Archives for 2013

My son played Hockey as a kid and later went on to ref it for a time.  It’s a great game – if potentially a bit violent.  You’re wondering what this has to do with Google, right?  Stay with me.

The rules of Hockey are pretty well established, but there is this tendency in some venues to be lenient on enforcement.  As a referee you are given “broad latitude” (code for unlimited) to call what you want – or not.

One especially dangerous rule violation is “checking” from behind – that’s running into someone violently from behind with the intent to take them out of the play, out of the game, or way worse.  There is no continent on Earth where a cross-check is legal, but there are many individual games where it is overlooked pretty routinely.

Which gets us back to Google …

The webmaster guidelines ALWAYS (how do I shout louder than bold caps?) stated that “linking to achieve ranking” was not acceptable.  Period.  No exceptions.  It’s cross-checking, but unenforced until January 2011.  Then there came a new ref.

Has the game changed?  Yes.  The rules?  NO!  The rules DID NOT change, only enforcement, and yes, that did change, A LOT!  If we can not be honest with ourselves and each other about this one point, we just can’t move forward: the rules did not change.

Look, I least of all will be the one to fault anyone for playing the game the way it was enforced rather than the way it was ruled.  It can be (successfully?) argued that I invented some of the most successful Google-games, but if you recall closely, I did mention at some point the risk and the rational preparation every business owner, game players especially, should make should the ref (suddenly) decide to call foul.

That time has long since come.  The old games are done and it is now time to adopt new game.  Is this bad news?  I don’t think so.

Ironically, as a widely recognized “Google game player” I don’t view the post-Panda Google as much different than pre-Panda.  Sure, the “game” is no longer trivial (yes, that really IS the right word), but this is definitely weeding out a lot of competition and if you are willing to stay the course and commit to a “real” business … there is never a better time to do so.

I know.  Ironic, right?

• Link spam: dead.
• PageRank Sculpting: largely ineffective.
• Leslie: happy.

Weird.

When I entered the 3rd grade I was faced with this thing called “new math”.  The post-Panda age is just “new math”, but instead of PageRank math, we finally get to focus on real business metrics – kinda like I did for 20 years before Google.

So, yeah, I’m okay with the new Google.  I really loved cross-checking my opponents back in the day, but I’m okay playing “by the rules” too.  Leave the cheap shots to the brutes that don’t have a real game, play a smart game, and any Google will do just fine.

It used to be that every link was a good link so “back in the day” [pre-2011], pretty much any SEO was better than no SEO.  This meant that “taking action” was the primary factor driving success.  Even just doing a bunch dumb stuff, some of it would stick long enough to make enough money to get trained to do some good stuff to stick longer to do more stuff and … ultimately … be successful.

That was then.

Today, fast forward just a bit over 2 years and not all links are good links.  In fact, links are just as likely, or maybe even more likely!, to be toxic rather than helpful.  Starting out dumb and letting search traffic pay for an education is not really a viable path any more.  The dumb stuff you do now will almost certainly not work well enough to pay for much more than a few Kindle books and (worse) it will haunt your rankings for all the days of your (site’s) life.

Massive action is no longer the path to success.

And this is not just about Google.  Every online marketing platform – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, you name it – have to combat SPAM, but the problem is especially significant for Google.  The problem for the new marketer is recognizing what is, and is not, SPAM.  For someone new, all SEO pretty much sounds alike and the continuing siren song of the “grays” and the “blacks” that easy money is just one magic software button click away, is more than most people can resist … until they get burned a couple times.

If you can make the judgment between the good stuff and the bad stuff, that makes you – more-or-less by definition – NOT a “new marketer” and this post might (but only might) not apply to you.  But returning to the new person … what is the right path?

In today’s SEO, “not doing” is a skill.

There are so many ways to “get it all wrong” compared to the very very few ways that are designed from the ground up to work into the foreseeable future, that “action” from a purely statistical perspective is more likely than not to cause harm!

The wrong links or the wrong content can be so toxic and taking no action at all might be the better choice.  It’s sad really.  One of the things we’ve for years coached out of our students is “analysis paralysis” and now we are installing precisely the behavior we previously tried to kill!

