You have to ask yourself the question, given the resources it has at its disposal, the seemingly limitless funds and general marketing & personnel clout that it can throw at a situation, how come Google so often seem to open their mouths to change their feet?

How can such an organization that prides itself on the quality of its staff and resources engaged employ such a bunch of idiots to actually go out and do what they do at times?

First there was last year’s little escapade over the serious emergence of their new Social Media Promotional angles when they said that certain types of Link and Referral data was being withheld for…wait for it……Data protection issues. Then they were found to be selling, yes you’ve guessed it, that same Data to Adwords Buyers if they paid the right fees. The whole exercise was then blown wide apart when most observers rightly (in my opinion) highlighted the whole incident as the opening shots in driving the free version of Webmaster Tools under and the emergence of a Premium version of Webmaster Tools.

Now they’ve gone and done it again in another “hello Mr Foot please meet Mr Mouth” incident over paid Linking Campaigns.

Now for those who have only just entered this fun packed little Industry of ours, Google have developed, over the years, quite a negative stance (understatement here) on the whole concept of paid links. They don’t like them, they don’t like the practice of it and if they catch sites doing it then they basically consign them to the “nether regions of on-line hell” (or certainly below No 500 in the index or ban entirely) or so the theory goes.

Imagine the hilarity then when the Big G themselves get caught out a few days ago, supposedly engaged in a paid Link Building Campaign for their Chrome Browser but when challenged about it, suddenly develop a sense of moral outrage that “yes the Campaign was ours but it was not what we signed up for!”.

Really?

As they say over here in Ireland, “Do they think we’re not wise?”

Anyway back to the point, this whole episode highlights a great many things.

Firstly Google are going to do what Google want, for the interests of Google and not anyone else and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise?

Secondly they are not above making waves and delivering changes that come completely out of the blue as with yesterdays “Search, plus your World” announcement.

Now this has to be as clear an indication that they have finally decided to come out of the closet and take on FaceBook head on in the Social Arena with a beefed up “Google Plus” program.

Now my opinions of Google Plus in the early stages were very undecided and were very much powered by my distrust of all things Google and I still have some of the reservations but I do think that Google Plus could be “where it’s at in 2012″ and that 2012 could be the first year that FaceBook “catches a cold” (albeit not a major one).

We need to study at greater length the Google “Search, plus your World” concept further and we’ll write about in the days and weeks ahead as this could be something that it is essential to keep on the right side of with regards to Google but let me finish this with one last  warning.

If in your or your client’s Campaigns you are indulging in anything even remotely, how can I put this, slightly greyish/leading to Black Hat then steer clear of Google Plus by a country mile.

The downside of Google Plus is that because they call the shots as you can only take part if you have a Google controlled account, this means that if a Grey Squirrel as much as breaks wind in Southern Spain then the boffins at the Googleplex in California will know about it. I know this might sound as if I am an apologist for the likes of George Orwell et all but Google plus could possibly turn out to be the most potentially Orwellian of online marketing tools in that it really is a case of Google playing the role of Big Brother.

They do know what you are up to so keep it smart and stay safe.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t indulge in the odd piece of “cute” marketing as that would be boring but just don’t do it with any user logins or profiles that you use for Google Plus.

Now a newsletter / email like this wouldn’t be the same without a “shameless wee plug” for one of our ongoing promotions and Volume 3 of Back Links Heaven has just been released and in this edition we cover the Forum software punBB and how we can use sites using punBB for our needs when it comes to placing links.

As with other editions of Back Links Heaven this version is available from us here at Backlinks Heaven (http://backlinksheaven.com ) and so far we have covered the following formats in Vols 1-3:

1.       Vol  1 –  UseBB +10k Assorted Forums

2.       Vol  2 – AEForums + 10K Assorted Forums

3.       Vol  3 – punBB + 10K Assorted Forums

Basically this whole Series will encompass over 500,000 assorted Forum Domain Urls spread over nearly 50 different Platforms that will, when finally published amount to arguably the largest and most comprehensive resource on Forum Marketing there is.

Each volume is available for $ 16 but there are a few limited slots still available for the Series Subscription which is $160 and represents a saving of over $640 over the entire Series.

If anyone is interested in this then get in touch and I can get you set up on the system.

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IP Diversity and Link Diversity are two often misunderstood terms in conventional Link Building methodology.

First up, when you ask most folks as to what exactly an IP is they look at you with an expression that roughly translates to “ask me one about last night’s football?”

What exactly is an IP address?

Well to quote Wikipedia it is as follows:

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.^[1] An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows: “A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there.“^[2]

For more information about IP Addresses see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

For our purposes the “name of the game” here is to get your back links for any of your target Urls from as wide an IP spread as possible. Google want to see (and if Google want to see something then show them, don’t be stupid, don’t fight them) your Back Links come from as many Internet Users and Sources as possible, spread over as many parts of the globe as is humanly possible.

‘Nuff said really.

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One of the things I love about Simple Leveraging is that the “knowledge share” truly goes in more than one direction. This has been evidenced particularly in two incidences that spring to mind for me.

