Never Worry About an Algorithm Update Again, a History

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Never Worry About an Algorithm Update Again, a History Posted: 18 Jan 2012 12:54 PM PST Posted by wilreynolds A few months ago at a keynote I asked people to embrace the HARD work of building a business [video]. We all fall in love with the concept of the four hour work week, don’t we...how can I make money and work less, right?  Who wouldn't. It’s natural. The hard part is that almost every SEO I know who has a natural focus on scale has burned a more than their fair share of sites or clients in their career. There is just a mentality that comes along with the "scalable SEO", and it brings risks and baggage to many projects. I want to start getting people to think differently. If you can check out Bob Rains’ presentation from Distilled’s Search Love conference - (yes you have to pay, it's worth it) on why he’s turning white hat, you’ll get it. Scalable SEO is becoming HARDER work than you think and he's turning from Blackhat to White-ish. :) Embracing the hard work, the time consuming, foundational building blocks needed to build almost any sustainable business (notice I am not saying a sustainable SEO strategy, I am talking about a sustainable business) is the key to long-term success. So copy this, print it out and tack this up in your cube... There is no algorithmic update coming to correct rankings for tactics that are "doing hard work & connecting with customers". Algorithmic updates are often targeted at those large-scale low quality SEO strategies, so lets just stop doing them. Let’s start with a historical view…  PHASE I - It starts with cloaking... Anyone around doing SEO pre-2000 did this, and especially scalable SEOs loved cloaking because they could create some page full of garbage text, and just insert keywords to hit a target keyword density, and boom page 1 of Excite, Lycos, or whatever. Then came PageRank - Google realized that their search engine would be most successful if people had to "EARN it" by getting links from quality sources that had anchor text in those links. Google realized that too much money was at stake to just "trust" people to not keyword stuff, use white text on white backgrounds, and cloak (and they were right). PHASE II - Scalable SEOs turned to reciprocal linking Reciprocal linking sites sprung up quick to provide relief for the scalable SEOs hit by cloaking that was becoming less and less effective. Reciprocal linking sites were not about finding sites to reciprocate with, who were quality, the strategy was all about scale...there were tools & scripts that were built PURELY to run reciprocal link exchanges. There is no added value or hard work associated with a script that lets anyone post a link to your "links page" and constantly checks to see if they have their link up to you still. Scalable SEO's loved it... run the script, get rankings. No real hard work required. Cash the checks. Eventually Google updated the algorithm to hit sites who got most of their links in this scalable pattern. Leading to our next scalable exploitation... directory links. PHASE III - Directory linking on a tragic scale It wasn't long before scalable SEO's came in again this time with one-way links in the form of directories. Awesome, now people are getting links in directories for rankings, but many of those directories don't really quality control the links either, pay to play. Remember, there are 230 quality directories for the taking. As if that wasn't bad enough another cottage industry sprung up, you know the kinds of companies that will submit you to hundreds or thousands of directories for a very low cost.  This allows the 4 hour workweek loving SEOs to just pay some company to do all of their directory linking, sure clients might be at risk the day it stops working, but the scalable SEO doesn't worry about that, they'll just find the next exploit.  I believe that anchor text is going to be on the way out, maybe not in 2012, but soon I hope. When that does happen, expect several sites to take hits because they have their eggs in too much of one basket, if directories are working for you now, start balancing you link portfolio. PHASE IV - One-way bought links Once directory links started working somewhat less (I believe they still work more than they should) next up were link networks. You know the ones that created the golden brick road for SEO's. Pay us, we put your one way, non directory links up on pretty quality sites. Instead of making legitimate relationships with bloggers, authors, site owners and journalists or doing things that are newsworthy, creating awards, badges, etc to get your links, you could just pay. So the scalable SEO once again rubs her hands together in utter joy...because creating relationships with bloggers is hard work, buying links on those blogs through a link broker is so much easier, all I have to do is charge enough, and get back to my 4 hour work week. PHASE V - Panda smackdown, did you wake up?? I LOVE the fact that none of our existing clients were hit by panda, we (like many of you) picked up new clients, and we learned a ton in the process. You know what we learned more than anything? People who made tons of money mashing up databases of info into extremely low quality pages got a major hit. Well let's think, again, that scalable strategy worked for a while, but eventually caused a lot of (much deserved) pain to a bunch of web sites, who saw major drops in traffic. Most SEOs who embraced the hard work of adding value, saw no hits. Let me give you a peek into what caused a consulting client to get hit by panda. We had a client that we were training, in an emerging international market, the company has hundreds of properties and millions of web pages.  It’s a HUGE task to manage this.  As we interviewed different members of their team, you could just sense in your gut that the goal was drop everything into a database and create pages from the database. This is not always a red flag, obviously large sites run this way.  