kev grant

lol.

no I doubt it. we'd have to know what it was to fix first wouldnt we? it could be so many aspects of the structure or algo changes that we can never know, from inbound links being counted differently to age / trust /brand tweaks its pointless trying to speculate really.

i pointed you to the thread to show you that:

a) you are not alone
b) its more than likely nothing you guys have done
c) its pointless speculating
d) so you know im not making it all up

longtail traffic is mainly affected by inner pagerank and your supplemental index ratio / performance, the more pages are in the main index (and hence can rank) the higher the deep traffic count.

the link sculpting we were discussing previously would likely help in this regard anyway, (unless youre removing important links)

it looks like youre one of these large longtail sites that aren't benefiting from the latest Google algo changes.

forums have been affected more than most sites, not really sure why.

maybe a read through this (extremely long and permanently ongoing) thread might give you some clues?

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4125460.htm

i havent really been paying that much attention lately to be honest as most of our main sites (and all of the important ones) have improved more than theyve lost since the changes.

are you seeing a drop in the total number of kws over the period?

heh, yes it is, isnt it.

you should see what it looks like hooked up to a big ecommerce site with the ppc campaigns integrated and all the goals and income configured.

it's really quite something.

cant comment on the forum name past saying I would be surprised if that were the case much.

and with "java" you're in the top 20 for the word, out of About 221,000,000 results, so you dont need to write it in every inner page title too, they'll carry that ranking power from the domain's authority easily.

no, i meant inside it not the dashboard ;)

what I would normally do at this point with a client is a Skype call, where you share your screen with me whilst inside your Google panel, and I talk you through where to go / what to do. or actually with clients Im normally logged in and they see my screen.

but you should be able to pull a report showing the top 500 kws performance over a certain period, compared to a previous period very easily.

on the left, click traffic sources, then keywords, and then set the dates box upper right. that'll show you the top ten, then at the bottom of the page in the dropdown select 500 kws. you can then see the percentages up / down for every kw, and the overview will also show you how many kws total this period and previous.

yes you can do all of that in GA, dig into traffic sources / keywords and set the dates to compare a more recent period with a better period prior to that.

you havent even looked in there properly have you? Paul, it will blow you away what you can see in GA when you look ;)

Henry Wong wrote:
SEO does seem to be bunk, with the goal to get higher ratings, but it too seems to have some common sense.

seo is generally common sense plus sorting out shoddy web design by developers who should know better.

Henry Wong wrote:
and while content is king, there is no harm is giving a more pleasant experience too.

Henry

this is the most misunderstood cliche in the whole seo world. do not ever believe that content with no promotion is king, it is not, and will languish way too far down in the charts to ever see the light of day.

what Google actually mean by that phrase is that if your content is good enough, then enough people will link to it naturally to make it rank well.

and its utter b*****ks for 99.9999999% of sites out there.

anyone setting up a business website that needs to sell online for their business viability and listening to Google's propaganda will be bust in 6 months or forced onto spending a fortune on Adwords (Google's PRIME PURPOSE remember)

for the cost of 4-6 months worth of adwords a good SEO company can often rank a website for those terms organically, on an ongoing basis. whereas adwords stop the moment your budget does.

seo for business these days is not optional, it is essential or youre just one of the also-rans before you even start.

paul wheaton wrote:Currently, thread titles are the subject line followed by "([forum name] forum at javaranch)"

Sometimes, this can get really big. Is that a problem?

