I decided to do a test of a few different document sharing sites and compare them to see which really is the best. With SEO it’s all about optimizing our time and getting the most bang for out of our effort. So let’s look at the results!

The four sites I used for this test are:
Issuu, Scribd, Docstoc and Doxtop.

For this test I used the exact same article on all four sites and published all articles at the same time with the help of my SEO team.
We used an article with obscure and low competition keywords so that we could see the results more clearly.

INDEXING
The first test preformed was indexing times of each of these sites. For this test we simply published our content on the site and let it sit. We didn’t do any Social Bookmarking, Pinging or any other tactics that might alter results. Results may vary.

1. Doxtop – (Indexed in 16 hours of publishing)
2. Scribd – (Indexed in 23 hours of publishing)
3. Docstoc – (Indexed in 3 days of publishing)
4. Issuu – (Indexed in 6 days of publishing)

Doxtop and Scribd are very quick to get indexed but the other two sites take quite some time. In a case like this I would add these two sites into a software like Traffic-Bug to increase the indexing time.

RANKING FOR KEYWORD (TITLE)
The second test was preformed after all sites had been indexed. We also verified that all articles were on a level playing field and no one article had comments, traffic or backlinks. Since all four articles had the exact same title it would be easy to do an exact phrase match search and then log which sites ranked best.

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu (ranked two pages lower than Scribd)

Scribd was the clear winner but Docstoc and Doxtop weren’t far behind. Issuu in this test scored miserably.

RANKING FOR TEXT IN BODY(GOOGLE)
Next I wanted to see which sites preformed best for the actual body text. Title’s are nice but often times we are unable to squeeze our keywords into the title of an article. So it’s very important to test how the body text is ranked. For this we used an exact phrase match for a phrase in the body of each article and compared which articles ranked best. I wanted to take this test one step further and so I divided Google and Yahoo into two separate tests.

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu

RANKING FOR TEXT IN BODY (YAHOO)

1. Docstoc
2. Scribd
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu

Docstoc had a clear advantage over Scribd in this test on Yahoo. In Google both services were fairly close. In both tests Scribd and Docstoc were clear winners over the other two services.

PAGE RANK OF SITE
For the most of us we aren’t actually using these sites to necessarily target rankings. It is nice to dominate the entire first page on Google, but the reality is we may have dozens of these articles all pointing back to our main page. So it’s important to measure how much weight each site carries. So I did a quick measure to see how the sites rank in Page Rank. *Note. Just because a site’s homepage is a certain PR does not mean your article is that PR. This test is more of a measure of the strength of the overall site in general and the link juice it can pass.*

1. Scribd – PR8
1. Issuu – PR8
2. Docstoc – PR6
3. Doxtop – PR4

EASE OF USE
Sometimes it’s all about speed and ease of use. If a backlink is only 10% more effective but it takes 3x longer to achieve it often times is not worth the extra effort. So for this test I wanted to quickly compare which sites were easiest to use. The trick to this test was to get an objective opinion. Since I used three of these sites regularly and have my favorite and hadn’t ever used Docstoc before I didn’t want to be the judge on this test. So I brought in my wife who hadn’t ever used any of these sites. I had her go through the whole process of creating an account and publishing her first article on all three sites. Then I had her give her opinion on which site were easiest to use and her preference.

1. Scribd
2. Docstoc
3. Doxtop
4. Issuu

SPECIAL FEATURES, LIMITATIONS, FUNCTIONALITY

1. Issuu
++Link for every document in doc description (DO FOLLOW)
++Link on profile page (DO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect appears to have been added. This was added recently after my test and I have not verified.

2. Doxtop
+Link on profile page (NO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect or login with Open ID (registration is much easier this way)

3. Scribd
+Link on profile page (NO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect

4. Docstoc
+Link on profile page (NO FOLLOW)
+Facebook connect

THE RESULTS
*Drum roll please*

1. Scribd.com -25 points
2. Docstoc.com -20 points
3. Doxtop.com -17 points
4. Issuu.com -15points

And there you have it! Now you know which sites are ranked best and are worth your time. Though Issuu ranked in quite lower and I don’t use it as often I still find it a great resource! It is the only site on this list that offers a complete (DO FOLLOW) backlink that will show up on Google! A great tactic can be to publish several Issuu documents with backlinks to your main site. Then to give Issuu the boost it badly needs, simply input that URL into Traffic-Bug. This way you will look at much faster index times and are easily able to see backlinks being built to your main site.

