Teaching Sells – Authority Sites and Google Rankings
OK guys – this has been an interesting experiment regarding keyword authority and SEO – which was what I was playing with with my review Teaching Sells Does It Work?
I noticed recently that this site had become an “authority” site – to be honest I’d heard Grizz and others talk of authority sites before but I didn’t really understand the implications. First off to discover if a site is an authority site just google the site’s name or their main keywords – google “make money for beginners” and you will find this dubious site in #1 position:
So I have one of these pretty little listings too for my name and when I rank for something related vaguely to passive income online – I get the old double indexing with the second listing indented:
Once I post this update I suspect the 2nd indent will become this post – as it is sometimes its the tag page (that’s why you should NOT noindex your tag pages) but more often its a slight typo on the url which I noticed the instant I published and corrected – its not a 404 – the page redirects – to the correct url – I don’t understand it – but I don’t mind LOL.
The most clearest clue that you have authority though is quite easy – you go straight position #1 if you write a post on a relatively longtail long competition term something like “teaching sells does it work” for example: I got the listing immediately and it stayed there, that’s with no link building on my part. Now would it have stayed there if Grizz – the ultimate “make money” authority blogger hadn’t linked to me? I don’t know – that’s the trouble with SEO experiments – you really can’t control all the variables as you would in the lab – and you certainly can’t control who links to you – but now I know I will almost certainly stay at #1 because of all those kind people who linked to me – thanks guys!
Now it gets more interesting – as you can see on that above screen shot, from yesterday BTW, I was also ranking third and sixth for an infobarrel and hubpage. What I was actually trying to experiment with was the often quoted concern that hubpages was losing its authority was true. Well AFAIK neither of the those articles have any backlinks (I didn’t link to them from this blog either) – so by themselves they ranked on the first page and stayed there. The infobarrel out ranked the hubpage consistently – but that was probably just because I had the long-tail exact match in the url of the infobarrel: teaching-sells-does-it-work while the hubpage I’d just called teaching-sells.
It got more interesting today though – I noticed that the hubpage had got up to third place – but the infobarrel was gone – in fact its deindexed (check by googling the exact url) – odd to say the least – as I say I certainly have done no link building on it. I suspect a glitch or possibly Google didn’t like the odd characters at the end of the url – which are probably computer speak for “?” (you don’t have great control on infobarrel urls) – I do know in the past if I inadvertantly left a trailing “-” or “_” Google may refuse to index the page for a month or so.
So how do you make a blog an authority in your niche? Fairly simple really – google your keyword – and try to get links from any authority blogs that you find on the first page.
- Once you are an authority site you can outrank established sites by just having your keyword long-tail in the url.
- Once you are an authority site you can outrank sites which have at least part of the long-tail keyword in their domain name e.g. teachingsells.com
- Once you are an authority site you can outrank much, much larger sties which are also authority sites such as hubpages and infobarrel which have the keywords in the url.
Now while this site definitly has authority is neither ranking well for my primary keyword (hint its not either Teaching Sells or Site Build It!) not does it have great PR – PR2 at the moment – it was PR3 until the Site Build It fiasco saw me got a ton of relevant links.
I’m off to build me some more authority sites – in a nice that might actually pay!
Similar Posts:
- Teaching Sells: Does it Work?
- Case Study: Choosing Keywords – Installing a Niche Site
- Backlinks are Everything.
- What is InfoBarrel? Passive Income Reviews
- Hubpage Challenge 100 Hubs in 30 Days
21 Responses to “Teaching Sells – Authority Sites and Google Rankings”
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That is very interesting Lissie.
I have never known an authority before. It is interesting that you rank so fast for long tails but you say you don’t rank well for your target keywords. I assume that is because you got so much juice from the Site Sell post but it wasn’t for your target. To bad you can’t find a way to get a lot of people all hot and bothered about a passive income online or something like that. LOL
Thanks for sharing this and the Infobarrel and Hubpages rankings. I always enjoy your posts and learn a lot.
.-= Agrande with mlm email leads´s last blog ..MLM Email Leads =-.
Agrande just remember what google thinks is authority and what people think may be different LOL I think the reason that I am an “authority” site is that Grizz has linked to me several times – he is THE authority in the niche. The rankings for specific keywords appear to be somewhat separate
That is the problem, isn’t it. It is easy to become an authority site, but far more difficult to monetize it
Reminds me of an old wordpress.com blog I had some years ago, I just wrote about whatever interested me and in no time I went up to PR4 and ranked well for a bunch of pretty useless keywords. Perhaps Google takes in account the amount of advertisement on a blog? Something like Content/Ads = Authority? SY
.-= hospitalera@Niche Marketing´s last blog ..Recent Google Adsense Changes =-.
I think its easier to rank a site without advertising and wordpress.com get PR real fast – I think because of their “advertising is evil” approach. I see one of the main advantages of authority sites is to use them to help other sites to rank…
This actually made the whole idea “what is an authority blog” a lot clearer to me. What is the timeframe where you can have this status? Six months? A year? Any idea? I am definitely going to start trying to achieve this with some of my sites.
.-= Josh@How To Get Money Now For Beginners´s last blog ..Getting Cash Without Waiting =-.
Very cool experiment. Thanks for posting your results so I don’t have to go through all this myself with a controversial post flaming a major guru product, taking all the flak, and carefully checking my SERP rankings. (I have Yaro in my crosshairs if I ever decide to do it though LOL!)
