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Seasons Greetings…….and plans for 2013

Dec 26th, 2012
by Admin.
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First up, I hope you all had a terrific Christmas Break, enjoyed all of that which was on offer and spent some quality time with your families and loved ones.

Whatever your faith or whatever traditional Mid Winter break you observe, it is always nice to be able to take time out and spend it with special friends and family.

Our Databases and Data mining tools here at simple Leveraging have been working overtime these past few weeks and as part of a special “Twelve Days of Christmas” promotion we are supplying a lot of our High Page Rank Lists at knock down rates but the quality and the exclusivity remains the same i.e. there will only be limited availability to preserve a degree of exclusiveness.

These are also a precursor to the annual “Simple Leveraging Methodology Overhaul” we carry out at this time of year…every year.

The reasons we have remained in existence for so long whilst other groups have come and gone is that we continually (well once if not several times a year) “reinvent” ourselves.

The reason for this being is that though Best Practice in Link Building by and large remains the same, despite what the other “Gurus” claim, it does need “tweaking” from time to time. Sites and particular aspects that worked like “gangbusters” several years ago perhaps aren’t quite as efficient today whilst other basic techniques just steam along nicely working year after year.

Taking all of this into consideration we continually review what is working on our own and client sites, review and listen to what is working amongst our Simple Leveraging colleagues sites and then amalgamate this all together into our core “Simple Leveraging Methodology”.

This sounds all very pretentious I know but what it all boils down to is “if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it” or “if it is broke then try and understand why”. We then take this information and add it to our basic Simple Leveraging Approach.

It is by doing this that we are able to call upon a wide degree of expertise across the board and recently when Google rolled out the latest in their Penguin Updates I was able to find out pretty quickly who had been hit and why we thought so but more importantly who hadn’t been hit and even more importantly why we thought they had avoided a slap and survived?

We’ve amalgamated all of this and one of our longer standing SLS Members, Blake Webster, has compiled a beautiful set of charts which in principle he has agreed to share but what we’ll do is put them all into a Webinar/Workshop format and then make sure that all those who wish to get this information can do so?

 

There Is Life After Google……Seriously There Is…

Oct 2nd, 2012
by Admin.
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OK so the Search Engine landscape has resembled a WW1 landscape recently with casualties littered all over the place, but if you look carefully underneath it all sometimes it isn’t as bleak as it might seem.

Now conventional wisdom states that currently Google have circa 66% of the US Search Market and arguably much greater worldwide. Yahoo and Bing lag well behind in 2nd and 3rd place with approximately 27% between them while Ask and AOL are almost nonexistent (they will of course deny this strongly but then to paraphrase a well known Politico/Journalist quote – “they would say that wouldn’t they”) whilst the new kids on the block, Yandex and Baidu look good outside bets but still have yet to penetrate outside of their own domestic market places in any meaningful manner.

So if we take the above almost as Gospel then you would normally assume that when you get wiped out by Google then traffic, business, in fact any form of meaningful interaction online disappears overnight?

You would certainly think so?

However in one case we had control of earlier this year this was not necessarily the case.

The site in question was caught up as collateral damage in the “Great Penguin Attack of April 2012.”

But, interestingly enough, though turnover was hit it didn’t drop to the same degree or level that the Google Referral traffic did. The reason for this, looking back and analysing the data was that actually there is a huge difference between traffic and surfers visiting from the various Search Engines and this can have a marked effect on your turnover.

If you think of it this way, when you search via the Google Search Portal, you are met with a very minimalist Search Form that subconsciously puts you into the mindset “Research”. It is designed thus, always has been and that was its very early appeal and there is nothing wrong with that.

Conversely, if you look at the Yahoo Portal you are met with so much going on that it screams “interaction” and so by and large you are “in the mood” for clicking and interacting almost from the get go.

With Bing, it is slightly different and this almost is a hangover from the days when Bing (or MSN as it once was) was the Search Engine of default when IE was bolted on as a necessity with all installations of Windows OS. Now due to deregulation, Microsoft can no longer bolt on IE with Windows, the levels have dropped but historically the surfers who visited via MSN were always the most active of the lot.

Anyway to sum up, there is life after Google and that’s before you start to think about some of the other more socially oriented sites out there such as FaceBook or Pinterest.