Firstly the experience working with Myra Love on our forthcoming project provisionally entitled “Multi Disciplinary Marketing” where we took the $240K in four days Campaign and analysed it’s various component parts and broke it down into stages and examined in detail.

Secondly, it was after talking to another SL member, Dave “Quinn” Thomas over cool ways to promote Wikis etc and this opened my eyes to a technique that I was aware of but hadn’t really thought about too much in detail.

I have now though, but perhaps it might be an idea to get back to basics first.

Why do we pursue this whole concept of Tiered / Layered Multi-level Linking? Firstly it’s something that we have been advocating and doing at Simple Leveraging by and large well before most others but more importantly why?

It’s a question I get asked all the time, why do you advise the constant building of links to support links to support…….etc  etc?

The answer is very simple. It is because of the transient nature of certain forms of Link Support that we use in our Campaigns. Now that is not to say that short term support is a bad thing, it’s more a case of understanding fully what is going on.

For example, one of the first things we want to do with a site is build in Authority links as soon as is possible. Now in most cases this means getting links on High Page Rank Social Media sites and / or Press Releases.

Now in a lot of cases the Home Page PR of a lot of these sites is fairly high ((5+) and the knock on effect is a fairly vigorous (if we’ve planned and executed it properly) short term “hit” on our sites that results in a rise up the “SERPS”.

Now as they all say, “What goes up always has to come down” and that is the case with the effect received from those short term links but there are steps that we should do almost immediately to mitigate any potential downfall.

I explain it with diagrams and a PowerPoint in this short video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxboJJneJg0  but the upshot is that sooner or later pages gaining the benefit of links from these High Page Rank Home Pages drop the moment that the links themselves disappear and the inbound links form these sites tend to come from less powerful inner pages.

Hopefully by then, all good promoters / Link Builders will have already had in place additional Link placements to add support to these pages. In the case of declining Press Releases, usually a fairly vigorous Link Building Campaign (from SLS etc) is good enough to not only arrest the decline but in most cases reverse it.

I’ve also uploaded to the Members Only Downloads area of the Forum another more in depth video that goes into detail a very useful little technique that drives excellent authority links from a PR8 Site to all of our Press Releases no matter how many we have, within seconds. You can also use this to replicate this technique with at least one other Authority site also. The video can be found here:

http://simpleleveraging.com/slschat/index.php/topic,187.0.html

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Recently I wrote about some information we had gleaned about the latest Panda Update and touched upon the concept of “Trust rank” and as such have had quite a few emails asking could I elaborate on this further?

Well the story behind Trust Rank is this.

As a concept it has been researched by two separate organisations, Google and Yahoo. As a concept behind the scenes it had been around for some time in the Google camp but it was actually Yahoo who first went public about it really when one of their researchers alongside some research personnel from Stanford in 2004 put together a Paper entitled: “Combating Web Spam with TrustRank”. For those who want to pursue this matter further the paper has been retrieved and put online and can be found here:

http://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF

Apparently at the same time Google had been doing some behind the scenes work on a similar concept called Trust Rank and registered the Trademark “Trustrank” as Matt Cutts (the public face of Google) explains here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8mUXQzwEvs

Now where all of this falls into place with my feelings in my last Newsletter are this. Google has been searching for some time to further provide more background analysis on the “worthiness” of Web Sites and how they stack up.

Initially this was to be provided by using data from their Page Rank analysis but since Page Rank has been generally accepted to have been on the slide for the past few years (Google themselves downgraded it from being the “jewel in the Crown” in the Search Algorithm now to being “one of 200 other ranking factors” – bit of a drop in emphasis I think you’ll agree?) they have had to look further afield.

They then decided to expand the Trust Rank concept further in 2009 when as well as having the Trademark registered they registered the Patent as well. Now things were getting really serious and it is only now some 2 -2 ½ years later that we are starting to see the true manifestation in this with the Panda Update.

Looking round for methods to try and help them get some sort of handle on the generally accepted worthiness of a site, they hit upon the idea of seeing how a site was viewed by virtue of how a site was viewed by its peers hence the appearance of the “+1” concept. Now this, as in all things, can be gerrymandered such is the good and bad side of human endeavour but it goes some way to showing where they are going.

The other parts of the Trust rank concept lie in an old view of “you are known by the Company that you keep” or who links to you. Now we know also that Google tried to control this with the much vaunted “rel=nofollow” attribute but once again this has now also turned into a dead duck so where does this all lead us?

Well as I said in one of the newsletters of a month ago that I felt that with Panda, Google were turning back the clock to almost the days of the late Nineties with their views on inbound links etc.

Now my views on this are as follows. I think that there are certain aspects of Linking that Google are trying to downplay in the algorithm but with the absence of any credible alternative they cannot nor ever will truly be able to remove data from Link Building entirely. So the upshot of that being is that for the time being we are all safe there folks as far as our Back Link building efforts are concerned but what I think Google are placing more emphasis now than perhaps they have done before, is the nature of the IP spread of those links.

