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Search Engine Ranking Factors

January 21, 2008

Search Engine Ranking Factors This post started out as a response to a comment left to my post:
Don't give a Hoot about Google Page Rank.

The comment didn't make sense to me, and the more I wrote in my response to the commenter, the more I felt like my response needed to be a post of its own.

Here's the comment "Jim" left.

Search engine expert James Brausch -- who has performed statistical analysis on Google's Search Engine Ranking Factors (SERFs) -- states that he has found very little support that PR has a strong impact on how Google ranks a site. Interesting...

Cheers,
Jim

Now keep in mind, that my post:
Don't give a Hoot about Google Page Rank says that Google PR has very little weight on how Google ranks sites. So, I'm not sure if Jim is James, or one of his minions. See my post on Unethical Polarization. Nor, can I tell what he is trying to say. Is he saying I'm right or wrong? Is he saying James is right or wrong? Is he saying something else entirely?

Update: There's some really good information in the comments to this post, after reading the post, be sure to read the comments by clicking the little comments link below, or you can just click here.

I'm very familiar with James Brausch. I've used a lot of his products. I was a Magical Email address customer for a while (that's his coaching service). I've stopped using most of his products except for Artemis Pro (article submission software) and Muvar (multivariant sales page optimization script). I've learned a lot from James. Before Christmas I sent him a note saying so. I ended my Magical Email address coaching subscription as a lot of others do: very frustrated. I sent him a note saying even though we ended that subscription with frustration, the DVD product my wife and I created would not have been possible without what I'd learned from his blog. I mean that. I really do. However, I've grown very frustrated with James' blogging and his behavior and will no longer recommend his products and services. What follows is my experience with his Ranking Factors course and his Rasof product which uses the Ranking Factors data to score web pages.

Jim refers to James as a Search Engine Expert. James is NOT a Search Engine Expert. James claims to be a statistical analysis expert and he probably is. For his Ranking Factors data and Rasof product, he uses statistical analysis to reverse engineer the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) to try and determine which on page factors make a difference to search engine ranking.

I have James' Ranking Factors data; in addition I was a subscriber to his Rasof membership site (for a while) that gives a numerical score to your page based on the Ranking Factors data. I do not believe or recall Google PR being part of his data. It's been a while since I watched the video that came with it, perhaps he mentions Google PR somewhere in there, I don't remember.

I don't use his Ranking Factors data to optimize my pages and sites. On his blog, on more than one occasion, he has inferred that I do. My blog currently, as of this writing, ranks higher than his for the term "Internet Business" (with or without the quotes). In fact, my blog has ranked #1 or #2 for that term for quite a while. When I did try using Rasof and/or his Ranking Factors data, my rankings went so far south it was a joke.

In the data files that come with the Ranking Factors course, you can see if the measured result is statistically significant or not. In other words, if such and such modification (like the keyword being in the first H1 tag) had a large measured impact (either negative or positive) but the number of sites that had that attribute was very small, then the measurement is statistically insignificant. As I said, with his actual data you can see this figure, with his Rasof scoring site, you cannot: it adds up the measurement no matter if it's statistically significant or not (as best I can tell). What this means is that you can optimize your site using Rasof and get a great score in Rasof, but Google looks at it and buries it. That was my experience. Plus Rasof is currently $100 per month (it was $1000 per month at one time - guess not too many people kept paying $1000 per month to ruin their web site ranking).

Why does Rasof not work? Because the biggest factor that search engines look at is the links back to your site from other sites and the text used in and around those links. The algorithms used by search engines to rank sites are very complex and contain a lot of inputs. I'm sure that PR plays a part, as does some of the on page factors that Rasof looks at, but they're small in weight compared to inbound links. Unless you're going to build your own search engine crawlers and crawl the entire internet, then you don't have access to how various sites link together, even then you still wouldn't know exactly how Google, or any other search engine weighs them. You can certainly get the number of links to a site from Google or Yahoo (as shown in the data below), but that's only a number, it does not tell you the value of the inbound link as weighted by Google (or Yahoo, or MSN, etc.). So, in my opinion, trying to use statistical analysis like James does is only measuring the tip of the iceberg so to speak and ignores the rest of the iceberg that we all know is under the surface.

What does work?
Building inbound links:

Writing quality content and posts so that people naturally link to your site.

Writing and submitting articles,

Submitting your posts to blog carnivals (www.BlogCarnival.com),

Building relationships with other blogs and bloggers and mentioning their blog articles occasionally (they'll probably reciprocate at some point and mention your posts on their blog).

Using a service such as Jonathan Legers' 3WayLinks.net (affiliate link) - it works.

