If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my feed or subscribe to me on Twitter, which is updated on a more frequent - and more meaningless - basis.
I’m sure you’ve no doubt heard that getting indexed and ranked well in Google is all about Pagerank and links.
While Google search engineer Matt Cutts may have confirmed that statement almost three years ago, it doesn’t mean things never change and/or that Pagerank and on page signals (aka SEO) are the only factors that matter when it comes to ranking in today’s search engines, especially Google.
It’s not all about SEO anymore. SEO is simply the process of optimizing your site to get the most benefit out of the rankings you earn via marketing and traffic development and is not necessarily required to achieve the rankings themselves. SEO is still valuable. SEO is still important. But it doesn’t run the show.
A look at what pure traffic can do
A few weeks back we launched a little site called Tweetwasters. It wasn’t a “serious effort” or anything we planned to monetize. It was a quick dip into the world of Twitter applications. But it also gave me some actual hard data back up what I had known in my gut to be true for a long while… traffic can have a direct impact on your indexing and rankings.
How can I be so sure? Because within a matter of two hours, Tweetwasters had achieved the following:
- the homepage was indexed
- while considered a misspelling, Tweetwasters ranked #1 for the term “Tweetwasters” - over my own blog, which is pretty strong
However, what really was interesting was what happened over the next two hours (so, within four hours of launch):
- the site had over 300 pages indexed
- the word Tweetwasters was no longer a “misspelling” as far as Google was concerned
Within 24 hours the site had managed to hit the Alexa “what’s hot on the web now” list, though it only remained there for an hour or two. The site’s growth and strength in Google continued get stronger:
- the site had over 600 pages indexed
- the user profile pages began ranking top ten for folks without a lot of competition for their name and top 100 for those who did
- the site was now ranking #1 for the word “tweetwasters” above many other sites discussing it, and not only my own
Nearly 48 hours after launch, TechCrunch gave us a mention and over 20,000 profiles had been checked at least once in the system. The site had over 1000 profile pages indexed and had received over 10,000 links (also proving that there is no “getting links too fast” issue PROVIDING YOU HAVE THE TRAFFIC PATTERNS TO MATCH YOUR LINK GROWTH).
Several weeks later, our fifteen minutes of fame are up and the massive traffic on the site has become a trickle.
While we still rank number one for “tweetwasters”, the amount of pages the site has indexed has dropped to less than five hundred and my profile page no longer ranks top 100 for “sugarrae” (it isn’t even indexed anymore at the moment, even with a range of site link from my sidebar - if you’re smart, you’ll take something home from that too).
What this says to me is that while you can use your looks (in this case traffic) to open doors, you need to be able to back it up with some substance (keep people engaged, keep them coming back, keep them passing along your links) if you expect to last.
This has long been apparent to me when sites with some of the most horrid architecture and on page SEO I’ve ever seen, like Perez, are able to rank and rank well for highly competitive core terms. Watching Tweetwasters go from zero to sixty in terms of both traffic and the search engines simply allowed us to document an extreme case from beginning to end.
Could a talented SEO double the traffic Perez Hilton receives? They sure could - easily. But the lack of a competent SEO has not stopped their “SEO ignorant” marketing machine from obtaining rankings for all of their core terms.
Learn to major in marketing and minor in SEO
Three years ago, I did a post at WebmasterWorld on how I saw the tides changing:
“Stop aiming for the engines and aim for real, live human beings. Aim for obtaining traffic and not backlinks. Aim for obtaining attention and not pagerank. Stop aiming for the affections of a mathematical computation and aim for commendations from breathing individuals.”
Good core marketing and the occasional yet regular viral success (it doesn’t need to be large scale, especially if your industry isn’t) - both of which amount to driving traffic at the end of the day - can get you good rankings with or without SEO.
Mimicking valuable links with bullshit links obtained merely to game the engines won’t have a lasting effect. My nofollowed link from Twitter is more valuable to me than my dofollow link from TechCrunch because it sends me traffic on a regular basis that sends the right signals to Google while bringing actual human beings to my site.
SEO simply helps you leverage them to their fullest potential. SEO is no longer the sole key to good search engine rankings. Adapt and survive or deny and die. Remain a small component of an online marketing campaign or learn to run one. It’s your choice. 2009 will be the year of sharing tactics to market and brand websites from blogs to affiliate sites to regular business websites here at Sugarrae.
Subscribe to the Sugarrae feed | Follow Sugarrae on Twitter
Related Posts
Sugarrae runs on the Thesis WordPress Theme
If you’re someone who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality that you wouldn’t be able to obtain otherwise with a simple control panel instead of having to alter code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
For those "in between", like myself, I’ve created "dummy" guides for Thesis hooks that allow us to make more professional customizations than we ever deemed possible. The theme is not only highly customizable, but it has allowed me to run Sugarrae more professionally, with a much more targeted focus on monetization than it ever has been able to achieve before. You can find out more about Thesis below:
{ 8 trackbacks }
{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
Find me at Sphinn | Twitter | WebmasterWorld
Bullshit tech blog… buzz can be found in any industry - just takes extra work to create it in the more boring ones. I know - I play in finance.
Find me at Twitter | WebmasterWorld
Which bit is bullshit? The title of the page or the fact buzz will make you rank in Google?
Find me at Twitter | WebmasterWorld
Social is good, but search is better I should have added that. DIGG is not that good for gaining tons of backlinks in harsh wild west type industries like Finance. Google ‘car insurance’ - dominated by uk companies all with aggressive seo.