If you have any suggestions on other article sites you would like to see tested just let us know in the comments section below.
or
If you have a different type of test you would like to see let us know! We are open to share our results on any subject!

**If you liked this article then let us know by clicking the facebook like button or sharing on twitter!

The Caro interview I did will be up by Monday and I appreciate your patience on that, but for this post I wanted to cover everything interesting in the conference that was taught.

When you goto one of these…people start throwing website names out there…..
names you have never heard of. So you write the name down to research it later. Well at this conference so many dang cool things
were said… that before I knew it I had a full sheet of paper filled up with cool sites and ideas.

So without further ado…..here are some of the coolest sites and things talked about.

1. Start migrating Flash off your websites. iPads can’t support flash, neither can a lot of smart phones. There are already 17 million devices out there that can’t view flash. This number is only going to grow. So contact your graphics guy and start coming up with new solutions to replace the Flash on your website. (If you are clever or have a clever web guy….then you can actually insert a piece of code that detects when a mobile type device visits your site and displays something other than the flash.)

As Ed Dale says, “I hate Flash more than I hate the….” well I won’t finish that one. Fill in the answer in the comments section below if you were there! ;)

2. Wonder how much content your viewers can see on their monitor? Well Google has solved that problem. Check out this fancy Google Labs tool that will help you see how to improve your opt in pages or sales pages. Keeping content so 90% of browsers can see it is a good thing!

3. Voice Follow Up . Hmmm not sure what to say about this one other than it’s PURE AWESOMENESS. It allows you to have people opt in via the phone. You can literally broadcast your number and people can text that number with there email and name and they will immediatly join your auto responder sequence. This will be a killer for anyone doing radio ad’s. I will be adding this to my business cards when I goto events. I don’t want people actually calling my cell phone or home phone. Why not give them a numeber they can call where they reach a cool recording of whatever you like….with the option of learning more about your products or opting into a email sequence.

4. If your an iPad user then there is a very cool app you should pickup. Evernote. It can sync with your mac and you can simply write notes, keep track of ideas, etc. It’s an iPad Must Have.

5. The rules of a blog. During the conference they touched on a very good point. The three fundamental rules every blog should meet.

a) Simplicity – One Page = One Job – Look at the iPhone and iPad apps. They are so successful because they can do one thing very well.

b) Speed – Google is factoring page load speed into rankings and it has been proven over and over again if your page loads slow you loose customers. If you haven’t watched my video talking about ways to speed up your site go look at it now! Page Load Speed Video

c) Beautiful – No more producing shoddy quality! Spend a few bucks and get a graphics guy to design you some quality content. Take a look at my new video intro’s for example. (Yeah yeah I know this website still is very ugly but it’s in the process.)
***
To find cheap quality graphics people goto:
freelancer.com or fiverr.com

6. Tips for writing a sales page by the master John Carlton. Your sales page should fill in these three blanks.

We help (this group of people)
….do (this benefit)
…even if (worst case believable scenario)

Example:

We help aspiring artists
sell their art for millions of dollars
even if they have no agent and have never sold a painting before!

Simple yet effective!

7. Mashable. Most of you probably know about this one but I had to put it down for those of you who haven’t. Probably the easiest way to stay up to date on Social Media and Tech.

More tips are on their way as well as the video from the conference.

Michael R Roberts

So I put together this video for you so you can see how easy it is to use and how I am using it as a set and forget
back link strategy.

Check out this vid! ;)

GET ACCESS TO THIS AMAZING SOFTWARE NOW!

The software uses RSS to build a ton of very high quality
BACKLINKS, improves PAGE RANK and brings increased targeted
WEB VISITORS.

On TOP OF the usual genuine bonuses they throw in, I have got them
to also include their special powerful TWITTER module that is
usually only available to their members.

The Twitter module shows you how use Twitter to generate a huge
list in no time at all.

Tim himself has just under 25,000 Twitter followers!

25,000…

Anyway, I strongly suggest consider getting the Web Traffic Genius
software.

The include a 60 day FULL REFUND GUARANTEE so frankly why wouldn’t
you try this?

