Clearing Up MYTHS And FACTS About SEO and Google

[jamestame]

Fellow Warriors...

I am tired of all the myths floating around the net about SEO and how Mr. Google algorithms work, what sort of backlinks they are looking for to boost a site in the search results, how to increase PR and so on!

Sooo...

Let's break it all down, I will give you all my findings from over 3 years of SEO and affiliate marketing experience and you can add your own findings and opinions to this thread so that together we can clear up some of these myths and bring out the facts that will help EVERYONE here and move all of us forward with out online business ventures and campaigns!

Lets make this a GROUP PROJECT.

I will start off with some myths and my findings, If your experiences have being different please pitch in, but lets not turn this in to one of those BS I know more than you threads and arguments OK?

Here We Go...

First of all, The More Backlinks the better the site will rank in Google...?

That is true in MOST causes, but it all depends on the following factors:

*The PR of the site backlinking to your site

*Whether or not this site is a known spam site with loads of outgoing links and maybe even malicious coding or malware backlinking to you will damage the reputation of your site in Google's eyes and will possibly drop your site in the search ranks. (Had a site linking to one of mine that had malware and malicious code on it, ended up moving my site to second page)

*Duplicate content distributed all over the net on different sites all backlinking to your site WILL still credit you backlinks BUT... Those backlinks will not be of good quality and at some point will be discarded by Google and will no longer serve any value to your site. (Found that out from many experiments with my own sites)

*NO FOLLOW backlinks are useless... That Is A Fact but I think those still make some sort of difference as they are still getting noticed by backlink checking services such as yahoo explorer and such.

*Posting too much content all over the Net will hurt your site... THAT'S NOT TRUE! It's tempting to think that it is, but if it was then in cases when big news break on one of celebrity blogs and overnight thousands of blogs, facebooks and other sites link to that post only massively boost the popularity and findability in Google, NOT HURTING THE SITE WITH THE ORIGINAL CONTENT...

*Link Wheels can damage your site... YES THEY CAN! If the link wheel is not built properly and even closed on the end back to the original 1st part site of the wheel will automatically discredit all the backlinks meant to be gained from the linkweel by your target site.

Not only that, I noticed that the parts of the linkwheel in a lot of cases end up outranking your target site in search results and in turn moving it down the search engine results sometimes from 3rd spot all the way down to 2nd page so be careful with using link wheels.

*Using software such as SEnuke and other black hat software to artifucially inflate the popularity and backlinks of your site can hurt your site and get it sandboxed or even banned. THAT IS TRUE! Got 2 sites sandboxed 2 days after using SEnuke... Still sandboxed 2 months since!

*Using more than 2 links all up in one blog post will hurt the site and will not credit the backlinks to your site from that post... THAT IS ALSO TRUE... BUT, it only hurts the site if you use more than 3 links and it actually seems to hurt the actual site you are linking to!

*Buying butt load of backlinks overnight can hurt your site... NOPE, but it doesnt seem to do it any good neither, appart from sometimes in the long run it seems to benefit.

*Using ezine articles as the only way to build links to your site is enough. NOT BY A LONG SHOT! Google loves to see MANY DIFFERENT SITES linking to you instead of just 1 or 2 but this will not hurt the popularity of your site, but it will not give it a lot of popularity from different sources neither.

*Using your own sites to link to one of the main sites of your can hurt your site... NOPE IT WILL NOT! Google does not care that you own all those sites linking to one of your main business sites, all it cares about is they are all on separate domains,sub domains can be used to build up the reputation of the main site, mentioned by poster to this thread.

*Posting the same, duplicate content on your site can get your butt kicked out of Google... SURE, IT CAN! If you are ever planning to use dupe content then just DONT!

Write a brand new article, pay someone else to do it, use a good spinner or at least rewrite the 1st and last paragraphs of your article before reposting it if you ABSOLUTELY MUST... but i don't really recommend it if you are planning to put that on your own site, but i dare say you will get away with this on most Web 2.0 Sites.

Thats all from me for now... I will add more later, please feel free to pull this appart and add to it and discuss the points made in this post, it will benefit you, me and everyone else reading this thread!

[Mike Anthony]

Nice post and some solid findings jamestame but hold on to your hat when this is moved to the SEO section (which is where it belongs).

I agree with most of your points and your experience is not isolated. It IS pretty mainline SEO but theres some people who will get very upset at a few of those points.