Whereas in the past, conventional wisdom was that with a few PR5 – PR 6+ links from a couple of websites you could drive a site up the serps, now that is no longer true in the same way. What Google now want to see are links, but instead of a few folks voting i.e. just one or two sites they want to see loads more and those votes need to come from as wide a section of the Internet population than before.

So the upshot of all of this is that you need to have your links coming from a much wider variety of sites than before.

So what about Authority and Trust?

Now to further this and aid the overall Trust and Respect for a site, if you can throw as many links to your site from as many different types of sites as possible – so much the better especially if those links are from perceived trusted domains such as .Govs and .EDU’s.

Google’s love affair with .EDU’s and .Govs lies not as most folks think, in a fixation with the domain suffix but rather with the nature of the sites themselves. Indeed we have found in our own research that a great many Education / Academic sites that are not .EDU’s for instance are just as powerful if not more so at times.

For instance in the UK, the domain suffix .EDU doesn’t exist rather the academic suffix is .ac.uk and this is a the case in a great many other territories worldwide so as we have seen the power and authority doesn’t necessarily stem from the suffix, rather the nature of the site itself and that fact that these sites (as Matt Cutts himself has been quoted) tend to have loads of authority links pointing at them as well so this in turn gives their outbound links out more power.

So where does this leave rel=nofollow links from .EDU’s?

Exactly as where it left them before to be blunt. Just as powerful but with a different dimension i.e. the fact they originate from where they do carries a different set of weight rather than any PR juice that folks think they might not be able to impart.

For your own back links profile and authority status the fact that you might be able to count as many quality EDU links in your profile goes a long way to help confer “trust status” as far as the Search Engines are concerned.

To further this we have been running an associate program to our main Bookmarking Program and this has been centred round locating development spaces within various EDU properties where you can insert your own content under your own editorial control. Called the Lost Art of Conversation we have now reached Module 4 and in Module 4 we now have 50 EDU properties that you can insert your own Links and copy. Now these properties include a mixture of DoFollow and NoFollow links but as has now been conclusively proved for Trust and Authority status the NoFollow attribute is by and large of no consequence.

As with before we will only be releasing limited copies of this Module to the general public and I wanted to notify members of my Newsletter first. The uptake of previous Modules was such that they never actually made it to public release as they were all snapped up by readers of this newsletter and members of Simple Leveraging. The cost of Module 4 of The Lost Art will be $75 and if anyone is interested then send the $75 to info@simpleleveraging.com and I’ll forward the zip file with the contents through to you straight away.

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OK, well just in case anyone out there thinks I’ve finally lost my marbles and that the present Mrs Morgan (“she who must be obeyed”) is hastily calling for the ambulance whilst I type let me explain.

I was sitting monitoring a conversation on a particular Skype group this morning and the subject about indexing and de-indexing came up and what was really sad was the amount of disinformation that was being spread about what was going on so I thought I would throw my hat into the ring and explain a little about how Google especially reports data.

It’s easier to explain via a Video so I’ve put the video live on our YouTube Channel for those who want to take a look.

The bottom line is this. Google is arguably the most unstable of all of the Search Engines with the upside of this being that it is also possibly the most reactive. It’s probably quicker to get a site into Google – if you know the system and work it correctly then getting a site into Google can be like taking the family dog for a walk and getting it to come back onto the lead when you go home. Whistle at the right time and the faithful family mutt will come bounding along just in time to be taken home for tea.

Google won’t always come round for tea but if you go through the right procedure then getting good old faithful Googlebot to trot along to your site and index you can be easier than you think – especially if you have gone through the very basic Link Building 101 and have your own site map profile set up in Webmaster Tools.

Anyway, the video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oca8LMv3_o and it explains in very simple language how Google result can change and vary from territory to territory i.e. when a No 1 in Google isn’t always a No 1 across the board.

Lastly a bit of “SLS chest throwing out”. I was looking at the Warrior Forum the other day and thought that one particular WSO seemed to be good value for money etc. It was one of those discussions streams where you could get 101 Blog Urls where the PR was on the page where the comment was and not the domain. 101 Blog Urls for $27?

Not bad eh?

Then I looked at last Month’s Free Link Packet from “the leveragers” and saw that it contained 184 Blog Urls:

PR 6  7 Blog Urls

PR 5  22 Blog Urls

PR 4  31 Blog Urls

PR 3  67 Blog Urls

PR 2  51 Blog Urls

PR 1  3 Blog Urls

Included in the above are 24 EDU Urls of which 3 are PR1, 5 are PR2, 10 are PR3, 5 are PR4 and there was one PR6 EDU Blog Url for commenting upon.

And the above was free if your membership was in good standing.

So there you have it folks..$324 good reasons to be a member of Simple Leveraging. Not only as a full member do you get access to the largest Do Follow Social Bookmark Directory Network on the Internet but you also get more than $324 worth of Link Building freebies thrown in throughout the year.

For those considering upgrading their membership then we are still running the promotion whereby we discount the fee to $269 if you donate $30 to the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice so even more of a saving.