If someone gave me the choice, lose traffic from Google or Yahoo / Bing?

To be honest with you, we’ve proved a site can survive with damn all Google love, if we lost Yahoo and Bing then that could / would have much more of a financial implication on the bottom line.

Moral of the story after the latest Google putsch?

Spend as much time with your web analytics as you can and find out where the main traffic that’s coming from Yahoo and Bing originates from and concentrate on that in the short term while Google recovers from its latest bout of anti social behaviour.

Thoughts on This Weekends Google Update

Oct 1st, 2012
by Admin.
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We’ve been gathering information in the past 24 hours or so about the latest Google Update that was apparently rolled out over the Weekend and when we’ve got some fairly concrete analysis backed by evidence then I’ll send out an update as to how we think it’s going to pan out.

However, my one piece of advice at this stage is this. Google updates are always pretty brutal and savage at the outset i.e. the worst is always at the start and things actually get better and better as they realise what gaffs they’ve made and the implications of their screw ups.

It’s a particularly shoddy way of doing business in my mind and they seem to have no concept of the downside in terms of collateral damage of their actions which does tend to make me wonder about the Corporate Ethos at Mountain View in California.

You would have thought that with the so called collection of supposedly “superior cerebral matter” in their company that these updates and their implications would be better thought out but sadly that never appears to be the case.

But back to the initial carnage. This update appears to be more targeted towards low grade EMD Domains (Exact Match Domains such as www.campingsuppliesbelfast.com if ever such a domain were said to exist) with damn all in the way of content and loaded with Adsense or some other form of CPA / CPC Media.

Now no doubt the moment I have sent this Newsletter out, I will be beset with correspondence from folks all claiming that their collections of similar sites have remained OK but for the majority of folks with these types of sites in their Portfolio it is now looking more and more like a disaster.

I was reading on one bulletin board of one Webmaster who used to have approximately 50 such sites and as of this morning had lost 45.

Ouch.

So what is the upside?

Well sadly there is no upside but the only thing that can be said is that in most cases the damage is always at it’s more severe in the first few days (we’re approximately in Day3 of the rollout) and then things start to improve as the Search Engineers slowly start to tweak and adjust the algorithm. The side effects of this being that sites that have not totally been wiped out but only devalued should then start to see some drift back up towards where they were if you go back to basics.

We had one major client site really hit badly by the Penguin and lost a phenomenal amount of Google love but since then we’ve seen a 30% month on month growth of Google activity and interest and though we’re still not where we should have been we are certainly a good way down the road to claiming back our traffic levels and SERPS.

So the moral of the story?

Don’t panic – it’s too late to panic anyway as the damage if any, is already done so the best you can do if you’ve been hit is take the phone off the hook, tell your secretary that you’re in a meeting and front up to the situation. If your client sites have been hit then for god’s sake deal with it positively and don’t try and hide the fact. The clients will know and will certainly think an awful lot less of you if all you do is an impression of an online Ostrich.

Gather all your relative details and tell them you are working on it and then as I said, take the phone off the hook and get researching. It is absolutely imperative that you know the very worst of the damage even if the client is only partially aware.

Now is the time when we “SEO Practitioners” really start to “earn our corn” and I’d wager that all situations are usually reversible it just depends upon how you go about it.

It’s a pain, a complete and utter “pain in the proverbials” but that’s life when you deal with the big G.

As I said earlier, I loathe them for the shoddy way they do business and perhaps in the long term this long awaited tie up between Microsoft’s Bing / Yahoo partnership and either Yandex or Baidu might force Google to start to behave a little bit more responsibly.

One can but hope.

Any questions then fire away and as usual, here at Leveraging Central, we always love to hear your comments.

Google at it again (allegedly) or so we think?

Sep 4th, 2012
by Admin.
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Those fine guys and gals from the ‘plex are supposed to be at it again with another Update on its way, this time supposed to be more volatile than the last.

Boys and Girls…stop concentrating on exactly what Google are doing because they specialize in several things. Firstly doing things when they are least expected and secondly screwing up whatever it is that they are/were planning to do.

