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I went to a SEO seminar and want to share...

by severt
43 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi Guys,

Yesterday I went to a Search Engine Optimization seminar in Amsterdam and want to quickly tell you what's going on.
The guys who gave this seminar were trained by Google Experts so they know of the latest trends / techniques.

-Content is getting more and more important.
-Backlinks are getting less important

I'm not saying that backlinks aren't important, but what I'm trying to say is that with each Google Update , backlinks were getting more and more important. This growing line has stopped now, and it seems that Google is awarding more points to unique content.

Since content is getting more and more important it's useless (I believe it always was) to build tons of non-relevant backlinks.
It probably can't harm you, but it's not effective either.
I've you're deciding on purchasing backlinks, then you're better of spending that money on buying quality content.
And build quality backlinks to that content

Further, outside links do matter!
If you don't link your website to an external link, Google thinks that you find your self very important, which in most cases isn't true.
It's googles work to present the searcher with the best information there is. So linking to an wikipedia article or something like that can be useful.

Q: My website doesn't do very well in Google
A: Is there enough unique content?

Q: How do I know my content is unique
A: Go to Copyscape Plagiarism Checker - Duplicate Content Detection Software and find that out for your self

Q: How do I find quality backlinks
A: Go to Site Explorer - Yahoo! Site Explorer , type in the URL of your competitor and click on the button: Inlinks

Q: I have almost the same backlinks as my competitor but he's ranking number 1 and I'm number 18
A: This could be of various reasons, but again, check your content!

I hope some of this was useful to anybody,

Dennis
#seminar #seo #share
  • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
    Originally Posted by severt View Post

    Hi Guys,

    Yesterday I went to a Search Engine Optimization seminar in Amsterdam and want to quickly tell you what's going on.
    The guys who gave this seminar were trained by Google Experts so they know of the latest trends / techniques.

    -Content is getting more and more important.
    -Backlinks are getting less important

    I'm not saying that backlinks aren't important, but what I'm trying to say is that with each Google Update , backlinks were getting more and more important. This growing line has stopped now, and it seems that Google is awarding more points to unique content.

    Since content is getting more and more important it's useless (I believe it always was) to build tons of non-relevant backlinks.
    It probably can't harm you, but it's not effective either.
    I've you're deciding on purchasing backlinks, then you're better of spending that money on buying quality content.
    And build quality backlinks to that content

    Further, outside links do matter!
    If you don't link your website to an external link, Google thinks that you find your self very important, which in most cases isn't true.
    It's googles work to present the searcher with the best information there is. So linking to an wikipedia article or something like that can be useful.

    Q: My website doesn't do very well in Google
    A: Is there enough unique content?

    Q: How do I know my content is unique
    A: Go to Copyscape Plagiarism Checker - Duplicate Content Detection Software and find that out for your self

    Q: How do I find quality backlinks
    A: Go to Site Explorer - Yahoo! Site Explorer , type in the URL of your competitor and click on the button: Inlinks

    Q: I have almost the same backlinks as my competitor but he's ranking number 1 and I'm number 18
    A: This could be of various reasons, but again, check your content!

    I hope some of this was useful to anybody,

    Dennis
    Some good information, but there is absolutely no testing that I've seen that confirms the idea that linking out to authority sites helps your sites ranking at all.

    I'm not saying it doesn't help rankings, but there is no testing I've seen that confirms this.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
    I think people get confused when Google refers to unique content or duplicate content. Duplicate content means, duplicate content on your site, not throughout the entire web. Google loves syndicated content, look at all the news sites. If Google liked only unique content, then sites like Wikipedia, NY Times, LA Times and ALL news sites would be banned from Google.

    They way sites would have duplicate content on their own site would be sites that run CMS like Wordpress*. When posting content on these sites you will get your content posted 3-4 times.

    EXAMPLE:
    site.com/category1/CONTENT
    site.com/category2/CONTENT
    site.com/2010/10/08/CONTENT
    site.com/tag/marketing/CONTENT

    Do you see how the content is "duplicated"? When this happens, Google thinks that you are being "spammy" and trying to rank the same article multiple times, again within your own site. This is where you will get the dreaded, and usually misunderstood, "duplicate content penalty".

