Stop Doing Stupid Niche Research

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It's going onto over 10 years now since Google placed BRANDS by default on page one of their search engine.

In case you haven't heard about this, Google made a major change to their algorithm called Vincent's Change. The only major update that was not called an update.

Ask anyone about any of the Google updates and they can just about name every Google Animal update that has been released in the past 10 years.

But ask about Vincent's Change and it gets so silent you can hear the crickets in the background chirping. So little retention of this event is around why the search engine results occur as they do today.

Read more on Warrior Learn!!
#niche #research #stop #stupid
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  • Profile picture of the author .
    Dude what a great article.
    i love the title and it really makes me wonder how many times we approach things in the wrong way

    Thx!
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  • Profile picture of the author expmrb
    At one time they will run out of animal names to name the updates.
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    • Profile picture of the author sparrow
      Unless they make a change like Vincent
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    • Profile picture of the author OptedIn
      Originally Posted by expmrb View Post

      At one time they will run out of animal names to name the updates.
      Depends on what you consider an "animal," as it's believed are at a minimum 8.7M species on Earth.

      You can Google it. :-)
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      "He not busy being born, is busy dying." - Bob Dylan • "I vibe with the light-dark point. Heavy." - Words that Bob Dylan wishes he had written.

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  • Profile picture of the author affmarketer101
    Thanks so much for sharing. It looks great.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    Hi Sparrow,

    Incredibly interesting read buddy.

    Honestly; makes sense too on many levels. Brands are vetted already in many ways, so Google follows the billions, and brands get some serious rank on the Big G.

    I actually recall lowly little Blogging From Paradise beating Forbes for "how to submit a guest post" years ago on page 1, position 3 on Google. Falling in love with the process of creating helpful content, getting sweet links in and seeing an initial surge of traffic to my site were all huge factors; the initial surge courtesy of my tribe, which I built up over years.

    If you aren't a massive corporation, fall madly in love with the process of creating and connecting. That is the #1 weapon we have in our arsenal; the process, as you mention in the post.

    Thanks for the interesting share.

    Ryan
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    Ryan Biddulph helps you to be a successful blogger with his courses, manuals and blog at Blogging From Paradise
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  • Profile picture of the author wieserd
    In short: Don't focus on keywords, deliver great content.

    "Just about every technique for marketing works the downside is that it is only one part of the puzzle. You must have a strategy to win in this game of marketing."

    Absolutely. When you tell them about something that could help them in their online business, all they ask is "Will that make me money?" and my answer is "Not THAT in particular, but it will help." You don't buy a bookkeeping software and ask "Will this help me to make more money?" So many people are looking for the quick buck, which is why most of them won't make any money at all...

    It's about building a sustainable long-term business.
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  • Profile picture of the author tommen
    Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

    It's going onto over 10 years now since Google placed BRANDS by default on page one of their search engine.

    In case you haven't heard about this, Google made a major change to their algorithm called Vincent's Change. The only major update that was not called an update.

    Ask anyone about any of the Google updates and they can just about name every Google Animal update that has been released in the past 10 years.

    But ask about Vincent's Change and it gets so silent you can hear the crickets in the background chirping. So little retention of this event is around why the search engine results occur as they do today.

    Read more on Warrior Learn!!
    Excellent! Thanks for sharing! I was aware that Google constantly changes their algorithm, but this I did not know This shows that we cannot rely on Google on traffic. The more streams of traffic you can get to your site, the better. Diversifying traffic is important.
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    • Profile picture of the author sparrow
      You are so right about diversification

      if you think about it 2007 and beyond is when social media took off for traffic generation, because brands dominated page one results

      I suspect Vincent's Change had a lot to do with boosting all the different social media methods because of a reduction of over 70% of the available positions in Google search
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Sparrow I am probably putting my foot in it given this seems to get the approval of Warrior forum but

    Where the evidence? (moderators: I'm assuming since this is in the forum section that it is open to discussion. If not just remove the post. no harm. no foul)

    the only thing I saw in your piece was some personal research and your conclusions from it stated as fact. Theres an old saying that applies to SEO. Correlation doesn't equal causation. Perhaps you are right but perhaps not.

    What makes people read stuff like this and jump up and say - "Aha!. Eureka! great article!". Is that brands do rank all the time in Google. There is a correlation BUT

    Brands do tend to have MEGA links and they do get linked to from generally better and more authoritative sites

    So the brand aspect skews the causation. Is it the brand for being a brand or is it that brands get better links?

    Some of us have outranked Brands. Its not easy but thats due again to links and authority. Conspiracy thoeries are great complete with knowledge of secret meanings. I love a good JFK like theory myself but for SEO I just need a little bit more evidence. All experienced SEOs do research and for SEOs that have been in this section for years we have all seen people say their research reveals something that isn't really so.

    I'd be curious to know how you isolated the brands from the links that brands get. In solid scientific research you have to take precautions to isolate the particular thing you are testing so that other factors unrelated (in this case links and link authority) do not skew the results.

    Thats not to deny Google hasn't favored sites based on authority that might not even be reflected by links. Wikipedia is an example. Many pages rank without the kinds of links normally needed but for all we know Wikipedia is a seed site for pagerank. That doesn't make a blanket alleged "vincent update" a real brand thing.

    Just saying i'd like to see a good deal more evidence.

    Keyword planners data has always been off. Most pro SEOs have known this for many years. Still its not completely useless. Its plain wrong many times but as many adwords users will attest its comparatively right a lot of times too(not in specific numbers of searches but which terms get more traffic than others). I see no reason to denigrate a SEO for using it or teaching others to use it. You just need to point out its not perfect. Sometimes I run an adwords capaign to get a better feel for the term's real numbers.
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  • Profile picture of the author sparrow
    Mike you have some valid points, unfortunately the details you are looking for are way beyond the scope of this article, but I will try my best to answer your questions

    I did mention in the original article I had to cut this short I had a lot more to say


    What makes people read stuff like this and jump up and say - "Aha!. Eureka! great article!". Is that brands do rank all the time in Google. There is a correlation BUT

    No I did not say Brands rank all the time, Brands rank for certain keyword groups and less than others.

    I use Moz's domain authority to determine the differences between authority. I use this because it is the only metric that is consistent. Is it perfect of course not, but I have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Until I find a better metric I will use this because multiple factors are considered when assembling the numbers like links, age, etc...

    The chart I display is fairly consistent for the results I see day in and day out about 70% of all the keywords are brand dominated for page one results.

    I just did a new study using just buyer keywords and products that amazon affliates sell to see how it played out and I saw similar results it's not to say that certain areas brands are almost non existent . More than likely it's the other 30% of the results in the chart, I chose random samples to get a cross section.


    Brands do tend to have MEGA links and they do get linked to from generally better and more authoritative sites

    So the brand aspect skews the causation. Is it the brand for being a brand or is it that brands get better links?

    I don't think you can separate the two, to be considered a big brand, because if it was just an link issue then everyone would be sprinting to accumulate links to be considered a brand

    Some of us have outranked Brands. Its not easy but thats due again to links and authority.

    This I know is not true I see this all the time keywords dominated by brands in my charts many times all red signifying brands and in the #1 postion is a low domain authority website.