What about the normal Search Engine Optimization that people preach?
For example, keyword density and keyword count? Meta Tags? Link Placement? Shoving all the text first and the menu and links at the end of the page (as far as the HTML is concerned). It's not all that important. Look at the data presented below. The keyword counts are all over the place. If it was important, then they'd be more uniform. I consistently see sites in SERPs that do not even contain the keyword phrase that was searched on. The most important thing with keyword count is: don't over do it. Don't saturate your page. I like to look at the top 10 or 20 sites for a phrase I'm trying to rank for and then make sure that I'm in line with the keyword counts they have and possibly a few below. In other words if most of the sites in the top 10 have 10 or 12 for the keyword count, I like to be around 8 to 10.

Look at the data below for more justification of what I've said.
Do you want to be able to generate reports like the data below with the click of a button? I thought so. I'm polishing the tool I created to do this and will be releasing it as a product soon. Sign up to my subscriber list using the form below (beside my photo) to receive announcements when I post or have new products. I don't release products very often, but when I do, I usually have a special price for my subscriber list.

How to read the data below:
Below are two analysis. One for the phrase "Make Money Online" and then one for "Internet Business". The first section in each report lists the top 20 sites for the keyword phrase as found on Google. Beside the site URL are the keyword counts for the whole keyword phrase: t=total, h=keyword count in head section, and b=keyword count in body section. Following that are counts for the individual words (breakout) that make up the keyword phrase.
The next section lists the Google PR, back links (links to the site) as reported by Google, back links as reported by Yahoo, and finally Alexa Ranking and Links in as reported by Alexa.
(The Links in as reported by Google and Alexa are not really valuable figures because they're not updated often. They can be used for comparison but don't really contain accurate numbers.)
I will post more info in the future about the other features of this tool (it's main function is to track my sites and competitors sites).

Update: There's some really good information in the comments to this post, be sure to read the comments by clicking the little comments link below, or you can just click here.

DATA
Top 20 Analysis for "Make Money Online" from Google

1: www.carlocab.com: T=17 H=0 B=0,
BreakOut: Make T=37 H=10 B=0 Money T=39 H=9 B=0 Online T=26 H=5 B=0

2: moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com: T=23 H=4 B=2,
BreakOut: Make T=143 H=8 B=7 Money T=170 H=8 B=8 Online T=49 H=4 B=3

3: www.bidvertiser.com: T=4 H=2 B=2,
BreakOut: Make T=10 H=5 B=5 Money T=11 H=5 B=6 Online T=12 H=5 B=7

4: www.successwithauctions.com: T=20 H=2 B=18,
BreakOut: Make T=75 H=5 B=70 Money T=76 H=6 B=70 Online T=34 H=4 B=30

5: entrepreneurs.about.com
/od/homebasedbusiness/a/makemoneyonline.htm: T=7 H=2 B=5, BreakOut: Make T=21 H=2 B=18 Money T=33 H=4 B=27 Online T=21 H=3 B=17

6: www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com: T=51 H=2 B=49,
BreakOut: Make T=403 H=43 B=360 Money T=426 H=43 B=383 Online T=420 H=43 B=377

7: www.squidoo.com/supermom_in_ny: T=46 H=11 B=35,
BreakOut: Make T=136 H=22 B=114 Money T=205 H=26 B=179 Online T=89 H=14 B=75

8: makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com: T=19 H=4 B=15,
BreakOut: Make T=237 H=6 B=231 Money T=246 H=6 B=240 Online T=32 H=4 B=28

9: ez-onlinemoney.com: T=7 H=2 B=5,
BreakOut: Make T=26 H=7 B=19 Money T=74 H=7 B=67 Online T=69 H=4 B=65

10: myagloconetwork.blogspot.com: T=36 H=2 B=34,
BreakOut: Make T=121 H=3 B=118 Money T=147 H=3 B=144 Online T=76 H=3 B=73

11: www.justmakemoneyonline.com: T=26 H=2 B=24,
BreakOut: Make T=216 H=22 B=194 Money T=264 H=22 B=242 Online T=276 H=22 B=254

12: www.pcmoneymaker.net: T=17 H=2 B=15,
BreakOut: Make T=166 H=23 B=143 Money T=172 H=25 B=147 Online T=67 H=4 B=63

13: webworkerdaily.com /2007/02/22/10-new-ways-to-make-money-online: T=109 H=1 B=108, BreakOut: Make T=282 H=2 B=280 Money T=379 H=2 B=377 Online T=298 H=2 B=296

14: www.plrpro.com: T=3 H=3 B=0,
BreakOut: Make T=7 H=3 B=4 Money T=6 H=3 B=3 Online T=9 H=3 B=6

15: rsstoblog.com: T=2 H=1 B=1,
BreakOut: Make T=24 H=1 B=23 Money T=19 H=1 B=18 Online T=3 H=1 B=2