Only thing I can think of now that I would disagree with is that yahoo reporting nofollow links means anything. It doesn't. Those sites just crawl and recognize links that are on the page. They don't really claim to be what the search algorithm uses. Both Bing and Google by most reliable accounts take that out of the equation for search engine placement.

A few other things I don't completely agree with but nothing major its still a VERY solid post on good SEO.

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by jamestame

Write a brand new article, pay someone else to do it, use a good spinner or at least rewrite the 1st and last paragraphs of your article

I approve this message.

[hushy]

Very interesting. Thank you. Does PPC help your site get ranked higher? Or is mainly backlinks and ezine articles?

If I write an ezine article should I link it my blog which is then also linked to my site?

[InternetMarketingIQ]

SEO is all speculation. The only people who can speak definitively about SEO are the people who create the algorithms. What you may or may not think is the 100% truth could be entirely wrong.

You do what works for you and you test it. That's it.

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by hushy

Very interesting. Thank you. Does PPC help your site get ranked higher? Or is mainly backlinks and ezine articles?

If I write an ezine article should I link it my blog which is then also linked to my site?

I have seen my squidoo lenses rank in #1 positions in google for the keywords that they were optimized for because I was running PPC and pointing the adwords ads to that squidoo lens that I am talking about..

How do I know that was why it was ranking #1... because as soon as I started the PPC campaign on that lens it went to #1 that day...

As soon as i stopped PPC to the lens it went back a few pages where it was previously...

Maybe this has something to do with buzzing traffic sent from adwords but PPC has no backlinks value as far as my experiences go.

And I deffinitely agree with some of the posters above, SEO is more so a hype and there so some people can call themselves "Experts in SEO" and rip the newbies for a lot of $$$ even though those "Experts" know no more than every other online marketer.

Not saying they are all like that, but have happen to work with a couple of frauds in the past... not mentioning names.

And sure... you try different methods that help your sites get ranked in great positions in SE but you must know how to analyze the results and understand the WHY as to why those sites are starting to rank well in SE.

Once you work out the method that works for you and understand the "WHY" you are on your way to constant backed up results from a system that you are using and you will be able to expect those solid results constantly.

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by hushy

If I write an ezine article should I link it my blog which is then also linked to my site?

Sorry, forgot to answer that...

Link your ezine articles straight to your MAIN SITE...

Don't worry about linking those to blogs, ezine articles are hard to get approved, but once they do why waste your links on a blog while you can link straight to your site and give it a high PR backlink every time you do an article...

Makes Sense?

The main goal is to get your website listed in Search Results... By building links to your BLOG wont help your site appart from maybe the traffic your blog sends to your site but your site will not get any backlinks benefit unless your blog lives ON YOUR SITE, then maybe your site will still benefit.

[Jason Perez O'Connor]

disagree with the SENUKE thing, if that happens your using it wrong... again people are reporting on their own findings, I did not have that with SEnuke.

what works for one topic or what ever may not for another. You can't tell others what they can and can't do. It's best to let them go out and find out. You don't just know how complex the google algorithm is.

They may count at which speed you submit links, how long it is between each link.. and more.. everyone works at their own pace and not everyone owns up to doing it wrong then playing the nice guy who what they did is nothing to how they write it when they come for help on the forum.

Too many factors, and because google don't let on you don't know which to care about and which are non important.

Jay.

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by Jason Perez O'Connor

disagree with the SENUKE thing, if that happens your using it wrong... again people are reporting on their own findings, I did not have that with SEnuke.

what works for one topic or what ever may not for another. You can't tell others what they can and can't do. It's best to let them go out and find out. You don't just know how complex the google algorithm is.

They may count at which speed you submit links, how long it is between each link.. and more.. everyone works at their own pace and not everyone owns up to doing it wrong then playing the nice guy who what they did is nothing to how they write it when they come for help on the forum.

Too many factors, and because google don't let on you don't know which to care about and which are non important.

Jay.

Yeah, at the end of the day I am just sharing my experiences with SEO over the last 3 years and what has and has not worked for me. This post will eventually become a good guideline of the methods that work for MOST people and those are the methods MOST people should use to promote their businesses and campaigns.

That was the whole point of creating this thread and I appreciate everyone's input just like you said Jay, everyone has different experiences but there will be a correlation of methods that work SOLIDLY for most of us.

[petelta]

I'm still not sold on your Link Wheel theory. I have heard many horror stories of link wheels but I have been testing them out a lot lately.

I have one mini site (4 pages) and all I have done to backlink is link wheels. Both open and closed. It's number 4 right now of a competitive keyword.

