The world of SEO is not the greatest place to be in at the moment as the likes of Google play a perverse online version of Basket Ball at the moment with their index and to say it makes for nerve racking client meetings is a gross understatement.

However despite all of the online shenanigans, sometimes it pays to just go back and be “old school” for a while and sit tight when all around you is bouncing around maniacally.

This is not easy I can tell you and when you have a client getting near hysterical because their main keywords have gone “walk about” and wiped out about 75% of their traffic, sometimes the answer they least want to hear is…”lets’ just sit tight and see what happens”.

You have to be very careful at junctures like these as though to “sit tight” may well be the best course of action, as I have said; sometimes it is the least sort of thing a hysterical client wishes to hear.

We’ve been in just such a situation these last 10 days or so with one of our clients who has a nice site that’s based in the Health Niche and to say we’ve been under pressure is playing down the situation “big time”.

The trouble as I’ve said is that when an array of hitherto rather stable keywords and SERPS disappears almost overnight it is very easy to break out into wholesale panic. The trouble was that the more we analysed the situation and thought about it, the less inclined we were to actually effect wholesale changes to our SEO approach and “game plan”.

You could almost cut the sense of relief with a knife when thank god, the clients main term came back onto Page 1 in Google after a 10 day absence touring round “the nether regions” of online obscurity.

This was not, as it turned out, anything to do with the so called current “Panda Massacres” or anything like that but a phenomena that was more familiar.

A good old fashioned “Google Dance”.

Unpleasant nonetheless and if you are suffering from any form of “gastric issues” then this sort of occurrence could be defined as almost the perfect form of “online laxative” such was the very “uncool” situation client wise.

The trouble is nowadays it is very easy to over react and abandon Tactics and approaches mid Campaign if suddenly your SERPS go awry but sometimes that is the last thing you should do.

It is sometimes beneficial when the “brown smelly stuff hits the fan” to actually sit down and think logically at times as these such is the crazy world we inhabit called SEO.

When the bottom has seemingly appeared to fall out of your marketing world sometimes it pays to sit down and analyse why you think this has happened before you make a move and sometimes the result of that analysis and introspection is actually to do nothing especially if your previous actions had been well thought out, researched and seemingly well implemented.

Too often we seem to hear nowadays of client scenarios appearing to go badly wrong and all the blame seems to be laid at the doors of the “manic Panda” when actually it is something different altogether.

Think before you make a move….always. You’d be surprised at the numbers of those who don’t.

Lastly, last week, we informed you of the fact that we had some rather nice dofollow wikis that folks could use for their Marketing and Link Building Campaigns. There were 120 dofollow wikis that were based around the Apple Snow Leopard OS and the cost of them was $80 for the 120.

This week we have something hat is even tastier and much much rarer and that is 80 rather nice Authority sites based around the Academic world. Now the euphemism for this is usually the “EDU market” but that would actually be a gross over simplification as in this case, in this list is a very prestigious German University that is certainly not an EDU domain suffix (but is Still a PR8) and several Academic Institutions in the UK (all ac.uk) plus some nice Colleges and Universities in the Far east that are also not EDU’s. Plus also within this list are a long time favourite of mine and that is some nice “K12.us” domains which represent the US education sector just below the University and college sector.

I personally love these as they seem to get crawled very quickly and stay indexed due to their very nature plus even if the wikis get restricted, quite often the pages don’t get taken down so your links remain “in situ”. They also often have some nice PR on the homepage of the site and quite often this is PR4 or 5.

Anyway we have a very limited number of these that are available as we like to use these “in house” in a lot of our domestic Campaigns so we’re limiting the number of lists we’re making available to 12 copies and these will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Priority will also be given to members or readers who have already bought the 120 dofollow list to be fair.

PR on these sites ranges from PR8 at the top end (a nice number plus as I said some nice prestigious European Uni’s from at least 3 different Countries so a terrific IP spread) to those we have not yet had the time to allocate Page Rank to but in a spot check just before this newsletter was published I took 3 of the N/A Page Rank assessed sites and two of them turned out to be PR4′s on a manual inspection!!

