SEO experiment

1. 64

   Kidgasposted 15 years ago

   I started an SEO experiment to get ranked for the keyword phrase "SEO experiment".  I just posted my initial post to my blog and was able to find the post on page 15 of Google (position number 150).
   
   It will be an interesting task to prepare me for a niche site as the next likely step in my online income journey.  Feel free to follow along at my blog as I go through the various steps to see if I can get to the first page of Google.

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2. 75

   thranaxposted 15 years ago

   WTF! Google already indexed your blog and didn't get my Hub from 9/29 and 10/01?? BS.
   
   I guess I'm just a little stressed about it..
   
   ~thranax~

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3. 64

   Kidgasposted 15 years ago

   It is a blogger blog so maybe that made a difference.  I saw your thread.  Wonder if HubPages has gotten slapped a bit.  I have noticed my traffic down over the last several days.  There are rumors that a slap occurred.

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      blue dogposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      yes, have noticed minimal traffic for three days now.  a reprimand?  por que?

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         Mishaposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         Yeah, reps are coming to get you

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4. 75

   thranaxposted 15 years ago

   God I hope not..if it has might as well say by by to Hubpages and hello to all the other writer sites...
   
   ~thranax~

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5. 64

   Kidgasposted 15 years ago

   No kidding.  Maybe they are just behind.  I will have to check some of my articles now.

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6. 81

   sunforgedposted 15 years ago

   I dont think any "slap" has occurred my traffic is up 200% today!...but my earnings are less, go figure..
   
   anyways pages get reindexed, drop from first page to nowhere and then come back strong, give it at least 30 days before worrying, just build backlinks and partner hubs and blog posts in the meanwhile.
   
   It will spring back up

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7. 0

   girly_girl09posted 15 years ago

   My traffic has been slumping on certain "steady traffic" hubs so I'm a bit concerned but not terribly as a few other hubs have jumped in traffic (I'd imagine a change in Google rank recently occurred)

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8. 75

   thranaxposted 15 years ago

   *Gulps* I think I know why Hubpages isn't being indexed atm..
   
   If it was, we cause it ourselves and only ourselves...
   
   ~thranax~

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      Kidgasposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Care to elaborate?

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         girly_girl09posted 15 years agoin reply to this

         I was just going to ask this!!!...

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      2. 75

         thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         The Hub challenge...look at the rate pages are coming out a day. We completely raised the whole sites incoming traffic like a large percentage because we introduced that.
         
         Not only that, 9/10 new hubbers who write a hub have low quality barely even allowed here Hubs..not good.
         
         ~thranax~

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9. 73

   KCC Big Countryposted 15 years ago

   My traffic is higher than it's ever been over the past couple of days.

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    thranaxposted 15 years ago

    Don't look at traffic in general. I had a hub that got 47 Yahoo hits in a day (i never had that much from Yahoo in my life). So traffic went up for me, but Google went down, and I wasn't indexed. If you have a newer Hub make sure its indexed:
    
    Site:URL
    
    ~thranax~

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    KCC Big Countryposted 15 years ago

    The HubChallenge has been going on all summer. This is my fourth HubChallenge.

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       thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Thats the point!
       
       ~thranax~

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          KCC Big Countryposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          Then blame ME!  Woooo hoooooooooo

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             thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

             Im not blaming you personally lol. I think it has inspired lower quality because of the time requirements in some peoples cases.
             
             ~thranax~

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                KCC Big Countryposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                It's the same argument people always throw up. There are good quality hubs and there are some substandard hubs.  Flag the substandard hubs when you see them so that mgmt can remove them. That solves the problem.

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                1. 75

                   thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                   You think they can keep up with the demand? There are 7 of them, and there are 101,000 of us. Googles Bots, go around the whole World Wide Web and back in only a few days. It will try to index Hubs the second there out, regardless of quality. And now it looks like, for the time being they aren't.
                   
                   ~thranax~

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                      KCC Big Countryposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                      If the demand is great enough and it affects things the way you claim it does, perhaps they'd hire more personnel to keep up with it.  All I'm saying is it does absolutely no good to complain about substandard hubs unless you're willing to at least flag them so they have a shot at being looked at.  Obviously, there are no guarantees for the reasons you stated.

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                         thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                         Well, it at least determines a motive. If that guys blog is indexed instantly and the hubs here (i did some of the topic page to) aren't being indexed..theirs a problem other then "being backed up".
                         
