But it works the other way around too. If the system is gameable, the system will only be successful until the gamers change.
That's Google's problem in the eternal arms race of search. Google identifies a property that good content has (inbound links, keywords in the url, age of domain), which improves the rankings for a while until the spammers figure it out and morph their content to match. And then we're left in the wasteland that everybody has to do SEO just to keep up with the junk peddlers.
I have an irrational hatred towards SEO. People should stop investing money and time in trying to influence an algorithm that constantly changes and actually invest that time and money in creating better content or a better service that people actually want.
It will also make for happier web developers because we won't get stupid clients come in and ask for us to do some crazy stuff they read in a pdf somewhere online on a guru's website ... btw.. stay away from whoever calls himself a guru (SEO guru, code guru .. what-not-guru)
>I have an irrational hatred towards SEO. People should stop investing money and time in trying to influence an algorithm that constantly changes and actually invest that time and money in creating better content or a better service that people actually want.
The problem with this approach is that it's entirely possible to invest a lot of time creating wonderful content people want to consume and then have it fester in obscurity because no-one gets the chance to see it.
And it will also cut down on the amount of link and content spam generated (under the hood of SEO) making things better for everyone. But this is what happens with open systems. Some people start gaming the system, others suffer as a result of it and then everyone starts doing it.
EDIT: After reading other posts in this thread, I can certainly say that I have always shared your anger towards SEO. Web is an open resource for everyone to communicate and share knowledge on. I hate when some people just come in and start abusing it for their own gain at the cost of others. Down here someone is discussing about linkwheels and link pyramids. While spamming away this shit, they don't realize that they are making this open space dirty. While they make profits from their clients and their clients make some short term profit, someone else has to do the cleanup part and waste time behind this. Its like running around in a library and filling in the shelves with junk content and advertisement. It overshadows and make it difficult to find the real content.
I remember seeing a sales page for a backlink generating script a while back, before the penguin update. They had a section with the heading "Can this hurt my traffic in any way?" saying something the lines of "Of course not! If it could, your competitors could do this to you to destroy your ranking, and google wouldn't let that happen."
Is this obviously not the case anymore? You could easily cause a lot of grief to smaller startup websites by setting up a server to constantly generate spammy links at them. And maybe I should delete this comment before it inspires someone to be a jackass.
This is a real issue and it's being taken much too lightly; I think Google should ignore incoming from sites with an over the top [outgoing links to distinct domains]/[original content] ratio. So site directories, those 'how much is my site worth' sites, made for adsense blogs etc. It's very easy to get millions of worthless / spammy links for a site and it does ruin the Google standing. You also cannot mail all of them; a) it would be a fulltime job b) they don't care; they won't remove the links anyway, because that would be a fulltime job for them.
I always thought Google was smart about this and witch-hunts will not have an effect. But seems like that’s not the case.
In any case relying on a sing provider for the majority of the traffic with a plan B to survive a disaster is a great learning. One that we always forget when we are sailing the success boat.
hi, during summer i'm going to give a talk at a digital media conference here in austria http://summit.werbeplanung.at/2013/franz-enzenhofer/, the tagline "fire your linkbuilding agency, especially if you are in a competitive vertical" i'm not going into full detail here as it's mostly still in my head, but the argument will go something like this (oh, and as an additional restriction, i won't use any hollow terms like algo-update, pinguin, panda, caffeine, magic unicorn, mayday, ... as these terms kill all and any serious discussion)
1. for SEO success you need links
2. but not a fixed amount, but growth over time
3. paying a linkbuilding agency enables link growth over time
4. as long as you pay
5. if you stop paying, link growth will stop
5a. probably your links will decline
6. in the meantime you haven't developed any assets
(know-how, connections, brand-recognition, internal
ressources (people)) that enables natural or do-it-
yourself link growth
7. you depleted your ressources (money) for external quick-fixes
8. you are dependent on your external agency
9. this is not a healthy business relationship, but something else
10. called addiction
solution:
a. if you are a customer / addict: go cold turkey,
start from scratch (link-building wise)
b. if you are a link-building agency: change-or-die
Hey! OP of the article here. And good call - you may be right.
HOWEVER, if you download the eBook and don't think it's one of the best free resources you've ever received, let me know and I'll send you $10 via PayPal for the hassle. ;-)
But, again, point taken. I could probably make more tactful use of the popup.
I work with a very good online marketer who runs an agency between New Zealand and the UK at my co-working space. With their UK clients they saw a lot of flagging over a year ago so adjusted their practices and moved on, this hasn't happened much in NZ yet. He predicts a massive amount of bloodletting here in NZ as google are only just starting to pay attention and flag sites for doing dodgy link building and, apparently, that's what most local SEO's here do.
Am a SEO guy here- been doing this thing since 2-3 years ago. To myself from what can be seen from the post itself it appears that the SEO company that the OP's been using is actually doing a pretty good job- Drop on 80% of traffic with anchor texts that don't vary that much. What the SEO company have probably done is probably to just go ahead and blast links directly at the site with automated tools[SeNuke and the likes] It could have been easily averted had there been layering and tier-ing of links done and varying anchor texts and keyword variations. Your aim of getting links that also drive traffic is actually a very good idea, since it'd definitely boost the credibility of the site itself.
