Check Your Backlinks for Penalties

Some see today’s search results as tumultuous and uncertain. New sites can break out of the sandbox or completely avoid it altogether and be listed with the big boys without the site age and backlinks. Page rank is being beaten out by content siloed websites with great internal link structure.

For some it is like a wave that the surfer waits for to ride only to be dumped into the sea. For the many that do everything right and then get slammed in the SERPS, there is a reason. These machines that index the web are running on particular algorithms and even though the SERPS may seem like a result of random placement, they are not like 52 card pick-up at all.

The recent trend of big search has been commented upon often on this website. It seems that all that we knew is in a continuous shake-up, but this is not the case because the big search players are moving to perfect the art of delivering truly organic results. Currently great content and internal linking strategy is being rewarded and old spammy schemes are being penalized.

On one hand you have rewards for good and on the other you have penalties for being linked to a site that has bad marks against it. New site owners that have true professionals working the SEO of their sites are enjoying fantastic results. Some websites however, are experiencing penalties by association. Even with established, aged sites we are seeing them being dumped off the first page and sometimes even far lower.

What is it? What is going on is just what I predicted in big search’s strive for organic results. Backlinks, whether contained in news articles, press releases, or raw incoming links need to be checked. Right now, a new link with anchor text placed on a penalized website will tank your site on any search for that keyword or keyword phrase in the given anchor text. New potential links have to be checked and a page rank check is hardly enough.

It seems page rank is an item that is setting idle for now and while it is a factor in the SERP placement, its value is stagnant. A page with high page rank can be penalized to death and you would never know it. Google and Yahoo are very similar in their algo’s regarding the penalty placement in the SERPS. The bar graphs on tracking software shows parallel movement in these two search engines. Bing is another story and we are still trying to figure them out as they seem more stable but a bit also harder to see movement.

So folks, it is your links! If you track your backlinks, you can begin to undo some damage. Visit the Seopenalty.com site and try out their service. You will be surprised at the sites that are penalized heavily for spam and related tactics that have been allowed on the sites. Focus on Anchor Text both within and outside your site. Remember: If it is too easy to develop a link = RED FLAG. As always, develop quality content and keep it fresh. Use the social networks to prop up your links and pages.

Have fun because without challenge there can be no great achievement. Ride the waves and stay on top with a successful strategy.

SEO – Page Rank Fading – Back to the Future – Content

Pie Graph of Search Market Share - link juice provided for SEOmoz.com

The Static Internet was a simpler place where one could enter, search and find information. Back-Links once regarded in this simpler era, as a vote of confidence in a new an emerging internet have been exploited and abused beyond reasonable validity. Links were the way to Page Rank and too easily acquired in the link free-for-all’s all over the web. The majority of the activity was inorganic and sought out by website operators to self-induce better rankings by trading links, etc. This type of self promotion was beginning to pollute the organic results sought for by the search engines. The original back-link idea was predicated upon end users that enjoyed a particular site would vote for it with a back-link. This old idea was all but destroyed by the linked crazed site owners seeking self promotion and the black hat exploiters. The search engines met this challenge with their own methods to filter out these self generated links and the spam that threatened the user experience of the free search engines. The method Google used for tabulating the old link method was called Page Rank.

Page Rank was a system that attributed value to sites based upon the back-linking and popularity as demonstrated by incoming links vs. outbound links. A mathematical equation was used to discern the Page Rank of a given site. This worked for some time but the inorganic use of back-linking was a continuing cancer of which big search spent a lot of resources to control. Page Rank seemed to be the honest vehicle in a dishonest world by which to deliver organic results to the masses.

Big search worked at filtering the junk out of the rankings. Good, unique and fresh content was rewarded not only by the human experience of organic back-linking, but with a higher PR afforded by the search engines. The sites that were deemed “authoritative” received a higher PR. These along with the blogs and forums were positioned by PR higher than sites with less content. The educational sites and non-profits, the respective “.org” and “.edu” sites received higher PR. This was reflected in the SERPS.