Anyway this list is available for $80 and as I’ve said is available on a first come first served basis. Our PayPal address is as usual info@simpleleveraging.com .

We will also be running another webinar on these within the next 7 days and priority on that webinar will be given to those who have bought the lists which is only fair.

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Not a pleasant concept and folks the world over are feeling the pain and pressure it is inflicting with its current activities. To be honest it is doing so much at present that you’d almost be pushed to try and fathom out where to start, what to take notice of first?

Well the subject I want to discuss today is that of the current so called “Over optimisation” slap that currently appears to be doing the rounds either brought about by or part of the current war against High Page Rank Networks.

The latest casualty appears to be Build My Rank hard on the heels of Authority Link Network and a whole host of others. At the same time Google appear to be firing the starting shots against some of the major Press Release Agencies who supply (for a fee disguised as an upgrade / premium fee) dofollow links in their Press Releases. The most notable name that has appeared here is PRWeb.com.

As well as de indexing and downgrading sites that have getting links form these networks there also appears to be a huge increase in the so called “Google Re indexing Request”. Now this is where via Webmaster Tools, Google kindly informs the recipient that they have been guilty of dubious linking building practices and are going to be de-indexed but that they will be eligible for re indexing if they clean their act up and stop these nefarious activities etc.

Now I know that this is a gross over simplification of the issue but sometimes it is best to strip these down to the basics and then try and work your way up from there.

Firstly in a lot of cases this is long overdue and I am surprised it has taken so long to happen as some of these Networks were extremely over the top in the way they promoted themselves and what membership of these networks would achieve.

After all consider the following. Why would Google continually allow such networks to prosper when their main aim is to undermine what Google is about?

Consider the way that most have continued to go about their activities:

“Join us and with our help we’ll make sure that you get No 1 slots guaranteed in Google despite their updates!” etc etc.

Answer from Google? “No you’re not and we’re going to de index you and punish all the folks who have had anything to do with you”

Going back to my gorilla analogy, it’s like sitting next to the aforementioned big hairy fella, continually poking him with a stick and then wondering why he has just picked up an even bigger stick and hit you with it?

So what is there to do and what advice can be given?

Well strangely the first thing to do is sit tight. Do nothing, don’t reply to any so called Google Messages as I have a sneaky feeling these are auto generated (well really Steve? That’s a surprise) and that they are just “shaking the tree” as we say over here in Northern Ireland and waiting to see who runs for cover and who falls out?

Don’t give them the pleasure but sit tight, watch and wait.

If you have a site that has been de-indexed or downgraded then go back and re-evaluate what you’ve been doing and what your involvement in any of the above High Page Rank Networks was.

Take this information and effectively reverse engineer it i.e. if you’ve only been targeting certain terms or anchor topics then widen your target base “as of yesterday”

Also consider your Anchor Link Density ratio and then expand upon that.

“Throw some dust up” and get some activity and signs of life surrounding your site and Google will have to re visit the site. Get fresh links but from different sources and don’t get beaten out of shape over Page Rank. It’s a busted flush, gone and not worth worrying over.

Nice if you have it but don’t lose any sleep if you haven’t.

Google are slowly pulling out of Page Rank anyway so why bother with it in the long term (the subject of another webinar basically but we’ll cover it in some detail in our next one).

Remember, Google wants to see a Back Links Landscape that as closely approximates a human powered one as possible. So if all Google sees on its occasional check is about 600 links all of which are coming from only PR4 sites and above, all on the same anchor subject and all from a limited number of IP’s then it is going to look very gerrymandered and false.

That’s why we’ve been “banging on about” these Wikis for the past few weeks. They are the perfect tool in your armoury for generating large numbers of any sort of links you want from 16,000 different IP’s. For literally a pittance you can create large numbers of sacrificial links that otherwise would be too expensive to procure or set up and then you can widen your back links base to as large a spread as you need.