The only absolute you can be assured of with Google is that there are going to be loads of collateral damage with lives ruined across the board. That’s the way they work because they can’t be bothered to either test things properly or think things through properly either.

Sorry to be the bearer of such gloomy tidings but I trust Google about a far as I can throw them.

We’ve got a couple of webinars coming up shortly where we are going to explain and examine diversification so that when the next Google update hits you’ll be in a position to sit back and just stick two fingers up at them (if you are not from the UK, that’s a very rude sign and they deserve it).

Concentrate on your own activities and keep your head down, that’s all you can do with Google because if they are going to hit you either by design or otherwise there is nothing you can do about it, till it’s happened and then you work on it to repair the damage.

All we can pray for is that either Yahoo / Microsoft get their act together or Yandex or Baidu finally make a break through to give Google the message that they can’t just run around like a 900lb Gorilla with a bad dose of Haemorrhoids.

Post Penguin Views and Great Value Back Links Offer

Aug 10th, 2012
by Admin.
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Before the weekend officially gets under way I thought I’d drop everyone a line to answer a few questions regarding the recent events and goings on over SEO in the last few months and certainly regarding Panda, Penguin and SLS.

Well first up, I get asked regularly about has SLS and its network been affected by the Penguin Update and the answer it would appear (touch wood he says) is that we seem to be OK at the moment as we do appear to have maintained our “low key” below the radar status.

I ran a test for a client last week on one particular keyword phrase and after the Press Releases had appeared in the top 5 slots in Google (well 4 out of the top 5), positions 7-10 were occupied by our Bookmark Directories.

Also I spoke to one of our longer standing SLS members the other evening and we were talking about SEO and Promotion in general and how sites were starting to come back post penguin and I mentioned that in our case we hadn’t changed anything in terms of promotions Post Penguin and that the one site we did have that had been affected was now showing a month on month increase in Google traffic by about 15% for the past 4 months.

The moral of the story it would appear was that yes you couldn’t deny the Penguin Update had had an effect but that by just keeping on with the basics, we had managed to survive without buying the plethora of “shiny new toys” or reports that always seem to appear post a Google Update. One wonders whether in fact what some folks would do if there never were any Google updates at all.

Ok, another question that came in recently was “what the heck is Back Links Heaven all about”?

Simple, loads of places (probably more than any other source) where you can put your own back links.

I recorded a brief video guide about Back Links Heaven here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP7KlGdiqK8

We still have a few packages of the first six Volumes of Back Links Heaven available at $45, which effectively prices them at $7.50 per volume for 2.5K Links.

The platforms covered in the first six volumes ranged included:

AEForums

UseBB

PunBB

ESyndicat

phpDug

MoinMoin (wiki Platform)

Also as a quick Weekend Promo for SLS users and Members we have the following happening.

A few JV partners have approached us to see if we could put together a brief mini-series of Back Links Heaven and we have and it’s comprised of the following.

Volume 1 will contain links from 10 different Platforms and the OTO that will be on offer only to those who have bought the deal will offer 30 Urls from each of the 10 Platforms for $35. These will all be links from Sites with a minimum Home Page Rank of 4. The sites will include the following platforms:

PunBB

VBulletin (Blogs here not forums)

MoinMoin,

Elgg

ExpressionEngine,

TikiWiki

DokuWiki

JomSocial,

SMF,

phpFox.

There are some nice unusual Software Platforms there as we are expanding rapidly our range of Platforms on offer in Back Links Heaven

These packets will only be available as a OTO or to members of Simple Leveraging so anyone who wants some links from some nice PR4+ sites (mix and match of NoFollow and Dofollow) then send over the $35 via PayPal to info@simpleleveraging.com and we’ll get you sorted.

For those who wish a bit more coverage and want to go for the Proper Volumes of Back Links Heaven and want the half price offer then send over the $45 to info@simpleleveraging.com and we’ll get you sorted.

In the meantime have a great weekend.

Explanations On Five Very Rare Platforms for Link Building

Jul 30th, 2012
by Admin.
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Just wanted to send out a quick email out to everyone to answer a few questions that emerged from my last email and then also to give out a quick heads up regarding some of the answers.

First up were a few questions about some of the software platforms that we covered namely ESyndicat, the wiki platforms Moinmoin, TikiWiki and Docuwiki and then the Social Platform JomSocial.