16: spaceofinfluence.blogspot.com: T=37 H=4 B=33,
BreakOut: Make T=89 H=4 B=85 Money T=121 H=4 B=117 Online T=76 H=4 B=72

17: www.doshdosh.com: T=5 H=2 B=3,
BreakOut: Make T=14 H=3 B=11 Money T=21 H=4 B=17 Online T=13 H=4 B=9

18: make-money-from.blogspot.com: T=16 H=5 B=11,
BreakOut: Make T=194 H=8 B=186 Money T=220 H=14 B=206 Online T=33 H=9 B=24

19: www.team-schuman.com: T=14 H=3 B=11,
BreakOut: Make T=71 H=15 B=56 Money T=83 H=15 B=68 Online T=24 H=3 B=21

20: mashable.com/2007/07/30/make-money-online: T=57 H=1 B=56,
BreakOut: Make T=127 H=3 B=124 Money T=206 H=2 B=204 Online T=186 H=2 B=184

Google PR:
www.carlocab.com: 3
moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com: 3
www.bidvertiser.com: 6
www.successwithauctions.com: 4
entrepreneurs.about.com: 6
www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com: 4
www.squidoo.com: 7
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com: 4
ez-onlinemoney.com: 4
myagloconetwork.blogspot.com: 4
www.justmakemoneyonline.com: 5
www.pcmoneymaker.net: 4
webworkerdaily.com: 4
www.plrpro.com: 3
rsstoblog.com: 5
spaceofinfluence.blogspot.com: 0
www.doshdosh.com: 6
make-money-from.blogspot.com: 4
www.team-schuman.com: 3
mashable.com: 7

Google Back Link Count:
www.carlocab.com: 1180
moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com: 624
www.bidvertiser.com: 46900
www.successwithauctions.com: 322
entrepreneurs.about.com: 1410
www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com: 1550
www.squidoo.com: 16000
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com: 182
ez-onlinemoney.com: 1160
myagloconetwork.blogspot.com: 632
www.justmakemoneyonline.com: 2700
www.pcmoneymaker.net: 162
webworkerdaily.com: 9100
www.plrpro.com: 776
rsstoblog.com: 479
spaceofinfluence.blogspot.com: 308
www.doshdosh.com: 13100
make-money-from.blogspot.com: 458
www.team-schuman.com: 3640
mashable.com: 35100

Yahoo! Back Link Count:
www.carlocab.com: 28900
moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com: 12500
www.bidvertiser.com: 3070000
www.successwithauctions.com: 11600
entrepreneurs.about.com: 43400
www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com: 39600
www.squidoo.com: 259000
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com: 3570
ez-onlinemoney.com: 31900
myagloconetwork.blogspot.com: 21100
www.justmakemoneyonline.com: 42200
www.pcmoneymaker.net: 3570
webworkerdaily.com: 224000
www.plrpro.com: 20600
rsstoblog.com: 36100
spaceofinfluence.blogspot.com: 4210
www.doshdosh.com: 511000
make-money-from.blogspot.com: 13500
www.team-schuman.com: 16200
mashable.com: 655000

Alexa Ranking & Count:
(r = ranking, l=links in)
www.carlocab.com: r=34,338 l=No Data
moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com: r=88,763 l=59
www.bidvertiser.com: r=4,015 l=4,372
www.successwithauctions.com: r=230,993 l=48
entrepreneurs.about.com: r=140 l=743
www.canimakebigmoneyonline.com: r=120,783 l=83
www.squidoo.com: r=732 l=3,420
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com: r=94,392 l=80,298
ez-onlinemoney.com: r=69,415 l=21
myagloconetwork.blogspot.com: r=526,726 l=80,298
www.justmakemoneyonline.com: r=124,646 l=182
www.pcmoneymaker.net: r=348,107 l=2
webworkerdaily.com: r=28,314 l=250
www.plrpro.com: r=14,710 l=35
rsstoblog.com: r=83,726 l=914
spaceofinfluence.blogspot.com: r=492,121 l=80,298
www.doshdosh.com: r=8,409 l=No Data
make-money-from.blogspot.com: r=424,970 l=80,298
www.team-schuman.com: r=189,056 l=993
mashable.com: r=1,502 l=1,752

Top 20 Analysis for "Internet Business" from Google
(note: www.HomeNotion.com is giving a 404 error tonight - that's why it shows 0 for the word counters)

1: www.way2miracle.com: T=3 H=2 B=1,
BreakOut: Internet T=54 H=13 B=41 Business T=58 H=13 B=45

2: www.pqinternet.com: T=9 H=3 B=6,
BreakOut: Internet T=311 H=39 B=272 Business T=43 H=8 B=35

3: www.homenotion.com: T=0 H=0 B=0,
BreakOut: Internet T=0 H=0 B=0 Business T=0 H=0 B=0