    Upon inspection generally the low domain authority website has more relevant content, I will speak more about this further down.


    Conspiracy thoeries are great complete with knowledge of secret meanings. I love a good JFK like theory myself but for SEO I just need a little bit more evidence.

    This is no conspiracy theory, I suspect you did not research the history around Vincent's Change, because it's a fact it is what it is and why it was created.

    All experienced SEOs do research and for SEOs that have been in this section for years we have all seen people say their research reveals something that isn't really so.

    I am an experience SEO I have been doing this since the inception of the internet and I have seen just about every trick in the book including some I will never release.

    I come up with this method as a result of having over 10 million pages and most of them on page one for huge head keywords all the big keywords in insurance, real estate, grants the list goes on.

    When I started to lose top positions this is when I started to investigate why this was happening on mass. Strangely enough a year later the internet lit up with how Brands were dominating the results after Ad-age broke the story.

    Please look up the history of this it's all there.


    I'd be curious to know how you isolated the brands from the links that brands get. In solid scientific research you have to take precautions to isolate the particular thing you are testing so that other factors unrelated (in this case links and link authority) do not skew the results.

    You cannot isolate brands and links they are inherently the same, you may do this for lower authority sites, but overall as I said previous it's not a link race and your pointing to it is.

    Thats not to deny Google hasn't favored sites based on authority that might not even be reflected by links. Wikipedia is an example. Many pages rank without the kinds of links normally needed but for all we know Wikipedia is a seed site for pagerank. That doesn't make a blanket alleged "vincent update" a real brand thing.

    At the moment you may not be aware there is some very scientific testing going on about why wikipedia ranks the way it does. The results are using the scientific method of isolating many factors and show that several internal links are equal to one external link. A lot more is going on than what I point to in this article that goes way beyond the scope of this article.

    Just saying i'd like to see a good deal more evidence.

    Unfortunately this was beyond the scope of this article, but below I will try to show you some of the evidence uncovered by my testing.


    Keyword planners data has always been off. Most pro SEOs have known this for many years. Still its not completely useless. Its plain wrong many times but as many adwords users will attest its comparatively right a lot of times too(not in specific numbers of searches but which terms get more traffic than others). I see no reason to denigrate a SEO for using it or teaching others to use it. You just need to point out its not perfect. Sometimes I run an adwords capaign to get a better feel for the term's real numbers.

    I remember having a discussion in another thread with you if my recollection is correct and the best we could do is agree to disagree.

    Let me reveal what my experience is with keyword planner and in addition to another very well known marketer.

    I was hired by several PPC guys their budget was over a million per month on ad spending to rank their websites on page one to make a comparison about traffic to organic vs PPC.

    I specifically ask them their thoughts about keyword planner they kind of laughed at me pointing they don't use keyword planner it doesn't contain the correct data instead they are assigned representatives to walk them through the keywords that are important in addition how to craft their ads to get the most of the traffic

    The other marketer had diner with his client and the Google representatives and experienced the same. Unfortunately since you are demanding proof I cannot verify this but it is what it is nothing I can do about this.

    The other experience I have is the traffic as you point out can be unreliable that is true some keywords are better than others. My best traffic came from keywords with almost non existent statistics from Google so we partially agree there on the search volumes.

    My pet peeve with keyword planner search volumes is people don't understand what we both know to be true and they take the search volumes literally, so my approach is different don't use them at all and look at actual results to see who is competing on page one. Search volume numbers mean nothing if the competition is unrealistic period.

    If your teaching individuals to use search volumes in my opinion your doing that individual a disservice without explaining the nuances of the whole story.

    Today the name of the game in search is topic driven not keyword driven, we both know many times articles are ranking on page one without the keywords but the article is topic relevant. So why bother with search volumes just put some great content out there add value.

    Now for the proof you requested, I've been doing this for over 10 years and it gets complicated because it requires large amounts of data to see how the search engine behaves, otherwise the data can be skewed if your only looking in certain areas.


    I have many charts and data to show for now I am going to show one.

    wifi lightbulbs

    I chose this because I found an article about smart homes are the up and coming thing for affiliates to sell items. What I found this was going to be a very difficult niche to break in.

    Here is what the chart looks like, 50 buyer keywords and only one that had an average page one value less than a 60 DA


    Next is some data I collect

    I collect all the URLs, Page Counts, URL Counts, ADs, individual DA, Average DA for the page, Position on page one, and site types


    In this image out of the 50 buyer keywords 2 sites have a number one position on page one one site has 2 number one positions keep in mind they are competing against sites with DA's 60 and above

    Next image


    This image is to show you the actual page one results, I see two websites on page one for a keyword that has stiff competition

    Take a look at page count, this website is on page one for 48 keywords out of 50 keywords
    this is one article ranking for multiple keywords, this is what I mean the search results are topic driven and not keyword driven.

    The article does not have all the 50 buyer keywords in it but still ranks for them, these are actual results of what page one looks like.

    Next image


    This is the other keyword showing a low DA website out ranking stiff competition

    I see stuff like this all the time but they are the exceptions

    Are they ranking because of links and authority I don't think so because of their low DA values they don't have any where near the links of the much higher DA values Brands in most cases

    My point is I've done this for millions of keywords. In addition I have checked link profiles and I have software that tears apart the content to see if there is some evidence it is on page SEO, what I found this is not the case no correlation of on page SEO

    I uploaded another image of a golf product that all 50 buyer keywords are less than 40 in most cases the sites are much easy to dethrone on page one unless they have superior content


    This product sells between $200 up to $1000 and the brands don't dominate it.

    I would love to find many products like this it's what you call a unicorn.




    I uploaded this to show a niche in general the charts typically look like this for how brands dominate. My point to all of this is that you need to know what the actual search results look like if you want to have page one results with the least work.

    I haven't even touch how Rank Brain factors into all of this. I have historical charts to show that show almost 100% red and then when RankBrain came on full time the charts started to show much lower DA values showing up.

    Showing all the evidence Mike is really beyond the scope of this article and I invite you to take me up on checking out what I have. I have a youtube channel showing the early days of many brands on page one with just images no text on page one not long after Vincents Change took hold.

    I've done this research over millions and millions of keywords with automated software actually I'm closing in almost a billion keywords so Mike unless you have something to compare why this is not so I stand on Vincent's Change controls alot of the results sites with a Moz DA value greater than 60 dominate the results.

    I know someone is going to say but DA values is not part of Google's algorithm and it is not.

    Today we don't know what they use they killed Page Rank so the only thing is look at the results and use some metric.

    One last thing in all the graphs and data

    I track all the ad counts your absolutely right some keywords might do better than others because the data shows which keywords have the ads

    I hope this clarifies things to some extent and I am still learning what all the data means so I don't know it all, but the search results speak for themselves.

    One last thought what I also found it is all Niche dependent some heavily spammed niches Google really holds tight reins on their results while others they don't. I have test sites up that I break all the rules and still on page one. Most of them no on page SEO at all on purpose and still they dominate for particular niches.

    It's a lot more complex than just show me the evidence because of all the buts and ifs.

