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What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

mattcutts.com

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Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#81

Post by joonix »

Silhouette wrote: post #67
programminggeek wrote: post #27

I think the biggest problem that Google can't fix is that they treat links as a voting mechanism, and that voting mechanism has value. So, there is a big economic incentive to "buy votes" by buying links. As long as there is a financial incentive to ranking well in google and that the mechanism to rank better is to get links, people with money will buy links in the same way they buy influence in the media, politics,…

I think the biggest problem that Google can't fix is that they treat links as a voting mechanism They treat public links as a voting mechanism. Unfortunately, in the era of social networking, and maybe outside of their own Google+ network, they probably don't even see the majority of high quality links based on honest personal recommendations any more. Ultimately, I think this is going to be a good thing. Relying on…

I wonder if Google is buying linkshare data from Facebook and Twitter. It seems obvious that they should.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#82

Post by arbuge »

trevin wrote: post #66
tlogan wrote: post #43

This negative SEO is huge problem now and I'm concern about it. What some bloggers are now doing is buying links to destroy competition. They don't even need to "order" black hat. They just go to fivver and order some of "panda optimized" gigs for $5 (these gigs just hurt - they dont help). And whola.... competition is toasted... I hope this is going to be fixed somehow. EDIT: Also is this is just an "urban legend" o…

It's a real problem. I do SEO for a living and work with hundreds of sites at a large agency. I've seen several hit with negative SEO from competitors ordering link gigs on Fiverr or asking some low quality link provider on Digital Point to build 10,000 links in a short period of time. This has killed rankings for a few sites that I've worked with. It is really easy to get thousands of spam/porn sites to link to a co…

That case study is truly frightening. People spend years of their lives and millions of dollars to get their sites to rank higher in search engines... and then this can happen.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#83

Post by OGinparadise »

arbuge wrote: post #76

Not to be too dramatic about this, but I basically feel that the moment it became possible to negative SEO a competitor for ~$5 via services like fiverr et al is the moment that will be remembered as the end of Google as a dominant search engine, or at least the end of a Pagerank-centric algorithm for its search.

You don't understand. Google has made huge sites immune to this, and small sites that suffer are labeled as "spam, low quality and shallow" sites by Matt Cutts & Co.

Until recently Google was winning the propaganda war, now not so sure. On web forums people are openly talking about search manipulation to increase advertising via Adwords and ad clicks. http://searchengineland.com/google-matt-cutts-penguin-update...

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#84

Post by arbuge »

nulluk wrote: post #16
swinnipeg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Penguin opened the world to scalable negative SEO. This is now a common tactic in competitive markets. If you rank well it is worth worrying about.

I can't deny negative SEO is a worry and yes whilst Google opened up the doors for it they also recognised it and have started providing ways to hopefully protect yourself. (Disavowing links etc) If your in a competitive market where you have to worry about negative SEO so much so that it is making an impact on your SERPs then I'm sure the web spam team would be more than interested in hearing from you

So how do you disavow thousands of links a day? That's what a negative SEO could buy for a few bucks on fiverr...

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#85

Post by [deleted] »

joonix wrote: post #80
arbuge wrote: post #76

Not to be too dramatic about this, but I basically feel that the moment it became possible to negative SEO a competitor for ~$5 via services like fiverr et al is the moment that will be remembered as the end of Google as a dominant search engine, or at least the end of a Pagerank-centric algorithm for its search.

What do you propose as an alternative system?

[deleted]

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#86

Post by Silhouette »

joonix wrote: post #81
Silhouette wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest problem that Google can't fix is that they treat links as a voting mechanism They treat public links as a voting mechanism. Unfortunately, in the era of social networking, and maybe outside of their own Google+ network, they probably don't even see the majority of high quality links based on honest personal recommendations any more. Ultimately, I think this is going to be a good thing. Relying on…

I wonder if Google is buying linkshare data from Facebook and Twitter. It seems obvious that they should.

That's an intriguing idea, assuming that the likes of Facebook and Twitter would want to share that data with Google and would be able to do so without running into privacy concerns given that the links were presumably not public if Google couldn't see them in the first place.