4: onlinebusiness.about.com/od/startingup/a/needidea.htm: T=5 H=3 B=2,
BreakOut: Internet T=12 H=3 B=9 Business T=56 H=5 B=47

5: www.terrydean.org: T=11 H=2 B=9,
BreakOut: Internet T=28 H=2 B=26 Business T=123 H=2 B=121

6: www.jamesbrausch.com: T=37 H=8 B=29,
BreakOut: Internet T=54 H=9 B=45 Business T=62 H=9 B=53

7: internet-biz.blogspot.com: T=12 H=4 B=8,
BreakOut: Internet T=208 H=6 B=202 Business T=126 H=4 B=122

8: www.loc.gov/rr/business/ecommerce: T=3 H=0 B=3,
BreakOut: Internet T=34 H=2 B=32 Business T=55 H=8 B=47

9: www.internetnews.com: T=0 H=0 B=0,
BreakOut: Internet T=213 H=9 B=204 Business T=36 H=2 B=34

10: www.chriscrompton.com: T=14 H=3 B=11,
BreakOut: Internet T=33 H=4 B=29 Business T=46 H=3 B=43

11: www.internetbusinessentrepreneur.com: T=17 H=4 B=13,
BreakOut: Internet T=137 H=24 B=113 Business T=145 H=27 B=118

12: richardlee.com: T=10 H=2 B=8,
BreakOut: Internet T=13 H=2 B=11 Business T=29 H=2 B=27

13: www.smallbusinesshowto.com: T=0 H=0 B=0,
BreakOut: Internet T=0 H=0 B=0 Business T=0 H=0 B=0

14: www.businessknowhow.com/internet: T=3 H=0 B=3,
BreakOut: Internet T=63 H=3 B=60 Business T=198 H=2 B=196

15: biznetsolutionsinc.com: T=19 H=3 B=16,
BreakOut: Internet T=34 H=3 B=31 Business T=41 H=5 B=36

16: www.stat-usa.gov: T=0 H=0 B=0,
BreakOut: Internet T=9 H=4 B=5 Business T=3 H=1 B=2

17: www.interbiznet.com: T=1 H=1 B=0,
BreakOut: Internet T=1 H=1 B=0 Business T=1 H=1 B=0

18: www.cyns-home-biz.com: T=34 H=8 B=26,
BreakOut: Internet T=120 H=21 B=99 Business T=223 H=33 B=190

19: www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/bus00.00.00: T=0 H=0 B=0,
BreakOut: Internet T=11 H=4 B=7 Business T=74 H=2 B=72

20: www.internet-based-business-mastery.com: T=20 H=5 B=15,
BreakOut: Internet T=282 H=42 B=240 Business T=303 H=43 B=260

Google PR:
www.way2miracle.com: 3
www.pqinternet.com: 3
www.homenotion.com: 3
onlinebusiness.about.com: 6
www.terrydean.org: 4
www.jamesbrausch.com: 5
internet-biz.blogspot.com: 4
www.loc.gov: 9
www.internetnews.com: 4
www.chriscrompton.com: 3
www.internetbusinessentrepreneur.com: 4
richardlee.com: 0
www.smallbusinesshowto.com: 3
www.businessknowhow.com: 5
biznetsolutionsinc.com: 2
www.stat-usa.gov: 7
www.interbiznet.com: 6
www.cyns-home-biz.com: 5
www.ipl.org: 7
www.internet-based-business-mastery.com: 5

Google Back Link Count:
www.way2miracle.com: 240
www.pqinternet.com: 215
www.homenotion.com: 68
onlinebusiness.about.com: 388
www.terrydean.org: 513
www.jamesbrausch.com: 755
internet-biz.blogspot.com: 76
www.loc.gov: 26500
www.internetnews.com: 65300
www.chriscrompton.com: 394
www.internetbusinessentrepreneur.com: 24
richardlee.com: 249
www.smallbusinesshowto.com: 138
www.businessknowhow.com: 1280
biznetsolutionsinc.com: 7
www.stat-usa.gov: 3480
www.interbiznet.com: 1180
www.cyns-home-biz.com: 332
www.ipl.org: 7590
www.internet-based-business-mastery.com: 366

Yahoo! Back Link Count:
www.way2miracle.com: 8460
www.pqinternet.com: 4730
www.homenotion.com: 2120
onlinebusiness.about.com: 8170
www.terrydean.org: 5920
www.jamesbrausch.com: 8840
internet-biz.blogspot.com: 2830
www.loc.gov: 1370000
www.internetnews.com: 4320000
www.chriscrompton.com: 10400
www.internetbusinessentrepreneur.com: 662
richardlee.com: 611
www.smallbusinesshowto.com: 4450
www.businessknowhow.com: 31200
biznetsolutionsinc.com: 335
www.stat-usa.gov: 82000
www.interbiznet.com: 11500
www.cyns-home-biz.com: 8590
www.ipl.org: 189000
www.internet-based-business-mastery.com: 2530

