Interesting Post about Panda/Penguin

[Marcoose]

http://theaveragegenius.net/google-...l-content-interview-askthebuilder-tim-carter/

Make sure you listen to the interview near the bottom. My eyes open wider on a daily basis to the Big G.

 

[Django]

Great atricle, thanks for the share! I don't plan to stop practicing SEO in the near future, but reading/listening to something like this feels like a real kick in the balls...it sucks that one person can invest so much time in producing something that is of genuine value, almost to have all that value taken away at the flick of a switch.

 

[Marcoose]

Great atricle, thanks for the share! I don't plan to stop practicing SEO in the near future, but reading/listening to something like this feels like a real kick in the balls...it sucks that one person can invest so much time in producing something that is of genuine value, almost to have all that value taken away at the flick of a switch.

It does. Google have achieved their goal. No one will link build through fear. People will have to spend on PPC to achieve sales. This is while G also lines their pockets in the affiliate market with their comparison results.

I would so be up for a mass boycott but it would never work.

 

[Blossom]

I haven't watched the video because I don't have sound on this computer.

But in response to the "People will have to spend on PPC to achieve sales" I still go with 'Google's not stupid enough to *just* go down the driving profits route at the expense of everything else'. They know that the reason they make any money at all and that they're popular is because they have the best product. They also know that there's a big queue of other companies waiting to take their place. Giving all that up for short term gain and a hit to their reputation makes no sense.

That's even without considering the fact that the Adwords and link spam teams operate almost completely independently. The mess up with the link buying for Chrome shows how independent different aspects of the company are.

Here's a really good infographic which puts things in a little more perspective: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-seo-apocalypses-that-never-happened-with-infographics/43901/

Panda and Penguin are not the biggest changes to SEO historically, but there are far more people around to witness them, comment on them, and start conspiracy theories. If you use Google's stats, for every 1 person that's been affected, there are another 99 who are going merrily on the way, most of whom probably haven't even heard of Penguin or Panda.

Will I stop link building? No. Will I alter my strategies as a result of these updates? Of course. SEO has always been an industry where you have to adapt to survive, and that will never change.

 

[Django]

I'm really stuck on the fence on this one...I always hesitate to put on my tin-foil hat and start hinting at conspiacy theories, but a lot of the changes they have made and are making seem to be changes that cement their position as an advertising network and NOT as a search engine.

I think the most important thing I've learned about Google in 2012 (Panda/Penguin etc.) is not to rely on it as a sole source of traffic/revenue...this seems to be a consistent theme of people who were hit the hardest by the updates - Google was everything to them. I still spend a lot of time making my sites perform well in Google, but now I also realise it's more important than ever to build a diverse range of traffic sources. I don't mean getting rankings in Bing or Yahoo!, more things like developing a stronger social media presence, building an email list, even doing OFFLINE marketing (it still works!!!) This way if I do end up losing rankings in Google for whatever reason, it doesn't mean the end of my business/website.

These days intelligent marketing & brand building across a range of sources are probably even more important than pure, techincal SEO.

 

[Sussexite]

The same amount of potential traffic is there.

It will just take some slightly different skills to get hold of that traffic.

And if some other folks give up along the way, that means a further opportunity to do better for everyone who isn't already ranking #1 for all their chosen keywords.

It's a chance to move upwards for many of us here I reckon.

 

[Marcoose]

Finding an alternative to and a mass boycott of Google Analytics would hurt Google quite a bit in the long term I should think, as the sort of data gathered from this tool alone must provide a hell of a lot of statistics to aid ranking in the search results?

Good luck with a mass boycott of such a quality, reputable, VERY popular and FREE analytical tool though.

I meant a boycott of the search engine.