It’s taken a while, but we’re getting there: as of today, if you type ‘learn Mandarin’ into Google, ChinesePod shows up in first place. Meanwhile, if you type ‘learn Chinese” we show up at number 7, and rising. (At Yahoo, we’re at numbers 1, and 10, respectively.) Now, while we’re at it, if you type, ‘learn Mandarin + blog’, you get this here page!
I guess we’re becoming the ‘go to’ place for learning Chinese.
Extra: Om Malik writes about how Google’s acquisition of Youtube didn’t actually cost them anything!
Ken Carroll
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Whoohoo!
Go team!
Nice one! Careful though Google might want to buy you out if you become too successful.
Yeah, Bazza, just imagine that!
Ken Carroll
hmmm type [mandarin student] in google and my blog comes top.
usually 普通话学生 will also position it 1st or second but that search seems a bit more variable and random.
Ok mandarin student is not such a useful search term as yours but nonetheless :p
I really need to do some work on the blog though, usually too busy learning Chinese.
NUMBER 2 – I think as important is that you come up number 2 for “learn Chinese” in Google.
Glad to see the ‘search optimization’ has put Cpod where it should be. You’ve got the best content out there and rightly should have come up ranked high. Great job!
BTW, I think a more extensive ‘link page’ will really help you topple the number one and two spots. The top few sites for ‘learning Chinese’ really don’t have any more original content than Cpod, just extensive links. Your community page doesn’t really have the proper visability it deserves.
Search engines contrary to popular belief, don’t necessarily reward sites that ‘have been around longer’, in fact they like hip, new, fresh content websites — like Chinesepod (And ohh of course my site, feel free to click on the link in my name.).
They reward with higher rank in results if you optimize well so that they know about your site content. Much like Aric needs to get QQ so that people can get in touch with his inner being. It’s all in the optimizing.
FRIENDS AND FAMILY – I think I will speak out for Bazza, myself and others, remember friends and family, friends and family, and early vesting. That’s true luv. JIA YOU!
I just had a look at the learn chinese term Ken.
Your problem is that on the pages I looked at you don’t actually mention “learn chinese” or stemmed phrases like “learning chinese” in the text of the page itself. Notwithtanding the title, and meta-tags you will never get the number 1 spot (or at least keep it ) until you do that. Text in the page is very important. Don’t stuff the page just a mention of the phrase once or twice would go a long long way. Also I didn’t look at source code of your pages too hard but for example the Phrase “learn Mandarin your way” in the header is a graphic and the way it has been inmplemented there isn’t even any alt text (fei chang bu hao yi si).
There are CSS ways in which this graphic could have been implemented as proper text header but still displayed the graphic to almost all browsers. (this isn’t cheating it is simple the Webstandards way to support webstandards and accessability standards).
Email me if you want some examples. You should be able to rule google from a great height. No sneaky tricks required but simply becasue you have a lot a heavily linked, popular content that is relevant to those search terms.
Hi,
To get and stay at number one, you need text within the first 1k or so of your html file that has the keywords. It helps even more if the or h2 tag. If you have a header logo, you really should have an alt tag with the text of the logo so google sees it. To the best that I can tell, google almost completely ignores meta tags. I am fairly sure it actually only uses the meta tags to ‘de-rank’ pages.
If the meta tags dont contain text that are in your headings or page text, then your page will be de-ranked for pretending to contain content it doesnt!!
1) learn chinese should be in a h1 or h2 tag
2) logo alt tag should contain learn chinese
3) remove, or very carefully select meta tags
4) a page with learn_chinese or learnchinese in the URL and in the link name should link to the front page.
(There are heaps more things but they are the main ones)
Still I would think there’s is a more fundamental reason for the difference in ranking between “learn Mandarin” and “learn Chinese”
Yv
Yv,
The fundamental difference is simply that the phrase learn mandarin actually appears in the text on the page, whereas learn chinese does not. There will be other factors but that is the main one.