    Ed
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

      I don't think you can separate the two, to be considered a big brand, because if it was just an link issue then everyone would be sprinting to accumulate links to be considered a brand[/COLOR]
      I'm sorry but I don't think you understand how testing and research works. You HAVE to separate one from the other to claim that brands are a factor on their own as you have been stating. We already know that links are a factor so if Brands are not separated from links then for all we know its just links and nohing to do with a sperate algo factors of brands.

      This is no conspiracy theory, I suspect you did not research the history around Vincent's Change, because it's a fact it is what it is and why it was created.
      Since this is such a bare faced fact then my request ought to be easy to satisfy - please present the link where Google reveals that VIncent change was mainly about ranking brands. No this is not my first time at the rodeo. I 've seen this claim before but its had little to no evidence. I've stated openly you might be right or you might be wrong. I don't know whats is in Google's secret algo. Its after all - secret. What will make the difference from opinion is some actual proof. I'll always go where the evidence leads but not so much opinion stated as fact without evidence. I very well might have missed this evidence since this algo was years ago and very little is available about it. Show that proof if it exists as you claim. We can move on from there easily.


      Unfortunately this was beyond the scope of this article, but below I will try to show you some of the evidence uncovered by my testing.
      I remember having a discussion in another thread with you if my recollection is correct and the best we could do is agree to disagree.
      ....... Unfortunately since you are demanding proof I cannot verify this but it is what it is
      nothing I can do about this.
      I am sorry but You are doing what all would be SEO gurus do. Claiming you cannot verify what you said with evidence but hoping somone will take your word for it. I don't recall our previous exchange but if it lacked evidence then I guess we didn't agree there either.

      Surely if you have done all this research you can point to at least a serp where a brand is ranking over other sittes with better links. That would be one way to isolate AND WE ALL COULD BE ABLE TO see it and examine if the theory holds up.

      Ask around. I am pretty well known here for SEO. I don't know how you can conclude that you have done more research than I have (and I can't claim to have done more than you either) so lets make this discussion about evidence - not what I claim to have learned from my research (that no one else has examined) or what you claimed to have learned from research (that no one can see to examine).

      If not its just a believe me becasue I say so claim and seeing as how most of us don't know you - why should we trust that in making deicsions for our SEO traffic?
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      • Profile picture of the author sparrow
        Mike Google it the CEO of Google made it known this is what they were going to do

        Google's Schmidt Says Internet 'Cesspool' Needs Brands | Media - AdAge


        Mike I'm not here to please you believe it or not if you want to get granular do so

        I know what testing is done it all my life as an engineer so please, because Google does not expose what they are doing so you have to look at the results.

        If you want to apply SEO do so, I choose to avoid competition and still get the same results

        If you want an actual SERP check this out
        "best evaluations for wifi lightbulbs"

        it should show the low DA site
        I just checked the same site is there may not be in the #1 position as before

        The only thing we can agree like before is too disagree the search results speak for themselves
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

          Mike Google it the CEO of Google made it known this is what they were going to do

          Google's Schmidt Says Internet 'Cesspool' Needs Brands | Media - AdAge
          Anyone that reads that short story will see it says nothing ABSOLUTELY NADA about an algo favoring Brands. Brands being more reliable to create quality content does NOT equate to Google changing their algo to rank brands higher because they are brands.

          You said that the algo Vincent change was a fact to do with brands. Do you have any evidence that says so? because that wasn't it.

          The only thing we can agree like before is too disagree the search results speak for themselves
          If we coudl see a search result where what you said holds up that would be great. All we have so far is images of blacked out keywords and cut off urls. No one can yet look at any search result and verify you've analyzed correctly.

          As such people should just analyze search result strength and rank with an eye to Domain strength because of internal link strength.

          Because sites outrank big name brands everyone knows all the time in the search resutls

          https://www.google.com/search?num=10....0.O-P4iFlpxLk

          and guessing which sites counts as brands is nothing anyone can do with any certainty.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      [QUOTE=sparrow;11345528][


      I'm sorry but your charts and images don't show anything. The URl is cut off and the Keywords are blacked out so we can't verify their rankings. It looks impressive to put them up but they present no evidence anyone can verify.

      As it is Moz does a Pooor poor job of counting internal links in their DA and PA and as such dampen the internal linke juice flowing through a site - particularly a big brand with a lot of link juice from other other pages.

      So DA annd PA are actually quite poor at indicating a page's strength from internal links and its a well known fact that of all the metric companies Moz records the LEAST amount of links (than ahrefs and Majestic). They are trying to improve that but the improvements are still in beta.

      If you can present a search resutl we can actually examine then that would be better but anyone can say antyhing and put up images of results of pages and keywords that no one knows about.

      lets get soemthing we can actually see and verify and we will be cooking with gas and have a MUCH more productibve discussion


      IF you are making claims of things as fact in a "Learn" section it can't be outside the scope to show evidence that we can learn from.
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      • [quote=Mike Anthony;11345570]
        Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

        [

        I hate to be the one to point out the obvious guys, but analyzing the content on that site to try to find out why it ranks, and considering internal links etc is likely obsolete.

        I would bet a significant amount that ANY website with low DA TF or DR that is outranking websites with higher metrics is doing so because of its PBN links, which of course aren't crawlable to the metric sites, so don't contribute to the websites DA TF or DR, but are crawlable by google so do contribute significantly to its SERPs.

        Kidding yourself that it has gained its position from its content is lunacy.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by sparrow View Post


      This is the other keyword showing a low DA website out ranking stiff competition

      I see stuff like this all the time but they are the exceptions

      Are they ranking because of links and authority I don't think so because of their low DA values they don't have any where near the links of the much higher DA values Brands in most cases
      This part is what gets me. So you did all this research or whatever but your examples are all based on DA. Let's forget a moment how inaccurate DA is. Let's just pretend that it is highly accurate. It's not, but we can just take that argument right off the table.

      The problem with your data is DA tells you nothing about internal pages of a site. Your image shows all internal pages ranking. The DA is not what you should be looking at. The PA would be a better indicator of what is going on here.

      But even that is not really going to tell you much because it tells you nothing about the relevance and anchor relevance of incoming links or the relevance of the page. None of the metrics do.

      Facebook.com has an excellent DA and PA, but they don't rank for "how to remove a car engine". Why? Because the page is not relevant neither are any of the links pointing to the home page.

      Basically, it looks to me like you are cherry picking data to support your hypothesis.
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  • Profile picture of the author .
    Mike....

    the purpose of Learn is exactly what is going on here...
    the fact that you don't agree with the Article, it's 100% perfect and that is the main goal

    Our job in Warrior is not to promote the content we believe is 100% THE TRUTH ABOUT SEO... but I think his article has extremely valuable points, it's well written, and he is willing to support his claims... and in my books, that wins a lot of brownie points.

    And for me this conversation that is happening here, is the evidence that that type of content needs to be published and discussed.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by Gabriel View Post

      Mike....

      the purpose of Learn is exactly what is going on here...
      the fact that you don't agree with the Article, it's 100% perfect and that is the main goal
      Hey as I have made clear in this thread. I don't have an opinion outside of wanting some evidence. Could Google favor brands? How the heck would I know? Its a secret algo.

      However SEO learning is all over the Internet and much of it contradicts each other and many have ran down pointless avenues based on claims that are not backed up by substantial evidence. Evidence thats solid is the only way to cut through the noise and learn whats real or not. So it was not an issue as to whether I agree or not.