Something negatives going to have to happen before I'm a believer.

Travis

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by petelta

I'm still not sold on your Link Wheel theory. I have heard many horror stories of link wheels but I have been testing them out a lot lately.

I have one mini site (4 pages) and all I have done to backlink is link wheels. Both open and closed. It's number 4 right now of a competitive keyword.

Something negatives going to have to happen before I'm a believer.

Travis

Let's hope nothing negative will happen Travis,

I had my sites go from being built the day before and domain age of 2 days to #1 literally over night using linkweels, then down to 5th spot. then sandbox. then back out and on page 2...

Just my experience, but it's probably worth a mention that I was building 2-3 linkweels a day using 40 WP sites of my own and about 15-20 High PR web 2.0 sites in between my own sites.

[petelta]

Yea I have a 7 day process to build my linkwheels. I build 15 of them at once, but they are all pointing to 15 different articles/sites I'm trying to rank for. And I only use closed link wheels on the test site too. I'm not risking it with my money sites lol.

Travis

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by jamestame

*Using software such as SEnuke and other black hat software to artifucially inflate the popularity and backlinks of your site can hurt your site and get it sandboxed or even banned. THAT IS TRUE! Got 2 sites sandboxed 2 days after using SEnuke... Still sandboxed 2 months since!

I've got some competitors to take out in that case.

What you're seeing is the effect of having a temporary 'Query Deserves Freshness' boost followed by the decline when the site in question has no links of any long term value. This is sometimes mistaken for a 'sandbox' but it's actually a site falling to its natural level based on the quality and quantity of its links after the initial boost Google gives new content.

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I've got some competitors to take out in that case.

What you're seeing is the effect of having a temporary 'Query Deserves Freshness' boost followed by the decline when the site in question has no links of any long term value. This is sometimes mistaken for a 'sandbox' but it's actually a site falling to its natural level based on the quality and quantity of its links after the initial boost Google gives new content.

That is an interesting theory and I have considered that also... BUT the funny thing there is the site would have at least 5 times more backlinks from high PR sites than any of the sites sitting on the 1st page for the keyword and it will still seem to disappear, I don't think the lack of backlinks is the cause behind it.

I am sorry but half of what you posted is not true ... I would specifically like to point this out ...

so don't try to use SUB DOMAINS of that site you are building links to, to link to itself thats dumb and it wont work.

This is 100% wrong.. I have sites that have been running for years like this, I have clients that have had sites for over 8 years doing the same. I personally have tested this method and right now I have well over 350 sites that are on sub-domain names.

The fact is and yes I did say fact... It builds up the main site... Sorry it is not dumb, but it is smart marketing and it does work.

James

[jamestame]

Thanks for that input James, I have edited the main thread post above to include that the sub domains can be used to build up the reputation of the main site.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by jamestame

That is an interesting theory and I have considered that also... BUT the funny thing there is the site would have at least 5 times more backlinks from high PR sites than any of the sites sitting on the 1st page for the keyword and it will still seem to disappear, I don't think the lack of backlinks is the cause behind it.

Remember that it's the quality, stability and age of the backlinks, not the quantity, that matters, especially over the longer term.

If you have a ton of links like SENuke creates, which are mostly lower value links, you won't have much traction beyond the initial boost. When those links quickly fade, your ranking will be gone.

However, if you mix that will other, longer lasting and stronger links, you're more likely to stay in position or at least to plummet to the basement. Should you have an authority site to launch your new site from, you'll do even better.

[jamestame]

Yeah I keep that In mind also when putting up new sites and seeing what happens to them.

When I build backlinks I usually use my own wordpress sites, Blogging web 2.0 sites and other High PR sites in the mix.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by jamestame

Yeah, at the end of the day I am just sharing my experiences with SEO over the last 3 years and what has and has not worked for me. This post will eventually become a good guideline of the methods that work for MOST people and those are the methods MOST people should use to promote their businesses and campaigns.

Exactly. The standard rebuttal that if automates linking could cause sites to be sandboxed you could nuke your competitors doesn't take into account that the competitor has non nuked backlinks before that both caused him/her to rank and creates some variety/diversity\that may well protect him.

I'm not saying that its been proven but there are and have been a WHOLE LOT of people who have experienced something after a mass spam like link building campaign and they have usually been new sites or people that were not getting good placement before.