Submitting to RSS sites is much like that pinging feature I taught to you guys. (Pinging feature tip)
It’s something you need to be doing. However, RSS is more powerful than pinging and it is more time consuming.
Below is a list of RSS sites you should be submitting any new post to:

blogdigger.com
blogpulse.com
devasp.com
feedage.com (requires account)
feedagg.com (requires account)
feedboy.com
feedest.com
feedgy.com
feedooyoo.com
feeds2read.net
icerocket.com
newsisfree.com (requires account)
ngoid.sourceforge.net
overskrift.dk (requires account)
plazoo.com
rss-feeds.info (requires account)
rss-network.com
rssmotron.com
rssnetworkfeedsdirectory.com
weblogalot.com

The Web Traffic Genius software automatically does this for you, but if for some crazy reason you don’t want to try a 0 risk software
then you should be doing this list by hand!

By the end of 30 days you will be more than happy with the results from this tip! ;)

I will be doing a news video this weekend and also have some pretty cool seo tips in the pipeline so we will
catch you next time!

Michael Roberts

P.S.
I know this software will over time easily pay for it’s self….There is no doubt in my mind. Even if it just moved you from position
4 to position 3 that is a 3-4% increase in traffic every single month!
BUT
I wanted to throw in a free tip for you that you can utilize today to save money online! This tip alone in the course of a year can easily purchase this software for you! Internet Tip To Save Money
(Many of you may already know this tip but I was surprised how many weren’t using this!)

If you don’t think page load speed is important then watch my video and find out why it’s becoming more important than ever!
PAGE LOAD SPEED VIDEO

WP SUPER CAHCE
1) Install Plugin: WP SUPER CACHE
2) Before activating this plugin leave the plugin area and goto “settings” > “permalinks” > Select Custom Structure and enter: /%postname%/
3) Go into your WP Super Cache settings and set up your preferences and enable the plugin

WP Touch iPhone Theme
Awesome tool to install onto your blog to make it cell phone friendly. Greatly sped up the load time on my phone. Less scrolling and less junk to slow a cell phone browsing down.

Optimize your photos for load time
1) Free online tool to edit your photos is Picnik
2) Be sure to always remove all the white space around your photo. Crop that down as close as possible to the actual image.
3) Reduce the file quality. Often times you can greatly reduce a file size without seeing any loss in quality to the human eye.

CSS SPRITES
Another great way to reduce load times is by turning multiple back ground photos into a single photo. This will reduce the number of HTTP requests made and is a fundamental technique in increasing your websites load times.

1) Visit Spriteme and drag and drop the text/icon into your tool bar
2) Visit your webpage you want to create a CSS Sprite to
3) Click the Spriteme button in your toolbar
4) Click the make sprite button under the recommended sprites
5) Once the file is made click the export to CSS option
6) Now you can use your favorite HTML editor and FTP program to upload the new CSS Sprite

Spritme worked very well for me but a buddy of mine had issues using it. So here is a link to the second best free
CSS Sprite creator I found: http://csssprites.com/

FREE TOOL TO HELP YOU SEE PAGE LOAD SPEED ISSUES
1) First you will need to use which you can download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html
2) Next install FIREBUG
3) Now install Google’s Page Speed Plugin for it here: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/download.html

- Simply visit any URL now and click the firebug button and you get a nice report on issues effecting your page load speed! *MAGIC*

BONUS TIPS NOT INCLUDED IN THE VIDEO!

1) XHTML instead of tables

*This tip is a bit more advanced and will require you to know how to fiddle around with your websites code.

If your currently using Tables they render much slower than DIVs by your browser. By using XHTML instead of tables you are essentially accomplishing more with less code which increases page load speed!

However, like most things tables do have their place in this world. In some situations using a table is going to make a lot more since. Creating a 6 columned table could require a lot more coding using XHTML so just be sure you use tables when necessary but try to switch to XHTML for the majority of your work.

2) Compress & Merge JavaScript Files

* Another more advanced tip

Compressing JavaScript files can greatly lower the size of your files and doesn’t have any negative effects on your side.
Try to merge JavaScript files to prevent multiple includes and if a JavaScript file will be used only in a few pages then try to include them inside those pages.

Here is a link to a JavaScript Compressor

3) HTTP Compression & Gzip

Ok this tip is probably one of the more effective tips and it doesn’t take a whole lot of knowledge.
If you simply can’t figure out how to do this see one of my lower tips on outsourcing this task to someone I have used and is cheap.

There are two common choices and you can either use HTTP Compression or Gzip.
You can either use Gzip (which is what I use), which can be enabled at the site level
or
you can use HTTP compression which is a great choice as well that can be enabled on the server side.

I would go into describing this but there is already a perfect detailed article on how HTTP Compression works.

