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Not sure it is worth all the effort, but nice job by Michael staying on task. Sure looks like second links anchor text had an impact, and that was the claim, so this is at least a better argument than so many other "SEO claims" articles.
I always wonder, though... if these "seo claims" people make are just noise intended to elicit more tidy bits of info from the people who are working harder on the details. It's so easy to say "here's how it is, and if you think not, prove it" and then sit back and wait for someone else to teach you SEO.
In my experience, 3rd party SEOs have amazingly little insight into how the businesses they support actually work. SEO is capitalization on opportunity (search traffic availability) but a consultant should be able to do so much more than just the obvious.
Here's a test: if the first question you ask your client is "what keywords are we targeting" I say you're not an SEO consultant at all. SEO maybe, SEO firm or Agency maybe, but not SEO consultant.
Now we can have fun highlighting the SEO web sites that continue to recommend the free Overture keyword reseacrh tool from yahoo?
I quote "I spent about 2 months putting everything together..." and then "...I was able to make over $1,000 in May doing absolutely nothing"
I'm all for enrepreneurs getting started on the web, and writing about your first $1k on your site is fine, but promoting it here on Sphinn? Come on folks! If making $1k after writing an ebook over two months is news for a marketing community, we may have a problem.
A more interesting story might be how one of the most popular Sphinners of 2007 only made 40 sales of his online reputation management ebook despite working on it for two months, and getting some very well known SEO names to write public testimonials.
And what's with the blue-text-on-blue-background footer links with anchor text "online reputation management"?
@Jill your bias is showing.. again.
That Matt Cutt's post you referenced didn't say Aaron Wall was black hat. It concludes:
"But I can also see the situation more from Aaron’s eyes after talking with him last week. The resolution that I suggested (and that I’d suggest to anyone in a similar situation) was to disentangle the blackhat-ish site from the other site."
Sounds to me like appearances can be misleading, and upon investigation, Matt determined it appeared "blackhat-ish" and therefore, because Google itself is also biased and can't judge perfectly without human assistance, Aaron is advised to change some things.
You can choose to cite the initial Google mistake (that Aaron did some black hat stuff and got caught), or fairly report Matt's conclusion (that it is not black hat, but appears questionable and so should be changed to be safe). That's up to you. But however you do it, best not make it a claim unless you have evidence to back up the claim, even if passed off as a third party claim ("...I guess you missed the threads where Matt Cutts declared him as such [Black Hat]")
There is missing detail regarding the existing connections between Google and NASA for data processing, and NASA and Homeland Security for eavesdropping/advance researching. The privacy concerns of Google employees at the "individual level" are not relevant when the big picture includes Google and high level government collaborating.
An example from years ago is the "ID at a distance" initiative. Research to find a way to impart intent upon an individual on the street, from a distance, based on automated analysis of movement (gait, behavior). The remote camera decides if you are "suspicious", i.e. worthy of additional scrutiny, based on your appearance profile.
Now start mixing in Google's data with psychological profiling... study voices of people who search X and Y vs those who search Z for example... it is mind boggling that so much valuable information will be held within an entity in power, while unavailable to "everyone else".
When they start successfully reading your mind, you'll never suspect a thing.
Story: What's a 404 to Do?
I suggest everyone use Vanessa's comment to make this article a "are you advanced" test.
Despite all the silly debate about "advanced seo", it is really very simple: if you read that question about handling 404s and knew absolutely how to deal with them and why, in accord with Vanessa, you are "advanced".
If you can name 2 reasons why Vanessa is correct about option 3, including addressing the risk/reward ratio, you are advanced.
And if your own sites already include pages which are qualified as on-topic-enough for just about any incoming 404 likely to exist, simply because the presence of such "semantically transitional" pages is simply a consequence of your SEO, you are advanced.
Classic example of SEO discussions in the wild. No familiar (to me) names commenting. Commenters whose profiles say they are both CEO of an online company and a musician. One boasts of being a "Top Linked" person who also "accepts all invitations"... blah blah blah.
Credibility is so last year.
I enjoyed reading that so much I am considering buying the Dummies book.
Interesting how the Yahoo! lobbyist could choose who appeared before congress... perhaps indirectly, but successfully nonetheless.
Also interesting to think about ... what if YOU had been asked to appear before Congress on an issue of interest to the American business people? There is NO WAY I could have ever met the practical requirements... short notice travel, preparations.... yet the selection bias is all but ignored in the "big picture" of congressional hearings.
I loved the ending statement "Thank goodness I own a copy shop...so I get a discount on my printing and have 24 hour access."
Are they still calling this industry "search"? It is clearly comprehensive now...
