Catfish
What is really happening is now Google has very regionally biased data centers. So you don't have the number one rankings that you think you do. Go to Google Web master tools and look at the new keyword data and see how your rankings fluctuate for the same word in a given month. You think you are #1 for a certain word, but do a search for that word from various locations across the country and you will see widely different results. What people are seeing is a much greater diversification of rankings based on regional focus as well as personalization and other localization factors. The additional competition of front page noise is also a factor but that's been going on for a while now. This is a fundamental shift in the way we look at rankings. Google has completely changed the game. A single ranking report run from an IP off your local server doesn't mean anything compared anymore because you have no way of knowing how indicative it is of what is really going on across the index. Enjoy the new game.
I think people should always be respectful to one another in general around here when disagreeing. Just my opinion.As far as "industry secrets", it seems to me that most tactics aren’t really secrets and good SEO is more about the creative application of those tactics rather than the tactics themselves. Having said that, if you do find a secret with regard to SEO, you only devalue your own services by making it public knowledge. So one should always think about that before going public. Not because of how it might affect other SEOs, but because of how it might affect your ability to make money.
While I’m glad to see a bunch of people I respect are apparently talking to each other now (which is cool), don’t be fooled for one second that Black Hats are going away. Scrapper sites, malicious programs, funky redirects, cookie stealing and a bunch of other techniques that negatively impact user experience are still prevalent today because those techniques still make a lot of money for some people who know how to execute them.
I always love people who say "Page Rank" is just this or that. What Page Rank is, is part of the Google algorithm. Without a basic understanding of it, you are at a disadvantage to SEO professionals that do. PR is not going away any time soon. Consider how much branding is behind that term as it relates to the technology that differetiates Google in search. PR is never going away. It doesn’t have the weight it used to obviously and if you believe in Topic Sensitive Page Rank, it is also easy to concede that the original formula has been augmented. But the basic mathematical premise of Page Rank that links give your site a higher propensity to rank well remains true and will continue to do so.
Cookie I don’t think you are understanding my whole point. I never said ignore it. And I completely agree that a change in TBPR can be an early warning of problematic issues including link loss, duplicate content issues, etc. But this situation with one point drops happens a lot, especially for Websites that are on the edge of two PRs. If you have a consistent ongoing strategy for content building and link acquisition, a one time drop in PR by 1 point is usually not as big of an issue as some Webmasters, especially newer players in the game make it out to be. An instead of obsessing on the change, and most Webmasters do not have the technical knowledge to even know what variables can affect PR, most people’s best advice is just to keep doing what they are doing. If the change is accompanied by a loss of rankings or a further PR reduction, then that of coarse necessitates action. I hope that clarifies my position. Have a great day.
I think the take away here is that directories are the low hanging fruit of link acquisition. They should constitute a small % of your back links and you should only be in high quality directories and should avoid free directories for the most part (DMOZ notwithstanding). You can still get your way to the top on just directory links, but going forward, it is harder and harder to look at directories alone as a long term SEO strategy. Blogging is the most effective link building tool in my opinion that is scalable across all business models.
I will consider doing that Jonathan. What I am going to try to do which will be similar to that is tape some of our free SEO labs that we do at OMS to give people and idea of what we do in the labs as well as the things we discuss. I will try to do that at the regionals but if not, hopefully in Feb for the big one for sure.as far as the tools making SEO easy, I wouldn’t say that as much as I would say that there is a lot of good information to assimilate. but easy is definately not a word I would apply to SEO...lol.
Unfortunately man I will not. The only regionals I am doing on the tour this year are San Jose, Houston, Denver and of course, sweet home San Diego. I haven’t been to Chicago since I saw Jason what’s his face stick his foot all the way down his throat with the infamous "SEO is Bullshit" speech. Thanks for the kind words though bro, especially about my guitar playing..lol.
both local and mobile deserve serious attention for SEOs who don’t want to fall behind.
Hi Dennison,I have 5 more videos of that presentation that I will be releasing later this week. Glad you liked it :)
Thanks very much for the Sphinn and the very nice comments about my presentation. I really appreciate it. And it motivates me to come up with some cool new stuff for this upcoming OMS series.
Story: Is Desphinning rude?
It just depends on the client. Enterprise level clients don’t usually give you access. Usually you have to interface with an IT team which is why the discovery process in any engagement is so important. One cool way to deliver proposed content changes is to do mockups with Firebug.
I don’t know why this suprises anyone. I have been adamately opposed to even mentioning this jerks name since the infamous SES Chicago. I was in the audience that day in Chicago so I think I have a good idea how Rand felt. It is ridiculous to have to put up with a pompous jerk who is purposely insulting in order to cause controvery to further his own brand. I also have boycotted even mentioning the Spam Engine Mahalo. It’s a joke. And some people follow what this guy has to say like it means something and thus his words are incredibly damaging to our industry. So it really angers me that people in the search community (sorry Danny but cmon man) continue to put this guy on display. I think people should just not attend any event where he is speaking. It won’t take long before he isn’t speaking anymore. I personally will not attend any event that he is speaking at.
lol, that’s funny Barry. A Ho Hum button would be great for Sphinn. It’s just when you have such a mix of people in terms of their SEO knowledge, it’s hard to please everyone. When I spoke at the Online Marketing Summit last year, I had excellent reviews from most people, but the advanced SEO attendees wanted more specifics and advanced techniques. Conversely, some of the people that gave me high marks had comments like, very informative but almost a little too technical...lol. But this article would have been better with some real tips on what to do.
I would be happy to leave search for a record deal! Doug if you’re out there, take me with me with you...lol.
Nice article Barry. The only thing I would add is that the description is a great place to describe your product or service’s competitive advantage as well. Often times, things like "Free Shipping" are hard to fit into a title tag depending on how many other keyword phrases you are targeting.
LOL, while I appreciate your academic pusuit of SEO DarkMatter, I am sure there are many Webmasters that are glad its fixed...lol. also John I thought your post was well said.
I think the point that nickycakes makes is that many people denied the existence of the issue regardless of whether it was a penalty or an error. Clearly it is an error on Google’s part and not a penalty. However, the behavior characteristics which defined the Google "sandbox" were not an error. They were also not necessarily a penalty from a strictly semantic point of view. But the behavior was real, despite many Web masters (and some SEO "experts") claiming otherwise So I think the takeaway here is that, regardless of whether something is an error, penalty, algo change, or whatever, wide reports of similar behavior across search engine listings usually deserve investigation with an open mind.
Google can’t read all Flash and can’t read all links contained within Flash. Here is another solution.
This is a poor story. To make a statement like that based on a few examples that could be affected by a variety of variables unrelated to how new the content is, is ridiculous.
Story: No1 Ranking Lost 87% Value In Last Month...and It’s Still No1