    There is not one news article (ok I'm sure if you worked at it, you may find one) on the internet that is not syndicated in some sort, and thus not unique. If you post a "unique article" and I copy/ paste it on my site or syndicate your RSS feed, its not unique. Google knows that this is the way the internet MUST work so popular stories will be shared.

    Think if you wrote an article, and FOXnews.com picked it up and syndicated it on their site with credit to your site. Would Google penalize FOXnews.com because it had "duplicate content". No actually the opposite would happen, Google will value your site more because you have links from high PR site to a page within your site.

    Just think about what makes sense.

    *Many WordPress plugins can fix this problem i.e. Platinum SEO, ALL IN ONE SEO. These can set the tag, archive and category links to rel=noindex and rel=nofollow. This prevents, or at least tells, Google that these pages should not be indexed and are only there for navigation purposes. That is why all of the SEO plugins have that option.
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    • Profile picture of the author L41db4ck
      Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

      They way sites would have duplicate content on their own site would be sites that run CMS like Wordpress*. When posting content on these sites you will get your content posted 3-4 times.

      EXAMPLE:
      site.com/category1/CONTENT
      site.com/category2/CONTENT
      site.com/2010/10/08/CONTENT
      site.com/tag/marketing/CONTENT

      Do you see how the content is "duplicated"? When this happens, Google thinks that you are being "spammy" and trying to rank the same article multiple times, again within your own site. This is where you will get the dreaded, and usually misunderstood, "duplicate content penalty".
      So you're saying that WP sites automatically get penalised?
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    • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
      Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

      I think people get confused when Google refers to unique content or duplicate content. Duplicate content means, duplicate content on your site, not throughout the entire web. Google loves syndicated content, look at all the news sites. If Google liked only unique content, then sites like Wikipedia, NY Times, LA Times and ALL news sites would be banned from Google.

      They way sites would have duplicate content on their own site would be sites that run CMS like Wordpress*. When posting content on these sites you will get your content posted 3-4 times.

      EXAMPLE:
      site.com/category1/CONTENT
      site.com/category2/CONTENT
      site.com/2010/10/08/CONTENT
      site.com/tag/marketing/CONTENT

      Do you see how the content is "duplicated"? When this happens, Google thinks that you are being "spammy" and trying to rank the same article multiple times, again within your own site. This is where you will get the dreaded, and usually misunderstood, "duplicate content penalty".

      There is not one news article (ok I'm sure if you worked at it, you may find one) on the internet that is not syndicated in some sort, and thus not unique. If you post a "unique article" and I copy/ paste it on my site or syndicate your RSS feed, its not unique. Google knows that this is the way the internet MUST work so popular stories will be shared.

      Think if you wrote an article, and FOXnews.com picked it up and syndicated it on their site with credit to your site. Would Google penalize FOXnews.com because it had "duplicate content". No actually the opposite would happen, Google will value your site more because you have links from high PR site to a page within your site.

      Just think about what makes sense.

      *Many WordPress plugins can fix this problem i.e. Platinum SEO, ALL IN ONE SEO. These can set the tag, archive and category links to rel=noindex and rel=nofollow. This prevents, or at least tells, Google that these pages should not be indexed and are only there for navigation purposes. That is why all of the SEO plugins have that option.
      Google doesn't penalize for duplicate content unless their is a clear motivation by the webmaster to game the system. In most cases the worst thing that will happen is they might choose a different version of your content than you want them to.

      Here's the information: Duplicate content - Webmaster Tools Help
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
        Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

        Google doesn't penalize for duplicate content unless their is a clear motivation by the webmaster to game the system. In most cases the worst thing that will happen is they might choose a different version of your content than you want them to.

        Here's the information: Duplicate content - Webmaster Tools Help
        100% agreed, All I was pointing out was there are tools out there like Platinum SEO that can help reduce the chance that Google will see content duplicated on your site. I really just wanted to "debunk" the idea that syndicated content will somehow get you banned because you are "duplicating" it from another site and that the "duplicate" in "duplicate content" meant duplicate content on your site not others.
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    • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
      Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

      I think people get confused when Google refers to unique content or duplicate content. Duplicate content means, duplicate content on your site, not throughout the entire web. Google loves syndicated content, look at all the news sites. If Google liked only unique content, then sites like Wikipedia, NY Times, LA Times and ALL news sites would be banned from Google.

      They way sites would have duplicate content on their own site would be sites that run CMS like Wordpress*. When posting content on these sites you will get your content posted 3-4 times.