For diluting a heavy links concentration they are perfect. They are also extremely useful in other areas and anecdotally we are in receipt of a number of case studies where they have been shown to have positively impacted upon increases in SERPS.

Now in case folks think that we’re ignoring what is going on at present and trying to pretend that nothing is amiss, we’re not. We’re just as anxious as the rest over what is going on but we’re anxious perhaps in a slightly more laid back manner.

Those of you who know me fairly well with confirm that my view on Google is that I listen to everything it says, don’t believe a word of what it says and trust it about as far as I can throw it.

I intensely dislike what it does and how it conducts itself, the breath taking hypocrisy that it comes out with time after time but sadly it is a fact of life we have to deal with it and live with it.

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock recently you can’t have escaped the fact that our friends (ho ho) at “The Mighty G” <wink> have thrown another series of updates and general aggravation at us all again.

Now this email is not a complete chapter and verse analysis of what exactly is going on with the latest update rather the point I wish to make is that these updates tend to get classified as if they are just one action i.e. the update does just one thing when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

First up, Google no longer releases Mega Updates, those days are long gone. The days of the “Florida” and “Big Daddy” updates are well behind us and actually Google is permanently updating and “tweaking” its algorithm, it’s just that we’re not always aware of what it has been getting up to.

We only become totally fixated with Google as and when it gets round to one particular aspect of our SEO and in this case the latest update appears to come down hard on High Page Rank Blog Networks and similar High Page Rank Home Page Links. To be honest, the fact that Google has hit these types of activities is not actually much of a surprise, the only thing that really surprised me was that it took so long.

But it does appear to have punished these types of networks and does it mean that this is the end for High Page Rank Networks? Nope or at least not in my view, rather what has happened is that Google has singled out whole networks of sites where these sorts of links can be found and penalised accordingly. Now where does this lead this type of Link Building and Ranking as part of your SEO Arsenal?

Well I always say to folks, think like Google and behave like Google. By this I mean, you have to constantly evolve and change your marketing mix to survive. None of these activities that Google have come down will disappear but they will change and that is what I recommend you do to.

When we first started out in Simple Leveraging in early 2009 we were a vastly different proposition to the Simple Leveraging we are now and the fact that we’ve lasted this long is a testament to how we’ve changed. If you don’t change and evolve in this game, you’ll die. It’s that simple.

Anyway for those who want to find out more about what exactly Google have been looking at with their latest activities then follow this link: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html . It’s interesting to note that there are a whole range of things that Google look at constantly.

The one factor that attracted my attention was this snippet:

“Improvements to freshness. [launch codename "iotfreshweb", project codename "Freshness"] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.”

Now this to me confirms what I’ve long suspected that Google is coming down big time on the side of the provision of Fresh Content. This time they’ve just gone ahead and confirmed it.

Anyway to other updates and the various goings on at the vendors of the great wiki Submission tool Extreme Wiki Poster (hereinafter called EWP). Now this terrific tool has only been out about 4-5 weeks and they are already on version 1.3 which is in beta being tested by none others than your truly amongst others and so far so good. There are a few minor bugs but Kishor and his development team are on the case and I am sure that version 1.3 when it comes out of beta will keep raising the bar as far as submitters are concerned.

At the same time we have expanded our Public Wiki list to now include over 10,000 wikis and to answer a few questions about our “growth policy” for want of a better description it is as follows.

Our first list was 3,128 in size which we then shortly expanded to 4,000. Those who bought at the 3,128 level got the expanded list for free. We then came out with a few minor upgrades which everyone was notified about (email me if you hadn’t received any of the emails and you think you should have had as Aweber has been fun for the week or so) and the list was increased to 6,000 with the minor additions being free to those who bought at the 4k level or 3,128.

The list has now grown to over 10,000 and is on sale on Traffic Planet for $80 but for those who bought the old 4K list then you can upgrade to the 10K list for an additional $32. This also qualifies you for the free updates which will take the list eventually in this update to over 12,000.

