Is google loosing the plot?

[webgeek]

BTW - How much would everything you've said cost? And what sort of return would you expect to see?
And would you also have an ipad 2 giveaway to a random person who likes your fb page?

Personally, I wouldn't bother with 80-90% of the non-publishing ideas - but was just giving examples of what people do.

For our org, and clients, we stick with solid keyword rich content of varying lengths, posted, guest posted, socially mentioned, syndicated and backlinked.

Not giving away my costs, but I know that a solid 600-1000 word article can be written, edited, published and syndicated for under £50, particularly if you've got an publication workflow, editorial calendar, the right people in the right roles and the right tools in everyones hands.

The difference between trying a smattering shotgun approach of wacky ideas and a protracted campaign based on what generates top results is what separates the wannabe's from the pro's. This is why you pay someone to manage SEO campaigns.

Again, this is the Formula 1 concept. Jenson Button can tell you how to drive like him, and you can understand the concepts, but that doesn't mean you have the skill, experience and training to actually do it.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

That's really quite a shocking statement to make and I would never part with my money to any SEO whom concurs with that ethos

As long as they're open to the client about what they're doing, I don't see the big deal.

Unless you're approaching SEO from the perspective of creating great, link-worthy content, then you're approaching it from the perspective of fooling google into thinking links are unilateral votes for your site, rather than the result of some form of manipulation.

That manipulation is always likely to have a shelf-life.

Bought links are one way to do it. Maybe a riskier way to do it. But no more or less moral than other ways, IMO.

(In fact, probably a less dickish way than blog comment spam... where a blog owner has to trawl through the comments and disapprove them.)

Steve

 

[UKSBD]

The moral way to test it is with one of your own sites. (As you did.)

Steve

I tested it on one of my own high ranking sites,

Top 10 for "SEO"
top 3 for "SEO Services"
top 3 for "SEO Advice"
top 3 for "SEO Tips"

All have now dropped right out, but it still ranks for many other phrases as long as SEO isn't in the phrase.

 

[RadiusBPO]

Personally, I wouldn't bother with 80-90% of the non-publishing ideas - but was just giving examples of what people do.

For our org, and clients, we stick with solid keyword rich content of varying lengths, posted, guest posted, socially mentioned, syndicated and backlinked.

Not giving away my costs, but I know that a solid 600-1000 word article can be written, edited, published and syndicated for under £50, particularly if you've got an publication workflow, editorial calendar, the right people in the right roles and the right tools in everyones hands.

The difference between trying a smattering shotgun approach of wacky ideas and a protracted campaign based on what generates top results is what separates the wannabe's from the pro's. This is why you pay someone to manage SEO campaigns.

Again, this is the Formula 1 concept. Jenson Button can tell you how to drive like him, and you can understand the concepts, but that doesn't mean you have the skill, experience and training to actually do it.

Syndicated = spam. Remember even PRWeb isn't safe and any other "syndication" method is spammy in the eyes of Google now.

So £50 per link is basically what you're say. How does one reach the desired velocity without winning the lottery? You've just confirmed my point that start ups are now priced out of SEO, oh an Trebor8, here is another SEO who think SEO = money.

I would love some examples of sites using infographics to rank or bring in decent converting traffic. Or one using crazy content to bring in 100s of links.

 

[webgeek]

Syndication != spam in my dictionary...

Marketing.alltop.com is a great example of content syndication.

I've got clients paying £100 a month and ranking well for a handful of terms (though it takes several months). You don't need massive volumes of low quality links to rank. One popular post on an authoritative site carries more weight than a swarm of garbage links.

 

[RadiusBPO]

Syndication != spam in my dictionary...

Marketing.alltop.com is a great example of content syndication.

I've got clients paying £100 a month and ranking well for a handful of terms (though it takes several months). You don't need massive volumes of low quality links to rank. One popular post on an authoritative site carries more weight than a swarm of garbage links.

Ok so in your opinion. Sticking content on some web2.0s and spamming some blog comments at them is probably not the best thing to do? What about automated forum profile links? Are they ok??

 

[webgeek]

Good ways to improve rankings:
1) Publishing quality content on your own site
2) Publishing quality content on high authority blogs / sites / web 2.0

Good ways to hide mask your backlink profile so the competition can't easily reverse engineer, duplicate, etc.:
1) Blog comments with tons of anchor diversity
2) Forum profiles
3) Several other un-mentioned bulk automation techniques

BTW, content syndication via social mentions, email excerpts and RSS excerpts is one of the most powerful ways of getting people to see your messages without the help of Big G. It's not spam and it works.

