Good assessment of why SEO is basically DEAD

[johnnyboy]

I also disagree EMD will be targeted. Google understands people pay for domains, hence why it gives domains considerable weight. The domain is the one thing that (once bought) cant be adjusted (or optimized) for seo.

QFT.

Agree with the above quote.

There is absolutely no reason why Google should penalise EMDs; sites on them only drop in rankings or get removed completely because of bad content or search engine practices.

I think if anything, Google will realise that good generic, premium domains cost £x,xxx/xx,xxx to acquire and if people/companies are willing to spend that amount on a domain then they are not going to negate the quality of it with crap content and therefore may give it a tiny boost. Although, EMDs shouldn't be entitled to any advantage.

 

[JMOT]

Well this is nice of Matt... A little heads up for people...

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-warning-15577.html

 

[AuthorityDomain]

Hopefully they will now not penalise sites suffered from spam abuse. I did a post on negative seo and spammy links on my blog here: http://www.webaholic.org.uk/no-manual-spam-actions-found-negative-seo-exists/

 

[murph]

Well this is nice of Matt... A little heads up for people...

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-warning-15577.html

Urgh!! Are there any clues when and what's being targeted next?

 

[crazihos]

An update from matt cutts:

Hey Barry, I wasn't saying that people needed to overly stress out about the next Penguin update, but I'm happy to give more details. I was giving context on the fact that lots of people were asking me when the next Penguin update would happen, as if they expected Penguin updates to happen on a monthly basis and as if Penguin would only involve data refreshes.

If you remember, in the early days of Panda, it took several months for us to iterate on the algorithm, and the Panda impact tended to be somewhat larger (e.g. the April 2011 update incorporated new signals like sites that users block). Later on, the Panda updates had less impact over time as we stabilized the signals/algorithm and Panda moved closer to near-monthly updates.
Likewise, we're still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals, and as a result will have more noticeable impact. It's not the case that people should just expect data refreshes for Penguin quite yet.

Also a comment from someone who was actually at said seo conference:

Wow, it is amazing how statements can be taken the wrong way and twisted up. I was here yesterday and heard Matt talk about owe upcoming updates. That is NOT his intention.

Matt said that the panda updates are now on a more regular schedule, perhaps monthly, asp we are used to them. The impact is not as great on so many websites. The penguin updates are not on a normal schedule so to speak, so when they do hit we will know it. I do not recall him implying that new penguin updates will affect a lot of sites. This was NOT a warning at all, just a statement on the timing of updates.

 

[JMOT]

sounds like the PR machine had to jump in and clean up...unless the original article was totally making up the exact quote...

 

[crazihos]

Rusty brick does have a habit of over egging things to make a story. I do like to read him though.

Further reading suggests that he "may" have added some of the quotation marks himself:

This seems to have come from a WebmasterWorld posting, not a first-person account of someone who was at the talk. I think attribution to that effect would be appropriate, since the lede makes it seem as though it's been confirmed.

Also, the WebmasterWorld posting has "jarring and julting" - misspelling and all - not in quotations, so it's unclear if the author is quoting Cutts directly or if he's paraphrasing. I used to work as a journalist. If I ever pulled something like, I'd be fired - and rightly so.

Maybe you don't consider yourself a journalist, but you can't just post stuff without confirming facts like this and expect not to get flamed. I'm sure you're generating lots of traffic with this post, but you're also messing up a lot of people's day. I'm not saying this isn't accurate. You just clearly don't know whether this is what Cutts actually said. (And by judging his response, it isn't).

 

[addz123]

I don't understand, even if they were working on incorporating new signals and what not, why can't they just refresh the data every month?

Surely they realise that the longer time there is inbetween data refreshes, the more spam can crop up before they get rid of it. It's been almost 3 months since the last penguin refresh and spam has started cropping up the SERPs like nobody's business. It's kind of like plaque building on your teeth - it still needs cleaning every now and then!

 

[WigWam]

To put it simply seo is not dead, and it wont be for a long time to come.

The reason Google values links and uses them as such a contributing factor in their ranking algorithms is because they represent another source approving or recommending your site - similar to the way that a university paper would show its sources and other studies that are relevant to the readers research / interests.

