Content? Google Now Admits They Will Ignore Content

Mike, they also mentioned that LSI factors will have more relevance too so on page seo is a bit more important nowadays as well...ie. on site kws etc...

VERY glad to hear someone provide some resources and authoritative content here on the WF about SEO.

So Mike....

What do you have to say about the "myth" that writing good content will get you natural backlinks so all you need is good content and the links will come, along with the visitors and rankings?

I'm not Mike, but that last part is no myth. That is what I've done with several successful sites. No active seo on my part other than finding what people are looking for and giving them excellent content they will link to. I do no link building on these sites and yet they have new backlinks coming all the time. The pattern is natural too. Very few blog comment links and no forum sigs that I've seen. Real links that count very well.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by WareTime

I'm not Mike, but that last part is no myth. That is what I've done with several successful sites. No active seo on my part other than finding what people are looking for and giving them excellent content they will link to. I do no link building on these sites and yet they have new backlinks coming all the time. The pattern is natural too. Very few blog comment links and no forum sigs that I've seen. Real links that count very well.

NO one is talking about established sites. Once you are known and established then yes content can and does generate links. It is an absolute myth that if you build it they will come on new sites and the videos above concretely and conclusively prove that with no room for reasonable doubt.

I guess this may come across as confrontational but I am going to call bogus on the whole I do no seo on any of my sites. Thats why I took the time and will continue to take the time to post videos and articles from established experts in the field. there is too much distortion in this forum.

I bet it I look at your strategies I will find SEO somewhere in the past even if its just rss submissions.

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HCLee 14 years ago

Thanks for sharing such good information. I guess this explains why people who create lots of micro niche adsense sites do well too since most of them are one-pager sites. They just need backlinks!
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WareTime

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

NO one is talking about established sites. Once you are known and established then yes content can and does generate links. It is an absolute myth that if you build it they will come on new sites and the videos above concretely and conclusively prove that with no room for reasonable doubt.

I guess this may come across as confrontational but I am going to call bogus on the whole I do no seo on any of my sites. Thats why I took the time and will continue to take the time to post videos and articles from established experts in the field. there is too much distortion in this forum.

I bet it I look at your strategies I will find SEO somewhere in the past even if its just rss submissions.

Mike, my established sites were not established when I created them. Google found them well enough without me having to do a thing. They are a registrar, remember?

I'm not saying my way is quick. You can't do what I'm doing putting up 5 sites a week and expect any kind of success. You need to focus and spreading yourself over a fleet of sites doesn't allow that.

I do on minimal on page seo and I won't say I've never posted a link to one of my sites somewhere, but I said I do no active SEO meaning I'm not out link spamming and trying to get the word out about my site. My readers get the word out for me.

My way is long term, rock solid and profitable assuming you pick a decent niche. My way is not for testing out a concept or shot gun approach.

By the way, the Matt Cutts vids say what Google would like you to do. Not necessarily what works best. I have friends that test, test, test and I have a few test sites as well that I have tried some seo techniques on. For me my test sites have proven that if I can put up decent enough content my audience grows itself.

Remember too that google tracks how much time people spend at sites and other factors that no doubt get considered in rankings in addition to links and everything else.

When google pulls the rug out from under low quality links and the internet marketer SEO-ed sites fall to oblivion, I'll keep putting up content. At that point the only tool left will be one no marketer can sell because there is no market for it - hard work.

Build a million straw houses if you want. I'm building brick houses. ["you" does not mean literally, you, Mike. It's a collective term in this case, it means the people that are trying to outrun the search engines.] When you start a brick and mortar business, do you start five of them a week? No, because that's obviously insane. It's only on the web in which the cost of entry is so low that people do it. What the web can't change though is you only have so much time and energy to focus and if you spread it too thin, you get nowhere.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by WareTime

I do on minimal on page seo and I won't say I've never posted a link to one of my sites somewhere, but I said I do no active SEO meaning I'm not out link spamming and trying to get the word out about my site. My readers get the word out for me.

You don't have readers getting your word out for you if you have no readers. You are now admitting to posting links to your site. So what is your claim to fame? that you only did a little spamming?

Come on linking back to your own site is not always spamming. this purist nonsense and you are essentially admitting to linking back to your own but

" I won't say I've never posted a link to one of my sites somewhere"

Is an admission you promoted your own site somewhere or the other and thats all that has been said in this thread.

I can never understand why to thump their own chest people can't keep it real.

Build a million straw houses if you want. I'm building brick houses. ["you" does not mean literally, you, Mike. It's a collective term in this case, it means the people that are trying to outrun the search engines.] When you start a brick and mortar business, do you start five of them a week? No, because that's obviously insane. It's only on the web in which the cost of entry is so low that people do it. What the web can't change though is you only have so much time and energy to focus and if you spread it too thin, you get nowhere.