Get in touch if you are interested.

Usual deal gang, any questions ask away either in the Forum or email directly to me.

Cheers

Steve

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I’m perhaps going to be fairly controversial in this post but then perhaps not, I’m not too sure?

I’ve just received an email a few minutes ago from another marketer who I know quite well and wouldn’t want to criticise publicly because I think that would be unprofessional but the email made me fairly uncomfortable and that is going some…

The email revolved around the concept of .mil links and the concept of authority links. Now I think if we’re not too careful we all stand the chance of missing the plot big time over this.

Firstly let me state my position and background in this and you will then at least see that this isn’t some shameless “lame brained” attempt at jealousy because someone else has “beaten me to the jump” over this.

I’ve been sitting on a substantial four figure database of .mil domains for the last few months now and those of you who know me really well will have known that I’ve discussed the prospect of this with you. I’ve not done anything with them as to be honest I’ve been completely at a cross roads with what to do with them.

Sure, it would have been very tempting and the easy way out just to unload the database or release elements in snippets and just exploit the living daylights out of it but for the first time in my life I just never found my way round to doing it and that after a few months has told me something.

The turning point came the other day when I ran a test piece of research as to what exactly there was out there in possible link inventory and unearthed a whole series of blogs that were open for comments. I thought OK let’s give this a go and see where we go from here and then I read the blog (always a good idea) and thought (as we say over here in Northern Ireland) “catch yourself on here Steve”.

The Blog was an exchange between a Lieutenant General and an old soldier who was discussing the merits of basic training at Fort Benning amongst others and related to the basic training and merits of modern methods over the old. Now as I say this was a blog, that was unmoderated, open for comments and was dofollow, it satisfied all the criteria necessary for technically a good inbound link.

The usual ideal criteria were present i.e. massive inbound links amount and all from the usual domain suffixes i.e. plenty of .Govs, .EDU’s and so on but then I thought, does this comment I’m about to make and link I’m about to place actually contribute constructively to the “Food Chain” here?

I know damn all about basic training in the US Military, heck I wasn’t even a good Boy Scout when I was kid so what am I doing here? Then it all made sense.

Get the heck out of here and then think.

What was it that made me go there in the first place and it all suddenly made sense about what is going on and we’re all chasing the wrong dollar in the wrong arena.

You see what was it that supposedly made me go there? It was part of the endless quest for an “Authority Link” and then I realised that by and large we are all getting this massively wrong and by doing so giving the Search Engines a massive laugh at the same time.

You see the initial criteria was, this must be an authority domain as it was very rare, had lots of inbound links pointing to it from very “sexy” and “desirable” domain suffixes i.e. .Gov’s, .EDU’s etc etc but then I thought hang on here Steve, you’re chasing the domain suffix here not the site or content itself.

Now I am sure that if you run a site based around selling US Military Memorabilia or Army Surplus equipment then it all perhaps made sense though I am still not too sure how this old soldier and Lieutenant General would react when they saw my so called meaningful contribution about Training with a link through to a client site about Fitness Equipment.

Now there are certain web domains and categories that you can get away with this i.e. it’s fair game on most .EDU’s and .Govs as in most cases they want to set up some sort of exchange of dialogue and as long as you comment properly and enter into the exchange of communication responsibly then it doesn’t actually make that much difference as to what the domain you are using as your target link is…as long as it’s legal.

Now inbound links from somewhere like Kings College in Cambridge, The Physics Lab at the University of London or Yale, Harvard, Stanford etc are true Authority links because of the nature of the site themselves and the kudos of the domain suffix involved i.e. the .EDU suffix.

I am not too sure whether the same applies to .mil suffixes. Sure they are rare but then so is a four leaf shamrock but that doesn’t make a site about Irelands very own native vegetation an authority site or source (unless of course you have a site about rare forms of Flora and Fauna).

Also in the current climate with world events being what they are I am not too sure whether I fancied arousing the wrath of the US Military and a certain Lieutenant General.

I don’t think this is the case, it is more a case of just thankfully being able to step back and take some time out and re evaluate my thinking and criteria about the search for an Authority Link.

Rareness of a domain suffix does not grant it “Authority Status”, 100% top notch gold plated content from an independent source with no axe to grind does.

Therefore in my mind, .EDU’s and .Govs still rank top of the pile not because of the domain suffix but because of the nature of the sites themselves and the content by and large to be found on them.

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On Monday April 11^th, Google announced officially to the world that the Panda Update now applied to Google results outside of North America.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html

Now on the face of it the new update has by and large seemed OK so far to us here at “Leveraging Central”. If anything the only thing we have noticed is that the average SERPS level of pages has risen and that for some reason the Nett Yield on the Adsense units has also increased. We’re not too sure whether there is any correlation here or whether this has more to do with the start of the Advertising Second Quarter and hence more budget being freed up but nonetheless any increase in revenue is gratefully appreciated in these “inclement economic times”.

So back to what Google have been up to.