The issue was that there was no focus on making these pages quality, I mean NONE.  When we would ask why does this page exist, how does it help the user...we were told not to worry about it, we pushed back, but ultimately the client didn't take the advice.  That was almost 2 years ago, but at that time we knew that without any bloggers, no outreach, no unique content, nothing, just making pages from databases and aggressive interlinking was going to be a recipe for disaster. We knew that deep down Google & Bing don’t want this in their index. One day they got hit, why? Because they fell in love with what was easy and didn't invest in the hard work of adding value. Scalable SEO's - Zappos is going to eat your lunch  Are you in the clothing / retail business?  Here's an example: Zappos is producing 60-100 videos a day according to this video! There is no way to scale that, it’s just hard work. Building studios and making the investment, and their rankings will convert better than your rankings due to that hard work!! They have proof of the conversion increases when videos are on product pages. Eventually video could become a barrier to entry / ranking signal to the search engines, and if they do, you are WAY behind. So are you waiting for that to be the case to start the investment or are you doing it NOW?  I have been working more and more on evaluating real connections my clients have in social media, and in real life, looking at top forum posters, evaluating their top community members, or heck even looking at their LinkedIn connections as ways to build links. Final thoughts Many years have passed since our beloved first search engines have gotten acquired or went out of business, you know Excite, AltaVista, Lycos - even though they never became Google, they all worked towards the same goal Google and Bing do every day...reward the websites who create real businesses, good content, connect with the community and earn links with high rankings. Unlike my buddy Eric Ward, I am not 100% sold that 2012 is the year when all of this comes together, but even if it is 2013 or 2014, he is right in the fact that its coming. It’s been coming since the inception of the first search engine, I've been watching it for 13 of those years...search engines will figure it out. The question is do you want to always stay just one step ahead and have that stress or do you want to start adding value?   Disclaimer: Every SEO (including us at SEER) has to seek out efficiencies and opportunities that scale to some extent, so I am obviously all for that. But you know when you meet someone if the core of their view of the world is more about scale and less about embracing the hard work. That is when I get worried. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Everyone in Web Marketing Should Be Against SOPA Posted: 18 Jan 2012 05:40 AM PST Posted by randfish If you've visited the Internet today, you know that SOPA and PIPA are being protested by companies like Google, Craigslist, Reddit and thousands of others. To them, we at Moz (and all of us in the web marketing world) say, "Thank You." It's not often that the web's interests align so clearly with the principles of economic and political freedom, and we appreciate those who are recognizing it today, along with those who'll continue the fight in the future. If you're unfamilar with SOPA, please take a few minutes to watch this video: PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.   We'd also strongly recommend that everyone concerned about this take heed of Joe Brockmeier's wise words on the topic (via RWW): I'm glad that all of these organizations are taking a stand. But invoking what some call the "nuclear option" is only going to be so effective. Even if SOPA/PIPA are stopped this year, they'll be back under new names next year. The entertainment industry can afford to keep at it, knowing that the public's attention span is extremely short. The lobbyists who work on things like SOPA are paid to press these things through Congress. They can focus on them year after year, while the voting public has to make a conscious effort to keep tabs on their representatives. Informing people about SOPA and asking that they call their representatives is all well and good, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. What the SOPA protesters should say is that even if SOPA goes down in flames, it's not over. It's never over. Further, the public can not rely on mainstream media to warn them of this sort of legislation. This is doubly true when the legislation is supported by the same organizations that own the media. Sure, call your representative and senators today. Protest SOPA and PIPA. But beyond that, keep paying attention to what your elected officials are doing. Spend a little more time paying attention to your government, even if it means spending a little less time on entertainment activities.   Today's events are a great step in helping to raise public awareness, but there is real danger in the long term, and advocates must take action more than just today. That said, I've personally signed the petition at American Censorship, and if your beliefs align, I'd encourage you to consider it. SOPA + PIPA are real threats to Internet freedom, commerce, content and the marketing profession not just in the US, but worldwide (another troubling and terrifying issue that Moz isn't really the place to discuss). We support all those helping to keep the web the amazing place it's become and will put our names, our votes and our dollars to use stopping those who'd legislate against web freedom to help the wallets of self-interested non-innovators. p.s. SEOmoz had originally planned to make some changes to our site today in support of the SOPA/PIPA blackout protest, but we've been having some release management challenges - for that we apologize. Please don't construe this as a lack of support. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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