Now since the hyphenated version went live, it debuted at position 125 on google. It quickly dropped out the rankings and has not returned to date. The concatenated version meanwhile has just debuted at 22. That’s quite a difference in treatment!

Okay, so 2 sets of examples is hardly a test, but seeing as I’ve already heard that this is the case from what I believe are reputable sources, I am taking these as first hand evidence. And pretty strong evidence too that hypenated is a no-no.

Oh by the way, regarding my last post, there was a second twit that stole my content. This one posted it up on squidoo. It did rank. I can’t remember whether on page 2 or page 3 but google has since slapped it.

Meanwhile, the original (or at least first discovered of the two twits) has edited out much of the verbatim, and added some category placeholder posts and currently ranks at 27.

So yeah, definitely go .net or .org, else tack on a surplus word before entertaining hyphens if you want google to treat you nice from the get-go.

As part of this year’s 30 Day Challenge with Ed Dale and co. I registered an additional 2 domain names for a backup niche. Both consist of two words, but one is word1word2.net while the other is word1-word.com.

This came about because of the whole .com is worth more (not that I’d dabbled much in selling domains and websites) and as the hyphenated version was considered acceptable, albeit down the pecking chain after word1word2.net/org and word1word2word3.com/net/org.

I decided to go live with word1-word2.com live at the end of the first week of August with a single post. It didn’t rank. A week and a half later, I made word1word2.net live with a newly written post. I also submitted an ezine article which went live 2 days later. I don’t remember how long precisely it took other than it being within a few short days that the .net site ranked.

Interestingly, some lazy twit also stumbled upon this niche, most likely also a 30DCer in that they used a Wordpress blog with full on page SEO – and that this blog coincidentally appeared in the month of the challenge. Anyway the twit copied my post from my .net and posted it verbatim on its blog.

There’s a slight irony here in that the keyphrase is actually worthless. The google keyword stats said there was a lot of traffic, but that traffic certainly doesn’t appear to be search traffic as despite the high page 1 ranking of my .net, it’s lucky if the site pulls even 1 organic search visitor a day.

Anyway the point I wanted to make here is that the domain name was word1word2word3.com. The blog currently ranks on page 4 for the main keyphrase and is less than 10 days old. As a case study I’m going to track it, as of course there’s also this issue of duplicate content. It would appear that for the time being at least, google doesn’t attach that much weight to it being a copy as it does being a new blog incorporating the keyphrase into its domain name.

My hyphenated .com meanwhile ranks in the mid 400s. In light of the evidence and that this project was the first and never ranked in the 100s for broad match,  it appears that google starts off in a position of mistrust for a domain that incorporates a hyphen.

So this has all been very educational. I’ve learnt two things:

1. Hyphens really are to be used as the last resort, don’t be surprised if you are held back in the rankings if you start off a project using them in your domain name – even if it is only one.
2. Duplicate content is not that big of an issue, at least not as first – perhaps it also depends on exactly how many pages of duplicate content google detects amongst unique content.

While I believe the first slapping may have occurred due to the restructuring and the need for the google cache to update and flush out the old structure, the site has since been reindexed into the latter half of page 1 three times for the main keyphrase.

After the restructure, the site was already doing well, returning from it’s latest down in the google yo-yo experience. It was on page one, hovering in the latter half of the top ten. Within days it ended up as high as position 5 once google acknowledged a dmoz backlink. Shortly after that it got slapped.

Then after two weeks it returned and was slapped within 24 hours. Then another 2 weeks later it returned for 3 days then got slapped. Then it was back again a week later and slapped within 24 hours.

So if it keeps comiong back and then getting slapped, what’s going on?

Someone at google is manually targetting it? I doubt it, the content is good. I’m quite proud of the site. It’s about the only site amongst all the clearly ecommerce sites that actually contains useful information about the niche subject.

The restructuring? Not anymore, the google cache has updated, the old structure is nowhere to be seen?

Some minor structure tweaking? I have played around with a few smaller silo’d sections of the site that sit outside of the original main structure. Personally I don’t feel this should have had such an effect that I could be returned to page 1 and then slapped.

Too SEO’d? Nah, the SEO techniques used have hardly changed since the site first started ranking and going through the google yo-yo effect.

