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Google Image Search – What have they done this time?

Apr 12th, 2013
by Admin.
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What in the name of god have they done this time?

OK here’s the theory, those of you who have been avid readers of this blog and my arcane ramblings over the past few years will realise I have no love for Google (oh god here he goes again on one of his “rants” I hear you cry?) because of the cack-handed way they always seem to deliver or roll out their “algorithm updates”.

How can such an organization seemingly filled to the rafters of so called intelligent people so habitually get it wrong but I digress, back to the theory.

Webmasters complaining about changes made by Google is nothing new. Every time Google releases a major algorithm update like Penguin or Panda, the outcry is everywhere. But, like it or not, that’s Google trying to better its algorithm, and ultimately improve its search results. You could also argue that any traffic one site loses, another gains. Somebody wins.

OK that’s the theory but funny it never seems to work out that way and especially with their latest developments regarding Image Search.

Now any good SEO Agency worth their salt will advise you that it is advisable to been seen almost everywhere for a client. The name of the game nowadays is all about branding and making sure that your name is found everywhere above all others so as well as making sure you rank in conventional SERPS you need to make sure you can be found in places like Google Blog Search, Image Search etc etc.

But….

The Image Search story is a bit different, however. This is not an algorithmic change designed to point users to higher quality images or more relevant image results. It’s a cosmetic change, and while some users may find the experience to be an upgrade, it’s clear that many webmasters have not welcomed the redesign.

 “55% dropped for websites with images…”

“My traffic has dropped to 1/5 of what it was before the new Google Images search roll out…”

“My traffic was cut by half overnight…”

“My image based website has lost 2/3 of the visitors after the change…”

“Google image traffic has dropped by 50-70% on my site…”

That was back in January. It doesn’t appear that things have gotten much better.

Define Media Group published some findings from a recent study on Monday (hat tip to Search Engine Land). According to the firm, you might as well spend your time in other areas of search engine optimization and online marketing, and not worry so much about optimizing for image search anymore.

“We analyzed the image search traffic of 87 domains and found a 63% decrease in image search referrals after Google’s new image search UI was released,” explains Shahzad Abbas. “Publishers that had previously benefitted the most from their image optimization efforts suffered the greatest losses after the image search update, experiencing declines nearing 80%.”

“In the eleven weeks after Google’s new image search was released, there has been no recovery – which means for image search, the significantly reduced traffic levels we’re seeing is the new normal,” he adds. “In the aftermath of the new image search experience, image SEO has been severely compromised, and we have no choice but to recommend deprioritizing image SEO when weighed against other search traffic initiatives.”

Of course, there’s always the chance that your images could turn up in universal search results on Google’s web results pages, but even then, personalized “Search Plus Your World” results tend to get the emphasis when applicable.

It’s all made even more interesting due to the fact that Google pitched the changes as good for webmasters, indicating that they would actually drive more traffic to sites.

“The domain name is now clickable, and we also added a new button to visit the page the image is hosted on,” wrote associate product manager Hongyi Li in the announcement. “This means that there are now four clickable targets to the source page instead of just two. In our tests, we’ve seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website.”

“The source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view,” Li added. “This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website’s servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews. As usual, image search query data is available in Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools.”

It’s possible that some sites are seeing more traffic from the Image Search changes, and just aren’t being as vocal, but there has been an overwhelming amount of complaints since the redesign, and this new study is not doing anything to defend Google’s case.

Of course, Google is all about placing users first (even over webmasters), and they’ll continue to do what they think is best for them. From a user experience perspective, the changes aren’t bad. But that’s little consolation for those who now have to find other ways to get their content in front of an audience.

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?

 

What types of Links work for me and another 500+ wikis on our list of over 2,000

Feb 23rd, 2012
by Admin.
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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.

Just like waiting for a Bus – Nothing happens then along come two at once!!

Jun 28th, 2011
by Admin.
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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.