A couple of things began to happen with technology and more folks logging onto broadband connections, etc. A more sophisticated end user began to demand a straight doorway to a more personal experience. Blogs were still popular seemingly to spite PR. The natural inclination of free commerce is always for profit. Big search had its eye on pay-per-click advertising and began to feel threatened by building up PR on some websites. Big search did not want anyone selling back-links to the highest bidder. So as the drive for profit rules, some websites that had gained high PR because of great content, being they forums or blog sites with ever-changing content, started selling their links to lower ranking websites. This would have undermined that natural and organic model that propelled Google to the top and made big search the doorway to the internet. Big search wanted to control this selling of links so it moved to devalue the very things it held high, fresh and changing content. Rich content sites & Blogs were downgraded in PR sometime in early ’07 for fear of link selling. Many great sites were whacked in half. I had a few websites that went from PR4 to PR2 in one swoop.

Something else took place of the old PR method however. The results in the SERPS for Google remained for my regional results, but in the national SERPS that are mixed into the results; my authoritative sites fell against some of the larger sites with less content. This had to do with PR and another type of filter or manipulation by the search engines. The end result was a balance for a while until the black hats began to dominate the Adwords and Adsense programs with spam websites and garbage infiltrated the ranks of the SERPS. For quite some time Google’s own model was threatened by the hijacking of its own money making advertising programs. It took some time for Google to get off the profit taking and clean up its act.

Finally, Google policed its results by dumping paid advertisers in order to keep the world of search organic and honest. This had to be done as real people were getting tired of the experience of searching through the SERPS for what should have appeared on top. Black hat paid advertisers were destroying organic search. Thank you Google, even if it was a little late. (I wrote about this before the dumping of advertisers with great angst.) Google’s competitors started to sound off about the actions they were taking to improve their offerings.

In the current state of Googling, PR is outranked by content. What does this say about PR? PR is just an element of the criteria that is weighed for the real ranking, that of the SERPS. PR has its place as it does rule in many areas of search, but when it comes to content and a regional element, PR is not the deciding factor in getting listed in the SERPS.

Shall we consider PR as a fading element of yesterday’s methodology? I think so. I think we are seeing the reemergence of the human element in social media. PR was built upon skewed backlink math and it is not a real measure of a site’s popularity. Social media sites are inundated with garbage and the search engines are easily filtering out the good from the spam. It seems that big search is set-up to do this in an efficient way. So called “NOFOLLOW” links on sites like Twitter are noticed by Google and position well as referred links. The Google machine sees these links and they get into the results in the SERPS. The Google machine also sees content with its artificial intelligence that above all, will reward the true purveyors of interesting information. Real people are beginning to be harnesses to “tweet,” “dig” or “bookmark” their favorites on these social sites.

Google will continue to regard these sites as very important as they represent a threat to big search. As social media continues, it will refine itself into many doorways for many end users on the internet. Big search has positioning itself to not only harness this new media, but to build its own brand of social media. The networking that is currently in place has big search shaking, but there is hope. Search has realized that because it is so big, more leaches can suck its blood (and yours) and it can fall and be hurt terribly if it does not return to the simple organic results of yesterday.

“A hunger for interactivity will prevail…”

Social Media Growing like a weed - link juice provided for wpsmallbusiness.com

Social sites will also continue to refine, but not for the same reasons big search refines. A hunger for interactivity will prevail as real people can interact with each other. This service is unique to social media while search is a more private deal. Social media has its own limits set by its users as to what is visible and what is held back from the public. This is specifically why the social attempts like Google’s own “Buzz,” where the push for one to open their own personal contacts into the open air will not work. People want to keep some areas of their internet experience private and the mix of social with email contacts will be rejected by the masses. For instance: Just about everyone that has a job would want for their personal ramblings and excesses to be kept from public view.

The mix continues and it seems that big search will either rise to the occasion with a truly human experience that attracts people organically, or a new type of social search will enter to assume some of the traffic and to act as a multi-faceted and different kind of doorway to the internet.

-Bob W

SEO – A Way Around the Sandbox Effect

A Way Around the Sandbox Effect

The sandbox effect has been written about by myself and many others that have followed it since ’03-’04 by many in the SEO profession. This filtering out of new sites that are “un-trusted” by the search engines are relegated to sit in obscurity until they can be verified and let out into the SERPS (search engine page results). This is a period of time that is an average of six months and can be longer or shorter according to unknown criteria employed by the search engines.