 

[Suzuki]

Good ways to improve rankings:
1) Publishing quality content on your own site
2) Publishing quality content on high authority blogs / sites / web 2.0

Good ways to hide mask your backlink profile so the competition can't easily reverse engineer, duplicate, etc.:
1) Blog comments with tons of anchor diversity
2) Forum profiles
3) Several other un-mentioned bulk automation techniques

BTW, content syndication via social mentions, email excerpts and RSS excerpts is one of the most powerful ways of getting people to see your messages without the help of Big G. It's not spam and it works.

I think doing things like that are far more likely to harm you than help. With easy/cheap/free tools like Majestic and so on its not hard to filter out all the junk links so that certainly isn't going to hide your better backlinks from someone determined to look for that.

In the past I'd have said mix some of this stuff in anyway... today I would say the risks far exceed the rewards. Now that Google seems more likely to penalise you for backlinks, and its easier to sift back link reports anyway, this is a tactic that should have been left behind long ago. Its stale, out dated and dangerous.

 

[RadiusBPO]

Ok sooo basically

Build some web 2.0s (manually or automated) with content from odesk on it and a link to money site.
<<spam these with scrapebox

Spam money site with forum profile and blog comments to hide the non existent juicy links?

I got news for you. That's nothing like driving a formula one car. It's not some high level SEO work and actually a lot less effective than for example guest blogging. And this isn't creating content people want to read, it's creating keyworded relevant rubbish for google to munch on since no one will ever read it.


This... is just sales talk.

Just because you have a site selling printer cartridges, doesn't mean you have to write 500 word articles about the composition of printer cartridges.

Someone could provide content like:
- Wacky things people do with ink
- Crazy graphics
- Cool designs
- Have design contests
- Sponsor a 'What would you do for a lifetime supply of ink?' contest
- Get a Danica Patrick clone to pose for their promo works
- Write about anything in design, art, print, banners or other headline news, with a focus on unusual, interesting, big bucks or other remarkables
- Generate top 10 lists for 'top 10 ways to save $10,000 on printing'
- etc, etc

The reason content marketing companies exist is to take what otherwise would be boring as heck and turn it into something linkable, shareable, remarkable...

Impressive to someone looking to hire an SEO, but not very effective is it!

 

[webgeek]

MajesticSEO and Opensiteexplorer do little to identify which are the links of merit and which aren't. The make lists and often misquote the true value of the link.

Take a look at www.seofaststart.com and find which of those 65,000+ links are the ones which caused the site to rank and which caused the site to be bombed into oblivion.

Masking ones link profile, just like building any kind of links, could be dangerous if undertaken by a n00b. Linkbuilding isn't something for the children to try at home

 

[webgeek]

Ok sooo basically

Build some web 2.0s (manually or automated) with content from odesk on it and a link to money site.
<<spam these with scrapebox

Spam money site with forum profile and blog comments to hide the non existent juicy links?

You've effectively illustrated the Hasty Generalization Fallacy in action.

Everything I've stated has been geared toward building quality content on high authority sites.

You've obviously got issues with SEO... though I won't hazard to guess what happened to create such animosity and venom about what can be a very honorable profession.

The techniques discussed are not inherently immoral, illegal or unethical.

Given the above epic fail at trying to 'so basically' what i said, perhaps turning on the football and forgetting all this SEO stuff would be good.

And remember, *waves hand*, this is not the seo droid you are looking for.

 

[Hire Centre]

The last panda update did a lot to readdress the balance and get the relevancy back up there. However from what I am reading bing are hot on their toes and in cases returning a better result set. Bing and yahoo are also more fussy with how many pages they index as opposed to google.

 

[Suzuki]

MajesticSEO and Opensiteexplorer do little to identify which are the links of merit and which aren't. The make lists and often misquote the true value of the link.

Take a look at www.seofaststart.com and find which of those 65,000+ links are the ones which caused the site to rank and which caused the site to be bombed into oblivion.

Masking ones link profile, just like building any kind of links, could be dangerous if undertaken by a n00b. Linkbuilding isn't something for the children to try at home

Well what looked like a good idea masking links in April 2011 more than likely wins you a WMT bad link warning in April 2012. Plus there is no way to remove all these junk links once they're out there... so you're stuck with a link warning you can't do a thing about. And then a ranking drop a week or two later.