So back to what I hinted back in the title, incompatible plugins. I had installed All in One SEO and SEO Ultimate. On occasion I can be a plugin junkie, and especially with the site concerned. It was one of my first Internet Marketing sites and I was fascinated with the ease of adding plugins that you could now do since Wordpress 7 came out. This site was also the one I’ve expended the most effort on. Anyway, somewhere down the line I had both plugins live – pity that there’s no update trail (or if there is, I’m not yet aware of how to discover it) to allow me to find out when I installed and made SEO Ultimate live. Anyway, the problem with these plugins being used together is that they overlap in functionality, thus creating a functional contradiction that may have been screwing with things like the robots.txt file and other parts of the site when the search engine bots came crawling.

To further support this theory is the fact that I didn’t just get slapped by google, but yahoo and bing as well. Furthermore, I’ve since getting slapped, I’ve started to rank for the domain name without the “www.” prefix on yahoo and bing. The site’s domain uses the “www.” prefix which suggests a problem with the search engine bots interpretting certain information about the site. Why else would it go from indexing the domain correctly, then slapping it, then a few days later reindexing the domain using the incorrect format? Doesn’t sound like a problem with the content to me.

I have since disabled SEO Ultimate as I can’t be bothered to learn how to use it right now and All in One SEO is tried and trusted. If my theory proves correct, I would expect to see a return of my site within 3/4 weeks that will be permanent, rather than looking like some sort of blip. And I’ll be posting the result here.

Yeah if you’re the queen then don’t be arrogant enough to email me asking me to buy your affiliated product as that just says “Scream” of Internet Marketing, as in desperate. Yeah THAT I don’t dispute. And get yourself a proper domain name to email me from while you’re at it, not gmail. Spam, Delete. Nuff said.

Yeah, it looks like this was an affiliate of the “Queen” using the text from one of her emails, then paying some other internet marketer for my email address. So it makes the both of them look stupid.

This is why when people buy stuff off Internet Marketers they should use a backup email address just in case any of them sell your email address on the back end to other marketers. Hopefully most that do at least disclose that they are doing so, but it’s still a crappy practice. They shouldn’t simply disclose it, they should make it a choice, just like most legitimate companies do. Who really wants to see emails personally addressed to you coming from rank amateurs?

Well, not when you have a niche blog and a lot of your main content is under that subdirectory. I did that, and promptly I got slapped. At least I think it is slapped rather than deindexed as I can still find some of my pages in google, ironically at least one being a page from within another subdirectory I had renamed (so I can expect those to disappear shortly too).

I’m a bit annoyed by this, as I had managed to breach the top 10, and had just got into dmoz, which boosted me slightly higher in the top 10. I thought finally after the project yo-yoed up and down the rankings for about 3 months since starting the project, that the site was finally going to stay in the top 10.

And especially as the bounces were getting narrower and the last bounce was also from the bottom of the top ten. However, this was misguided, and the site was blasted into oblivion the next day!

However, at the same time, I am learning from my mistakes experiences, I am trying not to get frustrated and I am trying to remember that I have other projects to keep working on. Projects that may very well turn out to be far more profitable than the one currently slapped.

So it certainly seems like a good idea for a beginner to have several projects going if they are going to rely on SEO alone as if your site gets slapped, so does your income, as nobody will see you.

Therefore it is good to back your projects up with article marketing, blog commenting, emailing opt-in contacts and anything else you can do to gain traffic through third party sources.

Now most of my traffic is now coming through from my article marketing efforts. Which is better than nothing at all, albeit small fish.

You can also learn how to do PPC properly, so you gain more money than you spend.

So, now I’m just waiting to see how long before google, yahoo etc decides what to do with my site. Hopefully it’s back within weeks rather than *gulp* months.

So lesson learned, don’t mess with your subdirectory once the search engines have started indexing you unless you are prepared to lose rankings. The only question that remains right now is how long will the penalisation last! And will the site come back and ascend into the top 10 quickly, fail to get back into the top 10, or simply resume the yo-yo effect? Stay tuned!

What changed? I started activating more sites that I had purchased domains for but never used. I put some content on them. Some I was lazy with and just published a few articles on. And then I underscored them with 3 Way Links, which is a set once and leave system.