      I wanted to press to see what evidence he had. I did and he presented what he had. If thats it then thats it. case closed on my part.
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  • Profile picture of the author .
    I made my point in the other post that I recommend people to participate and comment in posts, 100% the way you do it.

    So I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear. I was posting about the same topic (articles/opinion) in 2 posts at the same time
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi Gabriel,

    What has happened to this forum?

    Why are we seeing ads for the the Learn "Blog" where we used to see forum discussions? Is this the new format?

    Back when the forum was vibrant we would have seen people getting infractions for this type of discussion killing practice.

    I had to read the whole thread to find out what the "article" was about.

    I don't agree with Mike that often but I have to admit he has made some astute observations about this article.

    I was considering clicking away from the forum to read the article, but when I got to the part of the discussion that cited "domain authority" as the premise of the article i thought I wouldn't waste my time. That stuff is pure Cargo Cult in my opinion. Rand Fishkin has gone public about it being a made up metric, not an actual valid ranking signal, just something that people want to believe in without any empirical evidence that it even exists.

    Anyway, my main point is that it would be nice if we could not have forum posts that are purely advertisements. I think these posts that are quite obvious advertisements for the blog will drive away people that were looking to participate in forum discussions.

    If the new goal of the Warrior Forum is to drive people away from the actual forum and onto the Articles, that's okay, just let us know so that we don't end up blasting people for posting advertisements in the discussion forums.

    Kind Regards,

    Don Burk
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    • Profile picture of the author .
      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Hi Gabriel,

      What has happened to this forum?

      Why are we seeing ads for the the Learn "Blog" where we used to see forum discussions? Is this the new format?
      What Ads? The fact the writer of the post decided to share his article is not an ad in my point of view mate

      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Back when the forum was vibrant we would have seen people getting infractions for this type of discussion killing practice.

      I had to read the whole thread to find out what the "article" was about.

      I don't agree with Mike that often but I have to admit he has made some astute observations about this article.
      Great. That is the whole point. Discussion.

      Originally Posted by dburk View Post


      I was considering clicking away from the forum to read the article, but when I got to the part of the discussion that cited "domain authority" as the premise of the article i thought I wouldn't waste my time. That stuff is pure Cargo Cult in my opinion. Rand Fishkin has gone public about it being a made up metric, not an actual valid ranking signal, just something that people want to believe in without any empirical evidence that it even exists.
      You see, I'm an SEO also and If I believe everything Rand Fishkin claims about SEO... then I will be out of biz. you don't agree.... and you just make your point and I'm loving the fact we are discussing the article . This is the whole goal of a forum.


      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Anyway, my main point is that it would be nice if we could not have forum posts that are purely advertisements. I think these posts that are quite obvious advertisements for the blog will drive away people that were looking to participate in forum discussions.

      If the new goal of the Warrior Forum is to drive people away from the actual forum and onto the Articles, that's okay, just let us know so that we don't end up blasting people for posting advertisements in the discussion forums.
      Your comment is a bit unfair.
      The Goal of the forum is to send people to articles? Mate. We publish 5 articles per week... we have over 1000 posts per week. claiming that we are "officially" driving people to the articles is an over-exaggeration.
      The author decided to share the article. There is not Evil plan here, no advertisement, no drama, no evil plan... I think you guys are overreacting a bit.

      And how is this advertisement? Does the guest post ends up with a SIGN UP NOW? I don't think so...

      I believe the article brings value and I stand in my position.... and I open the doors to anyone in the forum that wants to share articles with us

      I'm happy to reward people that are sending us some content, trying to bring value

      I stand in my position.
      Now if you disagree with my position of allowing someone to make a post about his own article in Warrior... I respect your decision.... but I don't see any big deal.

      This wasn't an "ad" or a "pitch" it was an article written by someone new to the Forum that he thought he was providing value to the forum and I'm grateful for his intentions.

      If you guys have content you want to get featured in Learn, let me know, happy to give you the same space, platform you deserve.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by Gabriel View Post

        The author decided to share the article. There is not Evil plan here, no advertisement, no drama, no evil plan... I think you guys are overreacting a bit.
        .
        Umm Gabriel I am going to have to defend Dburk on that. his point was not unreasonable or over reacting in regard to ads. He was referring to the practice we see in posts in the learn section of linking back to the authors sites and offers.

        Its not unreasonable for people to feel that way since in WF very own rules it states -

        In line links are allowed and even encouraged as long as they are not selling anything and expand specifically on the concept being discussed. Marketplace listings are of course exempt from this rule.
        https://www.warriorforum.com/main-in...e-posting.html

        Perhaps this has changed but the article that started this very thread has a direct link back to the authors $500 mentorship offer. Other learn articles have similar links

        So the "as long as they are not selling anything " clause of your very own WF rules at least as they are now written with the only exclusion being the market place are not consistent.

        You also have to realize -we don't know who these people are. almost all of them we have never seen much on the forums and we have never heard of them elsewhere. So its a little off putting with the rules being what they are posted to see them doing what we as regular contributors are prohibited from doing.

        I hope you can see that the rules published still as they are would give legitimate cause to question posters who have inline links to things they are selling. If thats changed or there is now an exclusion of the rules for the learn posts then an update of the rules would remove the contention.
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  • Profile picture of the author .
    in fairness some sites rank for any bloody keyword just based on DA and PA with very little relevancy ....
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Gabriel View Post

      in fairness some sites rank for any bloody keyword just based on DA and PA with very little relevancy ....
      No. It's not based on DA or PA. It's based on their link, their content, and their competition. Just like every other page in Google's index.
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  • Profile picture of the author dylansmith22
    Great article, man!
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  • Profile picture of the author sparrow
    Look folks I was invited to share what I do.

    What I showed works for me to view the actual search results instead on relying on other methods.

    If you don't agree then this is not for you.

    We all know every metric has some positives and negatives and I make no bones about it. I said multiple times DA value of moz is not perfect until something better comes along I'm using it because it tells a story in my opinion that many are missing and valuable.

    Since the beginning of time people who think different encounter individuals who work on discrediting the ones who dare to think different. If you're in that ballpark continue doing what you do it works for you, but no need to force your opinions on those that dare to think different and this works for me for the past 10 years.

    The answer to all of this if you don't agree this article is not for you.

    I was invited here to share and I did. I can't please everyone, my apologies if your expectations was not met.

    On the other hand I work with frustrated hard working individuals at the end looking to give up, because they can't work with SEO and Google as it is today. This method has given results to those individuals that now get page one results and see their business growing.

    Just because you disagree does not mean it does not work, this is why we have freedom to choose.

    My method is to evaluate the search results using Moz's Domain Authority Value. It is about look before you jump into any niche what is happening on page one of Google.

    SEO in a granular sense is not, it's about working from within websites what their on page factors and off page factors are. It's too technical for most and the reason many have such a hard time ranking on page one of Google.

    I look at it different and the point to this whole article is it's no different if you were doing a brick and mortar business the old fashion way.

    You look at location, location location. This is what I do look at the search results the real estate.

