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Negative SEO Does Exist

webmarketingschool.com

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Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#121

Post by jacquesm »

antjanus wrote: post #111
vectorpush wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Well, besides the fact that it's his prerogative to care about his blog's search ranking, I think the implications are pretty obvious; he's suggesting that if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone, including someone who does have a commercial interest.

That's one thing another thing is that just because my blog is non-commercial doesn't mean it shouldn't rank. I monetized it recently and would like to continue making some cash off it (to cover costs and as an incentive and excuse to continue doing this). On top of that, I like to write, the more people read my shit, the more I'm excited to write. What sucks about this entire dilemma is that we're all looking at "lo…

Forgive me for being stupid, but what does google have to do with all this? It's the last source of traffic that I would think of when it comes to blogging, I could be completely wrong about this but I can't imagine that's the way to to it.

What would do it is: interesting articles, a userbase that likes what you write and passes it to their friends, a reputation for quality and useful articles, people linking to you because they found your content useful, engaging you audience and so on.

In contrast with that (which takes a long time to build up, that I will readily admit) google traffic seems so fickle.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#122

Post by spudlyo »

DontBeADick wrote: post #99
jacquesm wrote: post #2

I'm so happy google did this. For one tiny span of time the SEO world is given a taste of its own medicine. Let me explain: When I crawled geocities and re-hosted it under reocities.com I was trying to achieve something positive. I did not realize how infested geocities had become with spammers, linkfarms and other trash. Probably at least a few million of the accounts were either compromised or somehow tricked into…

I think your eagerness to pat yourself on the back has caused you to miss the main point of the article. Congrats on your geocities thing, I guess?

Your nickname reminder isn't working. Try a post-it note on your monitor.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#123

Post by rfergie »

jacquesm wrote: post #107
SquareWheel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you feel SEO can do good show me an example where an SEO achieved value creation rather than shifting around a percentage in some zero sum game. Your generalizations are really quite misguided. SEOs achieve value when they optimize sites to fit Google's guidelines, which as it happens also benefits humans. Converting Flash sites to HTML, reorganizing the URL structure to convert ?articleid=5 to /my-great-article/…

No, that does not create value. It creates the impression of creating value, but in actual fact the same number of $ are spent online so the only thing that changes is where the money is spent. Value creation is a way to get out of the zero sum game.

If a business X is 5% better than business Y (for whatever reason) and marketing helps a customer go to business X rather than business Y then value is being created.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#124

Post by cm2012 »

neurobro wrote: post #100
normloman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Negative SEO is part of the toolkit of any competent SEO professional nowadays." Yes, because sabotaging your competitors with shady spamdexing practices fits most people's definition of "professional."

It's just a natural extension of the techniques that PR firms (or before the 1940s, propagandists) have been using for centuries.

There's not really any similar techniques there, except that the tactics are a bit slimy. It's not like you can make an appeal to Google's Pathos.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#125

Post by jacquesm »

ProAm wrote: post #120
jacquesm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? If someone copies your content, go after them, sue them if you have to and out them. Make sure that they realize that if they copy your content that it will hurt. I have absolutely no idea what if any backlinks I have to my blog, nor could I care less about it. People will read it, or mayb…

| Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Because networking is everything in life. Maintaining a good reputation, providing valuable information may not pay off immediately today, but you never know what you'll need tomorrow. If you are penalized today, you have no chance at tomorrow.

But google traffic is not networking. And a link profile is not networking either, that's just a bunch of bits.

Networking is meeting and engaging people.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#126

Post by lilsunnybee »

Isofarro wrote: post #89
lilsunnybee wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that a lot of small businesses are on the internet too, whose owners often don't understand how all this stuff works, and have just hired an SEO consultant or two in the past to help improve their Google search ranking, with no ill intentions other than trying to get more visibility and improve business. My parents are two of these people actually, and changing the rules all of a sudden like Google did,…

Ignorance is not a valid defence. Yes, it's harsh, but that's what entrepreneurs sign up for when they start their own business. Directors of companies are held responsible for the decisions they made. Delegating that decision to others does not abrogate their responsibilities. If you are in the SEO industry, please stop hiding behind this. The SEO industry have had ample time and patience to clean itself up (naming…

I am not in the SEO industry, and said nothing in defense of unethical SEO practices. My parents are also very ethical people, and would only do business with others they felt were the same way. Just because someone participated in affiliate marketing in previous years, with consenting partner sites, before it was outlawed by Google, does not make them immoral and irresponsible.

And besides paying Google to exist, no one my parents ever talked to even seems to know what it takes these days to show up on Google anymore, because it's secret, so no worries because Google's moral crusade has been successful, never mind the collateral damage.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#127

Post by jacquesm »

mfjordvald wrote: post #118
jacquesm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? If someone copies your content, go after them, sue them if you have to and out them. Make sure that they realize that if they copy your content that it will hurt. I have absolutely no idea what if any backlinks I have to my blog, nor could I care less about it. People will read it, or mayb…

As someone with a blog, the size of my audience matters a lot, knowing I actually have people reading what I put out there matters a lot. Having people interact with my content or tell me it helped them sure does motivate me as well. If I lost my search engine traffic that'd account for half of my daily traffic. (only around 500-600 people so not huge) If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating.

> If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating.

Ok, that's a good reason.

But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason.

And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation.

How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of the engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#128

Post by adventured »

normloman wrote: post #75
matnewton85 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you even arguing with this? Do you have any experience with SEO? I use negative SEO regularly to drop sites out of the top 10 in Google. I only target low quality sites that shouldn't be in there anyway, but Google in all their algorithmic wisdom has ranked them, so... I knock them out. Low quality 5 page Adsense sites shouldn't outrank actual, legitimate businesses so it's just a case of click click, BOOM. I…

"Negative SEO is part of the toolkit of any competent SEO professional nowadays." Yes, because sabotaging your competitors with shady spamdexing practices fits most people's definition of "professional."

Morally it's absolutely no different than Apple running PC guy ads targeting Microsoft, Windows, and PC makers in general. It was a negative campaign meant to harm the competition by making fun of it.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#129

Post by ProAm »

jacquesm wrote: post #125
ProAm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Because networking is everything in life. Maintaining a good reputation, providing valuable information may not pay off immediately today, but you never know what you'll need tomorrow. If you are penalized today, you have no chance at tomorrow.

But google traffic is not networking. And a link profile is not networking either, that's just a bunch of bits. Networking is meeting and engaging people.

You can certainly build a network by meeting people via your blog content. If they can't find it, you'll never engage with those people.

Re: Negative SEO Does Exist

#130

Post by vectorpush »

jacquesm wrote: post #106
vectorpush wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Well, besides the fact that it's his prerogative to care about his blog's search ranking, I think the implications are pretty obvious; he's suggesting that if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone, including someone who does have a commercial interest.

I miss the bit where we have a right to traffic. That's maybe naive, but just like I don't expect customers to beat their way to my door through some act of magic I don't expect visitors to come to my website either. If I want them there I have to go and engage them. That's marketing, building customer relationships and so on. Hard work, and definitely not easy money but it is very hard to assail that from the positi…

I get what you're saying, but as far as business goes, it's just not very pragmatic to ignore the monumental impact that google can have on your hits/conversions. Your competitors certainly aren't ignoring it.
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