Tuesday, December 23, 2008

CuocthiSEO: Finally my blog has been fully indexed!

Today I have checked and found that my blog has been fully indexed by Google. See search query for details.

However, my blog is not on the top spot when searching for the blog url and not all pages are listed on the result (see search query for details). I guess the reason is that my site's data is not available in all Google data center.

Actually, I can't find my site when searching for contest's keywords cuocthiSEO, but some keyword ranking monitor tools do. Digital Point Keywords Tracker reports my blog at 80th place, and SEO Web tools - Google page rankings: 1000 SERPs Top Position Rankings web tool says my blog on 51th spot. That's not bad for beginning at all :) .

Today a big change has been noticed at the top rankings: cuocthiseo-seo dot co dot cc lost first place and on end of 6th page. As SEO experts usually say, this may be temporary and will get back after few days, or over-optimization penalty hits :) .

Look forward to coming days to see my blog at top spot :) .

Sunday, December 21, 2008

cuocthiSEO: My last post has been index within 30 minutes!

Good news from Google!

My last post at cuocthiSEO has been indexed within 30 minutes! Even older posts aren't still!

That's very strange, Google! I guess Google doesn't like term "Stupid Google" as my post has and tries to understand why I say it's stupid :).

Today the ranking has been significantly changed: the cuocthiSEO dot com left the first spot and new site cuocthiseo-seo dot co dot cc grabbed it.



Personally, I like new rankings and I think contest organizer likes it also, because this is exact answer to complaints that the contest is not fair by cuocthiseo dot com joining.

I am impatiently awaiting for indexing my blog home page and seeing my blog at the top spots :) .

My cuocthiSEO blog is still not indexed!

Google is very slow in indexing, even my blog is hosted by Blogger that owned by Google.

Actually, my Digg page http://digg.com/tech_news/CuocthiSEO_2 holds 8th place. That's good signal. Logically, original page should be ranked higher than Digg page for the same keyword, because theoretically Google loves original content, my blog is original and Digg page is only link to the page. However, I don' think that Google is too smart to understand that :D .

I expect that my blog should be index within this week.

For fun: I just tried to google a image with keywords "Stupid Google" and found this funny picture that says how smart is Google:



That's good, Google! :D

Thursday, December 18, 2008

cuocthiSEO: Works and Results

A day passed and a lot of works has been done for the CuocthiSEO contest. A little result has been achieved also.

Following works have been done:
- Creating the blog
- Writing 5 posts (including this one)
- Submitting blog to few directories
- Attaching the blog url to account's signature at Digitalpoint.
- Submitted to Digg.

The achieved result is a little:
- Few directories already accept the blog
- The my Digg page is listed on 9th place in Google when searching for cuocthiseo. See below image for the details.



To be honest, I don't want to reveal my blog to public now, but you can't expect high rank if you are invisible :) .

However, my blog is still not indexed by Google :( .

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Cuocthiseo: Current rankings

See below for the current ranking of the contest.



Cuocthiseo dot com is on the top recently, two banned blogs at My Opera follow, then few images capturing Google search for cuocthiseo at Flickr, and on 5th place is cuocthiseo dot blogspot dot com. (You can see that Google is not so smart by this search :) ).

Some contestants complained that by cuocthiseo dot com joining, contest becomes unfair for others, because Google gives too much ranking value to keywords-match domain.

Personally, I think choosing domain name is an important part of SEO. So, why not fair? The owner of cuocthiseo dot com already made a step ahead, because he is good SEOer :) .

I joined about two weeks late and chosen free blog at blogger for the contest. By this way, I can see many disadvantages, but victory should be more amazing by this way :D .

As my experiences, blogs at Wordpress seem to be better in SEO than blogs at Blogger. However, my Internet connection is very slow when accessing Wordpress blogs. So, there is one more disadvantage :( .

Anyway, that's a contest and I enjoy contesting :) .

What is on-site optimization?


We said that on-site optimization is one of two big steps of SEO. We do this optimization from beginning when we start establishing the website.

In this step, we optimize pages of our website for our targeted keywords.

In common principle, the keywords should be included in all parts of the page. They are

- Domain name: If you can purchase domain name that includes our targeted keywords, it's the best. If you can't, don't be sad :) .

- Title: use the keywords in the title of page.

- Description: write short description about the page, with included keywords you are optimizing for.

- Use keywords in all HTML tags as possible: H1, H2, H3, bold text, strong text, image alternative text etc.

Note that care about keywords density that SEs don't penalize you for keywords spamming. I have read some where that 10-12% keywords density is good ratio.

- All content should be unique content. You can't be ranked highly with duplicated content that copied from another sites, even your site can be penalized and removed from SERP for duplicated contents.

- Add your content regularly.

The second thing you should care in on-page optimization is site structure and navigation. Website should have logic structure and easy to be navigated. Every pages should have link to upper pages, including home page with correct anchor text.

Oops, I thing there should be much more things to do on on-site optimizing, but that are the most basic matter that every webmaster should care ;).

That's all for now, we'd have break.

Now it's a off-site optimization time for CuocthiSEO :) .

How optimized websites for SEs?

As promised, I'd explain what needs to be done while doing SEO.

Firstly, it depends on what Search Engine we optimize website for. Every Search Engine has its own ranking algorithm, so optimizing website for each of them is different.

Also, ranking algorithm of each SE is big secret and never revealed and is changing. So webmasters only guess what is important and try to do every thing what they think that important.

Anyway, we can expect that there are two big separated optimization steps: on-site and off-site optimizations that important for all Search Engines (Of course in different ratio for different search Engine).

On-site SEO means we optimize every thing on our website.

Of-site SEO means we create connection our website with another websites on the WWW, (we call link building process).

That's all for this leason :) , I'm a little tired and can't give out of my head the winning sound of cuocthiseo contest :D .

What is SEO?

This is the first post in SEO contest BLOG. So, I think explaining what is SEO should be in the place :) .

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - means to optimize website for Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN ...) for high ranking in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).

You have a website and you do SEO for your website for your keywords. When visitors search for your keywords and see your website on the first slots in SERP, you are the winner!

For easy understanding, this cuocthiSEO contest should be nice example. You go to Google and type CuocthiSEO and hit enter! If my blog is on the first place, Let say congratulation! I'm the winner :) .

Next question should be: how we optimize our website for getting on the first place of SERP? Be patient, I will try my best to explain to you later!

So, wish my best for the contest :D !