In the public service I want to comment on my successes of late in getting new sites broken out and noticed, crawled and placed in the SERPS. There are several methods I have used to do this and it is working quite effectively. Below are elements that aid in this effort and will work well to get you noticed fast. I will expound upon them after listing them below.

1. Google Webmaster Tools are essential in getting you listed on a new site on the big kahoona. You should have an existing Webmaster Tool Account with another site that is already listed.

2. A very active Blog is most effective. By active, I mean that you are posting well written articles that contain careful keyword usage. The Blog/Website should be carefully crafted with in-page optimization and cross linking for exciting ping-backs.

3. Social network submission on a daily basis for approximately a week with crafty title tags. Automate your social submissions so that all is done for you so that you can continue your written barrage of daily written articles regarding your business.

4. Write professionally for a living. Your payoff will be amazing if you can produce interesting copy about your company or offering. Do not worry about those that will try to mimic what you do. Be a trend setter not a follower.

5. Submit to smaller search engines along with the big ones.

The above four elements sound so simple to do but they are a challenge to some folks. Google Webmaster Tools is a way to get your site trusted if you already own a website. You can get noticed very quickly. Google will not always list your site as being indexed right away but who cares as long as you get into the SERPS, you will have something with which you can begin to improve upon.

A Blog is a way to get your site noticed quickly with a lot of pages. Quantity is very important because you will not go unnoticed. Your site will achieve what all the lazy black hats want for their sites but are now having trouble doing. There is no substitute for site copy and this is demonstrated by all of the angst I feel when my work is plagiarized. Content is the key to your success.

You need to write like a journalist or you need to hire a writer that can produce good clean and interesting site copy on a daily basis. This is war and the better writers are going to prevail in this battle. I received an email yesterday from a black hat offering software that “legally” scrapes content and automatically posts it on websites. The black hats are scrambling for content because it works. Links are secondary and Google is cracking down on the link spammers even having offered a new snitch program to help them in this regard.

Social networks are the new avenue to get listed. These sites are networked and everybody is using them. You can automate your social submissions so that your new articles are automatically posted on them. If you hand submit, pay close attention to the “title” tag as you want a unique tag for every submission and you want it to be relative to the keywords usage within your article and you want your pages to be titled along with your site at the biggest audience.

While big search is busy filtering out new sites, a large amount of the smaller search engines are taking listings and posting them immediately. Use this avenue to GET NOTICED!

-Bob W

Article Submission – One of the Best SEO Efforts

Article Submission Back-links are so important in SEO and in getting your site to the top of the SERPS so that they can never be neglected in your SEO efforts.  Just as important is the original copy from professional writing contained on your website.   One of the trends in the last several years has been website owners without the ability to produce interesting and unique site copy would trade a one-way back-link for submission of a unique article submitted and posted on their site. Some blogs are essentially an electronic version of this same bartering system or article submission for link exchange.  Either way, it is a great deal for the person gifted in writing original copy in article format.  To gain a quality back-link (backlink) in a one-way fashion this article submission trade for a backlink is a fantastic way of gaining exposure. The absolute requirement for content, content, content has been known since search began and articles for links are a great way to gain exposure on the Search Engines.

From an SEO standpoint, article submission without the offer of an allowable backlink is virtually worthless, as Search runs on backlinks as well as unique content. Each backlink is a vote for your site.  Some sites and end users see backlinking as spam, but in the trade-off for unique content articles, this is not spam.  Spam is a worthless blurp with an attached backlink posted by a hack.  The ability to produce site copy in a unique article at will, and then trading it for a one-way backlink will certainly anger those without talent. Those that must trade links for unique content articles know their place as publishers.  This is a good thing!  Never call a good unique content article with an allowable link spam.  The backlink is spam if it is not allowed or if it is not a quality content article. Take to the internet and search for those who would publish your unique content article in exchange for a backlink.  Look over the site and take notice to se how the unique content article will be used.  Look at the SERPS for the site.  Look on Alexa.com for the sites linking into the site.  These sites may be associated with yours in the future.  If each unique content article is given its own page, along with whatever advertising links are added, and the site passes the sniff test, this is the optimum trade-off for your site.