Fair enough Waritime but why bring up a strategy that isn't even what is being discussed. I don't see anywhere a discussion about building five a week when we discussed the myth of if you build it they will come. You've not so subtle admitted that you have linked in the past to your site. That proves the point.

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Stephen Crooks 14 years ago

With all due respect, this is nothing new. I regularly read Matt Cutt's blog and as always he gives just enough information away about Google to keep us interested. I find with him, it's what he doesn't say that's more interesting.

Of course you can't just throw up a million page site of quality content and expect to gain authority immediately because of size alone. That is just a ludicrous argument anyway.

However, what he should be pointing out is that a site that has grown over a period of years and gained a lot of authority in that time through it's backlinks will serve new pages of content a lot better just from a few internal links.

Big sites DO have more authority than small sites once they are established. If I was to add a new page to my established million page site and put some internal backlinks to it, that page would get indexed and ranked pretty quickly. If I was to do the same thing with my established minisite of 20 pages, it would not happen as quickly.

This is not contradicting what Matt Cutts says, it's just the natural way that page rank works. The larger the site, the more PR and authority that flows through the internal links. But like I said at the start, it is what he doesn't say that I find more interesting.
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WareTime

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

You don't have readers getting your word out for you if you have no readers. You are now admitting to posting links to your site. So what is your claim to fame? that you only did a little spamming?

Come on linking back to your own site is not always spamming. this purist nonsense and you are essentially admitting to linking back to your own but

" I won't say I've never posted a link to one of my sites somewhere"

Is an admission you promoted your own site somewhere or the other and thats all that has been said in this thread.

I do have sites I've never posted a link to that are doing well. When I say I've posted a link, it could be in a members only forum ala review my site. Oh, well, you are just never going to agree with my method as you sell a backlinking method yourself. No big surprise there. I'm just saying there is a different path where you can focus on building content rather than links and still be successful. My sites all have backlinks, but I didn't create 99.9 to 100% of them depending on the site.

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JohnMcCabe

14 years ago

Maybe some will see this as stirring the pot, and maybe it is...

Are the "backlinks are everything" folks saying that the quality of the content being linked to does not matter? That as long as it has enough backlinks, by whatever means, any POS article-spinner vomit will rank well and stay ranked well?

Or would it be fair to say that combining a sensible linking strategy with content that users will find valuable is a better strategy?

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halfpoint

14 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Maybe some will see this as stirring the pot, and maybe it is...

Are the "backlinks are everything" folks saying that the quality of the content being linked to does not matter? That as long as it has enough backlinks, by whatever means, any POS article-spinner vomit will rank well and stay ranked well?

Take two different situations.

1. You have a crappy article on your website that was written by someone who doesn't speak English very well and the article is virtually unreadable. However, the page has good on page optimization for the keyword you're trying to rank for and you build a huge amount of backlinks with relevant anchor text.

2. You have a fantastic article that is very easy to read and contains great information. However, you build zero backlinks and don't do anything other than write the article.

Which situation is going to be more successful in terms of SEO? The first one by a mile.

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Or would it be fair to say that combining a sensible linking strategy with content that users will find valuable is a better strategy?

Obviously you should always strive to provide great content for your readers, however, as far as SEO goes, links are far and wide more important than content.

The best strategy is as you suggest. Provide the best content you can and build a huge amounts of links.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Maybe some will see this as stirring the pot, and maybe it is...

Are the "backlinks are everything" folks saying that the quality of the content being linked to does not matter?

I dunno. Where dem "backlinks are everything" crowd at?

Some of you (especially those of you just getting in on the conversation) are just going off on a tangent (maybe to sound smart). Great content is KEY. No one said any different. You need the backlinks , promotion and you need good content. Like I said in my OP I was referring to the crowd that claims that "if you build it they will come" .

Whats funny is there in two key videos the evidence is in and theres still a few people still trying to make the argument that if you build great content they will come. Its just an old reminder of the old proverbial statement

"Don't confuse me with the facts"

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JohnMcCabe

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I dunno. Where dem "backlinks are everything" crowd at?

Some of you (especially those of you just getting in on the conversation) are just going off on a tangent (maybe to sound smart). Great content is KEY. No one said any different. You need the backlinks , promotion and you need good content. Like I said in my OP I was referring to the crowd that claims that "if you build it they will come" .

Whats funny is there in two key videos the evidence is in and theres still a few people still trying to make the argument that if you build great content they will come. Its just an old reminder of the old proverbial statement

"Don't confuse me with the facts"

Mike, I know you never said good content wasn't important. And I never claimed to be in the "build it and they will come" camp either. That strategy worked like gangbusters back in 1996, and even then you still had to seed the search engines of the day with at least one url.