Alexa Ranking & Count:
(r = ranking, l=links in)
www.way2miracle.com: r=561,273 l=163
www.pqinternet.com: r=298,568 l=4
www.homenotion.com: r=338,180 l=210
onlinebusiness.about.com: r=140 l=303
www.terrydean.org: r=100,143 l=2
www.jamesbrausch.com: r=28,754 l=116
internet-biz.blogspot.com: r=1,243,930 l=21
www.loc.gov: r=5,300 l=18,533
www.internetnews.com: r=28,888 l=7,402
www.chriscrompton.com: r=129,990 l=No Data
www.internetbusinessentrepreneur.com: r=2,133,980 l=57
richardlee.com: r=101,998 l=4
www.smallbusinesshowto.com: r=630,445 l=240
www.businessknowhow.com: r=47,698 l=1,088
biznetsolutionsinc.com: r=3,464,881 l=4
www.stat-usa.gov: r=543,013 l=1,618
www.interbiznet.com: r=231,662 l=687
www.cyns-home-biz.com: r=406,209 l=185
www.ipl.org: r=42,978 l=10,560
www.internet-based-business-mastery.com: r=332,038 l=27

Update: There's some really good information in the comments to this post, be sure to read the comments by clicking the little comments link below, or you can just click here.

Until next time,
Fred Black

About the Author

Fred Black is an experienced programmer, web site developer, online business operator, systems integrator, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business Blog at: http://www.pqInternet.com.

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Posted by Fred on January 21, 2008 | Printer-Friendly

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Comments:

From: Tim Gary

Hi Fred,
I can't wait for your software. Here are some interesting numbers to back up your thoughts on rasof... Very strange coincidence, I almost emailed some of this info a few days ago, and this post shows up!

rasof results from 1/15/08
search term: Internet Business
Google location: #1 listing
site: pqinternet.com
Total Score: 713

rasof results from 1/15/08
search term: Internet Business
Google location: #8 listing
site: jamesbrausch.com
Total Score: 1261

rasof results from 1/15/08
search term: Internet Business
Google location: #2 listing
site: www.way2miracle.com/
Total Score: 290

Oh, and here's my FAVORITE!!!
search term: Internet Business
Google location: #3
Site: www.homenotion.com
Total Score: -53

Basically, rasof doesn't appear to mean *anything* with regards to Google listings in the top 10 spots.

The analogy I think of is the stock trading "systems" where their version of reverse engineering is to find a pattern in the market data after the fact. It's all too frequently a poor indication of the future, and in this case it's not even backing up data from a specific example HE USES!

Anyway, I think I'll send the email I was going to now, not that there's much new in it-who knows.

Keep up the great work,
Tim
Posted by Tim Gary on January 21, 2008 11:43 PM
From Fred...

Hey Tim;
Thanks for posting that info! I wanted to post some Rasof scores, but since I'm not a subscriber anymore I don't have access.
Take care,
Fred
Posted by Fred Black on January 22, 2008 12:04 AM
From: April

Wow, that's a lot of data. Search engines seem a bit of a mystery to me. I just keep plugging away, getting links from various sources and varying the anchor text. Eventually it all starts to pay off.
Posted by April on January 22, 2008 8:50 AM
From: Terry Dean

Hi Fred,

Good study on this subject. I agree 100% that the primary factor on search engine rankings revolves around the incoming links and the anchor text of those links.

I find it interesting that you didn't use Rasof to get the #1 ranking. It has been mentioned that you did...and it has been mentioned that I also purchased the software. I did during a special with other products he has, but I never used it to modify any sites.
Posted by Terry Dean on January 22, 2008 9:08 AM
From: Carol Bentley

Hi Fred,

found your blog through a link on our mutual friend, Ed Rivis' site.

I'm always looking for ways to get visitors and SEO is just one of the methods I'm starting to use. I say starting because my blog has only been going since last October (you can blame Ed for me getting started ;) ) and currently has a Google rank of 3 - but I'm not sure what it is ranked for because I can't honestly say I worry too much about keywords etc, just write posts that I think will interest people.

I look forward to learning more from you and Ed and I'll sign up to your blog so I get to know about your new tool. Thanks for the insight and also thanks to the people who added interesting comments.
Posted by Carol Bentley on January 22, 2008 11:27 AM
From: Jennifer

Fred,

Your ranking in Google for the term Internet Business is the real reason why I signed up for your rss feed.

Talk is cheap without corresponding action.

I view your results in the SERPS as proof that you not only know what you're talking about but your results speaks volumes.