4) GETTING A FASTER SERVER

A lot of people who get into the affiliate marketing game just dip their feet into the water. They don’t want to spend a bunch of money until they know they can make it work. This can be a very smart decision and is what I refer to as Boot Strapping. However, sometimes this can wind up shooting your self in the foot. You pick out a the cheapest shared server you can find and then the next thing you know your having reliability and site performance issues.

Making sure you have a fast server is critical. If you are getting 4-10k worth of traffic then it is definitely time to step up your server and move to a VPS (Virtual Private Server). This may sound big and scary but were only talking around $24 per month for a quality set up.

It’s at least worth looking into!
Hostgator is a great option with very good customer support, Softlayer is awesome and has slightly better prices and the last hosting company I have recently found is probably more suitable for smaller affiliates. They have crazy low prices and they are who I am using on many of my sites now.

If you want to get ahold of the nicest sales agent I have met over there contact: lijeesh@subhosting.net
(Tell him I sent you and to give you a killer price!)

5) HIRING AN EXPERT

My business model is focussing on putting out quality content into each one of my niches. I find it very difficult to hire someone to put together quality content, but for everything else someone else can do it better! Why sacrifice 8-16 hours of my time optimizing some of the more complicated tasks in improving my site speed when I can pay someone to do that and focus on the most important thing…putting quality content on the web! Now for me putting up quality content is what makes me money so everything else is just a distraction.

Hiring an expert though doesn’t have to be scary. I have done over 150 out sourcing projects and I have found some incredible and some awful freelancers. For this post I am willing to share the name of one of my better HTML, SEO, Web design guys. He even agreed to run the paypal transactions right through my company so that you guys don’t have to be scared sending your money over seas, etc.

If you need any help with improving your site speed, optimizing your on page seo, etc. just shoot him an email!

You can get ahold of my guy at:

siteimprovements@gmail.com

LAST NOTE:

I thought it was important to say not to get too carried up in this!  Obviously page load speed is important.  It has been proven to increase conversions and might start becoming a factor in rankings.  However, I wouldn’t spend all your time worrying about this as content is still king!  If your page loads extremly fast already don’t spend coutnless hours trying to squeeze more out of it.  My homepage and blog on this particular site do need some work and so in the next 30 days I have already set aside time to improve that, but note I am not going to drop all other SEO efforts for the month to worry about that.
Take it in stride!  :)

Hope you enjoyed the article!  If you found this article useful please share it on twitter, stumbleupon, dig, etc!
It really helps especially on these longer articles I put together for free for you guys!

Thanks again,

Michael Roberts

P.S. For an extremly detailed list of all on page factors you should take into consideration you should visit:

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

I have compiled a large list for you guys that you need to have uploaded onto your Word Press site! Just watch the video and follow the instructions and paste the following list into your WP options.

Please do remember to rate the video and subscribe to my channel! :)

Also don’t forget to set this up any time you create a new blog.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/
http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php
http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Also on top of that my team and I set up a green screen studio with lighting, HD Camera and the whole bit.  I will be launching a video series in roughly 9 days.  I will be producing 3 videos per week and placing here on my blog.  Mondays video will cover SEO and Internet Marketing Tactics where I will go in depth training you.  Wednesdays show will just be a short blurb about whats on my mind, changes in the industry, tips and short advice.  Fridays show will be a very light hearted fun show that will cover the latest SEO News and Internet Marketing News.  I have been wanting to put out this kind of quality content for awhile but haven’t had time or the equipment.

Anyway to the good stuff!  Here’s a bit of information I just learned the other day and wanted to share it with you!

Google recently had two excellent write ups about optimizing your mobile site for SEO. One blog post is about helping Google to index your mobile site located at  [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/running-desktop-and-mobile-versions-of.html].

The iPhone and Android devices provide a rich browsing experience while using the smart phone. There are also many mobile phones with web browsers that do not provide this rich user/browsing experience. Webmasters wanting to optimize their sites for smart phone devices can submit mobile content to Google, using a format known as mobile sitemap. [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8493]

You may want to have a single URL for the same website irrespective of whether it is being accessed from a desktop, mobile browser or an iPhone. Google explains in the blog post that you could use the user agent string “googlebot” and “googlebot-mobile” to display a different stylesheet for the same content in different layouts for desktop and mobile devices. This would not be considered ‘search engine cloaking’, as clarified by Google.

The best practices in the area of mobile site SEO are not clear to very many webmasters. These blog posts would probably help put them on the right track for building web presence on the mobile front.

I hope that helps you guys out and subscribe to my blog to get the first buzz when my video serries is released!  ;)

Michael R Roberts