there. We will have to wait another month and re-analyze the results to see if it is worth it or not.

SEO Article Distribution Test – Whats Next???
If there is enough interest in these results we will run another analysis after another month. We will check again how many webpages the articles are picked up by and at that time we should be able to analyze backlinks to the website the article was written for. If you want to see these results post a comment so we know there is interest.

I just ran a report that focuses on three candidates from the Democratic party (Clinton, Obama, and Edwards), and three from the Republican party (Romney, Giuliani, and McCain). I was curious to see whose website would rank the best when their own name was searched for. That is, if you do a search on Google for “hillary clinton” does her campaign website come up first, or does some other website, perhaps not the website her campaign would prefer, come up in the top spot? Worse yet, what if a candidate’s website didn’t come up within the top 30 results for a search on their own name? Here’s how the numbers played out:

Search engine / Keyword	Competition	Clinton	Romney	Obama	Edwards	McCain	Giuliani
Google
john edwards	21,100,000	-	-	-	1	-	-
mitt romney	2,300,000	-	3	-	-	-	-
barack obama	2,770,000	-	-	4	-	-	-
john mccain	2,980,000	-	-	-	-	-	-
rudy giuliani	1,500,000	-	-	-	-	-	-
hillary clinton	7,610,000	3	-	-	-	-	-
Yahoo!
john edwards	63,400,000	-	-	-	1	-	-
mitt romney	8,430,000	-	2	-	-	-	-
barack obama	8,470,000	-	-	2	-	-	-
john mccain	25,000,000	-	-	-	-	15	-
rudy giuliani	4,680,000	-	-	-	-	-	2
hillary clinton	34,200,000	2	-	-	-	-	-
MSN
john edwards	1,032,575	-	-	-	1	-	-
mitt romney	315,450	-	6	-	-	-	-
barack obama	156,879	-	-	6	-	-	-
john mccain	188,486	-	-	-	-	4	-
rudy giuliani	348,102	-	-	-	-	-	13
hillary clinton	3,171,167	6	-	-	-	-	-

Assuming the candidate who did the best job optimizing their own site for their own name was the winner, it would clearly be John Edwards. But of course, this is hardly a reliable predictor. Because ranking is often a product of how much competition there is, perhaps it’s not a good sign that John Edwards is so easily able to get the #1 position. It might indicate nobody else is interested in him and therefore no content about him is being written.

However, if you look at the competition column, you’ll notice there are more pages bearing the name “john edwards” than any other. But this is a false hope for you Edwards fans. Think about it, how many other people are named John Edwards other than the candidate? How many others are named Barack Obama? I think you get the point.

Moving on, I can’t help but think it’s not a good sign that McCain and Giuliani’s websites aren’t coming up within the top 30 results in Google for their own names. What other websites are coming up and what are they saying about the candidates that might differ from what the candidates would like to say? If the candidates’ website aren’t showing up in at least the top 10 results chances are people are developing their opinions based on sources other than the one source a candidate would prefer and which they have complete control over–their own website.

As both Jim and the forum commenters state, PageRank (and wherever I mention PageRank I’m talking about the public PageRank shown in the Googel toolbar, not the PageRank Google is actually using behind the scenes) is a measure that is 3-6 months old at best.

So here are some tips:

1. Don’t worry about PageRank.

2. If someone tells you about the importance of PageRank, ignore them.

3. If someone tries to sell you something based on PageRank, run from them.

As always, use common sense. If a site has meaningful, interesting content that is relevant to your site then getting a link from them will be a good thing. Even if their site has low or non-existent PR it probably is or at least will be a quality link in the long run, PR notwithstanding.

My SEO firm gets asked this same type of question by almost every customer looking for SEO services, so here’s your answer–it depends.