As we have mentioned before, the update appears to be concentrating very much on ensuring that quality reigns supreme but then Google go and do what only Google do best and that is to push things so far that ultimately they screw up.

When you consider matters pertaining to Google I’m often reminded of the old sixties classic duet between Frank and Nancy Sinatra “Something Stupid” where the line goes “and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid….” only in this case it’s doing something and that stupid thing in our books is the new addition of the facility within the new Google Chrome Extension that allows viewers to block domains from their results if required. Now this in isolation is not necessarily a bad thing if handled ethically and correctly but therein lies the rub. This facility has other features and aspects too.

In a couple of comments that I found disconcerting Google via Matt Cutts let this one slip out of the bag:

” If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.”

Another Google insider also stated:

“While we’re not currently using the domains people block as a signal in ranking, we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future.”

Now as Chris Crum in Webpronews.com said:

“One has to wonder how Google would use such a signal in a way that could not be gamed by people getting their competitors’ sites blocked. There are other potential abuse scenarios as well. Personal spite comes to mind.

It’s possible that it could become a ranking signal and nobody will ever know for sure. Google will not reveal its entire list of signals. They may keep this one close to the chest, although that doesn’t mean it won’t still get abused based on hunches.”

Overall the new “algo” change could be a good thing but to be honest, my advice to all of our Clients in our SEO Division is to really consider diversifying all of their SEO Promotion and to proactively go after good results in Yahoo and Bing as to be honest no one knows where this new Google Direction is going to end up.

Lastly, we have a few copies of the FUDForum and Nabble Lists (both $15 each) that were available last week still available so if anyone is still interested in positively diversifying their IP Back Links structure (and who shouldn’t) then get in touch.

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Hi Gang,

May I preface this newsletter / email with a few words to those
of our readers and members who are either based in Japan or have
Relatives / Loved ones affected by the events of the recent few
days.

May I just simply say this? You are in our thoughts and prayers
and from all of those here may I wish you respite and care from
the tragedy and if you are one of those unlucky enough to have
been affected by personal tragedy then may whatever deity it is
you worship, may they look after you in the days and months ahead.

Without wishing to sound facetious at this point, to the matter
in hand and that is, further analysis of the Panda Update.

No doubt like you all, I appear to have been inundated with material
and information about this and to clear up some confusion about
possible conflicts may I just say that there was only just one
update form Google and that the “Panda” and “Farmer Updates” are
on and the same.

The official term for the update as far as Google are concerned
(well Messrs Cutts and Singal anway) is “Panda” but as the main
thrust of the update was to redress the situation primarily
surrounding Content Farms and/or issues of  excessive Dupe Content
the Update has become unofficially known as the Farmer Update.

As I said, this can be confusing and misleading and all of those
new products that have arisen from many a so called expert proclaiming
the upside and opportunities of the Farmer Update should technically
not be so confusing (makes you wonder what else they’re getting
slightly out of kilter but….) more misleading to the rest of
us.

Onwards with our take on it however (Free of charge ?). Now
today’s contribution comes by and large from some information
gleaned from Word tracker and our aim on the days and weeks
ahead is to try and bring to you information from as many sources
as possible to help you work your way through the update

Apparently, the aims of Panda are noble: to remove poor quality
sites from the top of Google’s results pages. Or as Matt Cutts,
Google’s head of spam, puts it in a blog post announcing Panda:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality
sites–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content
from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.
At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality
sites–sites with original content and information such as research,
in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

The last thing Google wants is searchers being unhappy with
what they find. They might try another search engine if that
happens.

Few people other than the low-quality sites’ owners and their
investors will have a problem with that.

But all major Google updates leave ‘collateral damage’ behind
them: sites that just don’t match the target or deserve to be
penalised. Google are aware of this and so have asked those with
“a high quality site that has been negatively affected by this
change” to let them know about it here.

So if you have a high quality site that’s been adversely affected
by Panda Farmer then let Google know.

So what Factors are likely to trigger off a Panda Attack?

- A high % of duplicate content. This might apply to a page,
a site or both. If it’s a site measure then that might contribute
to each page’s evaluation.

- A low amount of original content on a page or site.

- A high % (or number) of pages with a low amount of original
content.

- A high amount of inappropriate (they don’t match the search
queries a page does well for) adverts, especially high on the page.

- Page content (and page title tag) not matching the search queries
a page does well for.

- Unnatural language on a page including heavy-handed on-page
SEO (‘over-optimization’ to use a common oxymoron). Eg, unnatural
overuse of a word on a page.

- High bounce rate on page or site.

- Low visit times on page or site.

- Low % of users returning to a site.

- Low click through % from Google’s results pages (for page
or site).

- High % of boilerplate content (the same on every page).

- Low or no quality inbound links to a page or site (by count or %).

- Low or no mentions or links to a page or site in social media
and from other sites.

If any of these factors is relevant to Panda, it is unlikely
that they will be so on their own.

Combinations of factors will be required to get ‘Panda points’
(and points do not mean prizes in this game). Panda points will
be added up. Cross a threshold (Panda’s redline) and you are
‘blocked’.

