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Wowsers... nice response.

Thanks for spending the time on writing all that out

I'll re-work the site structure, taking all comments on board!

Is it a problem if google crawls this thread?

Thanks for your insight into this!

Interesting.

Why did you search for: "Find event ideas, wedding entertainment or party ideas" ?

When I do it, I get the same result and also the google message about some results being omitted.

Maybe all those pages are considered "keyword stuffed" by Google?

You said you noticed one of them had a page. How do you mean?

There is a landing page for weddings:

http://www.superted.com/wedding-entertainment.php

But no external links to it yet.

I have a site in the UK, with these metrics:

• 15 years old
• 500 pages in sitemap, but Majestic says 186,000 indexed URLs ?
• DA of 45, PR of 3
• 1000 links from 200 linking root domains, across from 150 IP's (from OSE)
• 33,000 links in OSE when I use the compare tool and look at the "links to this root domain" section
• 24,000 external links according to Majestic
• 350 shares, 2,000 tweets, 60 +1's
• Median PA of linking root domains (from OSE export) = 20
• no Moz on-page errors, or webmaster tools issues

The above metrics are better than 2 competitors who have only just launched, have fewer links, lower DA, etc, and are ranking for keywords like "wedding entertainment", "corporate entertainers"

Our site is www.superted.com

1. Why doesn't OSE show 33,000 links when I select "links to this root domain". Why will those links only be shown when I do a domain comparison in OSE?

2. I'm thinking our anchor text distribution is the problem. We have very few links containing the keywords want. Also maybe our sitemap is an issue as it only lists 500 of our pages? But given our domain age, DA, etc... surely anchor text / site map isn't the only issue here?

Any hints would be awesome.

Yup, deleted.

I've never come across any stats, but logic (well, my logic at least) and from everything I hear from anyone is that if anything, it's increasing.

People are getting better and better at searching for specific things online.

But... it's ultimately up to Google. Google may decide that your search query, "where to get a hawaiin pizza 24 hours a day in New York" is very specific but it's going to focus on shorter phrases like "24 hour pizza" in the search results.

In Webmaster Tools, you can "fetch as google bot" meaning you can enter one of those 77 URLs, and see what the Google "bot" sees when going to that URL.

You can also use:

http://www.dnsqueries.com/en/googlebot_simulator.php

For the URL: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Entertainment-Magazine

the Google Bot Simulator says:

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Showbiz-Gossip

and for: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy-helped-woman-lose-3-stone

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy

Interestingly, both the NEW URLs work fine although http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy doesn't look too good (at least in my web browser) but that's another issue.

You have a fairly complex .htaccess file (hint: I looked up your OLD .htaccess file - you should delete old htaccess files or something so people can't access them via a web browser), so I'm guessing the problem will be within your .htaccess file.

If possible, put a plain and simple .htaccess file on, test it with Google Webmaster Tools and see if the error still persists.

Adam

I know this question has been asked many times in this forum but I still can't work it out.

Why does this link:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.bookpal.com.au&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=external&target=subdomain&group=0

Which is showing all links, external, to pages "on this sub domain" show 1,935 external links but this link:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.bookpal.com.au&sort=page_authority&filter=follow&source=external&target=subdomain&group=0

which is exactly the same but this time shoing followed + 301 links, says "showing 1 - 50 external links) but won't show the total links (and I know the mouse-over on the question mark says it's won't show the total links, but I don't understand why it can't show the total links when it could show the total links when I requested to see "all links" instead of just "followed+301" links.)

but it actually lists 700 links (14 pages, 50 results each page). I know the link list is limited to 25 links per domain but then it means you can NEVER know the total link count unless you download the full report.

This makes using OSE to know numbers of links (internal, external, or otherwise) impossible.

And if anyone uses the API, why the API (external+follow) returns 1,451 links?

I'm sure it's an ongoing issue with people trying to get their head around all of this and I've never really been able to.

Any insight would be much appreciated!

I did some correlation testing of the "SEMRush Rank" metric and across 12,000 keywords I couldn't find any correlation between their metric and SERP positions. I've quizzed them on what the metric actually is and I get very little information from them. They say it's based on Adwords competition which would then mean it's not related to organic positions but then I couldn't find any correlation between the metric and paid ad positions either. So in my opinion, SEMRush can't help you there however their suite of tools is awesome.

The SEOmoz metric, "keyword difficulty" is the best I've found. It sucks that you can only enter one keyword at a time (there's no API access for that metric either) and it's fairly slow in returning results. So if you have hundreds of keywords you'd like some kind of "difficulty" or "competition" metric on, then as far as I know there's very few.

LongTail Pro have added a "difficulty" metric to their downloadable software though I'm not a fan of the price / feature ratio and I haven't tested how well it performs, or wether it's an absolute metric or a relative (to your list of keywords) metric.

Sean mentioned Raven Tools. They have plenty of great tools, pulling data mostly from SEOmoz and Majestic SEO. From my memory they don't have a "difficulty" or "competition" metric, though I could be wrong.

I ended up writing my own software to get "difficulty" metrics across an entire set of keywords. I don't sell it, or advertise it, but I am looking for people to help me improve on it through testing / feedback. The benefit is of course, you can use it. Shoot me a message if you're interested.

Adam

For me, when I hire someon to to "backlinking", it's about links from external websites pointing to the client's site.

I prefer the term "link building" as I think it describes more accurately what I want done.

The link profile on the actual client's site (internal links) is something I usually handle myself. It's more "on site" / "on page" optimisation (SEO) as far as I'm concerned.

So I think "backlinking" is external link building and then there's internal link building or on-page SEO.

Not sure why you're asking but if it's because of some confusion between you and a contractor or you and a client, there's no dictionary definition and so clarification is always required when using these terms.