                         ~thranax~

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12. 75

    thranaxposted 15 years ago

    If every author signed wrote 1 bad Hub, that would mean 1\5th of the whole site is low quality. about 90-100,000 Pages.
    
    ~thranax~

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13. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    I am concerned about the overall quality.  Plus I have noticed in the short time that I have been here, the number of hubbers has gone from 67,000 to 102,000.  You can bet Google doesn't like some of the hubs that I have seen.

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    1. 75

       thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Same. Think about it, when I first looked up a Hubpages PageRank it was 4. Now, the last time I looked were ranked 2.
       
       ~thranax~

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14. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    I agree.  I have flagged some hubs in the past though not many.  I will have to start looking at flagging more especially when the grammar and punctuation is incredibly poor.
    
    According to my SEO for firefox, Hubpages PR is 6.  Just checked it.

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    1. 75

       thranaxposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Now check your Hubs. When I released my 1st it had a PR of 6 also with the Site..now its down to 3.
       
       ~thranax~

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          sunforgedposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          PR isnt sitewide, this thread has none
          the home page is still PR6
          the forum home page is PR5 etc.
          
          Hubs can get high PR but im amazed to here you have anything higher than 2!  2 year old Hubs w/ 100 hubscores in the hot hubs thread have PR3!

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15. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    This forum thread is now ranked #34 on Google for "SEO experiment".  It knocked my blog post down by 1 position.  Kinda ticked now.

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       KCC Big Countryposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       You can blame that on ME too. LOL  I'm just kidding.

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16. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    Sure enough.  Now I need to get extra links to complete my experiment.  Arrgh!  So much extra work now.  LOL

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    Nelle Hoxieposted 15 years ago

    Hi guys, sorry I've been on the road (from Baltimore back to Cape Cod) since this afternoon or I would have chimed in earlier.
    
    A hub I wrote on 9/29 is already getting Google traffic. A week really isn't that long to wait for Google visitors.
    
    I just keep shooting hubs backlinks and cross-linking between hubs. I've also been thinking about making hubs a minimum of 1,000 words so google has more copy to work with. Right now I shoot for 800.

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    Nelle Hoxieposted 15 years ago

    It also could be the time of year. I'm not the only one working frantically to get Christmas hubs and websites in shape. Lots more competition going on.

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19. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    I checked my best hub so far and sunforged is absolutely correct.  It had no PR.
    
    The funny thing about the SEO experiment is that this thread is now on page 2 this morning.  My blog post back on page 15 at rank 150.

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       girly_girl09posted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Do you have to manually look through each SERP for your blogs listing or is there some lookup that you can use to determine what page? I usually give up after 2 or 3 pages, but it'd be cool to have a lookup that says it's on X page of Google.

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          lrohnerposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          I'd be interested to see if anyone has an answer to this as well. All of the rank checkers I've seen or used only check a domain's rank -- not a particular page.

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             girly_girl09posted 15 years agoin reply to this

             Definitely. A tool like that would be super handy!

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20. 61

    deartfuldodgerposted 15 years ago

    Your comp for that term although not ridiculously high in PR, does have thousands of backlinks.
    
    Why are you doing this experiment?

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21. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    Why not?  I will detail some reasons in my next blog post.  Thanks for the material.
    
    BTW, I am now ranked in the 31st position in Google on the top of page 4.

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22. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    GG and lrohner,
    
    Here is a link:  http://www.search-engine-optimization-t … -position/
    
    You can only check the top 300 positions on the sites Google, Yahoo, MSN.  But if you aren't in the top 300, it probably doesn't matter.  It is same as if you don't exist.

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       girly_girl09posted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Thank you!!!!! Awesome.
       
       I was just headed to bed but now I'll be up an hour playing around with this new data. lol I think I'll track some hubs in excel.

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    2. 64

       Kidgasposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Carol,
       Here is a link to a SERP tool.  It only reports the first 300 results.  I write on blogspot, eHow, InfoBarrel, Xomba, have a few lenses at Squidoo.  I am under the same user name.  You can find my blog at my profile here.

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       WeddingConsultantposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Here's another site that does just that:
       
       http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/

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23. 81

    Benjimesterposted 15 years ago

    I've been reading this whole thread.  Really interesting.  I've actually posted a few concerns on another thread about hubs not getting indexed this past week.  There's definitely something interesting going on.  But I don't think Google's henchmen are after us, because I have more overall traffic to the indexed hubs than ever.  Thanks for that great link, by the way.  Now I'll use the phrase SEO experiment to help with the rank of the thread.  Cheers!

