Comments on: A Mystifying Case of Top Search Engine Ranking: Solved

By: b2bcopywriting

b2bcopywriting — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:59:25 +0000

Thanks for the comments. Yes, the outcome surprised me. It never occurred to me that an “available” domain name might have some history. It's a good thing to check!

By: b2bcopywriting

b2bcopywriting — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:59:25 +0000

Thanks for the comments. Yes, the outcome surprised me. It never occurred to me that an “available” domain name might have some history. It's a good thing to check!

By: James Stratford @JRStratford (Twitter)

James Stratford @JRStratford (Twitter) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:49:03 +0000

That was a great post and thanks for writing it in a compelling manner. I sure am glad you didn’t leave us with a cliff hanger. Backlinks are important and the importance of the context was highlighted in your relaying the account. By the way the Sherlock Holmes style detective definitely added to the nuances.

Now to doublecheck the domains I bought lately to see what ranking.

By: Steve Diamond

Steve Diamond — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:21:16 +0000

Nice post. I agree with Jim. You tell a very engaging story. It’s hard to stop reading. The point about backlinks reminds me of the well-known example of Adobe ranking number one for the phrase “click here” since so many sites mention downloading Adobe Acrobat. But the point about previously owned domains is less well known. Research should probably start before acquiring a domain that was previously owned. Good insights.

By: Steve DeVane

Steve DeVane — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:02:49 +0000

Great detective work! The game is afoot!

Those two lessons are ones we should all remember. Amazing the power that one backlink had. It certainly shows that getting such backlinks is a worthwhile effort.

I had not considered the importance of past history of the url. But I see now that it’s something worth checking into.

Good work!

Steve DeVane

By: Ahmed Usman

Ahmed Usman — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:55:34 +0000

Very interesting article, never knew the power of back links was huge. I’ve got back links to a few sites that really good so i should be seeing my rank going up too… Doing research on the URL? Massive discovery, i would never have thought of this! Great article, points noted.

Thanks

By: Wizzer

Wizzer — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 08:29:07 +0000

Great story telling – very captivating.

Glad you had the patience to investigate that fully so we can learn.

I cannot see how backlinks won’t always be very important since that is the whole purpose of the “web” to link sites and relevant information together.

By: Internet marketing course

Internet marketing course — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:26:06 +0000

Well Sherlock… your story opened my eyes to some things we all take for granted especially in regards to haveing a pre owned URL. You could even I guess have a back-link that was irrelevant too which supports your statement that it’s always worth researching. An excellent informative article by way of taking the reader through the exercise.

By: Jim Hickey

Jim Hickey — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:51:14 +0000

Definitely an interesting approach to your article, story-telling is always a great way to convey a message.

Though there is much debate about whether back-links are still “King”, they are definitely still highly relevant and important. The main reason of course pertains to the fact that the search engines use them in ranking and in crawling (the more authoritative the linked sites, the better).

You also point out a risk when there is a web-trail that may deliver visitors to your site who instantly click off. Other factors the SEs use are time the visitor spends on a page, number of pages visited, etc. This is due to the fact that they are indications of how valuable the visitors find the content on your site. The longer they spend, the more useful the content (or at least that is the assumption).

Great insight and very thought provoking, thanks for the post!