This is it! - Summary of SEO Contest

Summary of SEO Contest:

It's sad that a tragedy happened in Hyderabad today which is also where this agwesome College events are happening..

I just can't ignore this and go on with my last posting of this contest..So just wanted to make this post a tribute to the lost souls.RIP.

As for the status of this contest..things are looking better now. 1st rank in Bing and Duckduckgo search engines for my blog as of now, which is great. Still Google not letting my blog in the top place. Hmm, got to check the actual reason and logic behind it.

Anyway, here are some of the notable points on SEO that I learned by participating in this contest.

Summary:

1. Visitors interaction would make an impact to the search ranking of a page and commentluv plugin proved that as my post on commentluv is at the top of Google results.
2. The age old link building strategy still works and better links are better than large number of low quality links.
3. Link juice is something that you can create on your own blog itself and for that every post in your blog or site should be properly linked and accessible. 
4. Making sure to remove unwanted links such as "read more", edit buttons, etc..
5. Authorship indeed will play a significant impact in SEO in the future and present.
6. Google plus is a great social media to get indexed quickly and to get traffic, which are relevant.
7. Wordpress is incredibly SEO optimized as default. Choosing the right theme is the key and 3 level depth can bring nice categorizing of posts.
8. Search engines are still vulnerable to black hat tricks. Keyword stuffing still works, at least for short period of time before getting a panda kick.

It's been a great learning experience and this contest kept me pretty busy in my home. So what are the negative impact?

1. Got removed the license to contribute to yahoo answers.(banned) sad...
2. Banned by a couple of SEO communities in Google plus..

My biggest worry was losing my mail ID and Google profile..eventually things gone OK. Got to start buildup my Google plus image as quality content producer. 

Finally had to appreciate the Felicity organizers, they really done a great job. The Q/As from the events of Felicity are pretty good, tough at least for my standards. And they made this event a nation wide competition, which is awesome. I know this looks like flattering but to be honest they've done good job at least in terms of online communication, mails, FB updates about events, Felicity website and promo video..that is all I can notice online as I couldn't go for this event in person.

Started this blog late..but I hope I did pretty much well and got it rank high..but high enough?
Feb 23..this is it!

Google Bing Duck SERP Analysis

SEOContestatIIITHyderabad 

So it's getting close and everyone is feeling the pressure as only 3 more  days to go to find the winner of SEO Contest at IIIT Hyderabad 2013. I've  been receiving events mail from the Felicity group for the upcomming events and the quality of questions they asked were pretty awesome(tough). The organizers

have a great job.

As for this post, we are going to discuss the search engine results page of Google, Bing and Duckduckgo for the ultimate SEOContestatIIITHyderabad ranking.

Google SERP:

The pattern what I noticed in Google's search engine results page is that it shows and brings new content relavant to keyword SEOContestatIIITHyderabad stuffed in the titles and description. I believe it's just to see if that new content is relevant and important and helpfull for that keyword. "to see" in a sense by evaluating the user behaviour and eventually 100+ factors..

But what is striking is that Google algorithm is still beatable but only in a short term. And I think it's just part of the plan for Google to bring all kinds of content at 1st page of search results and then hitting the nail. Like bringing  into the cage to kill.

Bing SERP:

Bing's search results for SEOContestatIIITHyderabad is quite unstable. The ranking varies regularly with short duration which just gives me the impression that it depends on both yahoo and it's own bots. So processing both the input induces the fluctuation.

Obviously the rate at which the indexing takes place in bing is slower compared to Google's indexing and so new content will take time to showup in bing's search results.

Duckduckgo SERP:

The most complex and unpredictable search result comes from duckduckgo. Right now it shows a post from my blog at the top of the search results page but to be honest it's not that great of a post for the keyword SEOContestatIIITHyderabad. But for some reason its right at the top, my luck I suppose!!

It's complex because duckduckgo takes input from various sources and it doesn't have any bots of it own to index. So the ranking doesn't seem to change for quite some days even though new contents are pouring everywhere.

In the mean time I've been working hard to get visitor to my blog and to get them

comment to see the effect of commentluv as SEO and building some backlinks. Got to

wait and watch..losing my finger nails :(

Little SEO Tweaks

SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad

Just wanted to share this Latest, Official Cool Video of Felicity 2013 promo. As you all know I'm participating in SEO contest at IIIT Hyderabad to rank high in search engines like Google, Bing and Duckduckgo for the keyword SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad.

And in the quest of this contest I have optimized some little things which might not seem as SEO but it will have an impact for better ranking in SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad. First thing I need to get all the pages to get indexed in search engines. So far, Google have done it and Bing have indexed half of the pages but duckduckgo still didn't index any pages.

And in Google webmaster tools, I saw a duplicate link in html improvement section which seems to be due to blog archive widget. So I've removed it. Also I know for the fact that Labels are not crawled as a default by robot.txt and so for full access of all my post in every page, I've placed the links in the navigation bar. This will work great because it will be google friendly navigation and the link juice will flow freely throughout the entire blog for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad ranking.