Continued Success.
Posted by Jennifer on January 22, 2008 3:59 PM
From Fred...

Jennifer, Carol, Terry, April and Tim... Thanks for your comments.

Look at the scores from Rasof that Tim posted. They're all over the place. Do a search on any of the search engines for any keyword you like and then look at the URL structure and look at the web pages of the high ranking sites. Take it even farther and look at the HTML code of the high ranking sites. There's little correlation to ranking well based on the URL structure of the site, or of the page layout. It's useless to use products or services that use statistical analyses to reveal things like "using H1 tags scores poorly"... or do or don't use the keyword in the URL or stem (path after the URL), or .com names do better or worse than .org names or .net.

A good analogy is analyzing all the students in a class room on days they take tests and comparing what they are wearing and their names to their test scores. Your statistical analysis may reveal that students with short last names were in the top 10%, and that students with red shoes were in the bottom 10%. It may also reveal that students who had brown hair and green eyes were in the top 2%, however there was only 1 student that matched this factor so it's statistically insignificant.

What it does not reveal, because you're only looking at what you can see about the students while they were taking the test, is what their general health is, what they ate for breakfast, their study habits, if they studied for this particular test, if their parents were in a good mood that morning, if they were from a bad home, if they got plenty of sleep the night before, if they got in a fight with their best friend that morning before the test, or any of hundreds of other things that can make someone perform better or perform poorly on a test.

Think about it from the search engines point of view. What are they in business to do? Provide sites that match what you're looking for. Do they know people are always trying to get their sites listed on the first page? Yes. So they build in checks to try and weed out the obvious and not so obvious sites that are trying to game the system. Still their main goal is to provide you with a list of web pages that are related to the terms you searched on. Do they care if it's a .com or a .org extension on your web sites domain name? What about a .net extension? No, just ask Terry Dean (his blog site ends in .org and ranks really well). Do they care if you use h1 tags or not? No. Do they care if you're trying to rank well for the term "gerbil shampoo" and put it on your web page 91 times... yes, they will probably see that as "stuffing" and put your page way, way down in the listings. However if you use the term "gerbil shampoo" naturally, mentioning it no more or less than you would in a natural conversation with someone, and you get inbound links from other web sites that have that term in and/or around the links back to you, then you'll probably rank pretty well. Note that Google seems to be much more sensitive to stuffing, so if you're trying to rank well in Yahoo or MSN, you can be more liberal with your word counts.

Thanks again for all the positive comments.
Fred

P.S. Terry... I didn't think you were using Rasof!

P.P.S... as of today, James is STILL claiming that I used Rasof and that Terry Dean used Rasof to get top ranking for "Internet Business" on Google... If anyone still has any questions.. WE DIDN'T. I tried and my ranking sank like a lead brick! So has been the experience of others that I've spoken with. I wish James (or whoever is writing his blog posts) would stop making false claims. They should verify their assumptions before proclaiming Rasof is responsible and trying to simply sell more product based on other peoples hard work!
Posted by Fred Black on January 23, 2008 11:47 AM
From: Dental Websites

Hi Fred,

I also used to use RaSof, and noticed the same thing that you commented about. When I tried to (helpfully) point this out to James, I made the unfortunate mistake of calling it a "bug"... Well, that seemed to prompt a blog posting about "there is no such thing as bugs in software" (or something along those lines), and something to the effect that software bugs are in fact a design issue.

Whatever.

Anyways, I have a question for you...

Since your website is actually a blog (non-static), your keyword frequency will continually change as you make new posts; do you make a conscious effort to keep the number of keywords in a specific range... either for the whole first page, or for specific blog posts?

Thanks,
Tom
Posted by Dental Websites on January 23, 2008 7:48 PM
From Fred...

Hey Tom.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving that comment!
I remember that ludicrous "bug" post you mention... it's just like the Wizard of Oz... Please ignore the fact that there's a man behind the curtain making it appear to work!

Anyway...
To answer your question, yes, I keep keywords in mind, but that's all. I don't compromise what I want to say or how I want to say it. However, I may use a different term if I've used the keywords a time or two in a post. I'm just cognizant to not create a saturation of them.

Thanks again,
Fred

Posted by Fred Black on January 23, 2008 8:09 PM
From: John W. Furst

Thanks for your sharing Fred. It's quite a good analysis.

For your upcoming software. I think you should add optional output for spread-sheets, like tab or comma delimited or even XML. It's not really hard to do.

Now, I have to get on your email list. --John
Posted by John W. Furst on January 24, 2008 1:35 PM
From Fred...

Hello John;
Thank you.
The software saves the results in a database and I'll have some output options as well.