    You don't start a brick and mortar business by walking into a business and ask to see their books it's not whats been happening since the beginning of time. This is what happens with pure SEO in my opinion this is what people have forgotten to do look at the real estate first(Google).

    My method is about that and if your debating about SEO technicalities you missed the whole point to this article.

    Gabriel thanks for the opportunity to share what I do.
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil John
    That's a great researched data. Keep up the good work Sparrow.
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  • Profile picture of the author sparrow
    Here is several links to Vincent's Change

    Unless you know what your looking for its harder and harder to find these days
    I had to follow multiple links to find resources when the internet was lit up about this change

    I even have a video that Matt Cutts made about this verifying the change as always Matt diffused the situation and only called it a change

    https://www.searchenginejournal.com/...rithm-history/
    https://www.searchenginejournal.com/.../vince-update/
    https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3854121.htm
    https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019480.html
    Big Brands? Google Brand Promotion: New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding | SEO Book
    Google Brand Bias in Search Results
    Big Brands? Google Brand Promotion: New Search Engine Rankings Place Heavy Emphasis on Branding | SEO Book
    https://youtu.be/LMfWPWUh5uU?t=8

    I'm sure if you follow the internal links you will find more information

    regardless on how you look at this it has wide reaching consequences if you look at just the results on what shows up for many products these days

    Can you point to specifics what is a brand I'm not sure how to answer that, but when we see what we know is a common brand like Amazon for example we know they are a brand.

    Here is another Google search that points out that Google talked about Brands is how they will define Google Search in the coming years

    https://www.google.com/search?client....0.K8Ise2ID4Fg

    Many authority sites pointing to Google's intentions without naming Vincent's Change

    I want to clarify it's not like I'm talking in the wind or holding back any information I looked at millions and millions of results to come to my conclusions.

    I blacked out keywords to protect work I am keeping, and the website links shown is how they cut off in my software.

    My article is really not about SEO so the SEO discussion is really not relevant. It's been a very difficult thing to define and the best I've been able to get my head around this is it's about "Competitive Intelligence" since the forum does not have a category I chose SEO, maybe marketing would be better but a similar discussion might be waged there as well.

    Now that Artificial Intelligence is part of the whole equation I personally don't think SEO in a granular aspect is making sense anymore because the more I look at the actual results it's getting harder and harder to pinpoint what placed a lower Domain Authority website above much higher Domain Authority values.

    I originally started my software with over 200 hundred columns looking at all factors. I have the same resources available as all of you and more because I even develop my own software to do specific jobs.

    I originally looked at Moz's Page Authority and it did not add up because fresh articles that had very little links etc... to them ranked page one many times #1 and proved very puzzling, the only metric I could get consistent results was Domain Authority. So I trimmed down all the columns to what I see as consistent results.

    Are the results perfect of course not. The more I work on this the more I see exceptions. But I look for possible answers that get results. Is correlation causation of course not, but when your dealing with unknowns you work with the best information available at the time.

    Many of you don't know me, I'm an engineer and testing is part of everything I do. I've worked in a think tank where my contributions are still being used today in industry for machines talking to each other. I worked on the earliest browsers now called Internet Explorer and FireFox. I say this not to brag, but to show some credit-ability that I'm not someone pulling this information from the clouds, a lot of thought and work has gone into this.

    I'm trying to think out of the box instead of working with the known and limitations of what SEO is doing today. I'm trying to push the boundaries to get onto page one of Google. Are we going to agree of course not hence the discussion that has transpired.

    Please do not think I feel that Rand Fishkin's made up metrics are what Google uses to rank websites they are not. But unless something better comes along for consistent results this is what I use. The search results are the search results.

    I appreciate discussions and welcome them if we disagree that's OK, again if this is not for you that's Ok with me.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

      I originally looked at Moz's Page Authority and it did not add up because fresh articles that had very little links etc... to them ranked page one many times #1 and proved very puzzling, the only metric I could get consistent results was Domain Authority. So I trimmed down all the columns to what I see as consistent results.
      I don't think there is anything puzzling about that at all. There is a very simple explanation for it. Google updates its data in real-time, but Moz can take 3-4 months to push out a data update.

      A new post is going to show a PA of 0, and it may show that for months. It depends when the next Moz data update is pushed out and how much data Moz collects on it between the time it is published and when their update rolls out. They may not collect much before the next update and it might actually take 2 data updates before you see a more accurate PA on a new post.

      Supposedly Moz is planning more frequent updates (daily) with their new Link Explorer, but we'll see if that happens or not when it officially launches.
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      • Profile picture of the author sparrow
        yes that is true, but the numbers don't correlate to the other results regardless
        that is what is puzzling

        I'm very well aware of updates in real time for Google, without actual algo insights it's a guess for everyone and we all use the tools available to all of us at the time

        Mike we disagree on what is relevant, we both use different metrics so it's a mute point on what is correct since artificial intelligence has a lot of control, from what has come out of Google even the engineers don't know what the new algo is actually doing.

        So we each use what works for us to achieve the results we seek, that's all that matters.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      First let me say I hope your attempt to put up some links up is a retraction of your previous post which essentially claimed requesting evidence from you was attacking you for being different and trying to discredit you personally. That was a fairly ridiculous claim.

      but fair enough . However lets be honest about what you put up. The video of Matt Cutts actually contradicts your claim not support it. He says right up front and through the entire video that Google does not think about brands. he even goes as far as to point out search results that prove that Google does not favor brands. Anyone that doubts that can go listen to it themselves and see the truth there.

      I have no idea why you listed Matt Cutts disagreeing with you as evidence Google agrees with you.

      Two of your other links are about a webmaster forum thread. Like I said we are aware of the claims people make but forum threads and opinion pieces are not evidence of a fact that Google has confirmed.

      So that leaves us with the Search Engine and seobook articles which are hardly authoritative but nevertheless gives you another alternative reasons why brands ranked, From your own link

      A brand is more than a website. A brand naturally achieves a clean inbound link profile as it relates to linking site relevance and anchor text association.
      Brands are mentioned broadly in news and media by their name across high authority outlets. Brands receive a wealth of branded searches, followed by high click-through rates and low bounce rates.
      Thats a horse of a different color. thats a collection of factors that could relate to rankings without brands. Lets face it Amazon has them and a lot of brands do NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE BRANDS BUT BECAUSE brands get linked to, voted for and mentioned.


      The very name of this update suggest its far more than just brands. Simply saying Sears will always out rank other pages would hardly be something so great an algo would be named after the programmer. What apparently Vince did was create an algo that emphasized the metrics that are present in trusted and popular sites (yes many of which are brands just by the nature of brands popularity). the dead giveaway this is the case is what you have already admitted -

      In the serps a non brand can and and often does outrank branded sites pages. If you actually did have an algo that says brands because they are brands outrank non brands then this could NEVER happen. great on page and a relatively few links can get you over a brand in some long tail results. Even in serps where you see big brands in top three postions you will see a non brand at position 7 and 8 over other brands even on page two

      Finally ranking brands just because they are brands doesn't even make programming sense. Computers can;t determine what humans call brands. Google would have to constantly add and subtract brands as they are retired, go out of business and monitor across the whole world new brands that emerge every month.