About the Infobarrel getting deindexed–it’s not just IBs and Hubs. Google seems to have changed the way it indexes new material in the past month. It used to be I would put up a post on any of my established sites and the ‘bot would come running in a few hours. Now it’s taking over 24 hours, and invariably the post gets indexed, then drops out (or goes to secondary) for four or five days, and then comes back like nothing happened. With one site it even happened twice. This has happened to over a dozen new posts of mine on 5 different sites in the past week. Some of them have one or two backlinks, some have none. It doesn’t seem to matter.
So I’d take the deindexing of your IB with a grain of salt–it’s happened to new posts on my WordPress sites too. Maybe this site has so much authority that it’s not happening on your new posts. Odds are good that it will come back.
.-= Lorecee´s last blog ..“Skanks in NYC” Slander Lawsuit Outs Anonymous Blogger =-.
Very good analysis and much appreciated. And, in my book, yours has always been an authority site!
AL
It is very interesting to see your results. I did a similar test with a MLM called Mondelis. For the keyword Mondelis Review I rank #1 & #2 and my hub comes in #3 & #4. Even though I may have cost this company some members the testing is a must for me. I am also near the top for most other searches, but the competition is almost nothing.
Great results are easy when you follow Mark & Courts, Griz & Lissie’s path.
I guess it is time to start writing some good content though for this spam blog since it reveals my name.
By the way you are # 44 on Big G for passive income, plan on some boost!
Cheers
.-= Dirk@Mondelis´s last blog ..Mondelis, Secrets You Need To Know =-.
The other interesting thing I am seeing on page 1 is a little splog hosted on blogger which is accuratly called blackhatmarketing – so for all those who worry that content is king check it out – they scraped my infobarrel article and used the same title in the 2 line blog post – they have no PR but google seems to be indexing their pages fast enough – and they are running Adsense on the site (stupid – so I know its a not a friend!) Question: does a link from a tiny url still count as a link?
Yeah Dirk you have a distinctive name too so I hope you are not going to write controverisal or poorly spelt content LOL
Answer to Question: I really do not know, I have not purposely used tiny URL’s before, or tested them to see.
It is very entertaining to me when someone goes crazy over spelling, but I have found that is usually their only defense against you when standing their “quicksand” position.
I see you almost to page 1 for teaching sells, my post on teaching sells fell out of the index. Maybe Brian used is teaching sells Voodoo.
.-= Dirk@Make Money´s last blog ..Why You Will Never Make Any Money Online, Ever! =-.
Maybe its hanging out with my infobarrel? Suspect they will come back so long as we build a few links to them!
It will be interesting to see if you can outrank Brian for is own keywords
Now there’s a challenge!
.-= Mike´s last blog ..I am pumped! =-.
Nah copywriting is really not my thing!
Actually, I just meant “teaching sells”. At least for me, your site is moving up for the phrase.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..I am pumped! =-.
Here in the UK I’m currently seeing you at number 11 in Google for ‘teaching sells’, Lis….
.-= Steve´s last blog ..28. I.N.D.I.A. =-.
Same here in Australia – I added a couple more specific links see if that ups it!
Hey Lis,
I think it’s interesting to note that people are complaining about your review, but I bet you ten bucks they suddenly realized how smart you were haha.
Personally I’m lovin that your honest post is doing so well. =)
I can’t think of anything long to write, but I did want to ask you :
How long has this site been targeting passive income ? Bet it’s a hard niche to crack but worth it in the end.
.-= Alex@Make Money Wedding Planning´s last blog ..Make Money Planning a Wedding =-.
Probably about 6 months Alex – my original title – “My online journey” was literary but hardly searched for LOL. I wanted to stay a long way away from “make money” for obvious reasons (WAAAY too much competition) – but passive income really is my dream – I own rental properties which are pretty passive (with a property manager that is) – but I really am all about lying on the beach and checking my adsense balance on the iPhone LOL!
Re: Infobarrell
I thought once a site was deindexed it required a special request to G for reconsideration. I have never heard of a site get indexed then deindexed and indexed again.
I have had sites get indexed, show up in the serps then disappear from the serps completely only to show back up in a few weeks, but they were still indexed.
It really is strange.
bk
.-= bk´s last blog ..Deep or Wide Online Empires? =-.
It wasn’t the whole site just the page – and its back now I now have position 2&3 (this blog), 4 (hubpage) and 5(infobarrel) for “teaching sells does it work” – I didn’t do anything – it just came back – I’ve seen it happen before with hubpages – whether its a glitch or deliberate I have no idea – though!
I’m seeing you at No 10, with the infobarrel at 17 and the hubpage at 19.
What is interesting to me is that the No2 spot by DoshDosh dates back to 2007. I thought Google liked fresh content? A bit puzzled.
Anyway I’ve put you in my sidebar with a link to recent post (pitiful linkjuice I know, but every little helps).
Regarding “the often quoted concern that hubpages was losing its authority” – I think Google has done to Hubpages what it did to Squidoo – which is to downgrade it only for certain topics. e.g. after the rush of people churning out hubs on credit cards, you can’t find a single one on the first ten pages of Google… G did the same thing to Squidoo for weight loss.
However, for non-bigmoney topics, Google continues to index both hubs and Squidoo lenses pretty fast.