What I noticed in wordpress is that they have the tags option which I think is missing in blogger and so wordpress is gaining undue advantage over blogger. Even Matt Cutts had said that wordpress is takes care of 80 to 90% of SEO, which is great and good luck for guys chosen wordpress for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad contest. Checkout this video.

So I though I better do some SEO of my own to my blogger blogspot. So I added meta keyword and meta description and meta news keyword manually for each post. But I haven't seen any significant change in my rankings but lets wait and see how it goes.

Also I tried to include breadcrumbs to this blog which is using seocontestatiiithyderabad as the label but due to intensedebate commenting system installed, having some issues to implement it. Damn, I'm getting so into this contest and I'm thinking is it all worth it? Will I able to win this contest? By the way, this college IIIT at hyderabad which conducts this competition is great doing great work. Checkout the offical Promo video above for the quality and the level of intensity the students of this College, IIIT, are showing. 

Will update later..

Social Media as SEO

SEOContestAtiiitHyderabad

Social networking sites have become a great way to boost traffic. 

All you need is an awesome content to be shared with and some cool friends or influential followers with many friends. You can get your post go viral in social media but its not easy.

So What are the option you have for Social Media?

It's obvious that giants like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter will come to the picture. Other than this you can share it with Reddit, Stumbleupon, Dig etc.

As for the giants  I prefer the G giant  The reason is with communities you can share posts relevant to a particular community with members who might be interested in your post and eventually getting some visitors.Also for promoting site as a Page Google page is the best way to do it. And that is what I did for this SEO contest At IIIT Hyderabad for SEOContestAtiiitHyderabad and the results are immediate.

This G+ page SEOContestAtiiitHyderabad got indexed in SERP quickly and is currently available in 2nd page of SERP and hence along with it my blog. As we talked about the importance of verified authorship, this G+ page SEO Contest At iiit Hyderabad will get more value and importance for SEOContestAtiiitHyderabad.

As for Facebook is concerned, I don't want to look as a spammer to my friends in the quest of this SEO contest. So restrained from doing it as of now. And twitter is still a mystery for me as I'm not active in tweeting. FB and G+ takes a lot of time in my daily activity and so there is no space for twitter.

So with Social media as a SEO lets see how my ranking for SEOContestAtiiitHyderabad will impact in this contest.

Link Building Basics

SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad

In this blog post, we are going to see the universal SEO strategy - "Link building". Instead of the usual spamming concept we encourage somewhat legit and more win-win strategy in link building. In my quest to win the SEO contest at IIIT Hyderabad for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad keyword, I'm quite choosy in the way of link building and want to play safe.

So lets discuss..

What Not to Do:

Spamming is a strict no when it comes to link building. When you post a comment with links and the webmaster marks your comment as a spam then Google has your data(mail ID associated with that comment) and it could result in devaluation of your content when using that mail ID. Also the link that your posted could come under the radar of Panda or Penguin.

Google is working to release it own version of a commenting system just like disqus or Facebook comment system. And once its done and you get caught as a spammer, then its just easy catch for Google in its quest for quality content and fighting black hat SEO.

What Can We Do:

Google appreciates 1 quality link more than a several low quality links. In other-words getting a link from a site with PR5 is valued more than several links from PR0/1 sites.

But does it all have to be a Dofollow links? Actually Nofollow links also share link juice, but a dofollow link is better.

A link which contributes a considerable traffic to your site valued more, as it mean relevant and helpful/useful info for a keyword. So instead of 100s of invisible  links, several traffic driving links are a great SEO.

To bring traffic, you have to write useful info which should help others and post  a valuable comment in appropriate site where the users want help like Yahoo answers or other sites post seeking help. This is what I'm doing now to rank for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad, answering in yahoo answers with my site url in source.

Other than that you can try making valid comments in wordpress installed sites which gives as option for entering website URL and commentluv installed sites. Mind you these links will not generate traffic but will help in PR.

So I'm doing all these 3 methods so that my site gets some valuable juice and eventually rank better for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad. Adding to this, internal linking is also important, which gives you more control over the anchor text used to link among the posts.

Authorship As a SEO

SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad

In this post, we are going to see the impact (in this case rank for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad) of having a proper verified authorship for a blog or site. There are tons of sites explaining how to use Rich snippet tools in Google webmaster tools for successful authorship.

Here we'll see a brief info of what needs to be done and how its a SEO.

How its a SEO:

Well there is a project going on in Google to validate and rank pages based on the authorship. Just like page rank, authorship rank is going to be universal in what ever the post an author does.

To give you just a glimpse of it, checkout the ripples in Google plus. The size of the circles represents the influence of a profile like higher page rank. So a post from an author who is verified by Google and is an influential author, his/her post will rank higher easily.