Fred
Posted by Fred Black on January 24, 2008 1:46 PM
From: Business Growth

Thanks for this post, Fred. I suspected some of what you've written here... but I'm glad to hear it straight instead of having to read between the lines.
Posted by Business Growth on January 24, 2008 2:02 PM
From: Ray Edwards

Fred

I really like your blog, and this was a very interesting post. I usually don't get too interested in SEO stuff, but I found this fascinating.

Posted by Ray Edwards on January 24, 2008 2:29 PM
From: Michael Martinez

You're making the same mistake many other people make when attempting to determine how search engines achieve their rankings.

Simply because some people rely on links to boost their sites' rankings doesn't mean that links are more important to search engines than anything else.

That's like saying sand is the most important ingredient in building a house because you looked at 100 houses and found that 60 of them are composed mostly from sand compounds.

Your data are flawed for a variety of reasons. For example, Google Toolbar PR is a delayed-publication derivative value -- it's a sampling published 3-4 times a year (usually) and doesn't necessarily reflect whatever current value could be derived from internal PageRank. Also, Google has mentioned that Toolbar PR takes more than just links into consideration.

Google's backlink reports are also inadequate because they only provide random samplings. You won't be able to research backlinks in Google effectively, however, because you have no way of knowing which backlinks actually pass value (as many as 70-80% of all links may NOT pass value in Google).

The Yahoo! backlink reports are completely useless for analyzing Google rankings for several reasons. For example, Yahoo!'s backlinks only tell you what Yahoo! can report from data it has collected -- Yahoo! has no knowledge of Google's link data. Also, Yahoo!'s backlinks include many bogus links that would never count in Google's index anyway.

Alexa data is very unreliable, and Alexa itself disclaims the statistical validity or usefulness of its own data.

Your computations are therefore not helpful in analyzing search results rankings.
Posted by Michael Martinez on January 25, 2008 5:21 PM
From Fred...

Michael;
Your comment is very confusing to me. I don't think you really read everything I wrote.

First of all, you're echoing most of what I said and then saying that I'm wrong. I think the only thing you mention that I didn't is that Yahoo backlinks are not useful for analyzing Google - I never said that they were. I simply use the data I presented for comparative analysis.

I also said that we can't know the weight that Google places on the links to a site. This is exactly the same thing you're trying to say when you say 70% to 80% of the links may not pass value. I don't agree with your statement because you can't possibly know that percentage: it varies depending where the actual links to a site come from. Each site will be different. It could be a very low percentage, or almost 100%.

I also said Google PR is not related heavily to ranking; in fact I linked to a whole post I wrote about that, so why are you telling me the same thing except in bigger words and making it sound like I said something else?

The main purpose of this whole article was to respond to a question a reader asked concerning Rasof. This article was not intended to be a comprehensive search engine optimization guide, but rather to show why Rasof does not work and why people should not waste their money on it.

I never said Google only looked at links, I said they look at a lot of factors (inputs), but put more weight (value) on inbound links than the other factors.

I stand by my conclusions (and my data), as do many others who have sites that rank well. The proof is in the results.

Thanks for stopping by.

Fred
Posted by Fred Black on January 25, 2008 6:38 PM
From: Noel

Hi Fred,

I hope you make the reporting of your new tool very easy to follow and understand: no need for secondary tools such as Oprasof or Rapogee to try and interpret the results. Glad you have seen the light re: JB etc.
Posted by Noel on January 26, 2008 11:48 AM
From: Check

RaSof is worthless like almost all of
Brauschs products
Posted by Check on January 29, 2008 8:17 AM
From: Martin Russell

Hi Fred,

Are you saying that you got to #1 on Internet Business, simply by using all the 5 steps you talk about above and nothing else?

I've been using RaSof from James' Christmas present and before in his mentoring program., and got my drmartinrussell.com site up to position 86 or so, but 2 weeks ago I got put down to the 700s and I'm still there.

Nemeas scores are comparable, my Rasof score is 1200 to the other sites 500 or way less. Even my Y! links are 860 which is a 1/4 of most sites in the top 10, but double what one site in there has.

Jonathan Legers stuff only promises 250 links before it stops so I didn't bother when I had more links.

Lots of bits in this post and the comments.

Thanks Fred.

Oh, and you do realize "Jim" is more than likely an intern doing the blog commenting procedure don't you.
Posted by Martin Russell on January 29, 2008 2:52 PM
From Fred...

