Yes you read it right correctly, this is how we took a particular term that was OK a very tightly focused niche term, but one that had adverts running as far as Page 2 in Google and therefore was making money (or so Google thought so) and we ended up “owning” 95% of Google in under 24 hours.

Actually astute viewers of the video when it comes out will spot that we actually did this in just less than 13 hours!

So what did we do?

First in broad match our Press Release for the Client hit the No 2 slot out of 309 million pages in 13 hours and in narrow match we ended up with our Press Release taking 19 out of the top 20 slots in Google in the same period

Now the video, though having been recorded, is not going to appear for another 14 days or so as we are live in the midst of the Campaign for the Client and to be blunt, I don’t want any enterprising folks out there “nicking our niche” but the video proof is there and when I deem it safe the video will come out to our members only download area.

So how was this done?

1. Careful Keyword Research.
2. Timing
3. Proper and planned use of META Data

Firstly as Myra and I discussed in our recent Web Discussion, it was all down to careful Keyword Research for the right term for the client. Secondly as this particular Season Campaign has just got underway I guess our timing was pretty hot in that we hit the tracks running just before the previous Seasonal campaign had actually ended. Thirdly and last of all we made sure that our MEAT Data for the Keyword Research was included right up at the front of the Press Release.

Now astute Google watchers will know that Google have fine-tuned their algorithm recently and for the time being seem to be using for the Meta Inserts in the SERPS, the first 300 Characters of the main body copy of the piece you are trying to optimise for.

Now the Golden Rule here is to try and make sure you get your main Key phrase inserted right there at the start of your piece. Now this is not new and has been standard SEO practice for years but it did seem to have gone slightly out of fashion recently but now appears to have come back to the fore in Campaigns or so our research has shown.

So given the fact that in Press Releases our distributor automatically assigns the first 300 characters to the Meta description and this includes the beginning information, for example:

(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 17, 2011)

This means it shortens your ability to use the keywords in the first 145-155 characters in the meta description that Google displays before it truncates. So make use of your keywords in the Meta description early on, ideally right in the first part of the first sentence.

Anyway enough of this. I’ll get the video put into the Members only support area of the Forum within the next 14 days or so but to further add proof to the fact that we’re not sensationalising this, I’ve released the video to a couple of SLS members to get them to verify that we’re not making this up. I’ll get them to add their comments to back up our claims.

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So, unless you’ve been hiding under a stone recently or have just arrived here from the Planet Zarg then it’s a safe bet that you’ve been hearing loads about Google+

So then why is it that yours truly is urging caution and reticence regarding this one in the latest series of offerings from our almighty Search Engine, the Big G.

Well first up, Google + is operated and run by Google.

Secondly, it’s run by Google…

And so on.

What more do you need here folks?

Lets be honest, Google’s track record in releasing offers like this is not exactly exemplary. Hands up all those who remember Google Buzz, Wave and Voice plus not to mention all those glorious Updates?

No my reasoning is more to do with the fact that I trust Google about as far as I can throw them at the moment but let me explain further.

It’s like this. You have a great website and you want to get some more action in Google over it but as we all know Google frown about all sorts of activities that might in some way give your site a slightly more competitive edge over the competition. So what do you do?  You get all your friends organised into one of these Google+ circles and get them all to “vote” for your site and then sit back and watch as your site climbs the charts?

Hmnnn, let’s think about it folks. You’ve been using a service run by Google to actually help in your intended aim of “gaming” Google.

The best bit of it all is that sooner or later some clown will come out with a WSO or E-book claiming that this is all one big Google Loophole and that this is going to be the next killer application and this is how you make it much better.

Just how dumb can we all get?

It’s like taking a big stick and standing there somewhere in the heart of the Congo Rain Forest and poking a big Gorilla with it. Folks, this, like the Google scenario, is not going to end well. Someone is likely to end up needing fairly intensive surgery and let me take this opportunity to say “it ain’t going to be Google…or the Gorilla.”

I mean, how clever is it to scheme up some really smart plan of actually creating a structure that is designed purely and solely for the purposes of getting round Google’s filters and structures….and then telling Google how we are going to do it…and when?

Let me finish this short newsletter with a quote taken from “The Filter Bubble” by Eli Pariser. In this short extract he describes the end of a conversation with a “Google insider” in which the subject of the Company Mantra “Do Not Be Evil” comes up:

“I once explained to a Google Search engineer that while I didn’t think the company was currently evil, it seemed to have at its fingertips everything it needed to do evil if it wished. He smiled broadly. “Right,” he said. “We’re not evil. We try really hard not to be evil. But if we wanted to, man, could we ever!””

Please treat Google+ with a huge amount of caution, especially if you are trying to use it as a form of SEO Weapon?

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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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A man is walking down a beach one day looking at the sea shore and also at the other side of the bay where he has to drive to work every day and also thinking about how long it takes him to drive to work and back every day and suddenly spies a bottle half submerged in the sand and his gives the bottle a kick.

There is suddenly a loud explosion followed by lots of smoke and a Genie appears looking very unhappy;

“What’s your problem mate? I’ve been asleep for thousands of years and you have to go and wake me up like that but as I’m here I have to follow tradition and give you a wish. Your wish is my command master?”