I wouldn't be surprised if thats a big factor because I really dont' think Google cares a whole lot about new sites giving great content or domain age wouldn't be a criteria at all. Google doesn't care about the democracy of the Internet and doesn't shed a tear when my great new site with better content that CNN on a subject goes missing in action in the results. Perhaps these poor souls just fall into that criteria of sites Google could care less about.

It may very well be that variety plays a a part in which case its not the tool directly but indirectly. Some sites are just easier to work with autobots than others.

It will never be something I care to test or mess with. When I want to get mad links I don't turn to bots. I turn to link bait and its gotten me links that no automated tool is ever going to give plus quantity.

[billionareHuman]

excellent post I agree with everything said 100%

For those that say you could theoretically hurt you competitors with mass links to their sites, think about why they are your competitors in the first place they most likely have:

- good content
- an aged domain
- established backlinks

For a site like this doing a mass backlink campaign will have no negative effect because they are already well established that's why they are you competitor!

Doing a mass backlink campaign to a new site does have negative effects from my experience , intial boost in rankings and then nowhere to be seen for months espicially if you don't vary your anchor texts. I have seen good results for new sites with varied anchor texts.

[paulgl]

Since they are your findings and your myths, I guess nobody
could disagree because we all have different conclusions on
a lot of that, and have different myths.

Posting the same, duplicate content on your site can get your butt kicked
out of Google... SURE, IT CAN! If you are ever planning to use dupe content then
just DONT!

I don't know what that means. Either you say don't put the same stuff over
and over on your site, or using some stuff you copied somewhere else.

Using dupe content to dupe google will not be rewarded. Putting normal,
everyday, duplicated content from another site or article will not do
a thing either way. Google coughs up a lot of duplicate content, no
problem.

Paul

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Since they are your findings and your myths, I guess nobody
could disagree because we all have different conclusions on
a lot of that, and have different myths.



I don't know what that means. Either you say don't put the same stuff over
and over on your site, or using some stuff you copied somewhere else.

Using dupe content to dupe google will not be rewarded. Putting normal,
everyday, duplicated content from another site or article will not do
a thing either way. Google coughs up a lot of duplicate content, no
problem.

Paul

I meant precicely that... Not using the same article over and over again on your own website. That's not a very good practice to follow and a sure fire way to get booted out of the Search Results.

I have seen some people post one article over and over on their own blogs and eventually they went down from Search Results quicker than I could say boo.

[Chris Worner]

I disagree with the domain age being an important factor, one of my websites which is less than 6 months old pips several domains in the listing which range from 7-13 years old.

[jamestame]

Yeah and it will if it has more backlinks than those other sites with good domain age, and the content on those sites could also be old and not updated often enough, who knows what's the case there.

As mentioned by myself and all the above posters there is a crazy ammount of factors that determine where your site ranks.

I believe the backlinks is one of the most important factors providing that your site content is worthy and well optimized for the keywords of course

[Chris Koltai]

Originally Posted by jamestame

*Whether or not this site is a known spam site with loads of outgoing links and maybe even malicious coding or malware backlinking to you will damage the reputation of your site in Google's eyes and will possibly drop your site in the search ranks. (Had a site linking to one of mine that had malware and malicious code on it, ended up moving my site to second page)

*Link Wheels can damage your site... YES THEY CAN! If the link wheel is not built properly and even closed on the end back to the original 1st part site of the wheel will automatically discredit all the backlinks meant to be gained from the linkweel by your target site.

*Using software such as SEnuke and other black hat software to artifucially inflate the popularity and backlinks of your site can hurt your site and get it sandboxed or even banned. THAT IS TRUE! Got 2 sites sandboxed 2 days after using SEnuke... Still sandboxed 2 months since!

*Using more than 2 links all up in one blog post will hurt the site and will not credit the backlinks to your site from that post... THAT IS ALSO TRUE... BUT, it only hurts the site if you use more than 3 links and it actually seems to hurt the actual site you are linking to!

Google has outright said a couple of times now that the only links that actively harm your site are links pointing FROM your site to "bad neighborhoods". This should be common sense when you realize that you have absolutely zero control over who links to you.

*NO FOLLOW backlinks are useless... That Is A Fact but I think those still make some sort of difference as they are still getting noticed by backlink checking services such as yahoo explorer and such.

NoFollow backlinks are still counted by Yahoo, and were previously counted by MSN search. I don't know if that carried over to Bing, but I do know that either way, Yahoo sends me some pretty killer traffic. Not quite on par with Google, but nothing to sneeze at.