Tulips.com kicked the local florists arse for me many times over the years. Super-fresh, super beautiful, fresh from the farm tulips delivered promptly, as promised, for a reasonable price. When I moved out here I visited them in person, and did not enjoy it at all. It is a very long standing family tulip business with large, beautiful farms. My personal experience at their storefront was a 3 on a scale of 10. This past year has not been so good online either, but the point is the online fulfillment is a different business than the offline retail.
I have *never* enjoyed high quality from remote FTD-inspired local florist shops, even when ordering through shops I had frequented in person with great results.
Separate from that more obvious facet of serving customers online, the online opportunities are often quite unique. Any brick and mortar small business that does well but doesn't yet understand the online world simply needs the right training, education, perspective, and probably people helping out.
This reminds me of some discussions over at http://www.internetbusiness.co.uk/. Many successful busines owners are happy to tell their stories of starting at the bottom, working as a dishwasher or prep cook or mail sorter before developing the insights and experience they eventually used to succeed with their own businesses. It's no different here... but there is a lot of hard work to do and maybe they are no longer up to the challenge of doing it all themselves, like they say they did offline?
from the article:
"Google does not want you or your clients sites to rank ANY higher than they “deserve” to. Google defines deserve; they are a for-profit company. That means that just about any intentional manipulation will be, by definition, black hat."
That right there colors the article for me. It's incorrect, and if you can't see the clue in that Google pronouncement, you probably have no other options than pulling tricks.
"You're still entirely missing the point here, so I'll end this conversation here."
What was that, a bluff?
To continue and try and get markdigerati to keep talking, but not in public, let me suggest there is a HUGE difference between loans and car loans. The searcher profile and the intent, the stage of the search process... all quite different.
Has Google backed away from quality control on the "loans" SERP given the competitiveness of that SERP? Sure looks that way. Is it justified? Sure... "loans" is too broad for high quality scores, right? The mantra for paying customers is "be specific and convert targeted traffic. The real money is in the long tail....buy keywords" I'm sure you know that drill.
So why are we worried about the massive amounts of untargeted, low converting traffic for some dumb ass search query like "loans"? The people who enter "loans" into Google are ignorant, unrefined, early in their search and far from ready to "buy". Skip those, and go after "used car loans in Peoria Illinois" where you might get fewer hits, but they are all looking for "used car loans".
If you feel the urge to agree with me, go ahead and keep busy typing into Sphinn. If you disagree, don't worry about it. I promise. If you're markdigerati, let me know if you're ever in Seattle. I'll introduce you to the concept of a growler.
What a huge waste of time. Due to this "distraction" we missed out on at least 10 more "women of SEO" articles that could have been writtten and promoted.
Sphinn is sounding like a bunch of old washerwomen (apologies to any old washerwomen in attendance). Hey Lyndon, now's a perfect time to call SEO bs and get keep your name up in lights for another month or so.
For all the rest of you interested in continuing the debate of ethics and "White Hat SEO" vs. performance-based marketing, try here and here. There's always room for a good mob action in the forums.
Be careful! Remember the old Wall Street adage... "buy on rumor, sell on news". That same section of the book notes that domainers would not talk about what they were doing a few years ago. Why are they talking now?
"buying and selling domain names a part of their business" is very broad... 10,000 two years ago is not so much, and probably reflects the cost of finding a good domain name more than an active interest in the domain aftermarket as a business opportunity.
I'm a domainer of sorts, but there's far more to it than meets the eye and there is a need for newbies to invest capital right now.
What a screwy community. The guy goes tabloid, which is nothing new, and the fair & balanced guys promote it, which is nothing if not hilarious (for the irony and the reality), and here the same search marketing people that organize industry conferences call him out on ethical grounds?
But wait for the best part... when he removes his own post from his own blog, those same righteous ones then point to a scraped copy and even seek a more exact replica!
Righteous hypocrites? The guy pulled his own post, but it's ok to republish it (sans permission) and highlight it, even with awareness the author wants it removed from view?
Sad sad commentary on the so-called leadership in this industry.
Uncle Joe was talking on the phone to Auntie Jane when the earthquake started. He noted, "what's that...?".
So now ATT can broadcast that "the ATT Information Network knew about earthquake minutes before twitter or the USGS Advanced Warning System"??
I appreciate the hobby watching earthquakes, and the interest in modern technology, and all that brotherhood shared between Danny and Scoble, but seriously, do we need to try and make this sound like it's an important tech discussion? Save it for the water cooler or wine bar conversation at a real conference, yes?
I guess I'm too old to "get it" cause I just see it is a communications channel, not a media outlet. I see people twitter al sorts of stuff that is not true, meaningless, joke, or otherwise non-information.
It's broadcast, yes, but that's more a side effect of technology than anything else. I don't think I know a single app less directed than twitter - it was built with no purpose except to exploit a technological ability.