First up ESyndicat. ESyndicat powers by and large by far and above the largest number of web Directories around and from a Link Builders perspective is actually extremely useful as long as you know where these Directories are. By and large they prove dofollow links and therefore should be part of every Link Builders armoury. The thing that you of course have to remember is that is unless you include them as part of an overall Campaign as a tier and make that supported then it can be sometimes a struggle to get links indexed. That having been said however, as we discussed a few months ago if you take the Urls that your links are on and either ping those Urls or ( as I prefer) compile them into an RSS Feed and then feed them through Yahoo Pipes and Google Feed reader then you’ll get them indexed quite easily. For those who want to investigate ways of getting articles and links submitted fairly quickly then there are a number of submitters around that will do this for you.

The most important thing to remember is that these Directories (along with other directories) are superb for diluting any potential concentration issues you might have inherited or been exposed to via the Penguin Update. As a tier within your overall Campaigns they are great as long as they are supported and this is obviously where our little ‘ol network at SLS comes into its own. The other thing about ESyndicat is that there are enough of them around (if you know where to look) with reasonable Home Page PR to make them extremely useful for our purposes.

Ok, next question was about the three wiki platforms, Moinmoin, TikiWiki and Docuwiki. Now these Wiki Platforms are not found to the same degree as MediaWiki which is very much the “Industry Standard” (or certainly the most common). Now unlike MediaWiki which provides virtually 100% nofollow links by default, there are some Moinmoin wikis which are dofollow, a much greater percentage of TikiWiki and virtually all Docuwiki are dofollow.

Because of the fact that these platforms have not had as much exposure as MediaWiki to the wiles of Link Builders (euphemism for Spammers) they are (at present) much more useful for our purposes at the moment and now is the time to get in now “under the radar”, get your accounts set up and then develop carefully.

Basically it’s the same deal as with Media Wiki in terms of usage and development but much more valuable because of the rarity value i.e. 25K potential Media Wikis and only 1.5 K DocuWikis etc.

Lastly, JomSocial. Well JomSocial is the social network application that runs on the Joomla CMS Platform. So the upshot of this is if you are running Joomla as a CMS Platform (Joomla for those who don’t know is effectively the grown up version of Mambo) which is one of the free Open Source php applications then you can use this as your software to set up and run your own versions of either a Social Network or Blog. It’s a great application and allows users to post dofollow links.

OK perhaps not as wide spread as other set ups but with the added advantage that as it runs on Joomla as its source engine, the upshot of this is that a lot of the sites it powers have very good Page Rank. Approximately 20% of the installations we have tracked down run on a Home Page Rank of over 3.

So there you have it. Five newish platforms (OK 4 but with added awareness of ESyndicat) and as per a request from a JV Partner to put some information out, we have put together some packs of a very exclusive deal together exclusively for SLS Readers.

Because of the exclusive nature of the three wiki platforms and also JomSocial, we are only making 10 copies of this deal available. This package contains over 650 very exclusive Urls containing some nice EDU and Academic Domains where you can place more dofollow links than you can nofollow.

This deal is available for $50 each and is available on a first come first served basis.

So to sum up, 650 Domain urls from some very rare and hitherto under exposed software platform / Sites now available for the first 10 takers.

Those interested, send the $50 via PayPal to info@simpleleveraging.com and we’ll get you sorted out with the Urls. These Urls are rare and are difficult to source.

Usual deal gang, any questions feel free to ask away and we’ll get as much info through to you as we possibly can.

June Monthly Free Downloads plus an expanded Bookmarking Network

Jun 12th, 2012
by Admin.
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Just a quick update to bring everyone up to speed on developments at Simple Leveraging.

Firstly we’ve been testing and integrating some new Directories to the network and now the Network is up to 372 with another 18 waiting in the wings and they will be integrated over the next 7 days but the new configuration is available for download in the premium members downloads area.

I was asked earlier today how effective this sort of utility still was so it was interesting to be able to forward a screen grab of where we had just placed a Press Release on behalf of a client to No 7 in Google within 8 hours of its release and there at No’s 8, 9 and 10 on Page 1 in Google were three of our Bookmark Directories. :-)

We’ve also just put live this Month’s free High PR Authority Forums list into the Premium Downloads area as well. This contains 50 EDU, Academic and Gov Forums where you can place and manage your own inbound links. The Home Page PR on these ranges from PR7 to PR 2.