‘Blocked’ is Matt Cutts’ word, used in that Wired interview:
“Whenever we look at the most blocked sites, it did match our
intuition and experience”. This suggests that …

… if a site gets defined as low quality then a penalty is applied
(it is ‘blocked’).

Google have since said that “low quality content on part of a
site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole.”

But ‘Low quality’ sites are not always ‘blocked’ (Matt’s use
of ‘most’ tells us this). So there must be exceptions to this
site-wide penalty.

Anyway enough of this at present and as and when more research
and information becomes available we’ll pass it on through.

Lastly we had a few questions sent through to us about our latest
initiative..”Precision Related Marketing”.

Precision Related Marketing” (hereinafter PRM) relates primarily
to drilling down and researching from one main keyword or phrase
an associate network of terms via Google’s Wonder Wheel and then
taking that list and data mining as many Blog Urls we can find
that fall within this keyword list and that are also available
for commenting upon.

We further refine this list until we are primarily left with
Blog Urls where the Page Rank is PR2 or greater for the Blog
Url itself and not the domain. This as you can imagine therefore
gives you a list of immense power in two categories. Firstly
the Blog Url for commenting lies within the direct theme or is
semantically linked to your main theme so is ideal for Google’s
purposes and secondly the actual Url itself for commenting upon
has been recognised by Google through its Url Page Rank as being
fairly noteworthy.

We’ve been using this technique within our own Client SEO Division
for some time now and the clients love it and as far as “Panda”
is concerned this ticks all the boxes. The comments are on relative
thematically linked pages and also pages with previously assessed
power as far as Google is concerned.

We will be rolling this programme out to our members shortly
but in the short term are going through presentations to clients
several times a day. This means that we are generating huge
surplus data sets that we cannot use within the short term
future and have been letting these go “at cost” to those members
of SLS who have blogs or networks of sites that suit whatever
particular Data Set we have available.

To give you an idea of how it works and the costs the Urls are
sold on a pro rata basis. The more powerful the page i.e. the
greater the Page Rank then the more expensive the cost. The
rate card is at present as follows:

PR7 Pages $700 per thousand Urls

PR6 Pages $600 per thousand Urls and so on down to PR 2.

One member recently bought one list from us and whilst the theme
must remain anonymous the list comprised of 8,579 Blog Urls and
the cost breakdown was as follows AT RETAIL PRICE:

PR    Unit Cost No    Total

8    800    1    0.8
7    700    3    2.1
6    600    64    38.4
5    500    360    180
4    400    1804    721.6
3    300    3157    947.1
2    200    3190    638
8579    2528

The Retail total price that we charge our clients would have
been $2,528 for 8,579 Urls for links which at a unit price is
an average 29 cents per link Url which is a steal. As this was
data generated for demo purposes we sold this particular batch
for $500 which was effectively at cost.

As this is all data that is generated by our suppliers we cannot
give this away for free but even at cost is one heck of a steal
(as they say). There is a minimum fee of $100 and if necessary
the member could have just bought the PR5-8 links if they so decided
and the charge for this would have been $221 but they decided
to go for the lot and as such we were able to pass these on at
a massive discount.

Anyway before I go on too much about this we have a few data sets
left over in the following subject themes:

Finance

Health

Iphones

Smartphones

Real Estate

Television

Technology

Stress

Anxiety

So if there are members out there who would like Urls for Links
plus Keywords in any of the areas above then get in touch and
we’ll see what we can do. Also we have an expanding list of
presentations coming up in the next few weeks and if there are
any members out there who would like additional areas covered
not mentioned above then now is the time to let us know as the
subject area matters not at all to us, this data is purely for
demo purposes and we are more than happy to pass this info through
at cost if the SLS member so wishes.

Let me know if anyone is interested.

Speak soon

Steve

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Hi Gang,

Well I’ve heard it all now. First of all we had “Big Daddy”
then later on we had “Florida” and god knows what in between
and now low and behold we have the Giant Panda!!

OK in this case just known as “Panda” but for all it’s worth
the Internet’s best illustrators are all using images of the
cute and cuddly Giant Panda for illustration as opposed to its
smaller cousin the Red Panda.

I would imagine there are groups of Red Panda’s the world over
all busy consulting their Lawyers as I write, trying to fathom
out how as a group they lost out on such a PR stunt but then
there you go, life isn’t fair. If it was, updates like this
wouldn’t happen in such a manner.

Ho hum

However back to business, the latest in Google Updates hereinafter
known (according to Google itself) as the Panda Update and what
an update it was?

Rather than try and second guess exactly what has happened (who
in their right mind would want the gig of trying to second guess
Google) I thought that in this case that I’d just provide some
links to other articles arguably better written than my humble
attempts at prose where you can find slightly more reverent
opinions as to what exactly is going on:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/2/

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/google-clamp-down-content-factories/

I know I know, this update was all about “nuking” those sites
that only survive by regurgitating what others have written and
here I am doing exactly just that but heck, life is too short
and too much has been written about this update by those better
qualified than “yours truly” and my concern is more or less
“where do we go from here?”. How can we survive? How do I keep
the present Mrs Morgan in the manner to which she has become
accustomed and how do I stop my son and heir to the Morgan
family overdraft from spending all the family savings.