What I have seen as I've tried to stay up to speed on the linking strategies is people preaching to put up any old PLR or spun content online and then link, link, link anyway you can. Even if that means spamming blogs with junk comments or creating bogus profiles for the sole purpose of dropping links.

I believe the best long-term strategy is quality content combined with a sensible linking program. If the content is good enough to attract organic links, those links help conceal footprints in addition to providing juice and traffic.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

M

What I have seen as I've tried to stay up to speed on the linking strategies is people preaching to put up any old PLR or spun content online and then link, link, link anyway you can. Even if that means spamming blogs with junk comments or creating bogus profiles for the sole purpose of dropping links.

Yeah John thats the other extreme. I got you. You know what I tell my customers? If you still need to be continually doing backlinks 2 years from now then you are not progressing. To me you use backlinks to get a jump to your content or great offers and then somewhere along the way when people can find you you should be making a enough of a name for yourself from your content that you get all kinds of natural backlinks.

After that you should only be doing backlinks to counteract what a competitor might be doing. The whole time you should be paying attention to content because thats essentially what on site SEO is all about.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by WareTime

I do have sites I've never posted a link to that are doing well. When I say I've posted a link, it could be in a members only forum ala review my site. Oh, well, you are just never going to agree with my method as you sell a backlinking method yourself.

Actually has nothing to do with that Waretime. What you are suggesting isn't even worthy of being called a method. Like I already suggested you could do rss feeds and get noticed. I obviously don't sell rss feed services and none of the sites I point to for backlinks are RSS sites. Its pretty simple the two videos constitute proof that you can post great content and hope :rolleyes: (what a great business plan) people notice it or you can create great content AND promote your site.

What I and others are tired of is hearing this spam nonsene every time someone talks about backlinks. There are plenty of sites that actually recommend (thats right recommend) you use their site to link back to your site. All kinds of sites that exist for people to promote businesses and networking between professionals.

Putting up your content and not making use of the links (even through RSS) for Google to find it is just poor marketing especially in light of the two videos.

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WareTime

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Actually has nothing to do with that Waretime. What you are suggesting isn't even worthy of being called a method. Like I already suggested you could do rss feeds and get noticed. I obviously don't sell rss feed services and none of the sites I point to for backlinks are RSS sites. Its pretty simple the two videos constitute proof that you can post great content and hope :rolleyes: (what a great business plan) people notice it or you can create great content AND promote your site.

What I and others are tired of is hearing this spam nonsene every time someone talks about backlinks. There are plenty of sites that actually recommend (thats right recommend) you use their site to link back to your site. All kinds of sites that exist for people to promote businesses and networking between professionals.

Putting up your content and not making use of the links (even through RSS) for Google to find it is just poor marketing especially in light of the two videos.

That's just it, I've never needed a link for Google to find my. As I said the moment I register a site, they know it exists. If you can't wait that long, throw an adsense ad on it, hit the page once, their media bot comes over. Soon after that googlebot shows up. You can take the adsense right back off.

"post great content and hope" Again, my readers effectively do my marketing for me. Could I do linking and improve things - yes, but not as effectively as my readers.

These aren't anal wart cure sites I'm talking about. I have sites people tell their friends about. If you are doing an anal wart cure site, well then you best be linking because if you build it they might come, but nobody is going to build any links for you and the site will never get good traffic.

Content isn't always articles. Content may be a free service that many find useful and tell others about.

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Mike Anthony 14 years ago

Originally Posted by WareTime

That's just it, I've never needed a link for Google to find my. As I said the moment I register a site, they know it exists.

What are you talking about? Webmaster tools? Many people will tell you that doesn't always work.

"post great content and hope" Again, my readers effectively do my marketing for me. Could I do linking and improve things - yes, but not as effectively as my readers.

Waretime if you use your readers from one site to start another site thats fine but it has absolutely nothing to do with what we are talking about in this thread. I have a hard time believing that when you start another site you don't announce it with a link to your new site though. Thats no brainer marketing.

Content isn't always articles. Content may be a free service that many find useful and tell others about.

I don't know how to tell you any better than I have. You can't leverage readers unless you have them. Yes you can get backlinks to your site if you leverage an existing site or readership but again we have never been talking about that we have been talking about new sites.

Under what crazy methodology would I have an existing site that is doing well and refuse to link to another site I am starting? Why wouldn't you? and if you do theres your backlink.