Those who wish to update the size of their Wiki list just send the $32 via PayPal to info@simpleleveraging.com and we’ll make sure the new amended list gets sent out asap.

Lastly we had a couple of Webinars in the pipeline for early this year which we’ve had to re schedule largely due to voice issues with yours truly but we are planning to schedule the first of these is this week and the provisional date for this is Wednesday 7^th March. It is pencilled in for 9.00 pm GMT (4.00 pm EDT etc) and will cover the subject of Wikis, both general and EDU / Gov as well.

It will of course be recorded and for those who are eligible, copies will be available. Eligibility for the Webinar falls to those whose membership of Simple Leveraging is current and valid or you have bought one of our WIKI Lists recently. If you fall into either of these categories and would like to attend then please email me with your Skype address and I will add you to the list.

Like our other Webinars, this will be conducted via Skype as I quite like the interactivity of it all. It will be held in the same format as our others and this will be first up presentation about the subject of wikis with guides for best practice and developments and then followed by a Q&A. If there is anything in particular that you would like to discuss or get answers to then send me an email with your question and I will make sure that I will address the issue and also do as much research into the question beforehand to make sure that my information is as up to date and current as possible.

Lastly I will make sure that there are some additional freebies available as an incentive to attend and they will also be some additional wiki Urls but these will be different. As a teaser rather than give too much information away but the clue is a two word phrase and the initials are DF.

Anyway, I think that is enough to be going on with so if you wish to upgrade to the 1Ok Wiki list then send the $32 via PayPal to info at simpleleveraging.com and if you wish to attend the Webinar then send me your Skype contact details and any questions you might have.

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What makes and Authority site? It’s another one of those questions that we regularly get asked and again the answer could be viewed in two ways.

Firstly on a very simple basic level, an Authority site is one that is recognized as an Authority within its particular topic or niche. For example, www.bbc.co.uk is viewed as an authority site within the News and Current affairs spectrum and in the area of Aerospace then www.nasa.gov would be viewed as an authority site alongside political websites such as http://www.number10.gov.uk/ in the UK and http://www.whitehouse.gov/ in the US. It could be argued with events on both sides of the Atlantic recently that both of these sites are pretty compromised (allegedly) but I digress.

The common theme in all of these examples is that they exist primarily for the dissemination of information and have no commercial bias whatsoever and therefore their information by and large is unbiased with no commercial intent whatsoever.

It is this last category that makes EDU and Academic Domains so useful and worthwhile as they are deemed to have relative unimpeachable independent non bias. It is also this aspect that goes way and beyond the domain suffix .edu as well as the majority of leading Academic Institutions worldwide are in fact not straight .edu’s but either variants such as in Australia .edu.au or in the UK, .ac.uk

On the next level an Authority site is one that is deemed to be an Authority in its niche by virtue of the experience and quality of the editorial and information published by the site. This latter category is helped by the way that site is perceived or viewed by other web sites i.e. are many other sites of a non commercial bias linking to it for example?

It is this second Category that for our purposes is slightly more achievable for us to achieve for our own or client’s websites.

Now as most readers will be aware we have been focussing a lot of our intention recently towards Wikis as sources of links and a lot of folks have asked why?

The answer as far as we have been observing is that whether they are nofollow or dofollow neither makes any difference as far as we are concerned as it is not Page Rank we are at all interested in here. Ot is the fact that currently they are helping our Press Campaigns “hit it out of the Park” at the moment. Currently we are getting a 90% success rate in getting our Press Releases within the top 5 in Google and in the most recent case of this morning we had 2 PR’s in the same top 5 slot in Google for the same phrase and all within 51 minutes of the release coming out.

Next up is the target to keep them there!

That having been said, having other Authority sites link to you does help you “up the ladder” and it’s to that end that I want to bring to everyone’s attention some very cool very rare information we have just finished compiling this morning.

Our list of Wikis using the MediaWiki platform has risen now to over 3,000 now and within that there are 117 EDU Domains plus 6 Gov sites with 3 satellite Gov / political domains. Now these are all working Wikis that we have placed material on within the past 3 weeks so the work.

