<< Last days of the QuadraCentifiable competition Number of mentions of QuadraCentifiable on Google >>
Nov 8, 2010
There are two parts to such linking:
- Its another hurdle for competitors to beat - that of the friends sites
- More Google PR to them, and them then linking into you. Powerful pages linking to you, meaning that Google considers you that much more powerful, irrespective of whether those pages actually rank for the phrase.
and the third...
- Why not experiment...
Rankings of friends sites
I have been obtaining links to ragepank and nzs, and it has been interesting to see the rankings of those pages over time.
http://www.ragepank.com/quadracentifiable/
http://www.nzs.com/site-profile/nzseochallenge.co.nz/
The ragepank page was its top page for the phrase, and its rankings increased from 23 to 14th for quadracentifiable. The NZS rankings on the other hand remained the same - 22nd from 29 Oct to 8 Nov. Why???
Hypothesis
I am a little surprised!
I would have thought that a powerful second page (my profile page on NZS), would have pushed up the rankings for the first page(nzs blog page). Apparently not enough to make a difference. Yet the ragepank page that was one below nzs jumped from 23rd to 14th! Both were receiving exactly the same number and power of inbound links.
While it is always proper to try experiments many times, I draw the following hypothesis:
- If you want to rank higher for a phrase, make sure you target a page that is already the most powerful for the phrase. Work with Google, not against it.
- Links into another page are effectively wasted links (in getting that target page ranked). NZS at 22nd did not budge. Ragepank increased a lot more.
- I had always thought that getting links for a second page with the same link text as the first would benefit and get the first higher. Yes, you can get an indented result using this strategy, but for competitive phrases where there are no indented's showing, a second page seems little use.
- Better to pick an alternate phrase for the second page, and get links for that alternate phrase.
- If I had linked to the NZS blog page with the same links, I bet it would have improved to be higher than ragepanks
Haiming's SEOChallenger website moves up to second
Yes, I did use this strategy to link to my SearchMasters blog post about the competition, and it moved remarkably up to second. I had been hoping for the same effect for the NZS and ragepank pages... Just today Haiming's SEOChallenge entry has taken over my second spot, and about time too!
Just as well my linking strategy for this main website has been that much more than I put into trying to get the SearchMasters blog post ranked. But it is another warning that Haiming is hot on my heels. My being top is risky business, you don't know how far you are ahead till you are passed, but at least I have put a marker in the way.
Higher PR and power of pages linking to you
Yes, this post has been more on how the friends pages rank for the Quadracentifiable phrase. Certainly any link that goes to a page, increases the value it then has to onlink to another site. My rankings for the phrase would certainly have been helped, although to what extent it would have been better to instead just link directly to this site is yet another unknown in the ever continuing hunt for the golden egg of ranking in competitive fields.
Wider effect of new links into Ragepank?
Since the 29 Oct, Ragepank's homepage has increased several places for some SEO related phrases. It would seem that the increased power coming into that one page has improved rankings of other pages with unrelated phrases on the website.So while the inbound links have not specifically got the NZS page ranking higher, additional incoming links certainly do have an effect, just a little more subtle.
Post Comment