Sorry but despite referencing yours as a methodology I still can't see a method that anyone could logically follow and so its just a distraction to what we are talking about in this thread.
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eibhlin

14 years ago

Originally Posted by WareTime

I'm not Mike, but that last part is no myth. That is what I've done with several successful sites. No active seo on my part other than finding what people are looking for and giving them excellent content they will link to. I do no link building on these sites and yet they have new backlinks coming all the time. The pattern is natural too. Very few blog comment links and no forum sigs that I've seen. Real links that count very well.

I agree. That's where content does matter.

Of course, it's a Catch-22, in a way: You need good placement at Google so that people find your website. Once they've found it, if the content is good, they'll link to one or more of your articles... and more people will find it & link to it, and so on.

I'm relieved to see that the backlink question has been answered. That's helpful when launching a new website, with or without strong, original content.

However, I'd urge people to continue to focus on content -- at least part-time -- so their backlinks grow organically.

Then again, I'm talking about sites that will be around in ten years (my most popular sites are that old, or older), not sites built for a short-term popular niche.

Thank you for posting this information! No matter what your online goals, seeing the content/backlinks issue clarified is a tremendous help!

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TimScott

14 years ago

Awesome share But the thing I'm curious about, is, let's say you build a small 15 page themed site, for whatever your promoting. Based on this idea, I could not add any new content, but maintain consant link building, and my site would continue to rank? If thats the case, then I feel like a huge chunk of my to-do list has been erased.

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halfpoint

14 years ago

Originally Posted by TimScott

Awesome share But the thing I'm curious about, is, let's say you build a small 15 page themed site, for whatever your promoting. Based on this idea, I could not add any new content, but maintain consant link building, and my site would continue to rank? If thats the case, then I feel like a huge chunk of my to-do list has been erased.

Yes, that is correct.

If I'm making a 15 page site based on 15 different keywords, then that is all I create. I then go crazy building links to make sure each page is ranking for it's desired keyword.

Consistent link building to the pages you are trying to rank is much, much more important than updating your site with new content.

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Mattk

14 years ago

Thanks for the info Mike, I would like to point out that if it is a small uncompetitive niche you will get your content crawled even without back links. This has happened to me even before I knew what back links were. If the niche is small enough, google needs search results.

Also, I noticed that Matt Cutts had his head shaved this summer while giving a caffeine interview. I am thinking the videos are at least 6 months old. So I am wondering if Google's position has changed any since those videos were shot.

I'm not stirring the pot, I am just curious if back links are the be all end all to marketing online. (Damn I hope not)

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halfpoint 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mattk

I'm not stirring the pot, I am just curious if back links are the be all end all to marketing online. (Damn I hope not)

The be-all to marketing online? No.

The be-all to ranking well in the search engines? Yes.
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Mike Anthony 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mattk

Also, I noticed that Matt Cutts had his head shaved this summer while giving a caffeine interview. I am thinking the videos are at least 6 months old.

The first video Youtube is showing a november date Obviously I can't tell when the video was shot but from summer (august is when I first heard of the cut) to now is not much time and it was taken from the Google webmaster channel not something someone else put up. I really doubt from summer to now the algorythm would so radically changed without anyone noticing. People are still having a hard time getting indexed for the first time and this explains why.

You are right in a very small niche you can rank some of your pages. The video says as much but depending on your backlinks your other pages will still stand a great risk of being ignored. Theres so much in these videos.
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tantowdy

14 years ago

good news for link building service.

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phpwarrior

14 years ago

wow, Content + Backlink are the King

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bolengas23

14 years ago

I'm an advocate of both quality content and link building. I think these 2 should go hand in hand. Sometimes it goes in a chicken-and-egg predicament.

What is a good content if it can't be found by search engine spiders and therefore you need links. And how can you build links if there's no valuable content to link to.

This is my opinion though - both content and link building are you SEO nunchucks. Loose the other and you can't really win the search engine war.

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jasonmorgan

14 years ago

NO one is talking about established sites. Once you are known and established then yes content can and does generate links. It is an absolute myth that if you build it they will come on new sites and the videos above concretely and conclusively prove that with no room for reasonable doubt.

I agree with you 100% but I wanted to throw out that you can still find success with strong content through long-tail traffic. But this is essentially ranking and receiving traffic through low competition keywords or very specific searches.

In some cases, you can do just enough SEO work (backlinking) to get yourself out of the SE gutter and while you won't be ranking well for any specific keywords you will see an overall improvement in your long-tail traffic. For a site with a lot of content all of those long-tail searches do add up to a reasonable amount of traffic.

But this still requires some basic SEO and backlinking to catch googles attention. Which leads us back to your original post... it takes backlinks to establish a site and get some google love.

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edgray

14 years ago

It's actually such a good point that many people miss out on. You could have the best content in the world, but if there are no links to it, no one will find it, no one will read it, and chances are Google won't either.