Now, ever since the search engines started people have been trying to "game" the system so that their website outranks others. It started with keyword & meta stuffing, link farms & duplicate content, it worked very well for a while as did the next few "generations" of seo including the most recent, which was link hoarding (think scrapebox, xrummer, seonuke ect). Now is just another generation of seo techniques that are reaching their expiry date.

Its fairly easy for Google to spot websites that have gained 10,000 links overnight from forums / blog comments / directories / spam sites and even easier if they all have the same anchor text and destination url.

People were so focused on their one and only keyword e.g. "car insurance" that they forgot to make it look natural. You linked thousands of times to your homepage with the same anchor text thousands of times - think, whats the odds of thousands of different webmasters using the same anchor text and all linking to the same page... Zero? Remember Google is thinking the same thing and they will punish you for it.

You need to distribute links to multiple pages on your site using a range of anchor texts over a sustained time period. When a visitor links to your page with anchor text they are giving the most accurate description of your site in it, this is why google has recently started changing the title tag in searches for sites with accurate anchor text links from multiple reputable sources.

You should also link your site to other relevant sites, for example if you owned a site that talked about "car insurance" outbound links to other highly reputable sites such as insurance associations, the dsa, police insurance pages etc will give your site more weight as a source of valuable information.

I am running tests on my own sites which are isolated on dedicated ips & servers to see if it is possible to get your competitors site banned / severely punished by google. Results arn't complete yet but out of my 5 test sites (all of which are virtually perfect onsite, had atleast 1 years age with plenty of unique content + match all of googles webmaster guidelines), 3 were knocked back into the hundreds for their main keywords, 1 uneffected, 1 removed from index. Still testing if googles warning in webmaster tools and replying to them makes any difference.

So to round it up, You should treat your site link a university paper - write excellent content that is written for people, then they will share with others in the form of a link, not just to the homepage but other pages that they found usefull, google will spot it and reward you with improved rankings for multiple keywords - your readers gave a diverse set of links & everybody is happy, especially you because you are outranking your competitors who are stuck in their own ways. As long as google search is alive it will have natural search results because they give so much value to the user, more so than paid adverts ever could in 99% non commercial of searches. If people just wanted to have paid results why is yellow pages website failing so badly?

If anybody want me to go into more detail about any parts of this just say and I will explain all day if I have to

Cheers,

WW.

 

[Aegean]

You should treat your site link a university paper - write excellent content that is written for people, then they will share with others in the form of a link, not just to the homepage but other pages that they found usefull, google will spot it and reward you with improved rankings for multiple keywords - your readers gave a diverse set of links & everybody is happy

Google have been saying that for 10 years, its just many webmasters would rather find a short cut, a lazy way, a workaround, anything except having to do the dreaded legitimate website. Sometimes they go to such lengths they spend more effort and more money than they would if they just did things properly in the first place.

 

[seemly]

Google have been saying that for 10 years, its just many webmasters would rather find a short cut, a lazy way, a workaround, anything except having to do the dreaded legitimate website. Sometimes they go to such lengths they spend more effort and more money than they would if they just did things properly in the first place.

Or trying to undo what a negative SEO campaign did against them...

Yes, there are some people out there that "take shortcuts", but what about those genuine businesses that have relied on the organic search for their business, only to be trashed in the rankings because of an unethical competitor?

 

[seemly]

To put it simply seo is not dead, and it wont be for a long time to come.

The reason Google values links and uses them as such a contributing factor in their ranking algorithms is because they represent another source approving or recommending your site - similar to the way that a university paper would show its sources and other studies that are relevant to the readers research / interests.

Now, ever since the search engines started people have been trying to "game" the system so that their website outranks others. It started with keyword & meta stuffing, link farms & duplicate content, it worked very well for a while as did the next few "generations" of seo including the most recent, which was link hoarding (think scrapebox, xrummer, seonuke ect). Now is just another generation of seo techniques that are reaching their expiry date.

Its fairly easy for Google to spot websites that have gained 10,000 links overnight from forums / blog comments / directories / spam sites and even easier if they all have the same anchor text and destination url.