In Webmaster Tools, you can "fetch as google bot" meaning you can enter one of those 77 URLs, and see what the Google "bot" sees when going to that URL.

You can also use:

http://www.dnsqueries.com/en/googlebot_simulator.php

For the URL: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Entertainment-Magazine

the Google Bot Simulator says:

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Showbiz-Gossip

and for: http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy-helped-woman-lose-3-stone

HTTP CODE = HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location = http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy

Interestingly, both the NEW URLs work fine although http://www.in2town.co.uk/Weight-Loss-Hypnotherapy doesn't look too good (at least in my web browser) but that's another issue.

You have a fairly complex .htaccess file (hint: I looked up your OLD .htaccess file - you should delete old htaccess files or something so people can't access them via a web browser), so I'm guessing the problem will be within your .htaccess file.

If possible, put a plain and simple .htaccess file on, test it with Google Webmaster Tools and see if the error still persists.

Adam

If it ever happens again, rush to you client and demand a bonus... before Google fixes it!

Hi all,

This is a question about whether the top 10 ORGANIC Google results for a broad match is your competition, or whether it's the top 10 for a phrase match, or an exact match.

I'm a newbie here but not a newbie to the world of SEO. I hope to be able answer just as many questions as I ask

QUESTION: If a customer comes to me and says, "hey, who's my (organic) competition for wedding present?" and I want to use Google to get the top 10 organic results, do I use a broad, phrase, or exact match?

It seems many people think an exact match is the way to go but I think they were more referring to Adwords results / competition. I'm not trying to determine search volume for Adwords or even the search volume for organic results... I'm only interested in the top 10 competitors in the organic results.

No one types in "wedding present" (with inverted commas" when doing a search in Google, so surely to see who ranks organically for wedding present I'd want to simply type in wedding present (no inverted commas, aka broad match).

I understand all the concepts about how Google results cary whether you're logged in, etc, etc so I don't want to get distracted by that. And I know there's a bunch of tools we can use like the SEOMoz Keyword Analysis Tool. But I just want to know specifically what people would use (broad, phrase or exact) to look at the top 10 organic competitors are when doing a manual search in Google.

Hi Darcy,

I'm going through a process at the moment of a very thorough analysis of every tool I can get my hands on - more from a technical perspective because I was getting sick of the varying results from different tools / utilities.

I wrote my own scraper utility to get live results from Google as well. I tested 800 keywords using broad, phrase, exact, etc and the results from Google compared to every tool out there is different.

I'm currently writing a document on all of this. Maybe I should post it somewhere, I don't know, but my strong feelings at this point is:

• check with each provider (of the online tool or downloadable software) whether they use broad match, phrase match, or exact match. SEM Rush displays results for "phrase match" but shows [exact match] search volume for that phrase. You almost need a database to remember what criteria each tool uses to return results.

• do they allow you to filter results by domain (google.com, google.com.au, etc)?

• in addition to the above, do they allow you to filter results by only showing results for that country (eg, if you can select "Australia", do they search on google.com.au AND give you the choice to see results for only .com.au domains, or all results that google.com.au would offer up?)

• How recent is their data? Everything costs money - whether it's in API units from Google, API units from a competing tool, or even time and money spent on writing their own scraping software. Free tools aren't going to update their databases every day. SEOMoz (who I've found to be quite accurate) updates their Keyword Analysis Tool database monthly. A lot can happen in 4 weeks. Getting this information can be tough. You need to email each vendor and get their answer - and then trust their answer.

• Tough one... but how savvy is the developer of the tool? I've written my own tools and it's damn hard to get accurate data even from Google directly! There's so many variables. Poorly written software returns poor results. In writing my own stuff, different proxies would return different Google results, even different user agents (web browsers) would return different results. You need a thorough understanding of the technicalities behind obtaining data from or about Google.

There's a few considerations off the top of my head. As I say I'm still putting together my findings. I'm using this reply as an opportunity to hopefully spark a little discussion on this as I think many people have the same problem.

The immediate solution? Write your own software, or use a few tools and average the results. I'm quite the analyst so varying results do my head in. However at the same time, is your goal to get 100% accurate results, or get a good "feel" for the competitive landscape and move on? Sometimes I like to get things perfect, other times my client doesn't have the time to wait, and I'm not paid enough to be that anal!

Hi Dana,

Very strange, I am just reading your blog post now and here you are answering my question. Thanks for the quick reply.

I agree the definition of "competitor" will vary. My question was asked with the definition of "competition" to be anyone taking up a position on the first page because if all 10 positions for shure microphones are taken up by major suppliers / manufacturers then the recommendation to my client would be "don't bother".

What I'm finding with varying tools (SEO Moz, SEM Rush, etc) is they all give search volumes in terms of phrase or exact matches. But when someone searches for wedding present in Google (as a broad match), the number of results is the number of results we care about.

I'm simply not confident in my own opinion because I would have thought all these tools would have put in enough research to decide that phrase or exact results are better. Using a phrase or exact match to provide "search volume" figures makes sense to me, but if you want:

• the top 10 organic / paid results for a keyphrase

• the number of organic / paid results for a keyphrase

Then broad match would be the obvious choice.

I'm not sure if anyone from SEOMoz wants to explain why the Keyword Analysis Tool shows results using exact match, but I'm sure there's a logical reason for it - I just can't see it!

Being new here I'm pressing all sorts of buttons and breaking things...

I posted a question, liked someone's answer so click "good answer" thinking it was like a "thumbs up" but it actually set my question to "answered".

How does one set their own question to un-answered?

Ah so people get points?! I'll have to research what they do but don't worry Dana, the points you shall keep!

But yes, a good feature would be to be able to set a question to unanswered.