The "content is king" thing still applies, but, just like everything in the real world, you gotta tell people it's there. Great content will equal great, natural backlinks, but only once it's been seen.

Good post.

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butters

14 years ago

Originally Posted by edgray

It's actually such a good point that many people miss out on. You could have the best content in the world, but if there are no links to it, no one will find it, no one will read it, and chances are Google won't either.

The "content is king" thing still applies, but, just like everything in the real world, you gotta tell people it's there. Great content will equal great, natural backlinks, but only once it's been seen.

Good post.

Which makes it a completely flawed system, google doesn't want us to build back links but if we don't do it, we wont get them...

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Mike Anthony 14 years ago

Originally Posted by butters

Which makes it a completely flawed system, google doesn't want us to build back links but if we don't do it, we wont get them...

yep. For the most part thats true. I and others involved in backlinking get a lot of criticism for providing links and showing the data that supports needing to build your own backlink (for most webmasters) but here you have Matt explaining why you need to have backlinks JUST TO GET YOUR CONTENT INDEXED not ranked highly.

It IS a flawed system. Matt can talk about CNN linking to you and you getting indexed fast but CNN doesn't link to the small guy very often no matter how great his/her content is. The fact is the already established site, the media companies and big corporations have the PR machine to leverage advertising to get the buzz for their sites that create backlinks pretty easily.

Sure providing content and great resources is a long term solid strategy but as Edgray indicated its all useless until you get noticed. So a little self promotion as in almost any business is needed.
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ShaqirHussyin

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I've seen a few people here subscribe to the "if I build it they will come" philosophy of getting their site ranked highly on Google. Basically the theory goes that if you write great content and you do good keyword research you don't have to worry much.

Yeah, right. It's the keyword that brings you traffic. Getting such traffic will give you much exposure that leads to a high rank in google.

You can use the google adwords keyword tool.

You can check the link below.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

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erwindegrave

14 years ago

But why would they disregard content if it's one of the important things that people look for? :-)

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MrStinky

14 years ago

He means they use content for relevance, but without backlinks a site won't be indexed.

Meaning that if you have 5 million nofollow links only to your amazing quality content site, you won't be indexed. You have to have dofollow links and they really base everything on having links. Without links you're invisible to google.

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mloveridge17

14 years ago

I think you are misunderstanding Matt. He is saying that if you don't have any links, they won't index the entire site - only a small portion. But they still index it.

For example, I have an adsense site that I put up last month with over 1,500 blog posts. I haven't yet started building backlinks to the site, but I am already making money from AdSense and Search Engine Traffic. A quick check at Google shows that I have 199 pages indexed.

Not all 1,500+ posts have been crawled and indexed... only 199. If I want more pages to be indexed, it looks like I'll have to start really pushing some backlinks.

For a 15-page site, you may never have to build a single backlink to get your pages into the index. And if the pages are for highly targeted keywords, you may not even need the links for a good ranking... Content will still do that.

But getting backlinks will still boost Google's opinion of your authority, so I still recommend doing it. Just remember that a backlink to a blank page will get you nowhere. You still have to have quality, targeted content for your links to be effective.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by mloveridge17

I think you are misunderstanding Matt. He is saying that if you don't have any links, they won't index the entire site - only a small portion. But they still index it.

Nope. Not misunderstanding it at all. I Understand completely that in the first video he is talking about the entire site but even in that video and in the second one he clearly states that backlinks are necessary if you are having problems with your site or parts of it being indexed. Its as clear as day.

Either way it is still stating that the system is designed to ignore at least some content until it gets enough backlinks or a backlink from a high authority site. If your site is small then of course it won't affect you as much but either way it is Google stating that content is included to the degree that it is backlinked.

He point blank says it.

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Branlan17

14 years ago

Interesting discovery O.o Oh well, who here hasn't had their IM world turned upside down several times?

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GeorgR.

14 years ago

absolutely nothing new in those videos.

Of course your site content does not give you "authority", and of course the old saying "build backlinks to get your site indexed" still applies. What else is new?

Some more in that regards: "Content" of course is still the main factor, content is what will give you links (sooner or later)...but its not the content *per se* creating authority but of course the links pointing back to it. That's what he is saying. That's kindergarten level SEO basics

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sarah_may

14 years ago

Well, I do not think google is going to ignore content. Quality content is so important for success of a website or you can say content is the base of any site.

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GeorgR.

14 years ago

Originally Posted by sarah_may

Well, I do not think google is going to ignore content. Quality content is so important for success of a website or you can say content is the base of any site.

If you would think to ignore content then you probably totally misunderstood Matt

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jasonmorgan

14 years ago

Are the "backlinks are everything" folks saying that the quality of the content being linked to does not matter? That as long as it has enough backlinks, by whatever means, any POS article-spinner vomit will rank well and stay ranked well?