 

[RadiusBPO]

You've effectively illustrated the Hasty Generalization Fallacy in action.

Everything I've stated has been geared toward building quality content on high authority sites.

You've obviously got issues with SEO... though I won't hazard to guess what happened to create such animosity and venom about what can be a very honorable profession.

The techniques discussed are not inherently immoral, illegal or unethical.

Given the above epic fail at trying to 'so basically' what i said, perhaps turning on the football and forgetting all this SEO stuff would be good.

And remember, *waves hand*, this is not the seo droid you are looking for.

I do have issues. I am annoyed it takes a lot of businesses out of the market for effective SEO and leaves them vulnerable to people who say they use infographics but in fact use automated forum profiles. Believe me, I have massive issues with that.

I am making more money now than before the G changes, and with less work

It's quite funny that you say Majestic etc don't show which are the best links. I agree, sometimes they will show some strange results but generally they will show what techniques someone is using, and by importing the data into excel we can look through 1000s of links quite effectively.

BTW what are you planning on doing when G wipes out these 2.0s? Since they are the only cheap thing to do at at the moment (hence £100 pm seo for example) and they are being spammed to death it is only a matter of time before they are wiped out.

---

It makes no sense why an SEO would want to hide good links. Sure a good link, eg that one on Gizmodo I showed you is impossible to copy. Why worry about hiding anything unless there is a FFA (free for all) link that is being hidden?

 

[webgeek]

Well what looked like a good idea masking links in April 2011 more than likely wins you a WMT bad link warning in April 2012. Plus there is no way to remove all these junk links once they're out there... so you're stuck with a link warning you can't do a thing about. And then a ranking drop a week or two later.

As an aside, the 700,000 WMT notices didn't come from link profile masking, they came from mass-blasting, sending multiple links per domain and using spun content being published on very public blog networks.

The difference between diversion and nuclear holocaust is no small one.

As with any linkbuilding discussion, your mileage may vary. I'm not advocating anyone else masks their backlink profiles. In fact, just send me your link blueprints, keyword ranking updates over time, content publication calendar, and I'll just tuck it away for safe keeping

 

[webgeek]

It makes no sense why an SEO would want to hide good links. Sure a good link, eg that one on Gizmodo I showed you is impossible to copy. Why worry about hiding anything unless there is a FFA (free for all) link that is being hidden?

Tell it to Dan Thies and any other negative SEO victims.

The more your competition knows about what links are causing what rankings improvements (and other info about your operation), the more vulnerable you become.

For me, it's like buying pet insurance. it doesn't cost a lot, and I'm not 100% sure how much good it will really do, but I sleep better at night knowing I did what I could.

I've now spent more time doing less work than about any day in recent history. Enough blathering on this topic for me - I'm outtie.

 

[RadiusBPO]

how does hiding a good link make you less likely to fall victim to -seo?

 

[Annoying Donkey]

As an aside, the 700,000 WMT notices didn't come from link profile masking, they came from mass-blasting, sending multiple links per domain and using spun content being published on very public blog networks.

OWG examples earlier in this thread seems to indicate otherwise...

 

[bdw]

Stand by for collateral damage complaints. Here's their latest anti spam move ...

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

 

[RadiusBPO]

Lol @ some sites ranking page 1 now.

 

[terryuk]

Google is losing the plot it's official So AM I

 

[SteveHippel]

Google have just applied for a new patent in their constant battle against web spammers. There is a good post about this at seobythesea.com by Bill Slawski. I can't post a link because I'm a new mwmber but it is his latest post.
Other things that may be causing unusual search results are your Google settings and if you are a G+ member, try logging out before you search.

 

[bdw]

Here it is Steve...
http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/04/...webspam-rolls-out-algorithm-change/#more-7599

A good starting point is the Google patent Methods and systems for identifying manipulated articles
There are a couple of different elements to this patent.

One is that a search engine might identify a cluster of pages that might be related to each other in some way, like being on the same host, or interlinked by doorway pages and articles targeted by those pages.

Once such a cluster is identified, documents within the cluster might be examined for individual signals, such as whether or not the text within them appears to have been generated by a computer, or if meta tags are stuffed with repeated keywords, if there is hidden text on pages, or if those pages might contain a lot of unrelated links.