People were so focused on their one and only keyword e.g. "car insurance" that they forgot to make it look natural. You linked thousands of times to your homepage with the same anchor text thousands of times - think, whats the odds of thousands of different webmasters using the same anchor text and all linking to the same page... Zero? Remember Google is thinking the same thing and they will punish you for it.

You need to distribute links to multiple pages on your site using a range of anchor texts over a sustained time period. When a visitor links to your page with anchor text they are giving the most accurate description of your site in it, this is why google has recently started changing the title tag in searches for sites with accurate anchor text links from multiple reputable sources.

You should also link your site to other relevant sites, for example if you owned a site that talked about "car insurance" outbound links to other highly reputable sites such as insurance associations, the dsa, police insurance pages etc will give your site more weight as a source of valuable information.

I am running tests on my own sites which are isolated on dedicated ips & servers to see if it is possible to get your competitors site banned / severely punished by google. Results arn't complete yet but out of my 5 test sites (all of which are virtually perfect onsite, had atleast 1 years age with plenty of unique content + match all of googles webmaster guidelines), 3 were knocked back into the hundreds for their main keywords, 1 uneffected, 1 removed from index. Still testing if googles warning in webmaster tools and replying to them makes any difference.

So to round it up, You should treat your site link a university paper - write excellent content that is written for people, then they will share with others in the form of a link, not just to the homepage but other pages that they found usefull, google will spot it and reward you with improved rankings for multiple keywords - your readers gave a diverse set of links & everybody is happy, especially you because you are outranking your competitors who are stuck in their own ways. As long as google search is alive it will have natural search results because they give so much value to the user, more so than paid adverts ever could in 99% non commercial of searches. If people just wanted to have paid results why is yellow pages website failing so badly?

If anybody want me to go into more detail about any parts of this just say and I will explain all day if I have to

Cheers,

WW.

If inbound links have such an impact on a websites ranking (in a negative way), then links just shouldn't be a ranking factor. The reason? Negative SEO.

It's unfair, unethical and too damn easy to destroy a business overnight using spammy inbound links.

Everyone (read; the majority) should know why links are used and the importance of them on the web, but that importance has become skewed due to Google's ranking algorithm failings.

 

[dragon]

Should/Shouldn't and Fair/Unfair don't really come into it.. Their search engine, their rules. It's business. Doesn't matter how much ppl complain, best thing you can do is adapt, and expand marketing into other areas so it's not such a loss if/when serps change.

 

[WigWam]

Should/Shouldn't and Fair/Unfair don't really come into it.. Their search engine, their rules. It's business. Doesn't matter how much ppl complain, best thing you can do is adapt, and expand marketing into other areas so it's not such a loss if/when serps change.

I work in seo for a living, finally my clients are learning why my prices are higher than the allot of the competition. If anything these Google updates have just exposed those who are doing poor quality seo work, (a shockingly high percent).

I know of a large ecommerce site that were employing £xx,xxx per month seo consultancies to build directory links and forum spamming - surprise surprise they were hit .

Frankly the Google update has done wonders for my business as others are fleeing their seo agencies / consultants by the bus load.

I make the following promise to all my clients when acquiring them high quality links. Following this should also help you get quality links.

No Directory links (unless extremely relative - with clients permission only)
No Blog commenting
No Link wheels
No Forum submitting
No Sitewide links
No Article directories
No "auto generated" sites
No Link exchanges
No Sites that publicly advertise link sales
No Sites with poor incoming link profiles
No Sites with high OBL's
No Sites with links to pharma, gamblimg, warez, link farms or adult (unless client specifies otherwise)
- Links will come from sites that are related to your sites niche only
- Links will be from sites that are older than 1 year (unless client specifies otherwise).
- Sites that are hosted on unique IP's are preferred, links from multiple sites on single ip's wont be bought without the clients consent.
- Links can be Geographicly targeted to areas of Worldwide / Continents / Countries / Cities / Towns
- Demographic Targeting is available ( Age, gender, income ect).
Non repetitive anchor text and tag distribution (this is key with the latest google updates).

And yes, gaining this way is extremely difficult but the results speak for themselves.

Cheers,

WW.