Or would it be fair to say that combining a sensible linking strategy with content that users will find valuable is a better strategy?

1. You have a crappy article on your website that was written by someone who doesn't speak English very well and the article is virtually unreadable. However, the page has good on page optimization for the keyword you're trying to rank for and you build a huge amount of backlinks with relevant anchor text.

2. You have a fantastic article that is very easy to read and contains great information. However, you build zero backlinks and don't do anything other than write the article.

Which situation is going to be more successful in terms of SEO? The first one by a mile.

Well, I do not think google is going to ignore content. Quality content is so important for success of a website or you can say content is the base of any site.

wrong... wrong and wrong

SEO and backlinks will always trump content... quality or not. Google bots are not your high school english teacher and have no concept at all of what is or is not quality content. They are looking at certain elements on a page to determine if that page meets the criteria for what they think is valuable content.

I can take a generic lorem ipsum text block and fill in my keyword of choice and have that page rank for my keyword through the use of backlink building and proper SEO.

Having quality content may help increase the popularity of a site, increase page retention and return visits but that quality content alone will do nothing to improve SE rankings.

Having a site with quality content may encourage people to link back to that site which will in turn boost SE rankings but this leads us back to step one... you need backlinks in order to rank well.

Search google for 'porn' and look at the sites on the first page. Most of them are video sites with almost no text content yet they all rank on the first page for one of the most competitive keywords on the net.

They are not ranking because of quality on-page text content, they are ranking because of backlinks. The almighty wikipedia and it's PR 6 page for pornography doesn't even show up until you hit page 3.

Writers don't want to hear it but SEO and backlinks will always come out on top of written content when it comes to SE rankings.

Do you need quality content to keep your visitiors and keep them coming back for more... yes. But without backlinks you're quality content is going to be lost at the bottom of the SE rankings and google is going to pay little attention to your site.

You need both to be truly successful and each serves a specific purpose in the whole internet game.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

wrong... wrong and wrong

SEO and backlinks will always trump content... quality or not. Google bots are not your high school english teacher and have no concept at all of what is or is not quality content........

I can take a generic lorem ipsum text block and fill in my keyword of choice and have that page rank for my keyword through the use of backlink building and proper SEO.

Now thats how you stir up the pot. Bare in mind though Jason with great content you do have a shot at backlinks from sites you normally wouldn't get. If something goes viral by way of content you could end up with some very special backlinks like from news organizations, authority blogs etc.

besides that I agree with much of what you wrote. I still like to balance it though.

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halfpoint

14 years ago

Jason, why are you quoting my post to say that it's wrong?

Re-read my post below. I said exactly the same thing you just did.

I said situation 1 would be much more successful. The one that emphasizes backlinks over content.

Originally Posted by Pat Jackson

1. You have a crappy article on your website that was written by someone who doesn't speak English very well and the article is virtually unreadable. However, the page has good on page optimization for the keyword you're trying to rank for and you build a huge amount of backlinks with relevant anchor text.

2. You have a fantastic article that is very easy to read and contains great information. However, you build zero backlinks and don't do anything other than write the article.

Which situation is going to be more successful in terms of SEO? The first one by a mile.

Originally Posted by jasonmorgan

wrong... wrong and wrong

SEO and backlinks will always trump content... quality or not. Google bots are not your high school english teacher and have no concept at all of what is or is not quality content. They are looking at certain elements on a page to determine if that page meets the criteria for what they think is valuable content.

I can take a generic lorem ipsum text block and fill in my keyword of choice and have that page rank for my keyword through the use of backlink building and proper SEO.

Having quality content may help increase the popularity of a site, increase page retention and return visits but that quality content alone will do nothing to improve SE rankings.

Having a site with quality content may encourage people to link back to that site which will in turn boost SE rankings but this leads us back to step one... you need backlinks in order to rank well.

Search google for 'porn' and look at the sites on the first page. Most of them are video sites with almost no text content yet they all rank on the first page for one of the most competitive keywords on the net.

They are not ranking because of quality on-page text content, they are ranking because of backlinks. The almighty wikipedia and it's PR 6 page for pornography doesn't even show up until you hit page 3.

Writers don't want to hear it but SEO and backlinks will always come out on top of written content when it comes to SE rankings.

Do you need quality content to keep your visitiors and keep them coming back for more... yes. But without backlinks you're quality content is going to be lost at the bottom of the SE rankings and google is going to pay little attention to your site.

You need both to be truly successful and each serves a specific purpose in the whole internet game.

Thanks
1 reply

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jasonmorgan

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Pat Jackson

Jason, why are you quoting my post to say that it's wrong?