Earn while you learn is dead … you gotta learn first.

Way back in the day, pre-Internet, actually, pre-indoor-sanitation, the Masons were actual masons – brick layers.  Doesn’t seem like much today, but getting the dimensions of an arch just right so it didn’t collapse and kill people was just about as valuable and mysterious as SEO is today.  So much so, that it was the foundation of a cult where the only way to learn the esoteric practices of stonework was to apprentice.  This is a well know pattern – think Star Wars – for good or evil: “The Force” is learned by apprenticeship and (largely) oral tradition.

Here’s my point (yeah, I know, finally, right?)

SEO is so fraught with bad info, uncertainty and unquantified dangers, that it is (for now at least) an art only to be undertaken with a mentor … and I’m not just saying that because I are one.  🙂

Actually, I think DIY SEO might be dead or close to it, but that’s another post, for now …

The question is how do you learn SEO?  Well, you do have to actually do stuff, take action, because otherwise you don’t actually know if you’ve learned it.  So what should you do?  That’s the bitch of it.  For every 10 things you could read about or be sold, 9 of them are harmful and they ALL sound alike to the uninformed.  Bummer.  But there is an answer – in two parts.

1. Find a teacher with happy and successful students

2. Don’t start doing stuff until you’ve actually learned how

I wish my answer was different.  In fact, it used to be and I liked it way better.  But this really is my best answer today.  Sorry about that.  In a couple years, my answer might change again.  In the meantime, careful what action you do take, because Google has a very long memory.

At The SEO Braintrust, we both advise students and provide service to clients on link penalty cleanup.  Often, these folks come to us having already done one, two, three or (gasp) more reconsideration requests – denied each time of course or they wouldn’t be talking to us.

In almost every case, one of the causes of recon denial is the difference between what the webmaster thinks is “natural” and what the Google SPAM team considers “natural”.  Here’s a simple rule that is generally a good one to live by:

If the link was a surprise – it’s natural.  If you knew it was coming – it likely isn’t.  Let’s consider some examples, in order from most obvious to less so.

Bookmarking, forum profiles, and blog commenting.  I shouldn’t even have to list these, but I’m still seeing them!  This stuff is just about as far outside the guidelines as you can get.

Article marketing.  Still totally obvious in my opinion, but once widely accepted and still an area where webmasters resist removing the links.  But look … it’s not like you weren’t surprised when the article you wrote and published linked to your site so how can that be “natural” or “editorial”?  Take all that crap down.  I bet money you’re not getting traffic from those sites anyway.

Blog networks.  This is just article marketing on (illegal!) steroids.  Again, how were these “earned”?  They weren’t – they were paid.  Case closed.  Kill it all!

But what about guest blogging?  Sure, the blog accepted your article as good and worthy content so if you cross your eyes just right and pretend that the whole web is hanging on your every word, you could (almost) call that keyword rich text link buried in your “about the author” paragraph an “editorial endorsement” by the blog, right?  Wrong.  First, you created the link, not the blog owner.  Second, this is entirely transactional: you gave the blog owner something of value (content) and s/he gave you a link?  That’s a non-paid link precisely how?

This is not to say that guest posting is bad!  For from it, but you should be doing if for the brand exposure, audience building, and targeted traffic, so by rights you should be using your company name or domain name and nofollowed links will work just as well for that as followed will.

By far the very safest think to do is to never syndicate anything with a link of your own in it and insist that webmasters using your content link to you only using your URL or text that would constitute a “navigational query” for your domain.

Why is this so important?  Because keyword links are!  Far from being “dead”, keyword text links are still very important to ranking – otherwise why would there be a penalty for overuse?  The difference today from pre-2011 is that now the guidelines are actually being enforced – with a vengeance!

Real natural links are not that hard to get when you do real marketing, so don’t risk your rankings on the marginal links.  Even if you don’t have a penalty today, if you’ve ever “built links” you should take a look at your link profile with “new eyes” and do some preemptive cleanup.