      However can Computers measure authority, links and mentions that most brands get? Aha yes they can. but that means if you reach that level you too can rank even without officially being a big brand.

      So it makes far more sense instead of thinking - I can't rank in this spot because there are brands - to look at the factors of trust, links and authority. A while back people swore blind you couldn't outrank amazon or even Wikipedia until yep....someone did


      P.S. I understand not posting your own keywords. However we can usually point to a serp we have no interest in especially if you are claiming millions of results.
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      • Profile picture of the author sparrow
        you really believe Matt Cutts? he's a spoke person to calm the restless natives

        I put him up as a confirmation that Vincent's change is official, beyond that I rarely believe what he says

        I put up the links since you mentioned you could not find enough evidence out there, if you dig deeper you will find more I just did a quick check to put something up

        Mike if you want to split hairs on what Brands are in your eyes its your decision.

        I paint a broad stroke for what I look for using my own metrics and actual search results.

        The purpose of this article was not to split hairs, the purpose of this article was to enlighten the uninformed on why it is difficult to get on page one and to avoid heavy competition.

        Students I work with achieve much better results using my method of avoiding brands and many of them getting on page one with very difficult competition with the same content that was used on the easy to rank keywords.

        Today it is common to see one article to rank for many keywords without even the keywords in the content but the article is still topic related. Which I believe is rankbrain in play for relevancy.

        Mike I've been doing this for so long and I suspect you have as well, that we sometimes forget what's it like for those that this topic just puts a glaze over their eyes.

        When the whole internet was changing over this Brand thing in a broad sense, I got fed up chasing the details because of all the work involved to find just the right combinations of why a site was on page one. What I did find the keywords that are yellow in my metrics SEO works well in fact many times the only way to get traction.

        So I came up with a filtering method, so I could be on page one without all the technical SEO work that many have to put in.

        I don't chase links anymore. I don't worry about Google updates. I get multiple page one results most times 4 placements and I dominate the keywords I pick in fact almost all the keywords I go after. The bonus is Google ranks me hard to rank keywords without all the work I need to do otherwise.

        So what's so bad about that? I achieved something without all the nit picking of what SEO is or not. Who cares I don't, I get better results than doing SEO unless I'm stuck then I need to dig into the bag of SEO.

        This whole article is not about SEO never has been.

        It is really a competitive intelligence gathering of page one results.

        What I posted what was on hand to show low Domain Authority on page one and also #1 position I chose that specific result for that purpose.

        I have so many results sometimes its overwhelming to find the exact results I am looking for to make a point without reviewing them and seeing what they contain for data.

        No offense taken. We both are passionate for what we do.

        By the way in the early days of Vincent's Change is was far more difficult to rank against brands. Only since RankBrain has come on full time the results are showing more lower value domains competing with brands.

        Here is a pdf (no strings attached) of several niches with charts before rankbrain same data done last year after rankbrain was announce full time.

        Anyone can download this to see the results just do a save as to your computer.

        rankbrain.pdf

        You will see the SERPs are changing for the Domain Authority Values I plan to do another set with the same data later this year to see how the SERPs are holding out.
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

          you really believe Matt Cutts? he's a spoke person to calm the restless natives

          I put him up as a confirmation that Vincent's change is official, beyond that I rarely believe what he says
          You can't really be serious. You were asked for evidence that Vincent change as a fact was about getting brands to rank. YOU not I put up the link to GOogles spokesperson talking about brands but want to claim its all a conspiracy where he doesn't support you - even though he goes to the extent of citing an example of what would rank if it were about brands. I m not a bleieve Google for eveything kind of guy but if you reference something as evidence it ought to support the claim evidence was asked for.

          You have stated over and over you have done this immense frankly near impossible for a working person to do research with millions of examples. You should have source evicence like who said what at your finger tips. Lack of evidence never enlightens . It darkens. You are using hair splitting as code words for I don't have concrete evidence and you should not require it of me.


          So I came up with a filtering method, so I could be on page one without all the technical SEO work that many have to put in.

          and that right there is the crux of the matter why so many regular poster here are challenging you and object to you posting back in your article to your products and services (since theposted rules don;t allow us to do that)

          Look at our join dates and level of participation. Do you think this is our first rodeo? that we have not had over the years MULTIPLE people waltz in here claiming that they have tools and knowledge that will cause people to rank easy peazy "without the SEO work that many have to put in" . We've seen countless poster start threads like this referencing their students, the millions of rankings they have etc etc etc and 99.995% of them they were full of crap (the other .05% of the time they disappeared so we can't verify).

          We used to have people weekly who ran WSOs who claimed to have found the magic easy potion. Its the number one claim of SEO related WSOs and crappy products.They all put up charts that didn't show anything , they all claimed tools and methods that were secret to the greater SEO world and they all claimed some version of Millions of this or that. However they all declined to show even one serp that the community could look and analyze to see if their claims held up.

          So let me cut to the chase - You don't have evidence besides people claiming what you have claimed who are stating their opinion like you are AND your position makes no sense to any programmer who knows how these things would be addressed.

          In order for google to rank brands merely for brand sakes (as opposed to the the kinds of signals brands get because of reputation and authority) Google would have to have a database listing all the brands on the planet, regularly update and delete names manually and then program their algo to check every result against that database for every search result position - all for the grand scheme of helping big brands to not to have to give them more money for adwords . Meanwhile they would have to spend Millions of dollars in progamming time for their developers to figure out ways to allow non brands to outrank brands in select situations for equally no monetary rational reason. Why ? because we both agree non brands can and do outrank big brands frequently.

          as a programmer of sorts I can tell you modern programmers abhor that kind of inneficient always have to manually update scheme. The whole thing just lacks evidence and no rational explanation why Google would care about big brands saving money not having to use adwords as much.

          We are marketers. We know when marketer are in sales mode on a forum post sayin hey I know but can't show. I have an easy system where all will be revealed after we sign up. So if someone comes in with the same looking story then its nothing personal - we are going to ask for evidence and thats not splitting hairs .

          Its simply - "all the other ducks have quacked like a duck. All the other ducks have ducked into the water like ducks and all the other ducks waddled like this one - what makes this duck different? "I'm actually giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're a different duck by asking for some sign that indicates you are different.

          However we have had multiple tries so I am done looking for the difference. Wish you the best.
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          • Profile picture of the author sparrow
            Look at our join dates and level of participation. Do you think this is our first rodeo?
            I guess you failed to look at my join date and level of participation.
            This is not my first rodeo either.

            I too am a programmer and know what it takes to get the job done. Your right the whole thing makes no sense other than Brands show up frequently for certain niches.

            If you don't believe that than this is all a mute point.

            So taking your analogy of reputation and authority why would any non brand out rank a brand, I don't believe its for the reasons you stated before, even you don't have evidence of why other than it worked.

            There is more to the picture that even you can't put your finger on. In addition we haven't even factored relevancy with artificial intelligence controls from what Google tells us.

            If it was all about links it would be a link race, they stopped that with one of the updates.

            The CEO of Google noted that brands were going to clean out the cesspool regardless if they called it Vincent's update.

            I have my way of doing what I do that works for me and others. I filter the results and work with the other 30% of what I have found. I told you my method of what I do I filter the results to see who is on page one of Google.