Re-read my post below. I said exactly the same thing you just did.

I said situation 1 would be much more successful. The one that emphasizes backlinks over content.

My bad... sorry about that. I mis-read what you had written.

Been going bananas creating backlinks non-stop and my eyes are getting blurry... I think I see dead people.

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durrenmatt

14 years ago

Thanks for sharing this, it has changed the way i look at things a bit...will pay more attention to backlinks from now on and less to content ...

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ashsmh

14 years ago

Hey, Thanks for the video. Really important info for any webmaster. Yeah, content is KING unless it has good backlinks.

ashsmh

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mejohn

14 years ago

I consider Google rankings to be somewhat of a chess game. Content is king, but the king NEEDS all the supporting pieces. The link in my signature explains in more detail.

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ladyqueen1988

Banned 14 years ago

YES, a good SEO can get many traffic on duplicated content.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ladyqueen1988

YES, a good SEO can get many traffic on duplicated content.

Perhaps but it takes maybe 30 minutes to write or $3-5 to buy an article so why not give your visitors something fresh to look at?

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Franco Mocke

Dor instance they keep telling us "no follow" links count for nothing and don't even get followed by the search engines, but I ranked a site of mine for a relatively good keyword with only using no-follow links, yet again proving they lie to the public.

Sorry I'm calling your bluff and would personally love if you could prove this since it would make my life a ton load easier. However I am going to bet that a you had follow backlinks or it was a near worthless term you ranked for.

Its too easy to come on a forurm and claim to have proof that you will share with no one that contradict nofollow. Way too easy. So wheres the evidence on this?

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Joshua.E1 14 years ago

In the past, content is king. Now relevancy and thrust are more important.

Having a a lot of web pages suddenly might not be a very good idea.

In this case for the two videos, I would suggest that we focus on a new page a day, get it link up by some authoritative sites if you can, if not get it link from some related forums.

Its better to build it a page a day then to build everything yet on one comes to your website.
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Titans

14 years ago

Content is king, but the problem is everyone + dog is pumping out similar content so now there are billions of kings out there.

Same reason why Google is now focusing on Twitter/Articles/Forum posts.

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Stephen Root

14 years ago

How's this news? This is common knowledge to anyone who has bothered to actually study and research how Google ranks pages. Content has and will always be secondary and your site will never ever rank based solely on content. That has always been Google's idea.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Stephen Root

How's this news? This is common knowledge to anyone who has bothered to actually study and research how Google ranks pages. Content has and will always be secondary and your site will never ever rank based solely on content. That has always been Google's idea.

News is what is new to people. Many people have never heard Matt Cutt actually say that Google will ignore content even in a site it begins to crawl simply because it doesn't have enough backlinks

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DesignerSurrey

14 years ago

I kind of thought that content wasn't so important. The sites I compete with for my keywords don't have particularly good content but they do really well! It's the backlinks that count....

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by DesignerSurrey

I kind of thought that content wasn't so important. The sites I compete with for my keywords don't have particularly good content but they do really well! It's the backlinks that count....

Not really true. Content with backlinks is whats important. Theres no reason to not have both.

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seobro

14 years ago

This is not rocket science. People pay for backlinx because because they bring traffic and juice. This is the pay per post model that is hated by the search engines.

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The_Slippery_Pie

14 years ago

This has got to be the most confusing crap I've ever heard. First I'm told to get links, then I'm told to create more content, then I'm told to get links this way not that way. Where's the forum for absolute brand new people? I've got a headache!

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Mike Anthony 14 years ago

NO need for a headache. If you don't take an either or approach the answer is simple.

Get Backlinks AND develop great content.
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Glassjaw009

14 years ago

Mike, Thanked for sharing the vids.

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edpudol1973

14 years ago

This is the reason why, there are many sites that have almost no content or very short content that rank well than other sites who have high quality content but lower back link.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by edpudol1973

This is the reason why, there are many sites that have almost no content or very short content that rank well than other sites who have high quality content but lower back link.

True for the short term but generally speaking a site with good content and enough backlinks to get traffic (from decent placement in serps) has a better chance of out distancing a one page wonder in the long run. There are just some pretty nice sites to get a link from that you will never get without good content.

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searchnology

14 years ago

I think what most "content hawkers" see as a result of producing quality content is a fairly healthy amount of natural backlinking. They then discern that it is the content itself and not the resulting backlinks and therefore serps that bring them traffic.

It doesn't mean that they are wrong in that content is important but not specifically for the reasons they think.

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

I've seen a few people here subscribe to the "if I build it they will come" philosophy of getting their site ranked highly on Google. Basically the theory goes that if you write great content and you do good keyword research you don't have to worry much. Google will reward you. Well I was recently going through some videos by Matt Cutt's and found two very interesting.

