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

Black Hat Content Plagiarizers – Content Hijackers

Black Hat Content Plagiarizers – Content Hijackers

I wrote about the plagiarizing of content a few days ago and have an update. The website did remove my original material after a brief period of silence. It took the guy 24 hrs. to get back to me. I want to post his remarks so that everyone that reads this post can get a flavor for the arrogance with which these people operate, however I am going to honor the addendum at the bottom of the email that requires confidentiality. This is a level of basic respect and something that was certainly not afforded me in the use of my material.

I will state that the defense given for the plagiarizing of my material was that it was the fault of the software developer that produced the software that they employ to pick up and automatically post RSS feeds. I was accused of over reacting.

My response to this is that I am not averse to obtaining exposure to my content with the appropriate credit and link applied on a related site. I am not however going to stand for a content scraper that takes my first paragraph of an article and changes one word at the end and introduces his own links and places the page in a sub-directory by design solely for the purpose of advertising as my competitor in the same field. This is illegal!

I fully expect backlash from those in the black hat community because they operate in different circles than I and they don’t like being shaken up by the truth. I expect that these operators will retaliate but I have nothing to fear because I do not plagiarize and I do not employ tactics that endeavor to hijack results.

“Hijacking” is a good term. These are content hijackers. I like that. I will update as the fight continues.

-Bob W

Victims of Black Hat Content Scrapers –Report Them!

Victims of Black Hat Content Scrapers –Report Them!

You carefully research and craft your original content. You take pride in your work. You post your unique work online. Then some ying-yang comes along and copies your work and pastes it up on his site without a thought about you.

These are the “black hats.” This is what they do. They have no talent. They have no conscious. They just take what they want and sometimes change a few words and re-post it on their sites. Anyone that has a talent for online writing has had it done to them. What should you do? I am working on a set of steps to cancel out these clowns once and for all. I will be posting my efforts later on in this article and in subsequent articles on this site.

I have commented right here on this site about the squeeze being put on the black hats. I have written down my observations regarding the changes in the search engine SERPS. I have theorized that since the old days of wide-spread inorganic back-link schemes were coming to an end that the crooks would be moving to steal your content. Well, today I found that I am a victim right here at Serpeo-SEO.

I released a press release yesterday entitled “Search Engine Optimization – Gold Rush is Over.” No sooner was the press release published did a self proclaimed SEO expert scrape up my first, very well written paragraph and post it in a new subdirectory on an SEO website. Google picked up on my original content and had it listed high in the SERPS by this morning. Immediately I wrote to this company to demand they take down my original content. I then reported the acts of this company as “Black Hat Content Scraping” and “Copyright Infringement,” on my Google Webmaster Account. I would suggest that we all demand that the search engines take action against these crooks every time an act of plagiarizing content occurs. It would seem that search engines should take a vested interest in wiping out this type of activity. They are at fault, in my book, if they do not.

I know that my original content falls under United States copyright laws. The old poor boy copyright was a simple matter of validating your original material. This was before the internet but it exemplifies the simplicity of how the law should work. It involved writing down your content and mailing a letter to yourself and keeping it sealed for any need for future proof. Having the proof is paramount in proving your case.

In this case I have the time-stamped press release. I have written thousands of pages of original content and I have never copied someone else’s content, except with permission and with appropriate credits listed. I have cited others where I have derived information in my research, etc.

This act is very different however, even criminal. This is outright theft. It is not the first time it has happened, but this time a person with no talent is masquerading as an SEO professional adding that “We know what makes you click.” I wonder if that was original.

I have had my content plagiarized many times and it has always been by a goofy website designer in a related industry and the matter was always resolved with an apology or removal of the content. I never felt the angst that I feel now about this one. Primarily it is the fact that this site is all about SEO, content and all things regarding my efforts at getting myself and your business noticed. I will not stand for this. I encourage everyone to report illegal activity and to protect your copyrighted material. More on this later…..

I want to include a link for a lady that has championed this cause of copyright infringement on the internet. Here is another site for information on plagiarization of content and what to do.