What we compiled this morning is of more interest and to be honest much more “Mega Hot” in as much as our research has unearthed signup pages and logins for 20 .Gov Wikis plus 3 satellite sites.

Now to be brutally blunt, using .Govs as part of your Link Building strategy is very much a specialised business and has to be handled correctly. Anyone who tells you otherwise is, as we say in the UK, “talking out their backside” but handled correctly can gain great results big time.

How rare are .Gov sites?

Well in our major Wiki list of 3,178 sites we have 6 of them plus 3 satellites.

In this list researched and compiled this morning we have 20 .Gov sites plus 3 satellites. Now these are.Gov sites that are truly spread across the world so the IP spread is to die for plus the geo coverage is great. There are of course a couple of mainstream US .Govs in there as well.

I am making this limited list of .Gov sites available to a very small group of people plus running a Webinar next week where we go through the do’s and don’ts of how to handle these sites properly and not get your material banned.

Now the places on this Webinar and the number of copies of this list will be limited to 15 as these sites are that rare. The cost of this list plus access to the webinar is $35 and is purely available on a first come first served basis. Send the funds via PayPal to info at simpleleveraging.com  and you’ll get out on the list

These sites are hot, they are rare so get in now to secure your place and I’ll get your place allocated.

I am also running another Webinar on the subject of dealing with and handling .EDU sites in the next 10 days and those who have already signed up will be notified of times shortly.

Back to the .Gov sites, get in quick as places are limited.

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People ask me quite often, what it is that I look for in a link back to any of our sites or our clients sites and my answer is always the same. I don’t really care quite often nowadays as long as the url the link is pointing to is correct and correctly coded.

Now the reason for this is that our viewpoint with regards to “Panda” and it’s glorious after affects really revolves around three things. Content is king again (and rightly so) and links do matter but where the link comes from in terms of geo location is perhaps now more important than ever and an increased variety in terms of type of link and mix and match of Anchor phrases is now more important.

Basically what Google want to see is a Back Links Landscape that as closely approximates something created in a random fashion by humans as possible. They do not want to see a Link Profile and Campaigns that are perfectly formed, perfectly calculated to the “n”th degree in terms of ratios regarding Dofollow to Nofollow etc etc.

In other words if your Back Links profile looks to good to be true then Google err on the side that it probably is too good to be true and will ironically punish you for it.

An example of that came up recently when I was advising on a prospective client who had come to me seeking advice because their portfolio of sites had been hammered by Google and he was now looking a portfolio of sites that had only about 30% of them indexed on Google.

I sat and listened to this “sorry tale of woe” (and it genuinely was a sorry tale as I do not wish to cause offence) and when asked about Back Links, the reply came back that everything had been carefully planned and they’d only gone after carefully screened keyword rich phrases from one a certain profile of site.

Then it hit me? Was this a link profile that looked as if it had been created and morphed by human hand or was it just too good to be genuinely true? My advice to the client was to go back and radically rethink their Linking Strategy and to not be afraid of a wide mix of link types, and certainly to think about varying their link sources and also the IP location of their links.

Next up the topic of Wikis and the power of links within them?

Now at the end of the day, unless you are talking directly to the person within Google Algorithm team who is responsible for the final tweaks that go into their algorithm changes then any comment from anyone about Links and Link Building is a “best guess” or “educated hearsay” – yes even mine.

Where we come from is that we will only pass on comments and tips / tricks and techniques that we have already tried on our own sites and know to have worked. How they have worked and why, we can only give our best shot in guessing or estimate but it is never more than that and anyone who can say different is by and large lying.

That having been said supplying information backed up by empirical verifiable evidence is fairly conclusive and that’s where we come from. We’ll only write about something either “after the event” or towards the end of a promotion that we feel us commenting upon, won’t adversely affect the outcome or success of that promotion.

So how does this affect our views on Wikis and such like?