The Hidden Potential Darkside of Googles latest activities

Apr 18th, 2011
by Admin.
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On Monday April 11th, Google announced officially to the world that the Panda Update now applied to Google results outside of North America.

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

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

So back to what Google have been up to.

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

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

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

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

Another Google insider also stated:

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

Now as Chris Crum in Webpronews.com said:

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

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

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

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

Beware the Giant Panda

Mar 5th, 2011
by Admin.
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Hi Gang,

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

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

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

Ho hum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speak soon gang.

Steve

Surviving a Dance with Google

Feb 3rd, 2011
by Admin.
No comments yet

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

Rescuing De indexed Pages and / or Sites plus Freebie Members Bonus

Dec 9th, 2010
by Admin.
1 comment

Hi Gang,

Just a quickie to tell you all about a freebie we have coming out later this week for members. I have had various discussions over the past week or so and one of the common themes is “how do I go about rescuing a domain / web site when it has appeared to disappear from sight index wise and / or been slapped by one or other of the Search Engines?”

Now if we are all honest then most of us have been in this unfortunate situation from time to time and the best piece of advice that I can always offer in a situation like this is to look at ways that you can “freshen up” the back links landscape of the site or domain in question.

This is quite often one of the less well known aspects of the SEO but it really is one of the most basic and the reason behind it is actually quite obvious when you think about it.

What Search Engines are looking for when they “come calling” is to see a web site that as far as its Link Profile is concerned is a profile that as closely as possible approximates that that would have been created if the entire process had been created by human intervention and not via a network of software applications.

What is that we humans do best?

Screw up, that’s we do more often than most and in a lot of cases that is what we do best and as such that is quite often what the SE’s want to see. As such as far as inbound links then the SE’s want to see a good healthy mix of the following:

  1. Direct Anchor Links
  2. Indirect links
  3. Redirects
  4. Dofollow links
  5. Nofollow Links
  6. Typos
  7. Good IP spread of inbound links

A back links landscape comprised of a healthy mix and spread of the above type of links will stand you in good stead and make whatever landscape you are constructing look credible and believable.

So how do we go about the above and make this whole landscape look varied and believable. Firstly don’t shy away from sites that only provide “nofollow” links as these can still be extremely useful for two reasons. Bear in mind that our back links serve two purposes. Firstly we want to try and pass on and / or aquire as much “juice” or credibility as we can from the originating site as possible and secondly we want to try and make sure that the links and / or pages we are promoting are discovered as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Now bear in mind what the “nofollow” attribute does to a link. Basically it tells GoogleBot not to pass on any acquired power / PR / ”juice” or whatever to the target site for the link but that is all. Contrary to a lot of folks it does not tell the Crawler or Bot not to follow that link just to disregard any link power that the originating site may or may not be passing on. As such “nofollow” links quite often are to be found on sites or locations that might be good for traffic and to that end they are perfect.

Bear in mind that our second major attribute of an inbound link is to make our target pages discovered as soon as possible and therefore “nofollow” links serve this purpose excellently. So the ideal scenario is to use “nofollow” links to link to or support pages where “dofollow” links exist to make them discovered as soon as is possible.

So we drive traffic and Bots via our “nofollow” links to our other back links and therefore get them discovered and crawled and therefore the Linking Process begins and the “dofollow” links start to accumulate and direct power to our target and / or other web 2.0 pages that are part of our structure.

Now whilst we were fine tuning our approach to “re invigorating” supposed dead sites we happened to stumble upon ( no pun intended as Stumbleupon was not a site that we used in this scenario) another of the so called New Generation of sites that helped us kick start one of our so called dead sites.

Now quite often sites or pages can slip down the indexes if Google or Yahoo etc think the page or site in question is dead and no longer current or valid. At this point you have to do two things. First off you need to rejuvenate the inbound links – freshen the profiles of these links up as much as is possible and then secondly you have to tell the Bots that the site in question is not actually dead or moribund but still “alive and kicking”.