            I don't waste my time anymore chasing what you do, as I said multiple times if it works for you do it, I found a better way regardless of what you believe.

            By the way when you have automated software doing the research I have done is not hard to do.

            The best that comes out of this is you believe what you wish, if it works for you great.

            I suspect you have software tools and I suggest you check for yourself because no matter what I say or show you it will be never enough for you.

            So again the only common ground we come to agree on is to disagree.

            I was asked to contribute to Learn about what I do.

            You were also invited to do the same you have equal time in this Learn area.

            Maybe we all could learn something that has not been rehashed.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

              I guess you failed to look at my join date and level of participation.
              Nope I didn't. You've never been much in the SEo section over the years Or we would know you. Most of the people in this thread got most of their thanks in this SEO forum. Just saying did not miss your join date but to keep it balanced a good deal of us got more thanks in months by participating.

              I too am a programmer and know what it takes to get the job done.
              not buying it. Any experienced programmer would know such a setup that has to be manually updated is counter to a well developed system

              The CEO of Google noted that brands were going to clean out the cesspool regardless if they called it Vincent's update.
              Why don't you read what you link to? Lets clear this consistent distortion up Schmidt was talking to MAGAZINES

              and he stated this as well when talking to them. FROM YOUR OWN LINK -

              In a talk that he structured mostly as an invitation for questions and ideas, Mr. Schmidt declined to advise magazines on looking more popular to Google's page-ranking programs.

              "We don't actually want you to be successful," he said. The company's algorithms are trying to find the most relevant search results, after all, not the sites that best game the system. "The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance," he added.
              Google's Schmidt Says Internet 'Cesspool' Needs Brands | Media - AdAge

              of course magazines are great for Google. Magazines have EDITORIAL STAFF that demand high quality relevant articles as opposed to affiliate marketers. Some people are just cherry picking quotes to get where they want to go because the same source they are pointing to as backing them states "We don't actually want you[ magazine brands] to be successful"

              Can it be any clearer from your own source that Google is stating they have no interest in boosting even magazine brands just to boost them because they are brands. You are all out of Google sources and they both contradict your claim

              its pretty clear to anyone not following some rubbish conspiracy marketers conspiracy theory that shcmidt and Google like Brand magazines because they put out quality relevant content and not because they want to rank brands to rank brands

              By the way when you have automated software doing the research I have done is not hard to do.
              By the way all the WSO sellers that come in this section have claimed to have whizz bang software that does what no one else does. Its all sales talk to get people to sign up. its not convincing to anyone who knows our niche. In fact the claims with nothing to support itself but personal testimony of the seller tend to lower credibility not increase it. At least to those of us who have been around the block and seen thise kind of thing before many times.

              We are not going to get anywhere so like I said lets just end it. the more you try and skirt around showing any serp of the alleged MILLIONS that you have researched the less credible it gets.

              Its been all down hill since defending using MOz as the corner stone of your research. I am not even a Moz hater but its widely known Moz is the weakest of all the link data providers. Even they have admitted this and are tryign to adress this with a new link database .

              hey I am a marketer too. If you want some high Da sites I can supply them to you . For full disclosure they will be crappy link farm and link spam supported links because DA and PA gives almost zero consideration to quality and OBL.they are addressgin all the pages their present crawler misses btu when they will adjust pages for the amount of links on a page and spam is anyones guess.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Google allows Brands to bend the rules that non brands are not allowed to practice.
    That's your rant?

    You're obviously using the word brands loosely here. Google doesn't give a shit who ranks for a name/keyword.

    Searching Google right now for the keyword buy iphone, the #1 ranked paid ad is from trademore [.] com, apple [.] com ranks #3 on paid ads for the same keyword. So you're going to tell me Google is in cahoots with big brands to weed out small business.

    Whatever.
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    • Profile picture of the author sparrow
      yes and I stated that and defined it as well

      apparently you missed the area for links, cloaking, image only page one rankings and so forth

      by the way those items were pointed out by very well known contributors on the internet
      BMW was caught for cloaking, need to look at the historical evidence

      https://marketingland.com/10-big-bra...y-google-69646

      this is only one instance of Brands getting away with things and still operate while the rest of us struggle and get permanent penalties, the history is there

      as it was phrased to "sort out the cesspool", not small business in general I hope not
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Today it is common to see one article to rank for many keywords without even the keywords in the content but the article is still topic related. Which I believe is rankbrain in play for relevancy.
    Yeah Anchor text link and LSi was doing that long before all the buzz was on Rankbrain. Theres nothing odd or new there. my firs run in with that many years ago was fun stuff. Had a cient in the UK and couldn't figure out why we were getting our tails whupped. Turns out it was because we were not familiar with the geography as Yanks. The page outranking us locally had references to counties nearby that we had no idea of. the references made the competitor rank higher for locally focused keywords. Took a look on a map to figure out that one. The actual name of the city in the serp wasn't on the page at all but the nearby counties were.
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  • Profile picture of the author texenergy
    Originally Posted by sparrow View Post

    It's going onto over 10 years now since Google placed BRANDS by default on page one of their search engine.

    In case you haven't heard about this, Google made a major change to their algorithm called Vincent's Change. The only major update that was not called an update.

    Ask anyone about any of the Google updates and they can just about name every Google Animal update that has been released in the past 10 years.

    But ask about Vincent's Change and it gets so silent you can hear the crickets in the background chirping. So little retention of this event is around why the search engine results occur as they do today.

    Read more on Warrior Learn!!
    Hi Sparrow,

    Great article, it's mind bugling to read how you breakdown niche research and ranking on google. I am quite interested in your mentoring and tools however my interest is more in generating leads for local businesses. Do you address this in the mentoring and do you play in that sector at all?

    Secondly do you have any case studies in local biz lead generation and do your tools have features that make it easy to do niche research for local businesses including possible strategies for google maps. By features I mean cities, towns, counties and states for keyword modifiers.

    Sorry if my question is off point.

    Regards

    Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author happydancer
    To add my two penny worth. I am a veteran of SEO. Never forget that big G is there to make money out of search which means getting as many businesses as possible to advertise and compete for key words, all in big G's favour of course. Now just using this knowledge, and it follows, big brands don't exactly need G but smaller businesses do. What would you do if you were G? Stuff the first page results with brands and results where it is less likely to use adwords to force all other businesses to place ads to get some exposure on page one. And of course G can justify this. That is why since 2008 (when I began to notice this effect) I have created brands and sub brands for my clients and get them page one without advertising (ok, a lot more than this besides but branding is part of the strategy). The message here, if you are in SEO for the long term start creating brands as part of your strategy and get the brand out and the term searched on on mass. Argos (a top UK shopping brand) is found by people putting "Argos" into google because shoppers want to shop at Argos period, a trusted brand. Argos do not go out of their way to advertise on G. It would even be damaging for Argos to do so since it would throw up their competitors, much better for a top brand to capture shoppers on their own webpages by using the power of their brand. So what better from G's point of view? Spam the first page with brand results such as Argos, yes Google spam as well. And content is king? Rubbish, just look at the content of some of page one brands and most is pure crap. Page one control is about G maximising their coffers and not yours. so brands who are less likely to advertise for that key word are spammed into page one results by G to force other companies to spend their money with G. Cynical? No, just true, G is a business pursuing a revenue/profit maximisation strategy on the own terms and own agenda and are now politically savvy enough to defend their search results whenever foul is cried by politicians and regulators.The rest of us just have to work with the reality of what G really is, we have no real alternative (Bing and Yahoo excepted but with srinking relevance).