Well basically I like them and at the moment along with SLS (of course) we are using them to support our PR Campaigns for one client and over the past five days have captured 4 Page slots (including 2 No 1 slots for two PR’s plus Client internal page) just using Press Releases backed up and supported by a wide variety of Wikis and SLS links.

The List we supplied to folks last week of Media Wikis has now expanded and instead of the 2026 Wikis we had in this list we now have over 2,500 (and it’s growing so don’t be too surprised if by this time next week it’s over 3,500!) so to all of those who bought copies of the 2026 list we’ll mail out the increased sized list for no additional charge so that about an extra 25% for free.

Now as to the power of this List? Well I spoke to one of our more senior members last week and their comment was that using one of the newer Wiki Submitters they had submitted to all of the Wikis and had successfully managed to submit to over 1,600 of them. Now this didn’t mean that the other 400 were useless, far from it. What it meant was that probably for a number of reasons the target wikis weren’t able to accept automatic submission or for some reason there was an “interface” issue but manually the Wikis would have accepted the submissions.

I personally think a success rate of 1,600 out of 2,000 is awesome and backed up by SLS gives one hell of a Link Support “Baseball Bat” to whatever you were trying to promote and our recent client success with PR’s has borne that out to be true.

Asked how powerful this list was and this type of promotion?

The answer that came back was that the evidence showed that these Wikis were strong enough to get pages moved from Page 2 in Google onto Page 1 and to be fair, that’s what we’ve found as well.

It’s great being able to go to a client or prospective client and then say that you’ll come back to them in a few days with some representation for them in Google on their first page and that’s what these Press Releases backed up by the Wikis and SLS is doing for us here.

The Wiki list is going onto Traffic Planet for sale tomorrow (slightly delayed through editing again) and the price will be $45 for 2026 wikis but those who are interested in buying from us directly for the next few days will get the extra 500 Wikis thrown in for no extra fee so will get a list that is 2,500 strong.

Now if certain types of Domain suffixes” floats your boat” (know what I mean?) then our Wiki List contains over 110 EDU Domains – that’s 110 unique EDU Domains not just different wikis on the same domain plus 9 .Gov’s.

Not bad eh?

The other thing I wanted to mention briefly was that following hard on the heels of these Wikis is our research on another platform of Wikis and these links for these wikis are auto approve and also Dofollow.

Now at the risk of winding folks up, we have a database of these that stretches to over 12,000 Wiki Pages spread across 850 Domains so far so this one is going to be “interesting” to say the least.

Anyway to sum up if anyone is interested in the existing 2,500 list then send the $45 via PayPal to info@simpleleveraging.com and I’ll get you sorted.

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Yup that’s the results this morning from two bookmarks placed earlier today (well late last night really) from our new High PR EDU Backlink package. I recorded a brief video to add to the package that shows these results for one of our Test search terms.

For this term the video shows us capturing position No 1 and 6 in Google.com for a term that shows 443K pages in Narrow Match. In under 12 hours. It’s a search term that has traffic as well being a tightly focused niche.

I’ll put the video out to our Peer review team and post the results in the forum but for obvious reasons can’t publish the video live as it would divulge too much information and not be fair on those who are part of this promotional package. It will be included in all copies of the zip file going out to purchasers today and also copies sent out to folks who jumped on board late last night.

6 spots left open and 12 hours left so if folks want to get involved then paypal the $50 to info@simpleleveraging.com and I’ll send the packages out by return.

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Just thought I’d drop a quick update to yesterdays email where I discussed an ongoing case study we were carrying out on some brand new domains and also checking how well the SLS Network was performing at the start of 2012.

OK interim stats are as follows:

1. 15 Domains bought and launched

2. All 15 were indexed and were starting to rank (albeit in a limited manner) within 24 hours.

3. For Narrow match terms, 4 had hit Page 1 in Google within 3 days, 5 had hit Page 2, 1 was on Page3, 1 was on Page 4 whilst the remaining 4 were lost in the mire (sub Page 5 but we’ll get them to where we want them to be ( it’ll just take some more time). So that’s a 60% success rate at Page 2 plus within 3 days.