      EXAMPLE:
      site.com/category1/CONTENT
      site.com/category2/CONTENT
      site.com/2010/10/08/CONTENT
      site.com/tag/marketing/CONTENT

      Do you see how the content is "duplicated"? When this happens, Google thinks that you are being "spammy" and trying to rank the same article multiple times, again within your own site. This is where you will get the dreaded, and usually misunderstood, "duplicate content penalty".

      There is not one news article (ok I'm sure if you worked at it, you may find one) on the internet that is not syndicated in some sort, and thus not unique. If you post a "unique article" and I copy/ paste it on my site or syndicate your RSS feed, its not unique. Google knows that this is the way the internet MUST work so popular stories will be shared.

      Think if you wrote an article, and FOXnews.com picked it up and syndicated it on their site with credit to your site. Would Google penalize FOXnews.com because it had "duplicate content". No actually the opposite would happen, Google will value your site more because you have links from high PR site to a page within your site.

      Just think about what makes sense.

      *Many WordPress plugins can fix this problem i.e. Platinum SEO, ALL IN ONE SEO. These can set the tag, archive and category links to rel=noindex and rel=nofollow. This prevents, or at least tells, Google that these pages should not be indexed and are only there for navigation purposes. That is why all of the SEO plugins have that option.
      Thanks for posting this. I just check and sure enough, my stupid tags were being indexed (duplicate content). Set them to no-follow. Dumb mistake. Thanks again.
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    • Profile picture of the author ExploringInfinity
      Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

      I think people get confused when Google refers to unique content or duplicate content. Duplicate content means, duplicate content on your site, not throughout the entire web. Google loves syndicated content, look at all the news sites. If Google liked only unique content, then sites like Wikipedia, NY Times, LA Times and ALL news sites would be banned from Google.

      They way sites would have duplicate content on their own site would be sites that run CMS like Wordpress*. When posting content on these sites you will get your content posted 3-4 times.

      EXAMPLE:
      site.com/category1/CONTENT
      site.com/category2/CONTENT
      site.com/2010/10/08/CONTENT
      site.com/tag/marketing/CONTENT

      Do you see how the content is "duplicated"? When this happens, Google thinks that you are being "spammy" and trying to rank the same article multiple times, again within your own site. This is where you will get the dreaded, and usually misunderstood, "duplicate content penalty".

      There is not one news article (ok I'm sure if you worked at it, you may find one) on the internet that is not syndicated in some sort, and thus not unique. If you post a "unique article" and I copy/ paste it on my site or syndicate your RSS feed, its not unique. Google knows that this is the way the internet MUST work so popular stories will be shared.

      Think if you wrote an article, and FOXnews.com picked it up and syndicated it on their site with credit to your site. Would Google penalize FOXnews.com because it had "duplicate content". No actually the opposite would happen, Google will value your site more because you have links from high PR site to a page within your site.

      Just think about what makes sense.

      *Many WordPress plugins can fix this problem i.e. Platinum SEO, ALL IN ONE SEO. These can set the tag, archive and category links to rel=noindex and rel=nofollow. This prevents, or at least tells, Google that these pages should not be indexed and are only there for navigation purposes. That is why all of the SEO plugins have that option.
      I found this post helpful! Thanks a lot, I finally understand nofollow and noindex much better than before, as well as duplicate content.

      Thanks a bunch!
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  • Profile picture of the author usedcardealers
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  • Profile picture of the author ComputerGirl
    @severt

    Thanks a lot for sharing this information. I will definitely take it into account, just I think that it is very hard to pay less attention to backlinks as for all the time the importance of them has been so big. If that is reallly how it works, then there have to go some time that we all could make shore that it really works. And also thanks for that point about outside links, before I did not know something like that, and even if there are no proves to that, why would not to try it!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
    @L41db4ck I just updated my post. I put a * by WordPress in my post but didnt reference what it was for. I added it to the bottom

    *Many WordPress plugins can fix this problem i.e. Platinum SEO, ALL IN ONE SEO. These can set the tag, archive and category links to rel=noindex and rel=nofollow. This prevents, or at least tells, Google that these pages should not be indexed and are only there for navigation purposes. That is why all of the SEO plugins have that option.
    I just cant agree that the best content wins. Links are very important because they add a Social Proof. Again, think about this logical, there is no mystery.