*Using ezine articles as the only way to build links to your site is enough. NOT BY A LONG SHOT! Google loves to see MANY DIFFERENT SITES linking to you instead of just 1 or 2 but this will not hurt the popularity of your site, but it will not give it a lot of popularity from different sources neither.

While ezine articles alone can hardly be recommended for a diverse and natural-looking linking strategy, there are many niches and keywords for which an ezine article or 2 is more than enough to secure you a spot or 2 on the first page.

Honestly, I know this thread was formed with the best of intentions, but so far this thread has 262 views... How many of those were newbies who are now walking away with one of these myths freshly reinforced in their heads as truth? It might be a better idea to collaborate with a few people in advance, preferably people who have a large sample size of sites and who have tried several different methods for SEO. That way, when you post your findings, you've got a higher chance of them being accurate.

Might want to check out the documents in Google Webmasters Tools, to start. Those will dispel plenty of myths, for those willing to take the time to read them.

[sajan1kota]

Thanks a lot jamestame for sharing such a valuable information, this post will definitely clear a lot of myths and help understanding the concept of SEO.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Chris Koltai

Honestly, I know this thread was formed with the best of intentions, but so far this thread has 262 views... How many of those were newbies who are now walking away with one of these myths freshly reinforced in their heads as truth?

Kinda harsh.

Sure there are some things you might not agree with and sure some might not be entirely accurate but how is that different from many other posts here. Its most ly a solid post with some really mainline SEO viewpoints.

Which one of his points is going to really hurt a newbie? If he's right about Seonuke and others are wrong they stand to be hurt a lot more than skipping SEOnuke. Same goes for linkwheels if they don't know what they are doing.

I'm sure a newbie doesn't make a beeline for just one post. Lots of viewpoints in here and some of the most trumpeted are just dead wrong too.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I turn to link bait and its gotten me links that no automated tool is ever going to give plus quantity.

This is the most safe and effective way to get a lot of links quickly, unfortunately, it doesn't work well for all niches, especially outside of the non-tech, non-web-savvy area.

[jamestame]

I've never used link bait before, sounds interesting, will look in to that also since both of you posters above have positive opinions of this method.

Actually stumbled on a site called LinXBoss yesterday on youtube as an ad.

This thing claims to build solid one way backlinks to 5 of your chosen URLS, 200 backlinks per each URL per month and charges a whopping $120 or so per month!

What do you guys think of that thing?

[Chris Worner]

Originally Posted by jamestame

I've never used link bait before, sounds interesting, will look in to that also since both of you posters above have positive opinions of this method.

Actually stumbled on a site called LinXBoss yesterday on youtube as an ad.

This thing claims to build solid one way backlinks to 5 of your chosen URLS, 200 backlinks per each URL per month and charges a whopping $120 or so per month!

What do you guys think of that thing?

A MAJOR ripoff!

[jamestame]

Thats what I Thought too!

For the sake of 200 links a month I doubt I would even pay $30!

But then again, some newbies will get sucked in to their promises and maybe they do deliver what they promise but hey, $120 a month is still a lot of $ for that many links.

But on the same note, SEnuke charges that much too (for PRO version) but at least you get some control of what's going on and what you are posting and what sites will be linking to you.

Just wanted some opinions from you guys.

If it was $50 a month for 200 backlinks for 5 sites I would probably give them a shot, after all, they are doing the work for you which frees you up to do some other stuff aye, another way to outsorce the dirty work I guess.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

This is the most safe and effective way to get a lot of links quickly, unfortunately, it doesn't work well for all niches, especially outside of the non-tech, non-web-savvy area.

Link bait will work well for almost any niche. You just need to be creative and understand what a webmaster wants. People miss that its the webmaster that must be baited. In my opinion the reason why Imers don't want to learn about it is because its not a push button and get this many links back deal. Linkbait is the ONLY way you are going to get featured on a big mainline blog or site with a single in content link.

and I'll tease you and tell you that in under six months a change is coming that will make alot of people BIG believers in it. It might even become the defacto way of getting backlinks.

[jamestame]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

and I'll tease you and tell you that in under six months a change is coming that will make alot of people BIG believers in it. It might even become the defacto way of getting backlinks.

That sounds interesting! What is link bait anyways? Is it a way of getting links by asking other webmasters to put your content on their site in return for a link?

Never had anything to do with it before thats why Im asking

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Link bait will work well for almost any niche. You just need to be creative and understand what a webmaster wants.