Let’s all try and use these as responsibly as we can.

We’ll also be putting live some AA Blog Urls for Comments that have just been sent to us. These involve some EDU and Gov Urls as well. As soon as we’ve processed these they will also go live in the Premium Downloads area.

As with the Forum Urls, these are free of charge to members with current live subscriptions. It’s our way of saying Thank You for being members.

The members Premium Download area can be found here:

http://simpleleveraging.com/slschat/index.php/board,55.0.html

We’ve also been updating various scripts on the Forum so any problems accessing these downloads then get in touch and we’ll sort you out asap.

Thoughts on Google and how we ” rescued a Penguin Ravaged” site.

May 14th, 2012
by Admin.
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Just thought I’d follow up on some thoughts that we started to express
the other day.

So first up, Google and it’s antics of late.

Question: “Why has Google behaved the way it has in what it is doing?”

Answer (short version):”Because it can and it’s Google?”

Answer (Longer version): “It is clearing the index (or attempting to)
of an entire sub class of folks who are trying to “game” its index and
rid itself of a plethora of absolute garbage that has arisen from too many
folks who have spent too much time reading the garbage that a lot of those
folks continually seem to publish.

There. Got that rant off my chest.

Seriously, it would appear that Google is by and large after the IM Market
(who seems to be screaming and shouting the loudest) and to be honest Google
doesn’t give a damn about this bunch and never will. If they all decided to
leave the Earth and populate the Moon it wouldn’t be day too soon as far as
Google is concerned. They just clog up the system with, as I said, by and
large worthless garbage and continually try and devalue what Google and
the others have to offer.

For example take the following. It seems for years we’ve had nothing but
guides telling us how easy it is to set up a system whereby we can buy traffic
via Adwords et al for mere pennies in the dollar as opposed to paying the current
market rates.

Then the same bunch start to scream about Adsense yields going down. You
can’t have one without the other being affected; it’s the other side of
the coin.

When you have an entire sub class of individuals whose entire “raison d’être”
seems to trying to earn a living by “killing”, “massacring” or whatever, Google
then you can hardly expect Google to be their biggest fans. Now this bunch
have all started to shout and scream that we should all forget Google and
go and play elsewhere.

Now for those of us who inhabit Planet Reality and have day to day SEO
Clients to deal with this is complete and utter suicide and total folly.
I can just imagine the next client pitch when we roll up and proudly announce
that we are going to take our prospective clients entire SEO Campaign and
forget about Google and move it elsewhere.

30 seconds later as we’re no doubt scheduled to follow our laptops as they
make their way out of the nearest window we would no doubt be reflecting
on our hastiness to be so “innovative”.

Daft or what?

Whether we like it or not (and I keep saying I am not Google’s greatest
admirer) Google is here to stay. It’s too big and the name “Google” has
now entered the dictionary and is synonymous with Internet Search.

Work with it or get another job basically.

Yes I know FaceBook, Twitter and the like of Pinterest are getting lots
of traffic and shouldn’t be ignored but the way to look at is as follows.
How much penetration commercially are they getting and whereabouts in
the overall “pantheon” of online search do they lie.

Answer: Well down the pecking order from Google.

I know FaceBook is popular and great for brand awareness etc, it’s very
cool and “sexy” brands are jumping on board left right and centre but
when it comes to day to day activities and active search it still comes
in a long way behind Google.

I use my wife as a “touchstone” in matters like these. She uses her laptop
a lot for buying all sorts of things from personal items, family holidays
and making all sorts of travel arrangements for the family. She would not
think of starting off at other point than from Google when she flips open
her laptop.

When I come back from a hard day at the Office grumbling about what a bad
day it’s been fighting Panda’s and now Penguins she looks at me as if I
should be strapped to a stretcher and being marched to nearest Psychiatric
Ward.

So where does this leave these issues? Panda and Penguin et al matter to the
SEO Market (of which I sadly am one) and the IM Market.