However I see people on here clobbering the idea of having link farms. Of course nowadays Google have been on a roll de-indexing major link networks (ALN, BMR and the likes). Public link networks can be used, but they cannot be seen as a long-term solution. A more sustainable option would be to build your own blog farms and link those to your main sites as funnel. Those could also serve as a very good platform of tier 1 links to do automated blasting to.
Just sharing my link strategy. And OP good job at doing a relaunch. Did you manage to use the Disavow link to take away the similar links with similar link anchors?
Nice to see a SEO article around here from time to time.
Please don't call yourself an "SEO guy" and then tell the OP to build what is effectively a very poor, easily identifiable, link wheel.
If you think that's a 'sustainable' tactic then I suspect you won't still be in the SEO industry in a further 2-3 years time. All you'll be doing is waiting for the next Google algo update to kill your clients rankings.
To your question: Haven't started using the disavow tool quite yet, no. When we really went through and did our initial clean-up, it was before the tool was released. I need to go back through the audit we did and tag / disavow links that are potentially hurting us.
But it's still difficult: which links are hurting, and which are providing great link juice? You can guess from the anchors given that's the majority of the problem / penalty, but sometimes it might be a better approach to build new links with varied anchor to a page and - once you start ranking again - have it be even stronger as you haven't hashed all your backlinks.
And I agree. I'd love to see more SEO posts here on HN. :-)
OP here. And not necessarily. You can be "over-optimized" without being spammy.
Over-optimized refers to having your SEO optimized to rank for a very specific, targeted term. Take "trolling motors" as that's the site of mine that was penalized.
Even if I built all my links via white hat, legi methods - but the anchor text of all the links to my home page said "trolling motors" - I'd likely be penalized. That's because in a naturally linking backlink profile, people would link with a wide variety of different words, not just "trolling motors". Because the concentration is so focused, it's almost a guarantee that someone was trying to game the system. Google algorithm updates like Penguin have really started cracking down where's it's obvious the owner is trying to rank for a word by optimizing the links, title, headings, copy in a way that appears dramatically non-natural.
Often, however, spammy link campaigns are also over optimized as well.
I would take it to mean that they basically went too far past the gray area of "legitimate" SEO in any or all areas. Spammy links, low quality links on "link farm" sites, keyword abuse, etc.
Essentially the moral of the story is to pay attention to SEO and do it the right way. Cheating the system may work now, but the next iteration of Penguin may end up getting you.
1. And what would the right way be? Is there a right way to influence a search engine's results? I find it to be wrong/deceiving from the very beginning. The only acceptable things in my opinion are:
* using clean urls, for ease of typing/reading/sharing
* using proper semantic html tags to structure content. I don't really know if search engines look for them but having content neatly structured will help people get the most of a website (especially people with disabilities; screen readers and other accessibility enhancing software)
2. Penguin update... what about other search engines? Shouldn't a SEO "guru" tackle other search engines as well? What if google "dies" tomorrow? I know it's very unlikely, but as programmers we strive to cover all possible issues/scenarios/errors.. why don't SEO "gurus" do the same?
I'm sorry if I come across as offensive but I really don't understand this hype regarding SEO, and more importantly why clients chuck their money towards something that in my opinion is superfluous.
Also, how would you quantify the success of a SEO campaign, how do you differentiate from traffic/sales/success generated by the content of your website and the one generated by a SEO campaign? (I am not being a smart-ass here, I am genuinely curious as I have no idea how you would do that!)
I worked for one of the largest SEO firms in the country; we built almost all of our links using BuildMyRank (a super-spammy service that thought it was invincible). When BMR went down, I looked at the books I was working with and realized I was personally responsible for the plummeting ranks of companies that had paid about $1 million over the past year for SEO work. All of that was pretty much worthless now.
Account managers promised that they would get the ranks back, and then we went to work building more links. Using Linkvana, which is basically the exact same thing. I didn't last long at that company.
Lol BuildMyRank and LinkVana. Good old days huh when you could just buy links from public networks. Nowadays people are getting hung up on SAPE and the likes. The best way that's the safest way IMO is to build your very own link network for provate use only. These would most definitely serve as a solid tier 1 of links and then do the blasting and whatnots to those. Makes the entire structure more stable
This is a prime example of a concept called "marketing debt." Your link building efforts didn't match the risk profile for your business and you got burned. For a better explanation, http://joshuaziering.com/why-marketing-debt-is-expensive/
[+] [-] davidroberts|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T-hawk|13 years ago|reply
That's Google's problem in the eternal arms race of search. Google identifies a property that good content has (inbound links, keywords in the url, age of domain), which improves the rankings for a while until the spammers figure it out and morph their content to match. And then we're left in the wasteland that everybody has to do SEO just to keep up with the junk peddlers.