 

[boxfish]

I make the following promise to all my clients when acquiring them high quality links. Following this should also help you get quality links.

No Directory links (unless extremely relative - with clients permission only)
No Blog commenting
No Link wheels
No Forum submitting
No Sitewide links
No Article directories
No "auto generated" sites
No Link exchanges
No Sites that publicly advertise link sales 
No Sites with poor incoming link profiles
No Sites with high OBL's
No Sites with links to pharma, gamblimg, warez, link farms or adult (unless client specifies otherwise)
- Links will come from sites that are related to your sites niche only
- Links will be from sites that are older than 1 year (unless client specifies otherwise).
- Sites that are hosted on unique IP's are preferred, links from multiple sites on single ip's wont be bought without the clients consent. 
- Links can be Geographicly targeted to areas of Worldwide / Continents / Countries / Cities / Towns 
- Demographic Targeting is available ( Age, gender, income ect).
Non repetitive anchor text and tag distribution (this is key with the latest google updates).

Isn't this your site?

http://www.seogenius.co.uk/services/

Advertising those very services.

 

[WigWam]

Isn't this your site?

http://www.seogenius.co.uk/services/

Advertising those very services.

Granted, that is a very old site though (which I had forgotten to take down). At the time that that website was online those methods were very legitimate methods of link building (for clients on low budgets), seo is ever changing as is ppc & social media. I don't use any of the methods listed above and focus entirely on quality not quantity links.

Cheers,

Steve

 

[boxfish]

Granted, that is a very old site though (which I had forgotten to take down). At the time that that website was online those methods were very legitimate methods of link building (for clients on low budgets), seo is ever changing as is ppc & social media. I don't use any of the methods listed above and focus entirely on quality not quantity links.

Cheers,

Steve

It's less than 18 months old?!

IMO this just highlights the garbage that SEOs come out with day-in, day-out.

You can't advertise one method of 'high quality link building' then when it gets penguin'd/panda'd deny all knowledge, blame all the crap SEOs and reinvent yourself. (Although some do, a certain non-negative SEO company is now on their 5th domain name in 18 months - 301'ing away from the penalties and still promoting their whiter than white methods)

 

[WigWam]

typical acorn domains. Post lots of useful information for free so members can build high quality links, learn efficient seo, avoid poor quality seo methods & penalties - and I get flamed. I don't know why I bother.

 

[boxfish]

typical acorn domains. Post lots of useful information for free so members can build high quality links, learn efficient seo, avoid poor quality seo methods & penalties - and I get flamed. I don't know why I bother.

Oh look, you removed your self-promotional link from your signature for that flounce.

Here it is:

high quality seo services available - pm for more info

It's still visible in your other posts too but I'm sure that's not why you were posting the helpful info, seems funny you removed it for that post though

 

[vizzo]

seo will never die

Is SEO dead?
No. As long as there are search engines that produce results on what they deem to be the merit of the site, there will be SEO - ways to make your site fit with whatever those engines are using to rank websites.

Are some methods of SEO in terminal decline?
Yes. Link building methods that were generally considered acceptable/low risk a few years ago are now unacceptable / high risk.

Is the SEO industry dead?
No. There will always be the demand for people who can help a website rank well. At the same time there are plenty of SEO businesses that will find there methods increasingly ineffective and so will need to adapt or die.

I found the original article quite stimulating. I read a lot about seo and there were some things that made me think outside the box that i was in.

One thing that has always puzzled me is that Google has often not exactly done what it says. For instance sites that were affected by Panda but which actually had good content, while other rubbish sites seemed to be unpunished. It says link buying will harm your site but we see loads of sites that have bought links doing so with great success. Two things strike me from the article. What google says now may be more about what will happen in a few years time. So for instance google gives a hint about bounce rate and loads of people say - my bounce rate is high and I still rank well, Google must be wrong/I can get away with it. Then next year Google does something about it and those sites with a high bounce rate do suffer. Secondly is the concept of misdirection. These two concepts taken together can help explain why with every theory about what Google is doing now there seem to be about a million sites that don't fit with the theory.

PS I'm only half way through the article - there's quite a lot to take in!