There have been emergency response/citizen media networks that aggregate various communications channels and sort them... I suppose they'll start including twitter to include the keyboard happy observers. I suppose if we took one of those systems and gave it a clever name we could credit it with all sorts of achievements for "knowing first". If the HAM radio guys were into PR I suppose we'd constantly hear about how they communicated news first, before any one else....
As for peple looking for news about an earthquake and finding it on twitter.... yeah ok if twitter is indexed or otherwise reaches the people who are looking for that news, that might be news, but I didn't read that "people hit twitter to learn about the earthquake before it was news anywhere else" I simply read about a guy who watched the USGS site and logged every minute from time zero as someone twittered him from China and the USGS posted the seismic reports.
I'll chalk it up as a slow news day, and remind myself that my own typing of this silly response is indicative of me, too, having a slow work morning, which isn't true, so I must get back to the matters that matter.
"hating on the twitter"
Gee Danny, it's that attitude that turns me off the most about the groups hanging together at SMX and other places... if something is contrary, call it "hating". If someone isn't going along, point them out as "negative". Why such an ugly response to expressed disappointment or concern? If you don't know what I'm talking about, just re-read your comment with that one little hater line removed. Was your commentary not strong enough, you needed to add that?
As I said right at the start... the observations are important, but maybe not search marketing news. But again.... participation in Sphinn s rewarded with these kinds of responses, from the leadership no less. Where's Jill? Should I go get Doug? I'm confident I don't need to ping Rand...
Yawn. SEO is a specialty...a focus on a competitive aspect of web publishing. It is soooooo easy to say it won't last, is dying, is the schnizzle, or whatever. Much easier to do that than rank for something competitive. Who cares?
As long as search traffic is important, those who need to compete will want to engage specialists who focus on search traffic... people commonly known as SEOs.
It is apparently so easy to game the SEO crowd into linking and discussing opinions, that these attention whores do that every time their regular traffic building efforts falter, or the wife announces she needs a new vaccuum cleaner, or the vacation home payment is coming up, or whatever else causes them to desperately need attention from distant strangers and talking heads on the web. Pity them, I say.
I get a chuckle out of seeing a full blown article describing something that the author alluded to a long time ago. It pays to pay attention to smart people, so you can share the benefits. As I recall, Dan said this over a year ago (without all the explanations). It made great sense then, and looks pretty obvious now. Notice he says he himself was doing straight A/B testing as late as 2006... sounds about right.
IMHO the stomping is annoying, though.
I have no problem with the "what's new" page being full of 1 vote junk... just default sort it by votes so the crap stays out of view. If the volume of submissions is the problem, pre-filter them through a set of eyeballs by randomly rotating the new ones into the visible mix. If they pick up votes keep them; if not, leave them ranking out of view. A 1 vote submission gets a fixed amount of exposure and if theres no traction, there's no traction.
Truth is, look around. A high pecentage of the workers around you are sub-par. The more people join sphinn, the more junk will be submitted. That's not spam.
Sphunn for the discussion only... not as a yay vote.
I think this decision is TERRIBLE because it demonstrates the quitter mentality so many on the web would love to see validated. It's the easy way out...and in my opinion reeks of ignorance. Spammers don't follow guidelines and only amateur spammers care if there is nofollow. IMHO Sphinn's quality lately has mirrored that same attitude... very low quality posts getting enough Sphinns to hit the front page, either because they rallied enough "supporters" or there was nothing better getting submitted.
If you want to maintain quality, label the junk as junk. Who sphinn's the spam anyway? Those Sphinners should get notices.. perhaps something like :
Dear Sphinner. A post you Sphunn as a vote of quality was removed by moderators as SPAM. This suggests that you either don't know SPAM when you see it, or perhaps like Spam. In either case, if you received X more of these warnings, you will be demoted to newbie, highlighted on the DumbAss page, and lose your Sphinning privileges for 2 weeks. If you need remedial assistance understanding the concept of quality, please read this tutorial (link)
Junk (and spam) is the product of efficiency. If the cost is low enough, no matter how small the payout you will get inundated with spam. In fact, the smaller the payout the more spam you will get (it takes more pennies than nickels to pay for rent and groceries). The only way to stop it is to raise the cost... not lower the benefits. Either make it harder to submit stories, more costly to sphinn garbage, or more beneficial for community members to self police.
I am embarassed that Sphinn handled this problem with nofollow.
Create a section similar to "Greatest Hits" but instead call it something like "off the Mark" or "clueless newbies" and list the profiles of people who have sphinned submissions that were later moderated out as spam or junk or otherwise voted off by the community. The "top o the list" person is the one most "off the mark".. most out of tune with the community standards.
No one wants to be on the first page of that list... and if they do, they've labled themselves as candidates for banning.
Story: Google passes second link’s anchor text