What Jacob said also + relevant title attributes on your links shouldn’t hurt none either. There are many things you could do but a few simple improvements will do it. Don’t try any of the sneaky tactics out there though because 1. your content is relevant so you don’t need to 2. you may get de-ranked for your efforts.
Ken, looks like the collective big brain is going to boot you to the top of google
I leave the heavy optimization lifting to Hank Horkoff. He knows his stuff.
As it happens, ‘learn Chinese’ is more competitive than ‘learn Mandarin’, and more people type that according to the Google data. If you look at the title bar (the blue bar at the top) on the home page, you’ll see it says “Learn Chinese with ChinesePod..” This is the key in terms of tags – the metatags are irrelevant. Originally, however, that title read “Learn Mandarin Chinese…”, which gave the ‘Mandarin’ keyword and edge over the ‘Chinese’ keyword. We changed it to just ‘Learn Chinese..’ a few months ago.
The content and incoming links will probably help drive ChinesePod higher up the charts, maybe even to first place for ‘learn Chinese’. At the end of the day, it’s the Big Brain that makes it all possible, as Chris points out.
Ken Carroll
Ken the title bar is good however this is Key.
To see what I mean if you use Firefox got to edit menu and search for text with the page. You will not find “learn chinese” you will find “learn mandarin”. This make a huge dent in your learn chinese ranking.
The reason my blog has been top of “mandarin student” ever since Gooogle indexed it is because it has that phrase in a nice h1 tag at the top of the page. Okay so maybe not a hotly contested search term but the phrase mandarin student does appear in lots of places on the web.
I gaurantee that you can get to top of learn chinese and stay there as you have the content and the popularity you just need to mention it in the pages
.
Hi Ken,
You may want to check out Google Trends:
Here is an example for you…
http://www.google.com/trends?q=learn+chinese%2C+learn+mandarin
Great job! You deserve it. Checked with my new blog, already ranked first with: “huoguo magique”… Ok. I know this is not useful…
Congratulations!! Go!
Chris,
Your point about ‘learn chinese’ in the body text is well taken. Great tip.
Ken Carroll
Ken,
Alexa’s Chinesepod traffic details:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=chinesepod.com
LESS IS MORE – The top two sites for the search term “learn Chinese” are pretty helpful sites, they have gathered lots of links to helpful resources on the web.
One could make an argument that they deserve to be there, but the third, minmmm? I think Chinesepod with it’s original and daily FREE content sure should be higher up in the ranking.
I think part of it is simple semantics. I’d recommend that Chinespod try writing a simpler descriptive sentence about their site in the meta tag that the search bots scan.
(I don’t think the meta tags are as unimportant as people think, look at the bold highlights in the search results from Google. It directly pulls this from….the meta tag description. Of course, if your site has ‘no’ content, the tag would be virutually irrelevant. But Chinesepod is ‘content rich’!)
The rewrite here is intended to increase your keyword proximity, and keyword weight. Note, we’re not upping the keyword density or frequency.
NEW DESCRIPTION:
“Learn Chinese today with free daily language podcasts from China. Your partner for speaking, listening and learning Mandarin Chinese.”
http://zhongwen.com/
“Online Chinese-English dictionary. Learn Chinese characters by
understanding their origins and interconnections.
http://www.minmm.com/
“Min Multimedia teach you how to write and speak Chinese. It utilizes pictures and audio to make your chinese learning experience an easy task”>
Lantian,
For google, the age of a website is very important. Mimm probably exists for a couple of years.
What is very interresting is to compare the progression of your website and Chinese-Tools.Com, as they are both very young (less than 2 years old).
http://www.chinese-tools.com
Ken and all at Chinesepod
CPod may not be number ranking on Google!! YET but I am sure it will be soon.
I wish it was around when I began to study Chinese it would have made things so much easier. This is what we NEED keep up the good work.