The man ponders on this and then comes up with an idea.

“I’d like you to build me a bridge joining this side of the bay to my place of work thirty miles away across the bay?”

The Genie looks at him incredulously and replies “Are you serious? Do you know how much steel and concrete that would require? The man hours, the materials, the environmental impact. Totally impossible but as this is not the answer you were looking for or expecting I’ll grant you one more wish?”

Now prior to going out for a walk that day the man had been spending some time at home on his PC trying to find a present for his wife using Google as a Search Engine with no luck and he thought:

“OK, I’d like you to tell me exactly how Google works and how they rank items as I couldn’t find a suitable present for my wife today”

The Genie looks at him slightly puzzled and then puts his arm round the man and starts to walk him down the beach and replies:

“Now tell me about this bridge you want me to build? Do you want one lane there and back or two….”

Such is life with Google at present but the one thing that is starting to appear as a constant is that Google is looking for quality content and also links from sites with authority and trust. This it would appear is almost more important than Page Rank. In fact it would appear that the much vaunted but never fully implemented concept of Trust Rank might at last be appearing again. Now this also touches upon another one of the supposedly “Sacred Cows” of the Internet – the “Nofollow Link”

Now to understand this fully you have to take a slightly more “holistic” view towards Link building and this was best described recently by a quote I found on another site recently:

“A link is not just about PageRank anymore, but trust and brand awareness. In fact, even though search engines do not carry PR through the no followed link to your site, they record it and they take notice that your site has been cited in a site. If that site is an authoritative one or a trusted seed, somehow its aura will reflect on your own web site, which will gain trust and relevance to the eyes of the search engines, therefore better rankings.”

Now taking this further, of the many important factors surrounding Links (and Google reputedly calculate up to 200 different factors in their current algorithm) the following three factors I think are of tremendous importance:

1.      There is More Than Link Juice That Determine Link Value

Going on the assumption that nofollow links don’t pass much link juice, they still pass relevance. Just because Google doesn’t “count” the link, doesn’t mean that they don’t see what anchor text is being used. The anchor text is still showing the search engines what your site is about and is passing relevancy.

2.      Some NoFollowed Links Are Very Trust-worthy

I (and others) also believe that nofollow links pass trust. If you have a link on Wikipedia or a major Academic Establishment for example, do you really believe that the search engines won’t pay attention to that link? If you can get links on highly trusted domains, whether they are nofollow or not, they will be taken into consideration by the search engines.

3.      Keep It Real (and Natural)

Lastly, if you’re building incoming links to your site and almost all of them are dofollow links, your link profile is going to look very unnatural. A natural link profile will have nofollow links, dofollow links, different domains (.info., org, .com, etc.) and various types of anchor text (brand name, url only, keywords, “click here”, etc). This is how a link profile should look and this is how you build a trusted domain.

To support this hypothesis I came across the following Blog Post from quite an eminent SEO Practitioner recently and it rather interestingly supports this theory:

http://www.socialseo.com/blog/an-experiment-nofollow-links-do-pass-value-and-rankings-in-google.html

There are more recent blog posts and discussions but I thought this post from late 2010 was still fairly relevant but now more so with the antics of our big Panda shaped friend.

So I believe that the upshot of all of this is that if you can get a link or series of links from a fairly trustworthy source then it is going to do wonders for your Link Building.  Link Building should not all be about how you can gerrymander a profile using just tightly focussed terms and only DoFollow links but other aspects as well.

Get some links from some trustworthy sources regardless of the attribute and you’ll be surprised at what they can do.

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We have saying here in the UK (and I’m sure it’s the same all over the world with different regional variations) and it goes like this.

“It’s like waiting for a London Bus – nothing happens for a long time and then along come two at once”

Well folks such is life with Google at the moment. Not only did they shake the world big time earlier this year with their not so cute and very definitely not so cuddly Panda Update but they’ve just gone one (if not two times definitely worse) better by now not only hitting us with “Panda The Sequel 2.2 – The Search Engine fights back” followed by the latest in their PR Updates which to be honest if you follow these things carefully is nothing short of a joke.

Sadly this one’s “a joke with a jag” (as we say over here in Northern Ireland) as the joke has left a bitter and sour taste in the mouths of web developers the world over.

To be honest it’s a bit early for a full report and understanding of what is going on and certainly as far as the PR Update is concerned as that is still ongoing according to Industry types the world over but “Panda the Sequel” or “Return of the SEO’s” (how many Star Wars gags can a guy crack – answer loads if needed?) is going to cause almost as much grief as the original one caused if initial feedback is concerned.

Watch this space and we’ll get some feedback live as soon as we can.

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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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It appears that as of the time of the post that Google have either completed or in the final stages of completing another Page Rank Update.

As with all events like this there are winners and losers but all I have to say to anyone is that at the end of the day, Page Rank matters damn all in the universal scheme of things, its SERPS that matter and many’s the time I have seen in the SERPS, medium to high PR sites (PR4+) get their butts whipped (as an american colleague of mine so eloquently puts it) by relatively low PR sites (i.e 1 or above).

Here are a few links to how the update is being received in parts Google Page Rank Update Discussion and more detail about this can be found at this Google Info Blog

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