[+] [-] smalboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RutZap|13 years ago|reply
It will also make for happier web developers because we won't get stupid clients come in and ask for us to do some crazy stuff they read in a pdf somewhere online on a guru's website ... btw.. stay away from whoever calls himself a guru (SEO guru, code guru .. what-not-guru)
[+] [-] lenazegher|13 years ago|reply
The problem with this approach is that it's entirely possible to invest a lot of time creating wonderful content people want to consume and then have it fester in obscurity because no-one gets the chance to see it.
[+] [-] pyvek|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: After reading other posts in this thread, I can certainly say that I have always shared your anger towards SEO. Web is an open resource for everyone to communicate and share knowledge on. I hate when some people just come in and start abusing it for their own gain at the cost of others. Down here someone is discussing about linkwheels and link pyramids. While spamming away this shit, they don't realize that they are making this open space dirty. While they make profits from their clients and their clients make some short term profit, someone else has to do the cleanup part and waste time behind this. Its like running around in a library and filling in the shelves with junk content and advertisement. It overshadows and make it difficult to find the real content.
[+] [-] papa_bear|13 years ago|reply
Is this obviously not the case anymore? You could easily cause a lot of grief to smaller startup websites by setting up a server to constantly generate spammy links at them. And maybe I should delete this comment before it inspires someone to be a jackass.
[+] [-] joemoon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tluyben2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cherian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parennoob|13 years ago|reply
I'm not so sure this guy has learned 'how not to be spammy'.
[+] [-] spiredigital|13 years ago|reply
HOWEVER, if you download the eBook and don't think it's one of the best free resources you've ever received, let me know and I'll send you $10 via PayPal for the hassle. ;-)
But, again, point taken. I could probably make more tactful use of the popup.
[+] [-] te_chris|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Negitivefrags|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike_ivanov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smalboy|13 years ago|reply
However I see people on here clobbering the idea of having link farms. Of course nowadays Google have been on a roll de-indexing major link networks (ALN, BMR and the likes). Public link networks can be used, but they cannot be seen as a long-term solution. A more sustainable option would be to build your own blog farms and link those to your main sites as funnel. Those could also serve as a very good platform of tier 1 links to do automated blasting to.
Just sharing my link strategy. And OP good job at doing a relaunch. Did you manage to use the Disavow link to take away the similar links with similar link anchors?
Nice to see a SEO article around here from time to time.
[+] [-] bmilleare|13 years ago|reply
If you think that's a 'sustainable' tactic then I suspect you won't still be in the SEO industry in a further 2-3 years time. All you'll be doing is waiting for the next Google algo update to kill your clients rankings.
[+] [-] spiredigital|13 years ago|reply
To your question: Haven't started using the disavow tool quite yet, no. When we really went through and did our initial clean-up, it was before the tool was released. I need to go back through the audit we did and tag / disavow links that are potentially hurting us.
But it's still difficult: which links are hurting, and which are providing great link juice? You can guess from the anchors given that's the majority of the problem / penalty, but sometimes it might be a better approach to build new links with varied anchor to a page and - once you start ranking again - have it be even stronger as you haven't hashed all your backlinks.
And I agree. I'd love to see more SEO posts here on HN. :-)
[+] [-] nkorth|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiredigital|13 years ago|reply
Over-optimized refers to having your SEO optimized to rank for a very specific, targeted term. Take "trolling motors" as that's the site of mine that was penalized.
Even if I built all my links via white hat, legi methods - but the anchor text of all the links to my home page said "trolling motors" - I'd likely be penalized. That's because in a naturally linking backlink profile, people would link with a wide variety of different words, not just "trolling motors". Because the concentration is so focused, it's almost a guarantee that someone was trying to game the system. Google algorithm updates like Penguin have really started cracking down where's it's obvious the owner is trying to rank for a word by optimizing the links, title, headings, copy in a way that appears dramatically non-natural.
Often, however, spammy link campaigns are also over optimized as well.
Hope this helps!
[+] [-] jakejake|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xpose2000|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RutZap|13 years ago|reply
* using clean urls, for ease of typing/reading/sharing
* using proper semantic html tags to structure content. I don't really know if search engines look for them but having content neatly structured will help people get the most of a website (especially people with disabilities; screen readers and other accessibility enhancing software)
2. Penguin update... what about other search engines? Shouldn't a SEO "guru" tackle other search engines as well? What if google "dies" tomorrow? I know it's very unlikely, but as programmers we strive to cover all possible issues/scenarios/errors.. why don't SEO "gurus" do the same?
I'm sorry if I come across as offensive but I really don't understand this hype regarding SEO, and more importantly why clients chuck their money towards something that in my opinion is superfluous.
Also, how would you quantify the success of a SEO campaign, how do you differentiate from traffic/sales/success generated by the content of your website and the one generated by a SEO campaign? (I am not being a smart-ass here, I am genuinely curious as I have no idea how you would do that!)
[+] [-] austenallred|13 years ago|reply
Account managers promised that they would get the ranks back, and then we went to work building more links. Using Linkvana, which is basically the exact same thing. I didn't last long at that company.
Be very, very careful outsourcing SEO.
[+] [-] smalboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enigmabomb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DelvarWorld|13 years ago|reply
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