Hello Martin;
Thanks for dropping by again.
I mentioned in the article that the values Rasof uses are statistical analysis values. So for example, if you analyze the top n number of web pages that Google displays for a certain keyword phrase for things like "do they have H1 tags", or "do they have JavaScript in the header", or" do they have the keyword phrase at the beginning of the title", etc. etc. etc. You end up with a really long list of factors. Each factor gets a value based on the number that met that factors criteria and how those pages ranked. Plus, in the underlying data you can see the actual number of sites that were tested - this is important because if only a very small number of sites met that test's criteria then there wasn't enough data to consider it statistically significant. I do not believe that Rasof takes this significance into account. So, even if analyzing pages this way could work (which is does not), using Rasof will not give you accurate scores based on its own underlying data because it will (or appears to when I had a subscription) count these statistically insignificant values as valid. In other words you can get a boost in your score because you adjusted the length of your description, but if you look at the underlying data and find the test that shows the results for your description length, it may have a high value but only a very small number of sites were found with that length, so it's not valid. This is ONE reason why you can get a high score and rank way behind sites with a much lower score. Heck, even James' sites score low... hummm, makes you think don't it!

The other reason it does not work is outlined above in what I've written: Google pays more attention to off page factors (links). Even as of yesterday and today, James is still proclaiming how great Rasof is. It's ludicrous. He's even claiming that it's responsible for his high ranking for his new site (.org) for the term "Internet Business Blog". His old site (.com) still ranks #2 for that term because that's the title he used to use for it and a lot of links use as well. But he claims a ranking of #11 for his new site (.org) and it's just not there (at least for me). It's between #185 and #190 when I search for it. I guess he thinks people will just take his word for it and not actually go check if he's telling the truth and then hand over their money to him. Maybe it was ranked #11 when he, or his assistant, or his employee wrote the post, but it's not now. See my latest post Google Dip for more info on why that may be the case. That rise and fall had nothing, NOTHING, to do with Rasof. Actually, the fall may have! We'll see where it goes in a week or so. He does have tons of links to his old site and I'm sure he's gaining links to his new site.

Keep in mind that some changes you make to your page will take a bit of time for the search engines to respond to. If you rank well for a term and then make changes to your page, depending on how often a particular search engine visits your site, it could take a day, a week, or a few weeks to see changes in your SERP rankings. Google will also push you down in ranking if they think you're stuffing keywords or using some other method to try and game the system - this can take longer to recover.

Now, to answer your other question: did I only use the methods I outlined above? Yes. I do a lot of traditional link building too, link exchanges, etc. Don't underestimate Jon Legers stuff - he knows what he's doing - more info here. I do tweak some things from time to time, like changing my description, but that's more to get clicks than ranking.

I plan on making a course to go along with the software tool I'm working on, hopefully this will remove some of the craziness around this whole SEO area.

Thanks again for stopping by.

Take care,
Fred
Posted by Fred Black on January 29, 2008 3:40 PM
From: Raymond Hines III

I'm a customer of his -- rather a former customer.

I ordered his James Brausch Newsletter and plunked down $300 for it. Three months later I have yet to see anything in the mail, so I email him at his paypal address to see if he could fix the problem. After several weeks of sending emails and not getting a response, I thought I'd post comments on his blog politely asking him to get in touch with me regarding his newsletter that I was not getting. Of course, my comments were promptly deleted but no emails.

I even had PayPal contact him on my behalf asking him to address this issue, and nope, he didn't respond.

So, in short, I am out $300 and I have learned yet another lesson in internet fraud. Sigh.

I guess my only solace here is that I'm not the only one to be screwed over by this guy.

Ray
Posted by Raymond Hines III on April 6, 2008 3:07 AM
From Fred...

Hey Ray;
Sorry to hear about your problems. If you've ever returned anything, or complained, or said guys like me or Robert Phillips know what we're talking about, then you're on his banned list. You will not be able to purchase anything with your "banned" email address. My two suggestions are to use a different email address to try and contact the customer support for his newsletter... wait... I don't think there is one! Also be warned that he'll tell Paypal you're a lier and cheater too.

The other option is to send a real letter to his address that's listed on his whois info for his .org domain, you can use this link to get that address: http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=jamesbrausch.org&prog_id=godaddy.

Take care and good luck!
Fred

Posted by Fred Black on April 6, 2008 11:00 AM
From: Devin T.

I think your research is very extensive in proving its point in taking down the Rasof scales. But I wonder if you have studied your own methods in analyzing the SERPs. I'm a very technical guy and love calculating things to make predictions. I've researched and came up with my own (rough) model of the search engine structure, and I was wondering if you consider keyword optimization a multiplier or additive in the search engines (or possibly both or neither).

Haha, maybe its too technical of a request, but you seem like a bright guy.
Posted by Devin T. on July 13, 2008 11:05 AM
From Fred...

Hey Devin;
See my response here: http://www.pqinternet.com/151.htm
Posted by Fred Black on July 14, 2008 2:43 PM
From: Search Engine Optimization

I have never really considered about backlinks.

I have always used articles submission and social bookmarking as my tool. After reading your article I am having second thoughts.
Posted by Search Engine Optimization on September 12, 2008 9:39 AM