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       girly_girl09posted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I think there have just been some recent re-indexing changes in Google. (Some of my hubs are getting many more views, some are getting less views). Overall my daily views have gone down about 200 (ouch!) but I don't think it is due to a Google slap.

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    Eric Graudinsposted 15 years ago

    It will be interesting to see how you go.
    There are about 200 searches a month for the term SEO experiment.
    I think it will be a good effort if you get to the first page, as you have a fair bit of onpage SEO competition for the term:
    inanchor: 14900 pages, intitle: 5900 pages, and inurl: 4370 pages.
    
    but if you want to get to the top of google for a keyword that has no searches, or no competition, it's easy.
    
    My  keyword phrase
    
    rex the performing ferret
    
    is on the top seven positions at the moment
    
    Now  I'll make millions!! Or maybe not.
    
    see http://hubpages.com/hub/Number-One-on-Google and then you'll understand the importance of Keyword research for creating hubs. :-)
    
    
    re Indexing;
    
    I checked last week, and a couple of forum posts I made came up on google about half an hour after I posted them.

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25. 64

    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    EG,
    I agree it will be interesting which is why I am working on it.  I found a keyword yesterday that only had one result and one that only had 5.  That would be easy to get on the top.
    
    I have also seen some of the forum posts here show up rather quickly.
    
    On a side note, my blog post has been anywhere from position 29 to 65 today.  Interesting to watch it change.

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26. 58

    yoshi97posted 15 years ago

    I just had two finally index from 10 days ago, so the indexing is slow ... but it's working.

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27. 58

    yoshi97posted 15 years ago

    One of the things I think helps forum posts (just a thought - no facts to back it up) is that these threads grow constantly with new material.
    
    I wonder ... any way to prove this theory?

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       sunforgedposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Its already well accepted, google loves constantly updating and fresh content, im sure you can find proofs and maxims at relavent sites, or check out matt cutts blog

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    Eric Graudinsposted 15 years ago

    I posted to this thread for the first time 78 minutes ago.
    
    I've just received a google alert showing my post.
    
    So there's certainly nothing wrong with the google indexing of the Hubpages forums!

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       yoshi97posted 15 years agoin reply to this

       So ... we just post our hubs to the forums, eh? So, that's why they do it ...

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          Eric Graudinsposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          Damn. You now know as much as I do 

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29. 81

    sunforgedposted 15 years ago

    It shows how hubbers could benefit each other by having relevant conversations via actual hubs, rather than in forums.
    If this thread was in your comment sections your article could be second page by now!

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       yoshi97posted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Excellent suggestion ... let's move this thread to my World's Best Pea Soup Recipe Hub, eh? It needs some hits! (oh wait ... I found the issue ... I never wrote it. lol!)

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          sunforgedposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          it would have been beneficial here
          
          http://myonlineincomebykidgas.blogspot. … iment.html

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             Kidgasposted 15 years agoin reply to this

             You are right about that, sunforged.  Down at 392 this am.

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    Carol the Writerposted 15 years ago

    A lot of new hubs seem to be pretty bad. Maybe new hubbers need to go through a screening process for their first 5 hubs or so. That would fix things.
    
    Anyway, my question is, how do you know if you are indexed by Google? There has to be a better way than scrollong down page after page. Is there?
    
    Kidgas, I just became your fan. Do you blog on community web sites or do you buy and set up your own web pages?
    
    -Carol

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    Must be sitting in the Google sandbox.  I checked just now and I am ranked at 499.

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    Island Tropicalposted 15 years ago

    Thanks for the info, I will visit your blog.

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    ryankettposted 15 years ago

    My hubs have been indexing instantly. The hubs that I did yesterday were all indexed within 1 hour, Im not bragging or anything..... just wondered why? Although I do hyperlink to and from other hubs before I have even published, is this tempting to google bots straight onto my hubs?

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34. 0

    Aquaposted 15 years ago

    Yes, but Ryan are they *staying* indexed? Some of mine index immediately but fall after the initial burst of "newness" wears off.

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       ryankettposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Not sure, I will check tomorrow and let you know Aqua.... have started something that is taking me far too long to finish!!

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    I have found that some of my Hubs as well show up almost immediately.  But if I don't check them right away, then I can't find them for a little while.  I had one back in the summer that I couldn't even find with the entire title in quotation marks for about 2-3 months.  Then I started getting some traffic to it and noticed it in the search results.
    
    That is why I am paying attention to this experiment.  I want to see how long it takes to get back into the results.  The blog post is not found today.