Webrings?

Really, I've found the pickin's become pretty slim once you get beyond the mainstream blog-o-twitting web/tech/entertainment savvy in-crowd and into the world of 1998 style web static hobby and business presence sites. Not to say it can't be done but it isn't quite as easy as scoring some good links by simply having a silly cat/dog/rabbit/baby picture or two.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Webrings?

Really, I've found the pickin's become pretty slim once you get beyond the mainstream blog-o-twitting web/tech/entertainment savvy in-crowd and into the world of 1998 style web static hobby and business presence sites.

I think you might have a limited interpretation of what linkbait means. it means any kind of content that causes or compels people to link back to you. It does not have to be gimmicky or controversial.

[tjcocker]

Myths = Many
Facts = None

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I think you might have a limited interpretation of what linkbait means. it means any kind of content that causes or compels people to link back to you. It does not have to be gimmicky or controversial.

I understand what you're talking about. I just don't see it much outside of the web savvy niches, at least not at the speed and coverage you'll see it on this side of the fence. Like I mentioned, I work a lot of hobby niches and other more middle-age/older adult niches and it's really a lot different that the younger persons niches and the mainstream web/tech/news/political/entertainment niches. If you can get it to work there, great, but I haven't seen it being effective outside of the very long term "build it and they will come" approach.

[Chris Koltai]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Kinda harsh.

Sure there are some things you might not agree with and sure some might not be entirely accurate but how is that different from many other posts here. Its most ly a solid post with some really mainline SEO viewpoints.

Which one of his points is going to really hurt a newbie? If he's right about Seonuke and others are wrong they stand to be hurt a lot more than skipping SEOnuke. Same goes for linkwheels if they don't know what they are doing.

I'm sure a newbie doesn't make a beeline for just one post. Lots of viewpoints in here and some of the most trumpeted are just dead wrong too.

The points I highlighted were the harmful ones. Yes, that line you quoted was harsh, I agree. It was intended as such. This thread was proposed as "clearing up myths and facts" but instead ended up reinforcing some of the most persistent myths in our industry.

Maybe in the average "Here's a quick tip" thread, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but the information here is being touted as fact. Like I said, I know there were good intentions at heart here, but as the old idiom goes, "The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions."

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

. If you can get it to work there, great, but I haven't seen it being effective outside of the very long term "build it and they will come" approach.

Again I think you have a limited view of link bait. Like I said linkbait is aimed at the webmaster not the niche readership. Does the webmaster want things for his site? All of them do. Will they link to you if you give them it - yes they will.

Sit down and write down everything that a webmaster in your niche would want for his site - EVERYTHING. Not just tangible items. Say they want love - write it down (just an example of an intangible).

When you do and apply creativity you will find out there are LOTS of things that a web sit owner would want and then you pick what you can do to give it to them.

I'm sorry I'm not going to get into specifics. I actually like the fact that people don't get into linkbait. It makes it even more effective.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Chris Koltai

The points I highlighted were the harmful ones.

Oh come on. You highlighted not using link wheels, not using Senuke and not having more than one link on a page . Newbies skipping any of those will not create any harm . Great SEO can be done without any of them. I just ranked a new domain nicely without any of those thank you.

Meanwhile if you play around with linkwheels or Senuke without knowing what you are doing you can create some short term damage.

Myths? Yeah there are a few and one of the biggests is when someone pronounces something they don't like as a myth.

Theres quite a few myths that this or that is a myth.

[Mark Blaze]

Don't agree with all of them at all but some of them do have some strength and truth.

Still a nice post and must have taken a while to write up so thanks.

Mark Blaze

[Mark Blaze]

Originally Posted by hushy

Very interesting. Thank you. Does PPC help your site get ranked higher? Or is mainly backlinks and ezine articles?

If I write an ezine article should I link it my blog which is then also linked to my site?

Nope not at all! PPC is competely seperate.

Originally Posted by InternetMarketingIQ

SEO is all speculation. The only people who can speak definitively about SEO are the people who create the algorithms. What you may or may not think is the 100% truth could be entirely wrong.

You do what works for you and you test it. That's it.

SEO is the same for every single person all over the world. The basics always stay the same but then the way people carry out seo is the only thing that changes and what they personally choose to focus on.

It's just like if you put all the parts to build a car in front of people, some would just do it, others would go and buy a book and read and do it and then you have the people who pull out their wallet and go and pay someone else to do it. Exactly the same in SEO!