Google aren’t wild about the former and could well do without the latter
so they are not going to lose any sleep over what is going on at the moment
and we’d be best served by just knuckling down and fathoming out how to cope
on both our personal sides and on the side of our clients.

Now we’ve just completed a fairly comprehensive look at what has happened
with the web sites we have under management, either our own or our clients
and the picture isn’t (touch wood) that bad.

Where we have been hit, and this was the unexpected one, we’ve just gone
back to square one and now 10-14 days later the site is starting to respond
with regards to its SERPS. It’s still not great but the traffic levels are
rising and the SERPS are responding in the right direction.

What have we done? As I said, we’ve gone back to basics and spent the last
3 weeks or so diluting the Anchor Concentration on their Back Links and
have just accomplished this by getting the client to publish articles and
material on their site that relate specifically to their own subject matter
and have left them to their own devices regarding content, structure,
keyword density and all the other SEO stuff that we’ve been so used to.
We’ve then taken this content and re purposed it and published it on any and
every site we could fine and just funneled the links back to the target
site using an extremely wide, varied and non-focused Link Anchor Campaign.

OK we’re not back to where the client was but Page 2 in Google is better
than Page 82 or wherever they disappeared to

We’ve also discussed this approach with a number of colleagues and friends
and the general consensus is that just moving forward with general promotion
rather than tightly focused and structured Campaigns is the best way forward
for the time being.

We’ve been promoting this for some time at Simple Leveraging where we’ve
been advocating the construction of wide and varied structures to support
your Campaigns that would withstand any form of penalty attack etc that
Google decided.

You see the crux of the whole matter is that that very rarely does Google
do anything out of personal malice etc. None of this is ever personal unless
you’ve actually committed the heinous crime of making them look very stupid
in Public or been very rude about one of their staff in an unnecessary manner.
Then you might get the odd personal inspection and suffer the consequences
but for 99.9% of us it’s purely an algorithmic thing.

As such when you are dealing with something like this, it is always best to
take a step backwards and think carefully before you make your next move.
Difficult I know (and boy do we know) when you have a panic stricken client
breathing down your neck and you feel then that it is intensely personal
despite knowing it is not.

So when all of the new “Penguin Killer” SEO Guides come out and you better
believe it they are on their way if not out already. Just think as to what
exactly Penguin is all about. By and large it is all about over optimization
and gerrymandered SEO Link Building. If it looks unnatural then you better
believe that Google will spot it sooner or later.

The Bottom line to dealing with Penguin is that your best tool is “Common
Sense” and make sure you stop yourself from getting too clever.

As I mentioned, we’ve found going back to basics helped and one other thing
is starting to emerge – the relative power it would appear of nofollow links.
Now this might sound as if we are riding a coach and horses right through
Google’ algorithm at the moment but in our experience and that of others we
are seeing a huge benefit to our Campaigns when we’ve added Press Releases
into the mix and these ( in our case) only involve nofollow links.

That’s one of the reasons why are now starting to use nofollow links from
EDU’s and Govs whenever we can lay our hands on them as well. They are not
only adding another dimension to our Campaigns with the additional IP
spread but the authority status of the sites themselves appears to be
really having a benefit.

Now I know I mentioned in my last Newsletter that we have some nice EDU High
PR Links Packets but an additional inspection of one of these packets reveals
that they also contain some nice High PR Gov’s and .mils in there as well.

There are a few packets of these still available and they are $75 for 2,000
High PR Links (PR3 – 6 and all on the page not domain) so those who are
interested then send the $75 via PayPal to info@simpleleveraging.com and
we’ll get you sorted.

Similar packets will be available on Traffic Planet shortly but the packets
available on TP will only contain links ranging from PR 2 to 4 whereas these
remaining packets here contain some PR5′s and 6′s as well.

Sometimes you just have to sit tight with Google….and some”hot” dofollow Academic Wikis available.

Apr 24th, 2012
by Admin.
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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.

Google up to it’s tricks again

Apr 9th, 2012
by Admin.
No comments yet
Google is up to its old bullying tricks again. Its behaviour resembles that of a 900lb Gorilla rampaging around inflicting pain and aggravation because it’s testicles have just been reshaped by a kick from one of its colleagues.

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.

In this instance sit, watch and wait.

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