In the first Matt indicates flat out that even if you have tons of content Google will only crawl your site to the degree that it has backlinks. Here it is

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

So it means that if you create ton loads of content (even great content) Google will ignore much of it unless you have a number of backlinks to your site (notice also he refers to links to various pages on the site level not just a page when he discusses authority). You might have been under the impression that if Google bot found your site at all the bot would crawl through all your navigation.

The second video admits that Google may just flat out ignore your site entirely if its new and you don't have enough backlinks to it.

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.

So content is king only when your are being recognized for content (or building backlinks to your content) by other sites linking to you. Despite what Google says great content will not get you listed highly on their site. Every webmaster needs to know this fact. Maybe now people will stop saying that content is all you need to concentrate on. If you build it they won't come.

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MusicisMagic

14 years ago

I don't think that is necessarily true...I think it's a combination of both content and backlinks..

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Solidsnake

Banned 14 years ago

Google don't read content but follow links.. simple as that...

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Morpheo

14 years ago

You guys need to listen to Cutts more carefully! He didn't say content wasn't king -- it still is -- there just isn't a variable in the ranking algorithm accounting for the shear size of your site. And this comes as no surprise at all. What? You expected that 10,000 blank pages would give you a SERPs boost? This is search engine spam control #1: don't incentivize shear volume. If this weren't the case, I would auto-generate a 10,000,000 page site in 30 minutes and outrank everyone.

The question posed to Cutts should have been phrased like this: Does the number of QUALITY pages affect authority? I my experience, whether directly accounted for in the algorithm, or just indirectory due to natural backlinking, YES volume of quality content possitively impacts your SERPs. Not to mention, it enlarges your "drag-net".

Think of your site like a giant stinging jellyfish hunting for a meal. If it has only 10 tentacles, it's not likely to catch much, and will probably go hungry. But if it has 1000 tentacles, it will catch more than it can eat. Mind you, as Cutts says, 1000 sting-less tentacles are absolutely useless.

EDIT: I've actually noticed that Google has an uncanny ability to "read" content when your site reaches an authority tipping point. Once it's large enough, my content gets ranked really well without a single backlink. That's because I build up so much authority that my own internal links are sufficient to do the trick. I just added a blog to my site with super quality content, and the blog's homepage went from PR0 to PR4 in a matter of weeks, with no direct linking.

What you guys aren't realizing is that quality content = backlinks. The two are inseparable in most niches. Unfortunately for IMers, your niches aren't very viral. Hence your spamming. If you were developing a Photoshop Tutorials site, good content alone would be sufficient to get you ranked well, not in itself, but in concert with the thousands of viral links it would generate. The best SEO is like jujitsu, you gotta leverage the weight of your opponent. To make that happen, you gotta build quality websites that get viral backlinks. Bottom line: we're forced to spam because we choose the wrong niche! And we choose the wrong niche because we're greedy and short-sighted.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Morpheo

You guys need to listen to Cutts more carefully! He didn't say content wasn't king -- it still is -- there just isn't a variable in the ranking algorithm accounting for the shear size of your site. And this comes as no surprise at all. What? You expected that 10,000 blank pages would give you a SERPs boost?

I don't recall anyone in the thread making any such statement about blank pages. The whole point is not to state that content doesn't matter but that content without backlinks will be ignored. I listened to Matt VERY carefully. Did you even watch it? It has nothing to do with indexing blank pages. It assumes there is content and it is POINT BLANK clear that backlinks are necessary to getting a body of content in the index.

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Manivannan

14 years ago

gone are the days when content ruled.
Now it is the era of backlink domination.
anyway screw google algorithms!

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theteach

14 years ago

Well, I have to say this is interesting.

I have a video tutoring website with about 250 articles.

Last year, my friend purchased about 500 good niche keyword domains. Each domain had 1 page of content and few backlinks.

What's interesting here is that some of his pages had about half of the traffic that my website had in the same day!

Here's the kicker!!!! His sites that did the best, had Adsense on them whereas my articles don't have adsense.

I wonder if many of us are overlooking the fact that Google is a business that subscribes to the theory of 'if you'll scratch my back I'll scratch yours'.

Just my 2 cents.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by theteach

Here's the kicker!!!! His sites that did the best, had Adsense on them whereas my articles don't have adsense.

I wonder if many of us are overlooking the fact that Google is a business that subscribes to the theory of 'if you'll scratch my back I'll scratch yours'.

Just my 2 cents.

Well plenty of sites rank well without Adsense so if there is such a benefit it would be relatively small. Although to be honest its kind of funny that Google talks about inferior landing pages because I have always considered a heavily adsensed page an inferior user experience.

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