How did I verify my authorship:  

• First give a valid email to your G+ profile in the work section and get a tick symbol as verified.
• Place a link to your G+ profile with your name using rel='author'
• In Contributor to list, add the home page or about page your site.

• Check your authorship using the rich snippet tool.

Now having my authorship done successfully, have to wait and see how this will impact in my SEO Contest for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad. 18 days to go and still no place for my blog at 1st SERP.

SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad - Battle between Blogger & Wordpress

This SEO contest for the keyword SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad seems like a contest between blogger and wordpress. As I searched for this keyword wordpress blogs seems to be dominating the 1st SERP, Which is odd and just wondering how could this happen.

Even though Google own Blogger it cannot and should not favor it's product over ranking page and it's obvious they indeed don't favor Blogger. But how wordpress tops the page? Are they better optimized for the keyword SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad? I just checked out some wordpress blogs which are competing this SEO contest and most were just mean. Full of this keyword and nothing more.

Some even using multiple tags with repetitive keywords with CAPS and without and many with duplicate tags. Almost all where just using this keyword to describe the event and info about it and it makes a post. 

But what about quality content concept? My blog is just 2 days old and I know I'm competing blogs older than mine but some wordpress blog post exactly 2 days old are at top but not my blogger posts. Hmm, I was intrigued. 

After all black hat SEO indeed works as a quick fix but not for the longer run. And this SEO contest for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad keyword seems like a better testing platform for me to really understand what works and what doesn't. I still have 20 days to go and 7 posts to try.

So what do you think..why wordpress ranks higher than a blogger post? What makes wordpress better?

Optimize Keyword Density - Experiment2 SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad

Since this is a SEO contest at IIIT Hyderabad and have to rank higher in search engines like Google, Bing and duckduckgo for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad, we are going to see the importance of keyword-density or does it really matter much.

As a warning if google bots sees your post as just a piece of keyword packed content without any useful information for the visitors who eventually find your post because of your keywords, then be prepared for the wrath of panda. 

The truth is "keyword" is indeed key for getting ranked higher for that it as Google sees, this post for eg: for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad, it could be relevant for that keyword. But Google also monitors the visitors behavior and if it finds out there is nothing there in your post , then your post is out of SERP. 

So as the old sayings "Content is the King" and if you got good relevant info on a particular keyword even if the its density is on the higher side and it's useful to the visitors then your post will rank higher automatically.

But what amount is too high or too low for a keyword count? Many say 3 to 5% of the total words of a page is fine. But if you want to play it safe like I do for SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad, you can stick with 4%.

At this point when I checked the count in MS Word, I had like 252 words and out of which I had  SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad used 4 times including this one and 1 at the post topic and 1 at the url and probably 1 or 2 at the post description. So it amounts to 8 and 4% of 252 is 10. So I could say I'm still in the safe zone of not over using my keyword.

So lets just see if this kinda post really helps me in getting me ranked higher in SERP. 

P.S: If you eventually end up writing a long post and way too much keyword without intentionally then try replacing some with other alternative word relevant to your niche.

Checkout my previous post SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad on commentluv plugin 

Commentluv SEO Experiment1 - SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad

SEOContestAtIIITHyderabad:

Hi guys/gals, this is my first blog post of the allowed 10 for the seo contest at IIIT Hyderabad. Since I have 30 days and 10 posts, I'll try to test 10 mythical SEO techniques which you may find controversy or doesn't work anymore or not sure if you can use.

In this post I'm going to test the impact of having commentluv in a blog post. In case you are not aware of this plugin yet, here is an intro.

Commentluv commenting system encourages visitor engagement in discussion as it rewards them with a link to their latest post at the end of the comment. Commentluv pro has advanced options which provides more control over the settings like making dofollow or nofollow links, G+ upvote option to show 10 latest post to link to etc..

So basically you get a dofollow link for reading and leaving a honest non-spammy comment.

But here are some of the conflicting yet intriguing point on commentluv.

• It encourages visitors to comeback your blog more often to check for any latest posts or updates for an opportunity to comment and a reward of a dofollow link. So loyal visitors..a plus for your site and a SEO.
• To make a non-spammy comment visitors have to read through the entire post to make a proper and relevant comment in order to get their comments through moderation. So increase in the time spent by visitors..a SEO.
• To get a dofollow link from a relevant niche visitors may be encouraged to dig deep in the site's archive. So less bounce rate..a SEO.
• A large number of comments with large number of dofollow links are meant to be leaking site juice to the linking sites. So harming the host having commentluv? A negative SEO?
• The first 3 points are suppose to happen naturally and that's what google wants. So because of commentluv it happens a lot less un-naturally. So will google ignore these parameters from commentluv?
• What it is like to be seen as a site with large number of links to other sites from Google's perspective? 

Sharing your thoughts and experience on commentluv or this post is most valid. After all this post is all about commentluv, so your interaction will answer my questions and I'd luv to share the results of SEO if any. Thanks.