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Went Hot: February 15, 2008 - 10:15 am
Posted By: ciaran 188 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.guardian.co.uk)
Category: Link Building
20 Comments
Went Hot: February 15, 2008 - 10:15 am
Posted By: ciaran 188 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.guardian.co.uk)
Category: Link Building
20 Comments
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Comments
Personally i think it's a pretty poor use experience to be putting links to loan sites etc when all they're trying to do is but badges on their site. Having said that, it works. Big time. Matt is clearly waaaay ahead of the game and a stupidly smart guy. SEO has always been about pushing the envelope and Matt pushes it hard and gets awesome results. I have a huge amount of respect for matt.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the method, but where's the poor user experience? In the fact that the dating site ranks better for searches for dating? Or is the experience of clicking on the link? If that's what you mean I have to disagree - the link doesn't say one thing and then take them to another...
I don't see a problem with what he is doing - it's hardly evil and I think it's a great use of widgets for SEO purposes.
Is it really (as Danny puts it) pushing it? I don't see anything in the guidelines to say it's against the rules.
Fair play and well done to Matt :)
Erm this might be verging on Grey hat, but has been around for years. Check seobook.com's SEO tools, or CheatsDatabase.com's appended links at the end or the cheat descriptions. Its syndicated content, at its best for SEO ;) I know there is a certain website with embeded video, with html appended below it to match the video box but with link embeded.
There is plenty of examples of this around, file and image hosts are another major player in this field. Even affiliate links, with 301 redirects, wholinks2me.com with the clever referer based domain assigning, so they can get the links to the homepage ;)
Ciaran: I think it's a good user experience for the dating site. Not sure about the blog readability test linking to the cash advance site...
But it does seem to work and Matt is a helluva smart guy. Good luck to him, I say.
Oh, and awesome on the dating site - he really nailed that one.
Matt might think this is smart but Google clearly doesn't. The site doesn't even rank for it's own name:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cashadvance1500&btnG=Search
Personally I think it is fine to suggest html that includes a text link back to a site. Its off topic sure, but it is visible. The people who say "if i'd have examined the source code I wouldn't have included it" obviously haven't looked at their website and realised that there is a link there. That link isn't hidden.
What I do think is pushing it is having the alt text of the image also saying cash advance (or whatever). The alt text should be there to help people who for whatever reason can't see the image to understand what is going on.... To hijack (and change the argument of) the previous discussion thats the poor user experience. Try browsing with images turned off..
At Patrickaltoft, i wouldn't say its the syndication of the button that is the problem there though. I would give a guesstimate that the thousands of pay per blog posts are something to do with him not ranking for his domain name ;)
Ciaran, I think it's pushing it. I don't care what Matt Cutts says -- you know, he's not the boss of me :)
In particular, I wasn't being asked if this violated Google's guidelines. I was being asked if I though it was right, fair, something a marketer should be doing to get links on someone else's site for whatever reason. Screw the PageRank. Happy to look at yourself in the mirror when doing this? For me, it was pushing it. It's on the edge of what I'd feel comfortable with and what I'd personally like to see.
It's a good point that people will do link bait for something that's not on the topic of their web site. But seriously, you want to tell me that you think this feels right? That when I just generated a badge now using the test here, it shoves a "TV Reviews" link underneath? What, a tiny bit more effort couldn't be applied, like "Brought to you by Critics Rant TV Reviews," or when the Cash Advance links were added, they couldn't put something similiar?
That's all it would take to make it feel like this was more than just an attempt to shove a lot of anchor-text rich links down the throats of people too stupid to understand they were being added to their sites. Yeah, I know -- they can see them, and they could easily remove them. But no attention was being called to them, and most important, no relevancy as to why they were showing up was attached. A few words, that's all it would have taken to instantly make this feel less slimy.
And sorry, Matt (the other Matt), I had no idea you were behind this -- but that was my reaction when I first posted about this to Sphinn and you weren't named -- and it's still how I feel. At least in this story, the idea of you building a geek widget seemed related to the dating site and didn't stand out as a sore thumb. To say this is a clever spin on linkbaiting in the story -- well, it's not so clever. If it was, no one would have noticed it. But they did, because those links looked weird.
Hi Danny - thanks for responding.
I didn't say that I necessarily agree with the method - like I said, I'm all about the relevance. I just felt that the article was going for the horror angle a bit. I have to say that I totally agree with Duncan's comment above about the alt though.
I've said on more than one occassion I don't see how Matt (C) can claim that linkbait imrpoves the index but paid links don't, and as long as they keep claiming that, they'll get campaigns like this.
And Danny - I didn't spot the original story as I was recovering from PubCon!
;)
Ciaran, don't worry about that original story. I mean, this went beyond it -- someone actually talking to the "other side," as it were -- and that really does help.
Apparently all of the sites that Matt was working on have now been well & truly punished - not even raking against their own brand name.
So, is this fair (as if anything in life is)? I think not for the reasons above; the links weren't sold and whilst they weren't relevant neither is most linkbait.
Reacting to media coverage? Google? Surely not...
You can rationalize this all you want, its still decpetive marketing.
Most badge-bait, widget-bait etc could be seen as deceptive marketing because a vast majority of people don't realise what they're doing when they proudly display their "likelihood of fending off zombies" score in their Livejournal, sneaky link or no sneaky link; relevant or irrelevant. But we've been promoting this method for a while. Time to update the articles / presentations? Are we advising people to do something that's soon going to get them banned?
Also, I liked Danny's point about the anchor text... and surely including some versions of "Brought to you by Critics Rant TV Reviews" instead of just, "TV Reviews" would be a good thing? Diversifying anchor text, etc?
@jane The problem is not with the links existing in badges. The problem is the links not pointing towards the site that you can find the content that the badge promotes, and even worse, the links pointing to spammy cash advance thin affiliate sites.
Yep, there are definitely varying lines of appropriateness here and people have shown different opinions as to whether this is appropriate or not... I'm trying to look down the line a lilttle way, trying to visualise the rationale behind penalising all of Matt's sites.
I can just see Google deciding that all badge-bait is deceptive because people often don't know that links exist in the badges... in which case, one of our most beloved linkbait tools will cease to be useful. And I shall be sad :)
@jane The guardian article has a quote from Google stating badges / widget linking back to originating sites is fine, but this example they considered a violation of the TOS.
I just don't really believe they'd have much problem doing a 180 on that given the nature of the badges tactic.
I still don't understand why they banned all of Matt's sites, not just those that they caught in this instance?
I agree about the 180. I was VERY suprised to see them make the statement. They usually only say what the bad is. Never what the good is because they want to reserve the right to change thier minds if it suits them.
As far as why they banned ALL his sites, you have more inside info than me. the only thing I know about is JustSayHi.com (the propegator of the spam) and the cash advance site (which was hit way before this story broke).
I can just say Google doesn't like being embaressed. If you get them media attention for allowing anything resembling spam, expect a nuclear bomb. I can't say I blame them, perception is reality.
Good for those who are adveritsing their products and services.