The time period was as mentioned three days since we bought and registered this domain and we were looking at the following results for one term (our main and keyword targeted term) plus as we had launched a while network of sites there was also some collateral penetration as well in that some of our other sites were also showing up for this term:

1. 5 Places controlled by us on Page1 in Google.

2. 4 Places on Page 2.

3. 5 Places on Page 3 (including Bookmark Directories).

4. 7 Places on Page 4 (including Bookmark Directories).

5. 5 places on Page 5 (including Bookmark Directories).

Plus when we expanded the Search queries it showed on Pages 9 & 10 that we had in some cases 90% of the page tie up for our sites / terms etc when we also took into consideration the member Directories of SLS which had also started to appear.

All we used in this promotion were a couple of items that we discuss in the members area of SLS plus the Bookmark Network using one account to deep link the sites.

So the quick response to does Social Bookmarking still work in 2012 (heck there was a post in the Warrior Forum recently that predicted the “death of…..” yawn) is yes and is alive and kicking.

The key thing that you have to bear in mind and I’ve stated this on countless times over the years, SEO is a constantly moving form of marketing. You have to keep evolving or you are finished and that’s what Simple Leveraging does, it moves constantly with the times and if it seems that in 2012 we are massively different animal to how we were in 2009 when we first emerged then in certain cases we are but in our core methodology? Nope, our principles and approach have stayed the same, just the implementation of them has been slightly “tweaked” that’s all.

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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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I was talking to one of my valued friends amongst the SLS Community today and the subject came round to what we both felt was working for our respective business operations and especially with regards to current practices and the conversation swiftly moved round to the “why and how”?

The answer to this was obvious and it was this. Simply put, Simple Leveraging has evolved considerably over the past two and half years of its existence and it helps explain why the practices and methodology taught remains at the forefront of current SEO and Internet Marketing in general.

Now my philosophy behind this again is quite simple, you have to evolve in this game or you soon cease to exist in any meaningful manner and hence the reason for the constant exploration for new tools, techniques and utilities that make SLS still pack the punch it does.

Nowhere is this more so that in the area of taking SLS and really scoring with the use of Press Releases.

Now those of you who remember the various Skype Webinars we carried out in late summer will probably wonder what happened to the end product.

Well the initial studies of the project into the success of SLS and Press Releases made some pretty bold (but backed by fact) claims in that we did go through the nuts and bolts of a Campaign that went on to generate over $240,000 in four days.

Pretty bold huh? But nonetheless fact.

Well what I wanted to do was to take this approach and run it across various Client Campaigns over the past few months and see overall how it worked. These Campaigns were run during some of the busiest periods of the online year and I must confess the results were pretty amazing.

The first Campaign took place in the run up to Halloween and involved a Client in the Catering and Food Industry and using the techniques and practices we discussed, our Client saw an uptick in Traffic levels of 127% on last year with the Organic Search sector of their activities seeing a jump of 197%.

Using the same Client, we then analysed their promotional activities over Thanksgiving and the corresponding results were pretty amazing. Overall their traffic was up 192% on last year with the Organic Search sector of their promotional activities seeing a colossal increase of 440%.

Finally we analysed the first sector of their Christmas activities and again the results bear very interesting reading. So far with regards to overall activity, their traffic levels are up by 163% and again in Organic Search terms they are 443% up on last year.

As they say, the Jury is well and truly back in on this one and it is working with a vengeance.

Now I bring this subject up because one of the core components was linked to being able to produce and distribute a fair amount of Press Releases and this, if you are not very careful, costs.

However with our colleagues at Mass MediaSEO we are able to pass on to our SLS Members savings that if taken correctly will save them at least $480 over the next 12 months.

What you have to do to qualify these savings is to send me your membership details and I will pass these onto Dennis and his team and together we’ll get you sorted out and up and running.

Now what we’ve done is effectively waive our commissions on this Service with the aim of passing these savings directly onto you. It’s another way of us being able to say to you, “Thank You” for being one of our loyal members.

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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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