There are several ways that you can accomplish the latter but one of the most effective ways of doing this we have found is to make sure that as much traffic finds its way to the site in question and by the very nature of this traffic, it tells Google / Yahoo/Bing (almost forces them) to reconsider its assessment of the viability of the site.

We have found Twitter to be rather useful in this and it was whilst we were experimenting with Twitter earlier today that we found out how useful it could be.

Now that Google has started to crawl and index Tweets then Twitter really starts to figure quite proactively as far as site promotion is concerned. Not only is it an ace way to drive highly targeted and focussed traffic to your site but if you have the support of a at least one (preferably more) good Twitter accounts with “clout” then there can be considerable benefits all round.

By “clout”, I mean a Twitter user profile with a reasonable number of followers that suggest to the outsider that it is an account of some standing” (the more followers the better) and as such merits consideration.

Now the commonly held view is that with Twitter you have to get your user accounts over the 2,000 follower marker as soon as is possible. Once you have more than 2,000 followers your credibility rises accordingly.

The Anatomy of Linking Part……hmnnnn well think of a big number?

Feb 12th, 2010
by Admin.
No comments yet

Why am I being so flippant today? I’m not too sure; perhaps it has more to with the fact this it is a Friday and that within a few hours I can stop by at my favourite “Watering Hole” on my way home and generally reconnect with the real world i.e. those who don’t make their living from life in this massive “Goldfish Bowl” we call the Internet?

Perhaps it is also due to the fact that I have spent quite a bit of time this week looking at existing link Building Campaigns from folks who should know better and wonder how they have ended up getting their butts kicked by the “Mighty G”.

Some people really should know better and I know those who are reading this will know better but let me reiterate this message for once and for all. There is effectively no such thing as a bad inbound link. There are good links and there are very good links but effectively there is no such thing as a bad inbound link.

The reason for this? Well one of the things that Google likes to see is a nice spread of inbound linking types as well as sources of IP’s. Hence to take full advantage of this Google is expecting to see direct links, indirect links, redirects, dofollows, nofollows, typos you name it. Why? The answer is simple, Google wants to see an inbound Links landscape that very closely resembles what humans would provide and that includes mistakes.

If it doesn’t see that then look out as your entire approach could be seen as too controlled and manipulative?

Have a great weekend and keep those messages and emails coming in.

See ya soon folks!

Oh heck, batten down the hatches for another bumpy ride!!

Jan 27th, 2010
by Admin.
No comments yet

Sorry to be the “prophet of doom and gloom” amongst the SEO Community but I have just been checking up on all the information abut the latest Google “goings on” i.e. the so called “Caffeine update” and the word on the streets is that things could get a little bumpy for a while.

Now “Caffeine” is lot more than just your “box standard” Google Update so to refer to it as just another update actually doesn’t do it justice, it is much more than that but that is not what actually worries me.

The guys at Web Pro News who know a few things more than I do actually reckon that the effects of this could be worse than the so called “Big Daddy” and “Florida” updates. Remember them? They were infamously and widely regarded amongst the SEO community as some of the darkest days of the Internet where chaos ruled for a short while until most people (including Google) actually caught on as to what exactly was going on and put matters right.

If the after effects of “Caffeine” are going to have as much lasting effect on us as the other two updates then heaven help us all. We already have spoken to two Companies “wiped out” overnight by the effects of Google’s over enthusiasm and inability to actually make sure that everything goes as it should do.

Now I know the Internet and Cyberspace is a pretty big place (understatement of the year) and (as a colleague of mine used to gleefully say) “you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs” that’s not the point. It doesn’t make it any better to be told cheerfully that most of us will not suffer any after effects when you happen to be the unlucky one that has just got wiped out.

It’s a bit like being in theatre of war and being told, don’t worry your latest gunshot wound was caused by “Friendly fire”, there’s nothing friendly about it at all.

Interesting times ahead.

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