    If I write an article, and you write an article. I get a link from FOXnews to my article and with that get 100s of backlinks from other news outlets. You on the other hand get 0 links. Google has said that links to your webpage are like votes for your webpage and PageRank is just weight of authority.

    You make every day decisions base on authority, right? (A real world example) If someone that you have never met told you that a particular golf club would make you play better, you would probably take it with a grain of salt. But if you see a Professional golfer use it, you would probably give their opinion more "weight", make sense?

    Google thinks the same way, back to my example of the news articles. My link from FOXnews acts as an authority, and tells Google that my article is more legitimate, more relevant, more reliable etc... than your article.

    I hope this fully explains why links are very important. Just think about what works in real life, SEO is not a huge mystery. Become an authority in your niche and you will rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author JackPowers
    There's absolutely no evidence to support this imo.

    Typical white hat seo bla. bla.
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  • Profile picture of the author nettech
    Hmmmmm, interesting although my data also doesn't prove these points about backlinks either. Agree with JackPowers, it seems like the Google PR machine wass out in full at this seminar.
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    Thanks
    Zaheer

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  • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
    Content is and always will be important.
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    • Profile picture of the author Your Lover
      Originally Posted by Marhelper View Post

      Content is and always will be important.
      Content is the #1 issue, or at least Search Engines are trying to reach that!
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
        Originally Posted by Your Lover View Post

        Content is the #1 issue, or at least Search Engines are trying to reach that!
        Agreed, but it has to be relevant content that people value. People value content on the web by linking to it, tweeting it, FB liking it, socially bookmarking it etc... All of these generate links back to your site.

        Its the chicken or the egg analogy. The great content leads to links which leads to higher search engines rankings. Its not the content, its the people valuing the content by linking to it and thus "voting" for it to be ranked higher.

        Google doesn't know what article about weight loss is the best! Again be logical, if you have the best written article with 0 votes (links) and you have a poorly written article that was partially copied from another site but with 1,000 links, tweets or FB likes then which one will Google think is better...

        Keep in mind that a "link" in any form as stated above is a VOTE for that page. The more votes, the higher in rank.
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        • Profile picture of the author Kurt
          Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

          Agreed, but it has to be relevant content that people value. People value content on the web by linking to it, tweeting it, FB liking it, socially bookmarking it etc... All of these generate links back to your site.

          Its the chicken or the egg analogy. The great content leads to links which leads to higher search engines rankings. Its not the content, its the people valuing the content by linking to it and thus "voting" for it to be ranked higher.

          Google doesn't know what article about weight loss is the best! Again be logical, if you have the best written article with 0 votes (links) and you have a poorly written article that was partially copied from another site but with 1,000 links, tweets or FB likes then which one will Google think is better...

          Keep in mind that a "link" in any form as stated above is a VOTE for that page. The more votes, the higher in rank.

          Links now pretty much just tell you who owns xrunner, twit software, scrapebox, etc and not really a "vote" any more.

          People are getting fed up having their blogs and forums spammed and I believe will start a backlash once they realize the only way to end the link spam is for Google to stop rewarding link spammers.

          And while Google doesn't know what's best, site visitors do, and Google has the ability to track user behavior, both through cookies and directly through the googlebar.

          Googlebar tracking makes it very hard to fake without installing unique googlebars each. With it, Google can track:

          -How long you stayed on a page before hitting the back button - If you click a link on Google and stay on one site for 6 seconds and another for 5 minutes, Google can use that info to detect "quality".

          -Whether you clicked through the site and how far. If you click 2-3 levels deep on a site

          -If the site was accessed by type-in or bookmarked. If you access a site using your favorites or bookmarks, it's probably a good sign of quality.

          - They can track click-through rate on the links in the SERPs. Yahoo release a study about 7 years ago that showed this produced far better results that algos.

          - Google can track your scroll speed as you scroll down the page...Are you scrolling at "reading" speed? How far did you scroll down the page? Did you scroll slowly at reading speed all the way to the end?

          Then there's something I call the "You Rank"...Is Google tracking YOU? Have you left any footprints that ties you to any sites that have been dropped or penalized?

          Think of it like a credit report...Are you unknown? Have you been banned from Adsense or Adwords? Maybe you have a couple of high trust sites that Google can tie you to?