I think the main thing is having a site with good on-site optimization, including having a domain that consists of a keyword with low competition. Then obviously having relevant content. For most of these sites, I at least published a single article on EzineArticles so that the sites had at least one high quality backlink coming from a page containing relevant content. Having 3 Way Links must surely help to keep them ranking thought, building up some level of external support and authority. Great to build up links while you work on multiple mini site projects.

The cocktail seems to be working well, I made $55 in May and can also more clearly see which sites are getting ad clicks and which ones aren’t. One of those sites is seasonal however, relating to fathers day. It gets high traffic, but alas the domain name was based on an informational keyword not a buying keyword so that site gets a disgustingly high bounce rate, but nevertheless generates enough clickthrough to be on a par with the other sites.

For June, that site may possibly perform very well as last minute people send the traffic even higher and in turn attract a higher number of people seeking to buy.

Regardless of that June is off to a great start with £12 three days in – more than I made for the whole of April, and 1/5 of what I made in May. Maintaining that rate for the month alone should double May’s figures. However, I did have quite a few days ending in $0, and of course some days there were highs, while on others there were troughs.

I expect to see the same again, except perhaps this time avoiding a $0 day would be nice.

So I believe yes, you can make money with adsense, just that you have to work harder for it than you would through affiliate marketing or creating your own products. However, over the long term it could prove to be the more steady and lucrative income earner out of the two for some. A major benefit is that the sites are yours rather than someone else’s and assuming you look after them, they should continue to generate revenue for you. Just ask some of the folk that have spent time building blogs and websites where adsense is now generating them at least a five figure income monthly! How’s that for a day job?

2/3 submissions may carry weight, but I’m beginning to wonder whether having more than that is not merely ignored but can actually contribute towards your site getting a slap (i.e. the assumption is that you’re trying to game the search engines ) at least while the site is less than a year old and/or doesn’t yet have a good variety of other backlinks coming in yet.

The idea does sound plausible to me as I have seen a mass of posts on the same topic appear under various author names all published over a course of days, if not the same day. I’m talking double digit submissions here.

This can serve a purpose though – swamping out the directory makes you look like the expert on the topic (or a freak, or an obvious salesman trying to push a product take your pick), and should drive a significant quantity of traffic to the target landing page.

So if you’re going to write articles for SEO purposes, use multiple submission sites. This should go without saying, but I got a bit lazy and couldn’t be bothered to sign up for other directories, squidoo, hubpages etc.

I also wanted to quickly get to platinum status in ezine articles – but I only ended up as Basic Plus after the first 10 articles were submitted as I did get a few articles flagged. I guess I am further than most people by getting as far as I have without outsourcing.

(In fact I’m just listening to an interview with Chris Knight in 2008, and he states less than 15% of the ezine articles members at the time have submitted more than 10 articles. Furthermore, to gain authority over your niche, you should write 25-250 articles. For better SEO of your own website, you may wish to spread submissions between several directories to leverage the variety of backlinks coming from different authority sources.)

Now I’ve only just recently submitted an article to squidoo and another to hubpages, which may have helped with the latest re-ranking menti0ned in y last post. I say these new sites may have helped with the re-ranking as I can see that yahoo has counted them, but the links do not appear in google webmaster tools, therefore I don’t know for sure that google has seen these and taken them into account.

That said, if page rank updates are ongoing, but are only made public periodically, then there’s no reason why the same too could not apply to counting links before they are publicly mentioned in webmaster tools.

Finally, remember, it’s one thing to get a link, to get a relevant link is another. Publishing to article submission sites is one of the best ways to get relevant backlinks as the websites that republish the articles should be related to the subject matter that your article is about. If you’re lucky enough to get a site with some PR republishing your link, then that’s even better.

So there are three good benefits from article publishing, squidoo and hubpages publishing:

1. High authority do-follow backlink (assuming you are submitting to a directory like ezine articles)
2. Trickle of Traffic (unless you write about a really hot topic(s) with a compelling reason for people to click through to your link then you can expect to enjoy at least 1 or 2 visits per day/week depending on quality and/or quantity of articles  and the demand for the subject matter of the article(s).
3. Article Directories only: additional backlinks. As some article submission sites offer republication rights to the public as a condition of authors using their service, and as the public in turn are expected to include your personal resource text with the article with dofollow, then you start getting free backlinks from sites relevant to your subject matter.

