2nd Site....want Opinions

[Crabcake Johnny]

I have to view all SEO information with a critical eye. First of all, the only people who know Google's algorithm is Google. There's a lot of fantastic guesses out there - but that's what they are.

Even in the esteemed SEO community there are basic disagreements about what weight is given to certain things like backlinks, content, social media, etc...

Google, for example, claims that paying for or spamming backlinks = punishment. However, do some research on some very high profile companies that completely gamed Google and Google didn't find out until their competitors narced them out.

Huh? So Google can't tell if a company is using hundreds of thousands of "illegal" backlinks? They can't catch that on their own?

And by the way, after those certain companies were narced out, Google did indeed penalize them but putting them in the "naughty corner" for a bit - then giving them their ranking back. Wow - stiff punishment.

 

[Josh]

SEOmoz has some good data, but between panda 1 and panda 2, there was a modification to the duplicate content penalty that I don't think they're addressing in there, and the A B testing that has been done shows a far different thing than a cut and dry penalty.

Having said that, it's not a great idea to design around the idea that the penalty won't be changed back to be more strict in the future, in particular when copyrighting costs 1-2.50 /100 words.

How much is copy writing ?

 

[JimmyUt]

So the question I have is this. How long do these articles need to be to get the "best bang for your buck", 500 words, 1000 words, is there a sweet spot

 

[Josh]

I have to view all SEO information with a critical eye. First of all, the only people who know Google's algorithm is Google. There's a lot of fantastic guesses out there - but that's what they are.

Even in the esteemed SEO community there are basic disagreements about what weight is given to certain things like backlinks, content, social media, etc...

Google, for example, claims that paying for or spamming backlinks = punishment. However, do some research on some very high profile companies that completely gamed Google and Google didn't find out until their competitors narced them out.

Huh? So Google can't tell if a company is using hundreds of thousands of "illegal" backlinks? They can't catch that on their own?

And by the way, after those certain companies were narced out, Google did indeed penalize them but putting them in the "naughty corner" for a bit - then giving them their ranking back. Wow - stiff punishment.

I might disagree with you about a great many things, but you hit the nail on the head here.

Google is the only one that knows how Google is ranking stuff.

The SEO community is always disagreeing with itself. I've been testing some stuff lately and it's been performing *very* well. I try some other things that I think might work and they tank. I really think the best way to be doing SEO is to constantly be testing different things out to see how well they perform and use THAT as the guide. That's really the only way to get Google to "tell what they're doing".

On the plus side, if you do your keyword research right you don't need to have a "perfect" site, it just needs to be noticeably better than everyone else. The other thing that's neat is while you're trying to figure out google and doing stuff to your site to get it to rank on there, Bing and Yahoo start drooling all over your site and it starts to rank well there.

If neither Google, Yahoo nor Bing like my site, I know I'm doing a lot wrong.
If Yahoo and Bing like my site, I know I'm doing most of the obvious stuff right, and I need to up my game a bit to win the love and affection of Google.
If Google likes me, everybody likes me.

I realize that Google is the top prize in SEO, but you can get some traffic and conversions off of the Yahoo and Bing stuff too that is years behind in sophistication from Google.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

It's one thing to test dupe content on a throwaway domain, but lead generation sites are an investment, the best kind of residual income there is.

You do not want to gamble you're hard work by putting duplicate content on ur money site(s).

It's fine if you spin an article for a backlink though.

And to Brooks point, there are plenty of article writers out there you can get for about $10 an article for a good article. Now, unless you spend $20-50 an article they will never be at the same quality an agent would write, but the point is to have time at the bar.

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

"You do not want to gamble you're hard work by putting duplicate content..."

Nuff said. The only post that matters on this thread.

 

[ksigmtsu]

How much is copy writing ?

Heh for top end content its $2.50 for 100 words.

For copy writing.

I might have had 4 or 5 beers and been halfway paying attention when I typed that.

Dunno why I'm answering you anyway, you know who I suggest using for insurance article work.

 

[Josh]

Heh for top end content its $2.50 for 100 words.

For copy writing.

I might have had 4 or 5 beers and been halfway paying attention when I typed that.

Dunno why I'm answering you anyway, you know who I suggest using for insurance article work.

I was wondering about this copyrighting service, not article writing

 

[ltcadviser]

I just launched another site Utah Medicare | Utah Medicare Supplement | Utah Medicare Advantage and I wanted some opinions.

1)overall look
2)performance (how fast it loads, etc)
3) suggestions

Thanks

Jimmy, swap out the picture. The eyes are all looking straight ahead. Have the eyes within a picture look subtle towards a call to action or a tagline or somewhere that you want the client to go.
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Iphone typo....I meant "subtly" not subtle