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The Real Reason we build Back Links to our Tiered Pages

Oct 25th, 2011
by Admin.
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One of the things I love about Simple Leveraging is that the “knowledge share” truly goes in more than one direction. This has been evidenced particularly in two incidences that spring to mind for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Are NoFollow Links any use?

Aug 17th, 2011
by Admin.
1 comment

This question was asked recently at one of the Forums that I participate in and I thought that the reply I gave might be of use here as well.

The answer to this is very straight forward. One of the most important factors that appears to have emerged in the latest Google “Algo” update was that they were now looking at the breadth, strength and variety of the inbound links that appear in your back links “landscape”. The old days of just getting loads of so called “dofollow” anchor links from one site / IP no longer cut it.

Now whilst folks have caught on about the IP diversity (still not to the extent they should have) people still haven’t fully appreciated the fact about “Link Diversity”. By this I mean that Google are looking now for a bank links landscape that as fully replicates that created by a human as possible. To this end they are now looking to see a variety in styles of links such as a mix of dofollow / nofollow, directs, indirects, typos etc in fact anything that looks like it could have been created by hand rather than an automatic submission bot.

At the same time time there appears to have been a re emergence of a concept they first looked at a few years ago called “Trust Rank”. This looks at the site that the inbound links originate from and assesses the “trustworthiness” or “authority status” of the site as it lies within your back links landscape. This is where EDU sites really come into their own and even if they only provide “nofollow” links. As most of these EDU Domains are virtually coming down with authority back links within their own profile, a lot of this is passed on in a way that is quite different to the old and now defunct (in reality) concept of Page Rank.

So to sum up (before I go too much about this) nofollow links from EDU domains are really valuable in a number of hitherto misunderstood ways. There are also a number of other factors that give benefit as well.

Reasons to be Cautious of Google +

Aug 4th, 2011
by Admin.
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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?

Panda 2.2 – It’s a matter of Trust?

Jun 30th, 2011
by Admin.
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I’ve been quite busy today trying to fathom out the fallout from the latest in the Google shake ups and it reminded me of a variation on an old joke and it goes like this:

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.

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.

Index Schmindex..who cares and another $324 good reasons to be a member of Simple Leveraging.

May 24th, 2011
by Admin.
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OK, well just in case anyone out there thinks I’ve finally lost my marbles and that the present Mrs Morgan (“she who must be obeyed”) is hastily calling for the ambulance whilst I type let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not bad eh?

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

PR 6  7 Blog Urls

PR 5  22 Blog Urls

PR 4  31 Blog Urls

PR 3  67 Blog Urls

PR 2  51 Blog Urls

PR 1  3 Blog Urls

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

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

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

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

Get in touch if you are interested.

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

Cheers

Steve

In Search of an Authority Link?

May 9th, 2011
by Admin.
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I’m perhaps going to be fairly controversial in this post but then perhaps not, I’m not too sure?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the heck out of here and then think.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pandas Still on the Loose plus new Links Service available

Mar 14th, 2011
by Admin.
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Hi Gang,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- High bounce rate on page or site.

- Low visit times on page or site.

- Low % of users returning to a site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PR7 Pages $700 per thousand Urls

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

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

PR    Unit Cost No    Total

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

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

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

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

Finance

Health

Iphones

Smartphones

Real Estate

Television

Technology

Stress

Anxiety

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

Let me know if anyone is interested.

Speak soon

Steve

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.
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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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