I know, I know, that’s not really an answer, but it’s the only legitimate answer you’re going to get, and here’s why…

Nobody, no SEO expert, no SEO professional, no SEO company, can accurately predict how much work or how much time it will take to get a top ranking. Nobody can even guarantee a top ranking. That is, they can guarantee it, but guaranteed or not they only have partial control over the results. This is because Google is ultimately in charge, and as far as I know you can’t buy them off. All you can do is optimize and hope for the best.

The way Google works is that they have an algorithm. It’s a set of rules for how websites are ranked for keyword searches. For example, if you do a search for “utah web design” certain websites will come up first. Why do they come up first? There are hundreds of rules that affect those rankings. Some of the more important ones include the text contained in the title tags of the site, the content on the site, the number of other websites linking back to that site, and the text contained in those links that link back to that site.

The trick of SEO is trying to figure out all of Google’s rules, which aren’t explicitly published. Google gives webmasters some SEO tips, and there is a very helpful Google blog, but Google guards the exact recipe of their secret sauce the same way Coca Cola guards the exact mixture that goes into a can of soda. Because whoever you hire is not privy to that secret recipe, they can’t guarantee results.

“Ok, so there are no guarantees, but I’m just trying to get a rough idea of what to expect, just give it to me already!!!”

Alright, here it is, but remember I can only tell you what I’ve seen based on my own experience, and here it is:

1. It is not hard to get a site ranked on Google within one month. I’ve done it myself, and my firm has done it time and time again. You may have heard of something called the sandbox, which is supposedly a holding place Google keeps site in until they’ve been around a while before they’re properly indexed, but I’ve never had a website get stuck in it. Everything I’ve worked on or that my firm has worked on has gotten indexed almost immediately even if it wasn’t indexed at all before. Maybe that’s unusual, and maybe we’re just that good, but I tend to err on the side of saying it’s just not that hard.

2. Unless you are in a highly competitive industry (i.e. web hosting, real estate, bizop, etc.) you should be able to get some first page rankings within 3-4 months. But it depends! Oh, I know you don’t want to hear that it depends, but there are so many factors involved I can’t help saying it. There is no website out there just like your website. Every industry is different. Some are more savvy than others. Some industries are more competitive than others. Every website you are competing against has to be taken into account and no two websites are alike. But in my experience, if SEO is going to work at all, you should see enough results within 3-4 months that you’ll feel justified in continuing your SEO campaign. If you don’t see satisfactory results, then either SEO is not for you, or you need to hire someone else to take care of your SEO.

As for the second part of the question regardinng what methods will be adopted, I could give you the methods my firm uses, but let me give you some general advice.

1. Make sure whoever you hire uses ethical SEO methods. Some examples of unethical SEO methods are cloaking, kiting, hidden text, and stuffed meta tags.

2. Make sure whoever you hire is up to date on their SEO skills. I run into so many companies who are using someone for SEO, and when they tell me what the person is doing I groan because they’re using SEO techniques that have been outdated for five years and are actually doing more harm than good.

Those first two are a little hard to verify, but here are some that are easier.

3. Make sure they give you monthly reports that include rankings, indexed pages, and various traffic reports. Again, I have visited with so many companies whose SEO consultants are not giving them any monthly reports. It usually turns out the SEO consultant isn’t doing anything either, which is why they aren’t providing reports because it would only show their lack of performance.

4. Make sure to get another monthly report that is an overview of the work that has been performed on your site. This report should probably be at least a page long each month. If they can’t fill one page with explanations of what they’ve done, chances are they aren’t doing much.

5. If you’re not getting results, fire them. SEO should work for almost any company, so if your SEO consultant or SEO company isn’t getting you results, get rid of them and try another one. If you go through four or five and nobody can provide you with results, then yes, perhaps SEO isn’t for you.

6. Don’t be confused. If what your SEO firm tells you is confusing then they may be just be bad communicators, but they may be pooling the wool over your eyes. There is a lot to SEO, and some of it can get complicated, and if you are technically illiterate then perhaps you’ll be confused no matter what, but if you have even a basic understanding of how Internet marketing and search engines work you should be able to understand what your SEO consultant is telling you.