    If you don't believe the power of branding on small/medium businesses (SME's), take heed and notice now. I had a business in a specialist insulation niche that made me £ mega per month. My top salesmen were making £180,000 p/a if that gives you a clue as to what I was making. I'm not kidding, it was a super profitable business. I had developed that business from scratch with a one word brand name and sold that business after ten years. It was page one, position one in google for all the relevant key words (a lot of SEO went into that) where 50% of the enquiries came from, the rest came from trade shows. The people I sold to, alas, ran the business into the ground, it expired in 2014 after being taken over for just 18 months. The website disappeared 3 years ago. Two months ago I put up a website up (not even a good one) just a free phone number and a few words saying that the brand was back as I'm working on too many other projects to do any more with it at this stage) using the brand name in the domain name, no advertising, no google adwords, no back linking, no mass page plugin, no cloaking, no tricks, no pbn and no SEO whatsoever. And guess what, I had three enquiries the very first week because people had searched the brand name and found the website I had put up! I thought it was crazy, a dead company still able to get enquiries after three years of doing diddly squat! How much business was lost in the three years previously god only knows. However, that is the power of branding, the brand, even when the business expires, does not die with the business. You want people to search the brand name as part of your SEO strategy. For a SME, choose a brand name that says what the business does in one or two words only (that is the hard bit but it can be cracked) and then get that band name exposed everywhere and on everything. It'll take a while but you can celebrate once you start seeing the search term for the brand appear in your logs. Remember, SEO/marketing these days must be done for the long haul,a brand name is essential for that.
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    • Profile picture of the author sparrow
      good points, never thought of lesser brands not advertising so brands that have a tendency to spend money will up their efforts, good possibility

      my software counts the ad counts so certain niches are ad heavy and others are not, very interesting to see where ad money is spent
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      • Profile picture of the author happydancer
        I am buying your software, research is key, a business plan must take into account what is happening now in 2018 and deal with how things are now. 20 years ago we did not concern ourselves with G but know G has virtually conquered the world for search, old marketing methods are redundant, it is all SEM now. Your tool is required at the planning phase, the start up phase, maintenance phase, the new product launch phase and the improvement phase of a business plan. Those that don't plan plan to fail very effectively.
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        • Profile picture of the author sparrow
          thanks

          any questions don't hesitate to contact me so I can help you get the most of the software

          your approaching this correct IMHO, research is the key these days before jumping into anything related to marketing on Google
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by happydancer View Post

      To add my two penny worth. I am a veteran of SEO. Never forget that big G is there to make money out of search which means getting as many businesses as possible to advertise and compete for key words, all in big G's favour of course. Now just using this knowledge, and it follows, big brands don't exactly need G but smaller businesses do. What would you do if you were G? Stuff the first page results with brands and results where it is less likely to use adwords to force all other businesses to place ads to get some exposure on page one. And of course G can justify this.
      I am a big advocate for branding, so I agree with a lot of what you said about that, but this part is just flat out wrong. Big brands are actually the biggest spenders in AdWords too.
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  • Profile picture of the author roberthull99
    Google and its algorithm changes have taught me two big lessons throughout my career making money online.

    When I first started out, I was ranking crappy scammy websites (promoting rubbish like free walmart coupons) on Google using all this backlinking bs. I was using all of these backlinking tools that stayed on 24/7 and eventually killed my macbook pro's battery.

    I made $100/day doing all that crap.

    Then Google hit me with Panda and I decided I have to start creating value.

    So I started writing helpful, well-researched articles in the health niche, and my website ranked organically without any artificial backlinking.

    Lesson number two came in August this year. Google totally slapped my helpful, useful website, and I have no idea why.

    I COULD always hire a SEO company and have them optimize my website, but lesson #2 teaches me to do otherwise.

    Lesson #2 is F Google.

    I recently went through a course where the guy said that if you are not profitable through paid traffic, then you don't have a business.

    I will no longer even THINK about google rankings.

    I will only focus on making money through paid traffic. If Google wants to rank my website, then the free traffic I get from that piece if shoot will be a bonus, but I will never waste any of my time trying to rank on that poophole again.

    Maybe when I a raking in the dough, I'll hire someone to do some SEO for me, but even then it'd probably be a waste of money.
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    • Profile picture of the author spunk91
      Originally Posted by roberthull99 View Post

      Google and its algorithm changes have taught me two big lessons throughout my career making money online.

      When I first started out, I was ranking crappy scammy websites (promoting rubbish like free walmart coupons) on Google using all this backlinking bs. I was using all of these backlinking tools that stayed on 24/7 and eventually killed my macbook pro's battery.

      I made $100/day doing all that crap.

      Then Google hit me with Panda and I decided I have to start creating value.

      So I started writing helpful, well-researched articles in the health niche, and my website ranked organically without any artificial backlinking.

      Lesson number two came in August this year. Google totally slapped my helpful, useful website, and I have no idea why.

      I COULD always hire a SEO company and have them optimize my website, but lesson #2 teaches me to do otherwise.

      Lesson #2 is F Google.

      I recently went through a course where the guy said that if you are not profitable through paid traffic, then you don't have a business.

      I will no longer even THINK about google rankings.

      I will only focus on making money through paid traffic. If Google wants to rank my website, then the free traffic I get from that piece if shoot will be a bonus, but I will never waste any of my time trying to rank on that poophole again.

      Maybe when I a raking in the dough, I'll hire someone to do some SEO for me, but even then it'd probably be a waste of money.
      Hmmm, there could be a conspiracy here...
      "They say" iphone updates makes the older models slower to have people buy a new, much faster, iphone, just to repeat the process next year..

      What if!?! And stay with me. What if google's algorithm changes is only to have you pay a seo agency to optimize your site to work with the new algorithm. Just to have you repeat THIS process all over when the new Google Centaur (or whatever) algorithm hits next year... :smilies_rolle yes:

      I feel like a true Sherlock Holmes.

      Just a sec. a black SUV just pulled up to my house...
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  • Profile picture of the author Reddevil007
    Ed solid share man just what one needs to do effective niche research.
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  • Profile picture of the author Carcharias58
    Great Content and very helpful comments.
    Its true !
    Thanks guys!
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  • Profile picture of the author niajax
    This is really a nice post to stoping people to Niche Researching on Stupid Niche.

    Things have changed and time has changed but still, people are using old tricks and doing useless researches.
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  • Profile picture of the author jobdollarr
    I do not understand the contents of this article and what do you want to show?

    Just show the keywords that are on page 1.
    Volume of traffic generated.

    So that people believe in your argument.
    Signature
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    • Profile picture of the author sparrow
      The whole article is about looking at keyword metrics that don't mean anything these days for helping you understand who and how to get on page one of Google
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  • Profile picture of the author NeeRanjan
    Your views and perception on niche research are right up to an extent and I do not completely agree with this. I am doing that thing for past one year and it has helped me a lot.
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