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    Mark Knowlesposted 15 years ago

    I have seen my first ever drop in traffic here, I usually see a spike down then up - but I am actually seeing a steady drop in traffic.
    
    And I have had quite a lot of my hubs de-indexed for some reason. Completely gone from the index. I have had hubs de-indexed before and they usually come back stronger - but this time seems different, because some of them are older, like two years old - all of a sudden gone.

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    magdielqrposted 15 years ago

    How long a hub be well indexed by Google and get many visitors?

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    Helen Caterposted 15 years ago

    Mine are all indexed within a short time but I too have noticed a considerable drop in traffic over the last few weeks. I have written 15 more hubs and my traffic is now lower than it has ever been. I have heard others saying the same thing and although my new hubs have a burst of life it tends to tail off. I am still around the 200 per day to 350 traffic mark but this was creeping up to 500 and is now nose diving each day. I have been trailing this and it appears my organic traffic is rising and hubpages views are dropping like flies. I am now 50% organic so I am not worrying too much

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    magdielqrposted 15 years ago

    I get only 50 visits per day. What should I do to increase the number of visitors?

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    johnr54posted 15 years ago

    You guys are confusing indexed with ranking.  There are literally billions of pages indexed that will never rank for anything.  You can see if a page is in the index by checking the cache using the Google plugin on Firefox. 
    
    Hubpages will typically get indexed in a few days, sometimes quicker, while blogs can often get indexed in a few minutes or hours because they are typically set up to ping Google with the update.  You can use some tools to ping Google with your hubs, I personally don't bother.
    
    Once a page is in the index, it will often rank higher for a while since Google weights fresh content higher, and will start to decay after a few days.  You combat that with linkbuilding of some sort, even something as simple as tagging your hubs.

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       Mark Knowlesposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       This guy is not confusing indexing with ranking thank you.
       
       I have had a number of hubs removed from the index completely. i.e. they are not in the index at all.
       
       This is a recent occurrence (last 2 months or so) and is only in certain niches which hubpages recent efforts to generate new users and hubs seems to have attracted vast amounts of content in.
       
       I am watching to see what happens - it looks to me as though a penalty has been applied in certain niches - in which case I need to rethink some of what I do here. Even having spent the last two month increasing the amount of backlinks to certain pages quite substantially - they are still not indexed.

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    Mark,
    I am certain that you know your stuff and appreciate your comments.  I have heard rumors that HubPages was getting "slapped".  Again, it pays to keep an eye on what is happening.  I would hope that HubPages might get around to deleting inactive accounts or accounts with low author scores.

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       Mark Knowlesposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I don't know about any "slap" for sure. All I can say is that for the last two months I have struggled to increase my traffic the way I expected it to increase and I have had a number of hubs de-indexed that are in the same niches. I do not claim to be an expert on google's ranking but I know a de-indexed page when I see it. In the past it usually happened after the initial surge and then came back after a few days or weeks and was stronger.
       
       This time is different and I am waiting to see if certain niches have been penalized. Do a google search for hubpages+foreclosure and you will see what I am talking about.

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    There is only one post for a foreclosure Hub in the first 3 pages.  Usually HubPages shows up a lot in the searches.

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    flread45posted 15 years ago

    This explains why my traffic dropped 30%.
    I thought it was because of another person stealing my writings and adsense account #s.

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    Carol the Writerposted 15 years ago

    Thanks Kidgas.

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    You are welcome, Carol.
    
    BTW, "SEO Experiment" blog post is ranking back at #69 on Google tonight.

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    Quick update:
    Was in the "sandbox" but have been on page 9 in position 85 or 86 for almost 72 hours now.  Hope to be working up gradually over time now and not returning to the sand.

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    Jackson Riddleposted 15 years ago

    Yeah I was just checking 'SEO Experiment' in google and this thread comes up in 10th place, on the first page. Too bad it is not your blog.

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       Kidgasposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       No kidding.  But it will still help I am sure.

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    chenmikehkposted 15 years ago

    One day I shall learn all about SEO and keywords etc. Now too busy writing and having fun.

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    shanekrugerposted 15 years ago

    Hub page is good source for one way linking.

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    Kidgasposted 15 years ago

    Sitting on page 1 in position number 5.  I wrote a Hub and a blog post on this.  WOOT!

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       Jeffrey Nealposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Great job! 
       BTW it's at position 9 without quotes.

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          Kidgasposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks for the information.  I never even thought to check that since there were 1.7 million other pages.

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