2 weeks have passed since the end of the SEO contest "Patatrak Pagerank".
For the uninitiated, there were 4 winners and I had the pleasure of the top position in the category "old sites". (See previous post)
Something I have already mentioned in my previous article wer Mosquito, Pagerank patatrak and the power of social bookmarking , but now I want to better describe the techniques I used, then I leave to you the consideration of the case.
Premise
In this race I wanted to try various strategies to position and I did several tests.
They are, however, remained within the confines of the "white hat", that I did not use improper techniques and espilicitamente banned by search engines ... more than I have pushed to the limit of some guidelines, but basically a seo contest does just experiment!
The domain with which I have won is the one they point to the beginning and who has not betrayed my predictions: pagerankpatatrak.alancurtis.it
But it is not the only site that I created for the occasion, here's the other 2:
pagerank-patatrak.alancurtis.it
pagerankpatatrak.biz
I wanted it more, but time is pressing and I did not succeed. It will be for the next contest.
The beginning of the contest
The contest started on February 1st, but I have just begun to participate on April 7.
Why?
To be honest, here it is not strange ... just a technique I discovered later. Unfortunately my work and my projects does not lead me to have too much free time ... but not digress.
Despite the delay I was not given for winning and I started immediately with a test: I created 2 sites are almost identical, and pagerank-pagerankpatatrak.alancurtis.it patatrak.alancurtis.it.
Actually they are not really "sites", are only 2 pages. I could define a "fake WordPress" in the sense that to create them I saved the html of my site in WP and I have changed.
I wanted to make them "almost" identical, the difference in the text I left the only news available. The first (which won) has a very short text, the second is longer.
I reported on the first and the second on Digg.com Del.icio.us, both to social bookmarking portals.
Then I waited.
After 9 hours the first site was indexed by Google. I was hoping to get similar results with the second but nothing ...
2 days after
I entered the same number of links to both subdomains in a little 'of sites of my property or my company's internal projects, and always my ... I can not remember, but I should not have exceeded 5-6 sites. Obviously, given the nature of the contest, I have chosen pages or domains with PR0.
1 week after
My site was beginning to show up in the standings, but was still far from the first page. Reporting on Digg was better placed in second or third page of the SERP. At that point I started to add a little 'of direct links to the first subdomain only, leaving the second that had not been indexed yet.
The links I have included in various directories, almost all of them manually. I only used an automated program, with which I got about 15 links approved. I have a favorite Italian directory, since the contest was made of Google.it
Meanwhile, I also registered the domain pagerankpatatrak.biz, leaving him inactive for lack of time.
Then I continued to put links to the philosophy "few but good and with PR0" for the rest of the contest.
At least until the fateful PageRank update, April 30.
10 days at the end
On May 1, usually people are resting. Usually, but not during an seo contest that is about to end. That day I threw wild to put links on my sites and not with PR 1 to 5, so now I could not hurt me.
I activated the domain. Biz, putting in a structure to retrieve automatic rss feeds to theme. I also integrated the feed ForumGT the contest. Please read the Rules suspected that a move was unnecessary, the PR was not expected zero or gray. In any case I wanted to use as additional support.
I also wrote an article, wer Mosquito, Pagerank patatrak and power of social bookmarking , about this contest and the other to which I was participating.
The article I posted on my blog, I posted in various channels of article marketing and press releases, and I also posted on ForumGT (I apologize to the operators of these sites if I pushed the limits of spam)
3 days at the end
I stopped doing anything and I began to look at. Links last minute not so good, they do effect too late and may also lead to temporary suspension, if Google sees it seem too much all at once.
The ranking was on my side, the site ranged between 5 ° -6 ° absolute position and was the first in its class to PR0.
There was always the unknown factor of different datacenters. But using special tools to do an average and compared with other users, the ranking did not change for my site.
So I waited for the end of the race and the publication of the results.
Why won?
As usual there is no absolute answer.
It 'was due to the combination of several factors.
Time ago I would have called arcane (hehe I could not resist!).
But the factors are not the secret, are known as good or bad ...
The secret is the importance given to them by search engines.
As far as I'm concerned, my accident was a little 'unusual and unintentionally provocative.
It is said that Google prefers sites with lots of content and pages, and I won with a single page, among other things with very little text in it.
To be honest, at first I wanted to create other pages and give a more "serious". Then I saw that he was climbing in the standings with no problems, so I wanted to leave to concentrate on off-site work.
I debunked a myth? ... I do not think sites are too young to come to hasty conclusions. However, may rely more on short-distance links and off-site factors that those on-site. It will be interesting to see how the snake will evolve in the coming months / years.
Before concluding, I think the most important factors for this victory were:
- length of the domain
- optimization of the site
- Link Building
- Social bookmarking
- article marketing
Obviously this list is not in order of importance, if not the first place I should have known the factor "C" mentioned by others!
PageRank is still important for positioning?
In my opinion no.
That is not as important as a time and maybe it is not over at all.
In fact, the PR you never directly affected the rankings, has always been a secondary parameter.
Today may have lost all influence on the SERP, understood as a simple reference for assessing the level of trust of a site. A value with no links to the charts.
But you only know Matt Cutts and a few others!
Thanks
I thank George Tavern, the organizers of the contest, all participants and users of the forum.
It 'was a good race, I'll see you in Milan!
Related Articles:
- Wer Mosquito, Pagerank patatrak and power of social bookmarking
- Victory at SEO Contest "Pagerank patatrak"
- SEO Experiment No. 1 on the Mosquito Mannara
- Brief analysis of Mushkonja seo contest
- Instantempo, instant indexing!