Well the answers to the latter are questionable but I reckon
the answer to the first i.e. “How can we survive?” is not a
million miles from the approach I counselled in my last newsletter
about surviving a “Google Dance”.

If you’re in the US and you’ve been hit (and there have been
loads) then there is nothing at present you can do immediately,
the damage is done, all you can do is sit down dispassionately
and try and think logically about how you can structure your
sites from here on in.

If you are based outside of the US and your core market is not
based round Google.com in the US then there is still time to
make some emergency adjustments if necessary as Google in their
infinite wisdom have decided to hit the US first and depending
upon the outcome and how bad the collateral damage is, hit the
rest of us at a yet to be determined later date.

It would appear that Google are after the whole sector of the
Internet that exists by republishing in all shapes or forms other
peoples content. The sort of sites that appear to suffering the
most through this update funnily enough are the major Article
Directories such as Ezine Articles ( apparently they have lost
over 25% of their traffic due to this update), Hub pages, Suite101,
wisegeek, buzzle, associated content and also one of my favourites,
Articlesbase.

Looking at what exactly these sites all appear to have lost,
the overall opinion would appear to be that the real losers
here are the smaller lower quality types of articles that are
either badly spun or badly rehashed versions of other material
found elsewhere.

Now with every downside, there is a corresponding upside and it
would appear here that if you are taking lots of care as to
exactly what you allow to be published on your site both in
terms of size and originality then you appear to be OK.

This of course is a good thing and the other important factor
here is that off page aspects of SEO (such as Link Building)
appear to be of even greater importance and how you structure
things matter greatly here.

It’s not all bad news and before this newsletter gets too unwieldy
I’ll sign off by stating that certain basics of SEO still remain
the same i.e. the most important piece of “on page SEO” is getting
the tags for pages correct (the Title tag here being absolutely
essential) and then also the amount and variety of your back
link landscape.

Now in our collective rush for automation this is quite often
overlooked.

What Google wants to see now more than ever is a Back Links
Landscape that as closely as possible resembles that which would
exist if it was purely compiled through natural organic processes
such as just through human intervention. So this means as large
as possible a huge variety of Domains and IP no’s. Lots of
different types of links, Directs, In directs, do follow, no
follow (yes these too) and even mistakes such as typos and badly
coded links. All links that look as if they have been compiled
by humans and reflecting what is arguably the most common human
frailty, the ability to screw up and make mistakes.

In my next newsletter (coming out shortly) I’ll go through in
more detail additional aspects of how you can further attempt
to “bomb proof” sites from Google and a couple of services starting
almost immediately from us here at SLS that will really help to
ensure that you comply with all future Google interventions.

Usual deal.  Any questions then ask away in the Forum or if the
subject is that sensitive then feel free to email me directly.

Speak soon gang.

Steve

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Hi Gang,

There has been a lot of talk on various Discussion Boards recently
about getting “Google Slapped” or “Google Danced” and what do
you do when it happens?

The first thing we always find is actually to recognize this for
what it is and don’t panic.

OK, easier said than done but it’s the best advice I can give.

The reason I say this is as follows.

If you are in a full blown state of panic then there is no chance
that you will think coldly and dispassionately (as you should)
about what to do about your sites present situation.

OK So what are my best tips on dealing with this situation when
you first encounter it?

1.    Go away and make a coffee or a Cup of your favourite
beverage and stay away from your PR or Laptop for about 5 minutes
at least.

There is nothing to gain and everything to lose by blindly pressing
all sorts of buttons, editing and re-editing pages and generally
behaving as if you spent the previous evening sleeping on a Termites
Nest.

If you’ve been “Taken for a Tango” then you certainly won’t be
able to redress the situation within minutes by any of your
actions as things like this don’t get resolved that quickly
despite what the various Gurus’ promise. But by giving yourself
a bit of breathing space and the ability to think calmly then
your next actions could turn out to be really productive.

2.    Return to your work station and now having had a degree
of separation between yourself and your perceived problem now
you should examine in logical order what it is you have done
to your site over the previous 2-3 weeks to make sure that the
current adverse situation is not arising through any fault of
yours.

This is easier done that you think and I can think of numerous
occasions where there have been fairly massive and drastic “plunges”
in SERPS due to innocent errors on the part of webmasters. You’d
be surprised how effective and damaging an errant “noindex”
tag left in the wrong place on a page can be.?

3.    So having completed a fairly rigorous and thorough
investigation of your current situation you now establish that
indeed this has not arisen through any actual proactive act of
your own what could the cause be and what can you do about it?

The first and most usual blame centre for most problems like
this is usually aimed at the current back links activity. After
all isn’t this usually the cause of most problems such as these.