What should we add? What should we whittle?

in word, no, its not a problem.

its always been thought that the first 3 words of the title have the most ranking power, although lately that doesnt seem to be as important, I think they've adjusted so that words farther down the title carry more weight, and the front a little less.

yours are ok as-is, but for maximum ranking power the perfect title would really be just the subject line.

but loads of sites have their name etc on the end too. all it does is dilute the relevance from the specific subject, but some argue it helps with the site's "theming" too, so dont stress about this.

with regards to the cutoff limit, you would be better off cutting the latter part off, not the first, especially as Google does in the SERP anyway, so people are never going to see your boiler plate text at the tail end of your title in Google anyway.

as you probably cant or dont want to do that just leave it as it is.

as with all SEO its much more important that your users write good thread titles, than any template changes you make.

hey all.

with regards to the slow decline, if it wasn't preceded by changes to the site your end, then it's much more likely to be a sign of the ongoing Google system and algo changes for the last 5 months or so. have you dug into the stats to see if there's any obvious big keywords that have dropped away? is the overall amount of keywords declining etc?

there are many possible scenarios analytics might help you identify.

and yes, more links will never hurt either.

Goog is still every volatile, like mid-update rollout almost. am beginning to wonder if its ever going to settle, or this is just the new reality.

and if youre altering urls, Im assuming the old is 301 redirected to the new?

if not, it definitely has to be.

hola amigos, que pasa?

am I right in thinking this is up one or more places since my link to it cached?

http://www.google.com/search?q=java+forum&hl=en&pws=0&gl=US&sa=N

paul wheaton wrote:That makes sense!

And I like the idea of a cleaner page too.

I think that links to our home page should have the anchor text of "JavaRanch" - that just seems what is good from a human perspective. Of course, from an SEO perspective, the anchor text should read "java jsp java servlet applet" and I'm not gonna do that.

"Java" is in "JavaRanch" - will that be good enough? Should we seriously consider "Java Ranch" instead?

i dont know exactly where you got your SEO perspective from.. let me re-phrase that for you..

Of course, from an Spammer perspective, the anchor text should read "java jsp java servlet applet"

there, now its correct ;) .JavaRanch will be fine. Java Ranch possibly (maybe) slightly better.

paul wheaton wrote:
Currently, on the "java" search, we are hovering around #21 to #24. I'm not saying I want to be #1 - that would be nuts. I'm saying that it just seems like we should be #9 or #10. And since we currently are not, then that is proof that I've been a poor site steward.

again I'd have to disagree, that will not "just happen" you would have to have been thinking about it and trying very hard for a long while, and you have other priorities.

that first page is authority sites wall to wall, its not like any of the other java forums have wound up there either is it?

ok no worries.

& there arent really any other tools available that show linkstrength without installing something, either Firefox add ons or PC programs, but am sure you can appreciate linkstrength is a factor of how many links you divide the pagestrength by. heres a screenshot of it on coderanch, see how the strongest link is a PR 3, but has less links leaving the page?

not that you need to really look at links in detail anyway, especially on Javaranch, you have more than enough to there.

with regards to ranking first page for "Java" even with your site's trusted status, that is still a massive mountain to climb, due to the strength of the competition. if someone came to me for a quote for that it would be north of 200k for a new site.

I would suggest the usual strategy of slowly picking off the sub categories java + forums, certification and the other stuff youve mentioned first and work your way up to the big push for "Java" because there are some truly mighty sites on the first page for that.

re this

So if we have 500,000 threads and they each have, say, 100 links to ... stuff. Including five to the home page. And if we changed that so it was more like 30 links and only 1 to the home page, then google will like our home page a whole lot more?

short answer, yes.

paul wheaton wrote:So if the primary mission is to improve our standing with "Java" to the javaranch home page, what do you suggest?

I'll go follow this new link (hoping that something scary doesn't pop up).

Paul, in the nicest possible way I suggest you drop this attitude or the free (but very expensive if I were consulting for you) advice will stop flowing.

I have been hacked exactly twice in 5 years, both in the last 8 days. its not fun, it was extremely f***king irritating, and your forums visits there at the exact time, were a) initially suspicious, and b) just plain unfortunate.

for that I apologise, however I have no affiliation of any possible type with linkdiagnosis or and am freely sharing time and knowledge & the best tools, with no possible gains for myself here.

maybe you didnt mean it to sound like it did, but if you did..