Originally Posted by jamestame

I have seen my squidoo lenses rank in #1 positions in google for the keywords that they were optimized for because I was running PPC and pointing the adwords ads to that squidoo lens that I am talking about..

How do I know that was why it was ranking #1... because as soon as I started the PPC campaign on that lens it went to #1 that day...

As soon as i stopped PPC to the lens it went back a few pages where it was previously...

Maybe this has something to do with buzzing traffic sent from adwords but PPC has no backlinks value as far as my experiences go.

And I deffinitely agree with some of the posters above, SEO is more so a hype and there so some people can call themselves "Experts in SEO" and rip the newbies for a lot of $$$ even though those "Experts" know no more than every other online marketer.

Not saying they are all like that, but have happen to work with a couple of frauds in the past... not mentioning names.

And sure... you try different methods that help your sites get ranked in great positions in SE but you must know how to analyze the results and understand the WHY as to why those sites are starting to rank well in SE.

Once you work out the method that works for you and understand the "WHY" you are on your way to constant backed up results from a system that you are using and you will be able to expect those solid results constantly.

Regarding the PPC part... Why on earth would google push up a website to the top of google or any higher when you are buying ppc ads? They want you to keep buying ppc ads and not just work on seo!

Now if this were true then i would go out and spend the smallest amount possible in ppc for all my keywords each day just to get top rankings! So shame it isn't otherwise everyone would be doing this.

Originally Posted by Jason Perez O'Connor

disagree with the SENUKE thing, if that happens your using it wrong... again people are reporting on their own findings, I did not have that with SEnuke.

what works for one topic or what ever may not for another. You can't tell others what they can and can't do. It's best to let them go out and find out. You don't just know how complex the google algorithm is.

They may count at which speed you submit links, how long it is between each link.. and more.. everyone works at their own pace and not everyone owns up to doing it wrong then playing the nice guy who what they did is nothing to how they write it when they come for help on the forum.

Too many factors, and because google don't let on you don't know which to care about and which are non important.

Jay.

Completely agree, if you don't know how to use senuke then don't use it! It all comes down to basic seo knowledge and learning about link juice and having a sequence... If your using it to spam then spam is what you will create and thus will be moderated, deleted and you suffer.

You can never suffer from creating links, you suffer as a result of them being deleted! Hence why people reccomend you build natural links and also non spammy links... so they don't get deleted!

Originally Posted by jamestame

Yeah, at the end of the day I am just sharing my experiences with SEO over the last 3 years and what has and has not worked for me. This post will eventually become a good guideline of the methods that work for MOST people and those are the methods MOST people should use to promote their businesses and campaigns.

That was the whole point of creating this thread and I appreciate everyone's input just like you said Jay, everyone has different experiences but there will be a correlation of methods that work SOLIDLY for most of us.

Maybe this is the problem with the myths... SEO has changed a hell of alot in the past 3 years alone and some of these myths reflect that!

Originally Posted by petelta

I'm still not sold on your Link Wheel theory. I have heard many horror stories of link wheels but I have been testing them out a lot lately.

I have one mini site (4 pages) and all I have done to backlink is link wheels. Both open and closed. It's number 4 right now of a competitive keyword.

Something negatives going to have to happen before I'm a believer.

Travis

Travis generally with a link wheel it's because it can be easily tracked especially if your using the same username in all of them or they all link to the same website and then something else which links to the same website.

Really comes down to common sense but now as far as im aware (haven't made these for a very long time) instead of the links harming your site they are just made neutral and so contain minimal to no power at all! Which also stops competitors from being able to hurt your site.

Originally Posted by jamestame

Let's hope nothing negative will happen Travis,

I had my sites go from being built the day before and domain age of 2 days to #1 literally over night using linkweels, then down to 5th spot. then sandbox. then back out and on page 2...

Just my experience, but it's probably worth a mention that I was building 2-3 linkweels a day using 40 WP sites of my own and about 15-20 High PR web 2.0 sites in between my own sites.

It was just finding where your site should rank, it takes a while even with pinging and bookmarking etc to discover all the links you create and so very unlikely that you will have any kinda of 'bad' things happen as a result of making a link wheel until later on.

Plus if it was using your own WP site's then this is a bit different to using the normal web 2.0 sites that everyone knows about and are typically used.

Originally Posted by petelta

Yea I have a 7 day process to build my linkwheels. I build 15 of them at once, but they are all pointing to 15 different articles/sites I'm trying to rank for. And I only use closed link wheels on the test site too. I'm not risking it with my money sites lol.

