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Thanks for the reply.  I entirely agree with what you're saying, but there was a reason why I asked the question the way I asked it.

Yes, your own site is better.  If there is a reason why you don't want to promote your site directly (without going into what those reasons would be), IS there an external source to promote your message on where you will retain full control of the content?

Should I understand that you think there is none?

Thanks!

Hi All!

After the havoc of Panda and Penguin - are there any article sites that still rank decently for the articles within? I'm not talking about using articles to get backlinks - I want to attract visitors to the articles themselves because of the message within the article.

Yes, I know that for lots of reasons my own blog would be better.  In addition to that, if you want to spread the message - which sites are recommended?

Thanks!

Aviva

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the response.  It's definitely a good idea - I'm just not sure how much really good content I can write (or can be written) on their topic, still kind of promoting their sites, without looking spammy.  (Which will be an effective deterrent to people sharing and linking.)

I'll start thinking more about it, though. Maybe I can make it work somehow.

Thanks,

Aviva B

Hi All!

One of my new clients is in a semi-grey-hat industry, and is in perpetual danger of having their real websites (of which they have several), blocked by the Chinese firewall (which is where their target market is).

So their idea is to use neutral sites to write information (Squidoo, article site, maybe a stand-alone WP site with a few pages) and promote those pages.  The idea being that China is less likely to block those sites, and then the link to the actual website from those pages could always be changed if China blocks the website listed.

I'm a little dubious as to how feasible this is - how do you promote a Squidoo page?  Or an article on an article site for semi-competitive keywords?  Besides on-page SEO (which may not be enough), is there anything you can really do post-Penguin?

If anyone has any ideas as to the above - or as to how else to effectively market sites when you can't market the site and brand directly, I'd be very happy to hear.

Thanks!

We've been having the same issue (it impacts on client evaluation and reporting significantly), and I just found a blog post written by SEO staff about a week ago:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hot-off-the-press-more-universal-results-included-with-your-campaign-rankings

He mentions the change, and says that they are considering giving more options in the interface by which to view your results (i.e. by absolute organic position, not just "natural with universal excluded".)  I would visit the post, comment, and also follow the link to the feature request page for this and vote it up - maybe that'll help the change get made - and sooner.

https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/21226961-show-the-top-universal-ranking-position-and-top-overall-ranking-position-as-well-as-top-natural-rank?page=1

Good luck!

-Aviva

Thanks, Stubby.  Infomation appreciated.

All the best,

Aviva

Thanks, Stubby!

That's what I've been assuming, but hadn't had any actual verification on.  Can I ask how you came to that conclusion?  Is it just what makes sense (100% agreed over here), or have you done analysis, or an official answer from someone who know at Google... or maybe you get visitations from the world beyond?  (I'm sure they know these things over there.  

Thanks,

Aviva

Thanks Andrea.  A post from Search Engine Land (http://searchengineland.com/by-the-numbers-twitter-vs-facebook-vs-google-buzz-36709) from about 2 years ago also says that the only number Google will give is "more than 1 billion," but that is assumed in the article to be a minimum estimate.

So it could that Catherine Roe was reporting the only "official" stats Google has, but which may not reflect reality 100%.

Aviva

Hi, All!

The figure I've seen going around is 3 billion and is attributed to ComScore, but in the comScore press release that was linked to (actually the one from Rand's article - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic-2012) all I could find was percentage of market share, but no total numbers of searches.

Anyone have a source on that?

Thanks,

Aviva

Feedburner is the obvious answer for publishing RSS feeds, but we've had a few issues with our feedburner account for our site blog, and now that we're starting a new blog, I wanted to explore other options.

I'm looking for a feed publisher that will give me stats, and function consistently.

What have you found?

Thanks,

Aviva B

Download the Google Global addon for Firefox or Chrome.  Set up Australia as one of the settings (don't forget to check the box for depersonalizing results.)

Aviva B

Hi, All!

If another site (example.com) links to you, and upon mouseover of the link, you see it's supposed to go to something like:

http://example.com/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=visit&link_id=123&Itemid=456

and then when clicked on you get to your actual site, is that considered a real link? How much of a link?

Thanks!

Aviva

Thanks, CafePress.  That certainly makes sense.   But are you saying that if I contact a bunch of site owners in my niche and offer them link exchanges (and they accept), that's really no different than linking between real business partners?  What about a partners page which links to all their partners via a logo (not much anchor text or any text, for that matter)? Is that as bad as putting a bunch of reciprocal links to niche sites on your page with no supporting text?

Everything I've read about Google recently makes me think they're smarter than that, but I'm looking for a backed-up reason.

Hi, All!

Artificial link exchanges (contacting a vaguely connected site and requesting to exchange links to increase your PR) is, as far as I know, considered an outdated, not-so-smart technique, as Google might devalue them.

Yet, for real business partners to exchange links seems to be an entirely accepted and encouraged technique.

While that would be intuitive to a human who's viewing the pages. how might Google detect when two sites that link to each other are linking because they are trusted business associates (valuable) as opposed to when they are doing a link exchange (devalued)?

Thanks!

Aviva

Hi, All!

I have a little time on my hands that's not taken up by client work or our own marketing.  What would you say is a skill worth learning during that time?

My background is not techie, so while I've picked up a teeny bit of knowledge about code, etc. on the way, I still don't really know how to code, use APIs, etc. So I was thinking something along those lines, but anyone have specific suggestions? And resources for whatever you suggest?

Thanks!

Aviva

Thanks, Ryan.  Good ideas, and we'll see what "the authorities" choose to do.

Thanks for the interest, Keri. It was a few weeks ago, so it's hard to remember now. I think GWT did mention that anchor text - but I'm not 100% certain. Either way, I asked the webmaster to add alt text to the arrows for each menu item, so we'll see what happens. Aviva