Just thought I’d follow up on some thoughts that we started to express
the other day.
So first up, Google and it’s antics of late.
Question: “Why has Google behaved the way it has in what it is doing?”
Answer (short version):”Because it can and it’s Google?”
Answer (Longer version): “It is clearing the index (or attempting to)
of an entire sub class of folks who are trying to “game” its index and
rid itself of a plethora of absolute garbage that has arisen from too many
folks who have spent too much time reading the garbage that a lot of those
folks continually seem to publish.
There. Got that rant off my chest.
Seriously, it would appear that Google is by and large after the IM Market
(who seems to be screaming and shouting the loudest) and to be honest Google
doesn’t give a damn about this bunch and never will. If they all decided to
leave the Earth and populate the Moon it wouldn’t be day too soon as far as
Google is concerned. They just clog up the system with, as I said, by and
large worthless garbage and continually try and devalue what Google and
the others have to offer.
For example take the following. It seems for years we’ve had nothing but
guides telling us how easy it is to set up a system whereby we can buy traffic
via Adwords et al for mere pennies in the dollar as opposed to paying the current
market rates.
Then the same bunch start to scream about Adsense yields going down. You
can’t have one without the other being affected; it’s the other side of
the coin.
When you have an entire sub class of individuals whose entire “raison d’être”
seems to trying to earn a living by “killing”, “massacring” or whatever, Google
then you can hardly expect Google to be their biggest fans. Now this bunch
have all started to shout and scream that we should all forget Google and
go and play elsewhere.
Now for those of us who inhabit Planet Reality and have day to day SEO
Clients to deal with this is complete and utter suicide and total folly.
I can just imagine the next client pitch when we roll up and proudly announce
that we are going to take our prospective clients entire SEO Campaign and
forget about Google and move it elsewhere.
30 seconds later as we’re no doubt scheduled to follow our laptops as they
make their way out of the nearest window we would no doubt be reflecting
on our hastiness to be so “innovative”.
Daft or what?
Whether we like it or not (and I keep saying I am not Google’s greatest
admirer) Google is here to stay. It’s too big and the name “Google” has
now entered the dictionary and is synonymous with Internet Search.
Work with it or get another job basically.
Yes I know FaceBook, Twitter and the like of Pinterest are getting lots
of traffic and shouldn’t be ignored but the way to look at is as follows.
How much penetration commercially are they getting and whereabouts in
the overall “pantheon” of online search do they lie.
Answer: Well down the pecking order from Google.
I know FaceBook is popular and great for brand awareness etc, it’s very
cool and “sexy” brands are jumping on board left right and centre but
when it comes to day to day activities and active search it still comes
in a long way behind Google.
I use my wife as a “touchstone” in matters like these. She uses her laptop
a lot for buying all sorts of things from personal items, family holidays
and making all sorts of travel arrangements for the family. She would not
think of starting off at other point than from Google when she flips open
her laptop.
When I come back from a hard day at the Office grumbling about what a bad
day it’s been fighting Panda’s and now Penguins she looks at me as if I
should be strapped to a stretcher and being marched to nearest Psychiatric
Ward.
So where does this leave these issues? Panda and Penguin et al matter to the
SEO Market (of which I sadly am one) and the IM Market.
Google aren’t wild about the former and could well do without the latter
so they are not going to lose any sleep over what is going on at the moment
and we’d be best served by just knuckling down and fathoming out how to cope
on both our personal sides and on the side of our clients.
Now we’ve just completed a fairly comprehensive look at what has happened
with the web sites we have under management, either our own or our clients
and the picture isn’t (touch wood) that bad.
Where we have been hit, and this was the unexpected one, we’ve just gone
back to square one and now 10-14 days later the site is starting to respond
with regards to its SERPS. It’s still not great but the traffic levels are
rising and the SERPS are responding in the right direction.
What have we done? As I said, we’ve gone back to basics and spent the last
3 weeks or so diluting the Anchor Concentration on their Back Links and
have just accomplished this by getting the client to publish articles and
material on their site that relate specifically to their own subject matter
and have left them to their own devices regarding content, structure,
keyword density and all the other SEO stuff that we’ve been so used to.
We’ve then taken this content and re purposed it and published it on any and
every site we could fine and just funneled the links back to the target
site using an extremely wide, varied and non-focused Link Anchor Campaign.
OK we’re not back to where the client was but Page 2 in Google is better
than Page 82 or wherever they disappeared to
We’ve also discussed this approach with a number of colleagues and friends
and the general consensus is that just moving forward with general promotion
rather than tightly focused and structured Campaigns is the best way forward
for the time being.
We’ve been promoting this for some time at Simple Leveraging where we’ve
been advocating the construction of wide and varied structures to support
your Campaigns that would withstand any form of penalty attack etc that
Google decided.
You see the crux of the whole matter is that that very rarely does Google
do anything out of personal malice etc. None of this is ever personal unless
you’ve actually committed the heinous crime of making them look very stupid
in Public or been very rude about one of their staff in an unnecessary manner.
Then you might get the odd personal inspection and suffer the consequences
but for 99.9% of us it’s purely an algorithmic thing.
As such when you are dealing with something like this, it is always best to
take a step backwards and think carefully before you make your next move.
Difficult I know (and boy do we know) when you have a panic stricken client
breathing down your neck and you feel then that it is intensely personal
despite knowing it is not.
So when all of the new “Penguin Killer” SEO Guides come out and you better
believe it they are on their way if not out already. Just think as to what
exactly Penguin is all about. By and large it is all about over optimization
and gerrymandered SEO Link Building. If it looks unnatural then you better
believe that Google will spot it sooner or later.
The Bottom line to dealing with Penguin is that your best tool is “Common
Sense” and make sure you stop yourself from getting too clever.
As I mentioned, we’ve found going back to basics helped and one other thing
is starting to emerge – the relative power it would appear of nofollow links.
Now this might sound as if we are riding a coach and horses right through
Google’ algorithm at the moment but in our experience and that of others we
are seeing a huge benefit to our Campaigns when we’ve added Press Releases
into the mix and these ( in our case) only involve nofollow links.
That’s one of the reasons why are now starting to use nofollow links from
EDU’s and Govs whenever we can lay our hands on them as well. They are not
only adding another dimension to our Campaigns with the additional IP
spread but the authority status of the sites themselves appears to be
really having a benefit.
Now I know I mentioned in my last Newsletter that we have some nice EDU High
PR Links Packets but an additional inspection of one of these packets reveals
that they also contain some nice High PR Gov’s and .mils in there as well.
There are a few packets of these still available and they are $75 for 2,000
High PR Links (PR3 – 6 and all on the page not domain) so those who are
interested then send the $75 via PayPal to info@simpleleveraging.com and
we’ll get you sorted.
Similar packets will be available on Traffic Planet shortly but the packets
available on TP will only contain links ranging from PR 2 to 4 whereas these
remaining packets here contain some PR5′s and 6′s as well.
).