Travis

Now that explians it better as they are not all based on the same linking structures! Hence why your 'link wheels' work.

Originally Posted by Chris Koltai

Google has outright said a couple of times now that the only links that actively harm your site are links pointing FROM your site to "bad neighborhoods". This should be common sense when you realize that you have absolutely zero control over who links to you.

Might want to check out the documents in Google Webmasters Tools, to start. Those will dispel plenty of myths, for those willing to take the time to read them.

If the google documents told the whole truth and nothing but the truth then everyone would have top spots for everything.

The reason they only do it based on what you are linking to is based mainly on the fact that you can control the links on your site and should do too! Links pointing into your site if they could harm your site would be given in the millions to many of the sites i own and i do sometimes see backlinks coming in that i did not create and are not the best of links either. But a backlink is a backlink and it either helps or it does not.

That being said pinging your competitors backlinks if they have been deleted since they were last indexed can cause them to move down and also if you owned a massive network of 1000's of sites with spam all over them and all on different ip's and domains then you could place someones site in them, wait until they are indexed and then delete them! That would have a negative effect... but if you can afford to spend that much and that much time then you are obviously not busy enough already!

Mark Blaze

[Hightower]

Hi Warriors,
I am glad I found this thread. As a newbie I was banned from adsense for no reason I can figure. I want to print out this page so I can read it and perhaps learn something. Are there other threads which might help with this issue?

I got an email from someone with an answer for $, but I thought it best to start with the warrior forum.
Thanks again,
Hightower

[Aussie_Al]

What about the Myth that Google will punish you if it sees too many backlinks in one day?

If there was a shocking story on the news and everyone covered it in their blogs and sent back links to the original source - then surely that high ranking news site would be punished - correct?

[Mark Blaze]

Originally Posted by Aussie_Al

What about the Myth that Google will punish you if it sees too many backlinks in one day?

If there was a shocking story on the news and everyone covered it in their blogs and sent back links to the original source - then surely that high ranking news site would be punished - correct?

Nope not at all!

It's all down to link velocity and the speed at which you continue to build backlinks and their decay (being deleted)!

Most sites that receive a load of backlinks as its big news will already have a load of backlinks or will continue to recieve them such as twitter for example.

Your site however could receive 10,000 backlinks in a day but unless a good % of them stick then it's going to have a negative effect on your site which is mostly the case with spamming links.

Mark Blaze

[Aussie_Al]

Originally Posted by Mark Blaze

Nope not at all!

It's all down to link velocity and the speed at which you continue to build backlinks and their decay (being deleted)!

Most sites that receive a load of backlinks as its big news will already have a load of backlinks or will continue to recieve them such as twitter for example.

Your site however could receive 10,000 backlinks in a day but unless a good % of them stick then it's going to have a negative effect on your site which is mostly the case with spamming links.

Mark Blaze

Thanks Mark

I was thinking about links that come in from those "Top Commentator sites" if you get a back link on each page that can be a few hundred a day - ya know?

[Mark Blaze]

Originally Posted by Aussie_Al

Thanks Mark

I was thinking about links that come in from those "Top Commentator sites" if you get a back link on each page that can be a few hundred a day - ya know?

Yep it sure can be!

However they also change every month i think it is and so you no longer have those 100 or whatever backlinks.

You stop this by keep commenting which can get annoying so for a quick boost up to the top it's good but if your talking longterm i doubt you want to have to keep going back just to keep your sites rankings.

Mark Blaze

[searchnology]

Some clarification on this item. The "nofollow" tag is meant to prevent pagerank from being passed to a link. It DOESN'T mean the search engines will ignore the link and not count it as a backlink so there is no reason that all of your backlinks shouldn't show up on backlink checking services. The question then is how useful is the backlink.

Originally Posted by jamestame

Fellow Warriors...

*NO FOLLOW backlinks are useless... That Is A Fact but I think those still make some sort of difference as they are still getting noticed by backlink checking services such as yahoo explorer and such.

[Jesse in Portland]

Great stuff, thank you!

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by searchnology

Some clarification on this item. The "nofollow" tag is meant to prevent pagerank from being passed to a link. It DOESN'T mean the search engines will ignore the link and not count it as a backlink

Search engines do not count the backlink toward ranking. That is a myth that no one on this forum has proven. Count as in tell you they are there yes because they are there but it carries no weight in the alogrithm. Thats based on the best evidence that is on the table now.