          It's not that hard for google to track YOU. Did you fill out an Adsense or Adwords application? Chances are Google knows you, your address, your bank, etc.

          Now if you put your Adsense Id on the same page as your Amazon ID, Google can track you by your Amazon ID from now on, whether you use Adsense on those sites or not.

          They can cross-check in the whois info, do IP and DNS cross-checks, etc., then apply this to the trust of any of your properties it can detect.

          And this doesn't even count any of the other "free" services Google offers that could affect how much they know about you and how they use that info.

          Someday, it may be that it's impossible for you to rank higher than someone else.

          I see the future of SEO being a combo of on site-seo for relevance, linking for popularity and "People Rank" (actual human actions) for quality to determine ranks.
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          • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
            Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

            It's not that hard for google to track YOU. Did you fill out an Adsense or Adwords application? Chances are Google knows you, your address, your bank, etc.
            Don't take the free ice cream...

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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
            Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

            Links now pretty much just tell you who owns xrunner, twit software, scrapebox, etc and not really a "vote" any more.

            People are getting fed up having their blogs and forums spammed and I believe will start a backlash once they realize the only way to end the link spam is for Google to stop rewarding link spammers.
            Of course it acts as a "Vote", it is a social proof. If I have a WordPress email plugin and at the end of the form, on your live site, there is a link that says: "powered by: WP email plugin" and I have 10,000 sites that use that plugin. Which would equal about 10,000 links (because some coders may remove the link). Google will say, if 10,000 sites are using this software, and it is clearly about "wp email plugin" then when someone searched "wp email plugin" or a variation of that, we will rank that higher.

            The reason it will rank higher is not because of the content (write by the site owner) it will rank higher because of the 10,000 inbound links (with the correct anchor text).

            You can write the best article you can, it can be 1,000,000 words, but no links. I can write 1 sentence and get 1,000 relevant (proper anchor text) links and out rank your article all day long. Google will view mine as more relevant because of the other pages on the internet that "voted" for my page.

            A perfect example (i found this in 5 minutes) is, search "business person" in Google, Yahoo & Bing. The first article on all three is... a Wikipedia article (surprise huh). Now look at the content... its only 2 sentences.

            It ranks because it has 300-400 links (depending on the search engine) with "business person" as the anchor text. By allowing links to greatly determine the rankings, Google allows the users of the internet to greatly control the SERP.

            Think about search engines determine what videos to display when you search the web... there is virtually no content to most internet videos. Search "christian the lion" in Google, 3 videos rank #1 in the SERP. How does Google know that the videos are about? There is no content on the YouTube pages (except the comments). They know to rank it #1 because of the number of links pointing to the YouTube page.
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            • Profile picture of the author Kurt
              Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

              Of course it acts as a "Vote", it is a social proof. If I have a WordPress email plugin and at the end of the form, on your live site, there is a link that says: "powered by: WP email plugin" and I have 10,000 sites that use that plugin. Which would equal about 10,000 links (because some coders may remove the link). Google will say, if 10,000 sites are using this software, and it is clearly about "wp email plugin" then when someone searched "wp email plugin" or a variation of that, we will rank that higher.

              The reason it will rank higher is not because of the content (write by the site owner) it will rank higher because of the 10,000 inbound links (with the correct anchor text).

              You can write the best article you can, it can be 1,000,000 words, but no links. I can write 1 sentence and get 1,000 relevant (proper anchor text) links and out rank your article all day long. Google will view mine as more relevant because of the other pages on the internet that "voted" for my page.

              A perfect example (i found this in 5 minutes) is, search "business person" in Google, Yahoo & Bing. The first article on all three is... a Wikipedia article (surprise huh). Now look at the content... its only 2 sentences.

              It ranks because it has 300-400 links (depending on the search engine) with "business person" as the anchor text. By allowing links to greatly determine the rankings, Google allows the users of the internet to greatly control the SERP.

              Think about search engines determine what videos to display when you search the web... there is virtually no content to most internet videos. Search "christian the lion" in Google, 3 videos rank #1 in the SERP. How does Google know that the videos are about? There is no content on the YouTube pages (except the comments). They know to rank it #1 because of the number of links pointing to the YouTube page.
              I have thought about it. I suggest you do the same. You are actually proving my theory be exposing a serious flaw with any version of link "pop".