I've been wondering whether something like this might explain how one of my sites, which has about two incoming public links in the entire universe and probably a page rank of 0 but seems to attract a decent level of FB/Twitter interest, hits the first SERP at least once for numerous queries in its niche.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#87

Post by aaron695 »

austenallred wrote: post #20
halcyondaze wrote: post #12

Black hatters these days don't really even care about long-term rankings, they're more about exploiting the inadequacies in the algorithm in the first month or so of a site's live. Build it, rank it, bank cash, and burn it out. That's the modus operandi right now...I don't see this update changing much of that. It's going to be great for those of us building out quality sites though!

Exactly. If you really want to know what black-hatters do and how they get around Google's filters, here it is: 1. Buy a ton of domains 2. Put up picture-based landing pages on those domains. The user only really sees pictures. 3. Put up or spin content with relevant keywords, put it underneath the images. Google only sees a couple pictures (it doesn't know what they are) and a bunch of really relevant content. 4. Bu…

>Put up picture-based landing pages on those domains....

I would have though this is a no brainer for Google to catch these days. I though text under pictures would be like white text on white and would set off immediate alarm bells.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#88

Post by austenallred »

aaron695 wrote: post #87
austenallred wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If you really want to know what black-hatters do and how they get around Google's filters, here it is: 1. Buy a ton of domains 2. Put up picture-based landing pages on those domains. The user only really sees pictures. 3. Put up or spin content with relevant keywords, put it underneath the images. Google only sees a couple pictures (it doesn't know what they are) and a bunch of really relevant content. 4. Bu…

>Put up picture-based landing pages on those domains.... I would have though this is a no brainer for Google to catch these days. I though text under pictures would be like white text on white and would set off immediate alarm bells.

You can use the "more" tags, similar to wordpress, and it still appears legitimate.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#89

Post by thejosh »

nostromo wrote: post #53
tlogan wrote: post #43

This negative SEO is huge problem now and I'm concern about it. What some bloggers are now doing is buying links to destroy competition. They don't even need to "order" black hat. They just go to fivver and order some of "panda optimized" gigs for $5 (these gigs just hurt - they dont help). And whola.... competition is toasted... I hope this is going to be fixed somehow. EDIT: Also is this is just an "urban legend" o…

It's hard to know if it's a real problem because when people are caught, it's hard to know if they're lying about how a competitor did it to screw them over. Anyway, here's what someone should do: Buy a bunch of spam links on fivver for keyword "matt cutts" and point it to his domain www.mattcutts.com. (He's one of the few people on Earth with plausible deniability regarding Google manipulation.) If you successfully…

Difference between matt cutts and everyone else is that he probably has thousands of sites (maybe hundreds of thousands, plus Google links) already pointing to the site.

Comparing a "big" site like that to a small business who might have $10-20 spent against them to negative SEO doesn't really compare.

It's like comparing McDonalds to a local burger joint.

Re: What to expect in SEO in the coming months [video]

#90

Post by charliepinglass »

codeka wrote: post #73
OGinparadise wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immunity? There's no immunity (supposedly) inside the Google search algorithm Almost certain that there is. After a certain internal Google score (?) it appears like no update will penalize you with things like 70% traffic drop out of the blue. Big brands are largely not effected by Google's many updates and even when they buy links etc they are forgiven very fast. Regular sites on the other hand are told generic non…

Do you have anything to back that claim up? You're on hn every time there's a Google story talking about how they're killing smaller sites, acting monopolistic, violating anti-trust regulations or whatever, what is your motivation?

Not the guy you're asking, but thought I'd answer. This may not be referring to true "immunity", but Matt Cutts did say this around the time Panda was first released:

"And we actually came up with a classifier to say, okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side, and the low-quality sites are over on this side."

http://www.wired.com/business/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-f...

So there is something that is specifically recorded for well-known sites that likely prevents them from receiving the same treatment as other, smaller sites. And anyone who works in SEO can tell you that not since Vince has it been just about links.

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