If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to post a comment. If you’ve got a question, chances are 1,000 other people are looking for the same answer every month that you are.

But let’s dig a little deeper and see if we can be of further assistance. If you’re a company thinking you might need SEO services, then this is what you need to be aware of:

1. SEO is an ongoing process. Your site will never be 100% “optimized,” it will only get more and more optimized as you put more work into it. But if you have someone spending 20 hours per week doing SEO for your website today, chances are you’ll still need 20 hours of SEO per week a year from now. The good news is that a year from now your rankings will be better and you will hopefully be reaping the rewards of having invested in SEO.

2. SEO is not free. If you do it yourself, you’re going to invest your time. You’ll probably want to invest some money in various SEO tools as well. If you hire somebody to do SEO for you, then obviously you’re going to be paying them. There is no free SEO service nor any affordable SEO service that gives you everything you need. Full service, effective SEO is going to cost you a minimum of several hundred dollars per month, if not thousands.

3. SEO is both easy and difficult. My firm often tells our clients that they can learn how to do SEO on their own. While this is true, it’s not feasible for most of our clients because it is less expensive for them to pay us than it is for them to invest their own time in learning SEO. However, in some cases I believe clients should learn as much SEO as they can because it will pay off for their business, even if they continue to use our services. It certainly never hurts to know more about SEO if you’re willing to put in the time. If you already know some HTML then you’ll have a much easier time learning SEO. If you find the task of composing an email to be quite difficult then SEO is probably not something worth dabbling in.

SEO vs. SEM

Organic or natural search results get more clicks than pay per click ads, on average. Generally you’re looking at 30-40% of the clicks going to PPC ads, and 60-70% going to organic search engine results. So there is certainly not a drawback to SEO in that sense. However, that ratio may be different for the specific keywords you want to rank for.

Another benefit of SEO over SEM is that there is not a direct cost for clicks. With PPC, you’ll pay twice as much for 100 clicks as you do for 50. With SEO you’ll pay the same amount for 100,000 clicks as you will for 50. However, this is also one of the drawbacks of SEO in that you’ll pay the same amount for 0 clicks as you will for 50. But if that’s what’s happening then you should probably find a new SEO company to work with.

One more benefit of SEO vs. SEM is that you get residual value from SEO. An SEO campaign is like a freight train. It takes a lot of effort and some time to get it moving, and it still takes a bit of energy to keep it moving, but if you stop pushing it won’t come to a stop immediately, and in fact with SEO there will always be some residual value. With SEM as soon as you stop paying the results immediately stop.

I would recommend to almost all clients that they do both SEO and SEM. If they both provide positive results, why not? It doesn’t have to be a choice between one or the other. You can run SEO and SEM campaigns simultaneously, and in fact there are some benefits and synergies to running both types of campaigns at the same time. So don’t focus on the drawbacks, focus on the benefits.

First up is Deftly dealing with duplicate content by Adam Lasnik, posted on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. The article covers what is and isn’t duplicate content (as defined by Google themselves), why Google cares about duplicate content, what Google does about it, and how SEO experts, webmasters, etc. can deal with the issue.

SEOMoz covers Canonical Issues & Duplicate Content, Duplicate Content Penalties, and Rand adds his own comments on Adam’s post.

William Slawski gives his two cents on Duplicate Content Issues and Search Engines. Actually it’s more like 11 cents. #10 deals with article syndication where William says “Many people create articles, and offer them to others as long as a link and attribution to the original source is made. The risk here is that the search engines may filter out the original article and show one of the syndicated copies.”

Todd Malicoat at Stuntdubl addresses How to Remedy Duplicate Content and Magical % Thinking where he points out that “If it was as easy as saying that any page with more than 42% duplicate content will be filtered from the search results, then all site owners and SEO’s would probably grab 40% duplicate content for every page filler.” Also check out his Top 16 Reasons People Hate SEOs.

Got any other resources on SEO and duplicate content? Please comment.