The answer to this question is usually and most emphatically
not. The reason for this being in a nutshell (as I have explained
to clients and members of SLS on numerous occasions) if this
were the case then it would be the most used and abused form
of SEO known to mankind.

After all if you can get Google to trash your competition as
a result of an influx of back links then why waste money on
your own SEO, just load up your Competitors site with loads
of dubious links and then sit back and watch your own site
serenely rising through the ashes of Google trashing all your
competition.

Not going to happen is it?

Google may be many things but it is simply more complex and
“aware” of this type of false activity than to be that simplistic
in its analysis of your site.

The answer to your question may lie purely within the subject
area known more informally to you and I as a good old plain
“Google Dance”.

The real reasons for Google Dances are hidden deep within the
mists of SEO Folklore and not even Google will admit to them
actually officially happening or for even such a phenomena to exist at all. Ask most Webmasters whether they exist and most will reply most definitely in the affirmative but again most know very little about it.

Most webmaster “guestimates” about “Google Dances” revolve
around Data Centre Upgrades that occasionally throw out results
across the board that are all inconsistent with each other.

The first thing to accept is that there is no such thing as
“one” Google Index and in fact Googles Search Index is made
up from Hundreds of Data Centres spread worldwide and therein
lies the problem. It would be a complete non starter for them
to update all at once and as such Google is in effect constantly
updating itself somewhere as they roll out one algorithm change
after another and they don’t always get it right (few of us do ).
Rather than spend this entire newsletter on the details of such
phenomena rather lets concentrate on what to do to get out of
it if it occurs.

I can only stress here that our experience here has to be put
down as anecdotal but we have found through quite considerable
“non scientific testing” (i.e. we don’t sit around here in white
coats and run around the office waving clip boards etc) and most
of our techniques emerge through quite considerable trial and
error. So our view is that the quickest way to get out of the
effect of a Google Dance is to concentrate on freshening up as
much as possible the IP spread of the Back Links Landscape you
have created for your site.

Bookmark like heck basically and bookmark anything that links
to your site so that not only are you creating fresh IP’s for
the Bots to discover but also add to the power of the links you
already have. Sooner or later the added power of your existing
links plus the appearance of more and varied links will tip the
scales back in your favour.

This is where the large links lists that we feature within the
Members download area of the SLS Support Forum come in handy.
Don’t worry about Page Rank or whether the links are dofollow
or nofollow, just widen that IP spread like mad.

Lastly, just as an adjunct to the above, I’ve spoken to quite
a few SLS members recently about a resource we’re opening up
shortly that will assist the above “big time” as they say.

We’ve been working on two separate Projects recently that we
decided to bring together and they are as a follows:

1.    A Resource of EDU Blog Urls that are useful and available
for Blog Commenting.

2.     A Similar resource to the EDU List but concerning
mainstream Urls ( i.e. .coms, .net and .org’s etc) and as such
a much bigger resource.

To give you an idea of how big a resource and database we are
processing at the moment, we have over 24 million Blog Domains
and over 36 million Bog Urls we are processing our way through.
Now we are refining the searches here down to only consider pages
where the Actual Page Rank of the Page is quite reasonable and
not just the domain Page Rank.

At present we have over 40,000 Urls where the PR is 2 and above
(actual Page Rank and not Domain Rank) and we have over 8,000
Urls on EDU Domains with a Page Rank of 1 or over.

We are going to be making these available to members on a regular
basis at quite frankly what is effectively “at cost” i.e. at
$27 per thousand Urls or $37 per thousand Urls to non members.
Now in each pack there will be 1,000 Urls and the page rank will
be spread between 1 and 4 (again actual PR of the Page) and will
be spread in proportion. This means that approximately in every
1,000 Urls there will be a spread of rank as follows:

400 PR 1 Urls

300 PR 2 Urls

200 PR3 Urls

100 PR 4 Urls (SLS members will get a few PR4+ plus some EDU
Urls thrown in as a well.

Now this will also be available as a forthcoming service via
the Warrior Forum plus a few others and places will be limited
but as before first choice option goes to members of Simple
Leveraging. We aim to only have about 400 members of this project
as obviously we want to try and limit the exposure of the information.

Now a similar service has just been launched by one of the “Gurus”
and they are charging $197 for 1,000 Urls which we think is a
complete over the top rip off adn that is why our service is
effectively at cost.

Why?

Well as I said, we have nearly 36 million potential Urls to
work with and probably over 400,000 with Page Rank so that is
more than we can handle as an in house resource and our aim
here at Simple Leveraging is always to try and look out for
our Members interest first and foremost.

This project is called “The Lost Art of Conversation” and is
ultimately an attempt to increase the quality of comments found
on Blogs and we will also be running a series of Videos whereby
we analyse a series of Blog Urls with a number of suggestions on
how to engage the Blog owner to publish your comment plus leave
you with a nice in-bound link.

I will send some more information about the “The Lost Art of
Conversation” in the next 24 hours to keep everyone informed
and up to speed so to speak.

In the meantime get back linking!!

Speak soon

Steve

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