Find me at Sphinn | Twitter | WebmasterWorld
The part that is bullshit is that you claiming that you can’t get buzz in finance industries. I’m in finance. I use buzz to generate traffic and links and ranks in finance.
>>>DIGG is not that good for gaining tons of backlinks
Did I say Digg was where you should be if you want buzz in finance? If social media/buzz means Digg to you, then maybe you should expand your horizons a bit. I actually specifically said in comments above I would NOT use Digg for a credit card site (you know, finance):
Buzz/traffic/social media and Digg are not the same word.
good post. I have to agree with some of the other comments like those by Matt Lambert and Indianapolis SEO - you were definitely hitting temporal factors of the ranking function which is great for short term growth but in the long run the temporal rank will die off and you will need other factors like inlinks and pagerank (i said like these, not exactly these - just think non-temporal long-term) to have a sustainable position in the serps.
I thought it was interesting that you said the number of pages indexed actually decreased after a few days. Why would Google remove otherwise good pages from their index unless they 404, are duplicates, or appear to be spam?
Rae,
I absolutely love your no-nonsense approach to getting found in search engines. When you write to a person who is interested in what you have to say you make friends on the internet, and when you write to an algorithm you lose that connection and visitors. I feel your experiment with twitter and your contribution to the community.
Keep up the good work.
Lee Rodrigues
Technology Dojo
Don’t you think that your site beeing new had a lot to do with this? When there is a news item or short hype people are going to search for recent items. This could explain the fast indexing and ranking. To really test your theorie you should take an older website and create a lot of traffic. I’m interested if you got the same results over a longer period…
I think the name helped quite a bit. Anything with “tweet” or somehow related to Twitter is bound to get some traffic after it’s indexed. But at any rate good points about SEO not being the only factor involved.
First of all, your domain name makes a lot of difference. I would expect tweetwasters.com to rank above your blog for the term, especially as you blog has links to Tweetwasters, which tells Google that your blog is not the actual Tweetwasters website.
Also, you don’t have much competition on the term in Google. And what competition you do have will probably be pointing to Tweetwasters.com.
Change the name of the site to poker, then write another post regarding your experience with SEO.
Find me at Sphinn | Twitter | WebmasterWorld
Chris, thanks for completing missing the point and making comments that show you skimmed and not read the post. You must have “detail oriented” in bold on your resume. Considering my experience in SEO comes from the diet pill, telecom and finance sectors, I think I’ll stick with my opinion regardless of your success with ranking for amazingly competitive “web design city name” and being able to glaze over blog posts. Cheers. :)
I read your post but I do not agree 100%. Without little effort and initial investments for SEO we cant get starting traffic. I agree that after we have good traffic we will get natural links and also good rankings but to start a new site I think we need some time and Investment on money to run a successful website.
Still Page Rank holds at least 50% value in ranking on result page. If we leave some web sites that have very unique content or services, most of the web sites in the world need SEO.
Most of the web sites in the world are not owned by people who know very well about search engine, the are owned by individuals and some of those are even not aware of the basic of computers so they need a service that can optimize their web site for them to get traffic.
This shows the power of twitter, and what it can do for you and your website! We Should all learn something from this.
“while considered a misspelling, Tweetwasters ranked #1 for the term “Tweetwasters” - over my own blog, which is pretty strong” - WOW! Isn’t this like example.com ranks #1 for “example” in google?! What’s so special about that. A 100% keyword domain will have a huge advantage when it comes to ranking for it’s name.
Also, I don’t really agree with the post. While the message is interesting, it is an exception. Do that with 5 sites, using a SYSTEM and you can say it is repeatable. Expand the SYSTEM to a point where it makes money and you can say you did something. Otherwise it’s just wasted bandwidth.
Your site was “buzz”. By definition (my definition) “buzz” means big fire that consumes itself fast. You got it at one point however - you can use a “technique” like this to get huge traffic, but you MUST have a way to convert it or keep it.
And your assumption that SEO means just on-site SEO is just wrong. That helps outrank a competitor that hasn’t done his homework but it won’t help you get near him. SEO is about RELEVANCE. That’s the quality factor in a 2-variable algorithm. The 2nd variable being of a quantitative nature - LINKS.
Just like you suggest, you don’t need SEO to rank well in Google. However, as you detailed in your case study, such ranking (based solely on high traffic) will only be temporary. In all reality, you do need solid SEO to fall back on in a long run, no matter your industry / competitiveness.
How do you think it would have panned out if you hadn’t gotten a mention on Techcrunch? That is a very weighty source in search engines eyes and the content there is duplicated across the web through trackbacks. Twitter is your main source of users because Tweetwaster is a Twitter app. The nofollow link from there is your main source of users because Tweetwaster is a Twitter app it only makes sense. Twitter is also a newly trusted source by Google as it’s very interested in doing real time searching so it’s no surprise that a Twitter app would be picked up quick. If it wasn’t connected to an already popular source of users I’m not sure you would have had such a success and it’s only anecdotal evidence that SEO isn’t required to rank in Google.
Find me at Sphinn | Twitter | WebmasterWorld
Well Barrett, if you read the post, considering we didn’t get the Techcrunch mention until day 2 and all the indexings and rankings starting coming in early on day one, I’m going to say Techcrunch wasn’t the deciding factor.
← Previous Comments