   Squidoo and Hubpages only: you can earn money directly from these platforms. I gather some people have created good income streams from hubpages in particular, but obviously you will have to submit a load of popular and in demand pages to get to that level.

Well actually, after the constant yo-yoing, I’m not feeling too confident that I’m staying there, although perhaps this time I may very well be. I have engaged in some link building attempts. They haven’t all come through yet, but some have.

My ezine-articling appears to be paying off well too. I am getting a trickle of visits daily AND I am starting to get backlinks from sites publishing my articles. Now I was glad to be getting the little trickles of traffic while the site was new and getting battered and bruised all over the shop while google algorithms (and staff?) decided where to put it. It kept me from despair.

I’m a beginner right, I want to see elements that this can work as quickly as impossible. Yes, I believe this can work. And I believe I can do it and become very successful at it. But like most things there’s that learning curve and initial uphill struggle to get through.

When you seem to be doing well, and then get a slap, then come back and get slapped again, you obviously don’t know whether you’re coming or going. Getting some referrals from others sources such as ezine articles, accompanied by a few adsense clicks or affiliate sales helps put a little silver lining on the cloud of uncertainty.

So I think launching a site with article submissions is definitely the way to go when launching a new site unless you have an effective means of driving traffic from the get-go lined up. However, that said, spread out the articles between different directories. More on that in another post.

Interestingly, the slap was only temporary. A few weeks later I was reintroduced on page 3, then slapped down several hundred places before I now finally being reintroduced to page 2, which I am hoping is permanent this time.

I slowly climbed up to position 11, but I understand page rankings “snapshots” have been happening recently, which have caused me to slide half way down the page. Hey, I’m still on page 2 and I can climb back up right?

Just need to apply some social bookmarking and get around to a few relevant blogs and the like and see if I can promote my site onto page one. The site is on topic with useful information compared to the other sites which are just retailing products so I think it should be there anyway!

Main focus now has to be building backlinks so I can increase ranking and traffic. I’m also going to hold off applying for affiliate schemes until I do that. Crawl before I walk so to speak.

As google have lifted my site higher in the SERPs, I am getting some traffic through search as well as a trickle through article marketing – and I’ve not even scratched the surface of Article Marketing yet as, I’ve only dealt with Ezine Articles thus far.

So anyway, I guess the main thing when building a new niche site after market research is not to panic and get disheartened if your niche gets a nice ranking position then gets blasted into no man’s land. If you’ve not employed tactics google doesn’t like then you may very well return with a matter of weeks. Keep working on your site in a natural way, and relax!

Hmm, will have to try this again sometime with 30 day challenge style approach to see if there is a way I can avoid my site being put in a box! I think their vintage electric guitar project never got the google slap.

Am I bothered about my site getting some google slaps? Yes and no.

Yes, because I’m not going to get any organic search traffic for a while now. Not that I had much to begin with, but I did get a few.

No, because as I am learning about article submission and social media. I’m learning that I can generate traffic without google. Google is seen as the be all and end all. “I must get listed in google” blah blah blah, but really, so what? Google should be seen as a chunk of traffic, but not the only source.

In fact if the recent post on SEOBook is anything to go by, google may soon become less valuable to focus your efforts on. The post claims google adjusted their algorithms in January 2009 and is now giving extra weighting to brand names to determine at least the top 10 listings on some search phrases.

Examples given demonstrated in one instance the change in results for a search for “airline tickets” now results in 4 brand name airline companies suddenly ranking in the top 10. So it may be in your best interests to get smarter and seek out new ways of generating traffic. Because these changes might ensure you never even had a chance to begin with.

Another reason why I’m not bothered – I’m very interested in this niche and keep thinking of things I can do to grow it and offer lots of useful content. Of course there’s a chance the efforts may be a waste of time.

But I like to think that by the time it gets reindexed on google, not only will it make it to the first page – hopefully to the first few positions if not the first, but that it becomes great at converting into either affiliate sales or adsense clicks.

I may do away with adsense at some point as affiliate sales are more profitable and reflect the purpose of the site. But at the moment I’m still building content, so affiliate offers wouldn’t integrate well just yet.

Anyway if there is a tecnhique that generally avoids resulting in the google slap, please let me know.