              If you do, you'll understand that Xrunner can blast 1,000,000 links. Then someone else can click the button twice and blast another 1,000,000 links. Which page is the higher quality?

              But you also left out a lot of other SEO factors, such as Trust, Hilltop, human review/white listing, etc.

              Then there's link velocity, link decay...Should we go on?

              Not to mention, popoularity is NOT quality and Google realizes this.

              What if an article that's 10 years old ranks #1 and I write a BETTER article. How does my better article get more "votes" than the established page?

              Basically, your concept of link pop as the major ranking factor makes it IMPOSSIBLE for any new article to outrank an older article, no matter what the quality of either is.

              You can bet Google knows this and understands this as well...

              Plus, Google can rank Youtube videos any way they want, including using their own usage stats. There's also tags, titles, descriptions, comments, etc.that are all "words" that can be used.

              Do you know how to fake Youtube impressions? If user actions had no impact, why do blackhatters do it, but more importantly, why does Google then try to stop it?

              I never said link pop would be discarded, I said that real human actions will become increasingly more important and there are factors other than links and on-page content can be used for ranking.
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
                Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

                I have thought about it. I suggest you do the same. You are actually proving my theory be exposing a serious flaw with any version of link "pop".

                If you do, you'll understand that Xrunner can blast 1,000,000 links. Then someone else can click the button twice and blast another 1,000,000 links. Which page is the higher quality?
                Well Google takes into account how reputable the 1,000,000 links are. If they are mass links all at once and from sites with little to no page reputation, then they will carry little value. Google can recognize sites that are setup purely for "link blasting". It has greatly reduced the value of 2 and even 3 way links. This is why sites like Wikipedia rank so well and are so powerful. How many outbound links do they have vs. the number of 1 way inbound links? Sites like Wikipedia also rank very well because Google ranks pages not sites. Wikipedia has a tremendous internal linking system that helps it rank for nearly any term it want to.


                Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

                What if an article that's 10 years old ranks #1 and I write a BETTER article. How does my better article get more "votes" than the established page?

                Basically, your concept of link pop as the major ranking factor makes it IMPOSSIBLE for any new article to outrank an older article, no matter what the quality of either is.

                You can bet Google knows this and understands this as well...
                The age may have some effect on rank, but not that much. I would be willing to bet that there are many sites that are 10 years old that don't get more than 10 visitors a day. You're making the assumption that just because an article is old that people will link to it. If there is an article that is 10 years old, and I write an article that gets picked up by CNN, and thus get a link from CNN.com. Which page will Google deem to be more reputable?

                Plus, Google can rank Youtube videos any way they want, including using their own usage stats. There's also tags, titles, descriptions, comments, etc.that are all "words" that can be used.

                Do you know how to fake Youtube impressions? If user actions had no impact, why do BlueFartters do it, but more importantly, why does Google then try to stop it?

                I never said link pop would be discarded, I said that real human actions will become increasingly more important and there are factors other than links and on-page content can be used for ranking.
                I wont argue that what you say has some effect, but my point is that all things being equal a video with more links pointing to it will out rank a videos with fewer.
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                • Profile picture of the author Kurt
                  Originally Posted by Mike Adams View Post

                  Well Google takes into account how reputable the 1,000,000 links are. If they are mass links all at once and from sites with little to no page reputation, then they will carry little value. Google can recognize sites that are setup purely for "link blasting". It has greatly reduced the value of 2 and even 3 way links. This is why sites like Wikipedia rank so well and are so powerful. How many outbound links do they have vs. the number of 1 way inbound links? Sites like Wikipedia also rank very well because Google ranks pages not sites. Wikipedia has a tremendous internal linking system that helps it rank for nearly any term it want to.
                  But did you also elimanate the possibilty that Wikipedia is also whitelisted?

                  Can you guarantee to all of us no real person from Google didn't give Wikipedia some "bonus" points? Not enough to make them unbeatable, but enough to give them an edge?

                  I own, build and delevope my own search engines and have done so for about 13 years now...I know I add "bonus points" to good sites to improve my SERPs.

                  The age may have some effect on rank, but not that much. I would be willing to bet that there are many sites that are 10 years old that don't get more than 10 visitors a day. You're making the assumption that just because an article is old that people will link to it. If there is an article that is 10 years old, and I write an article that gets picked up by CNN, and thus get a link from CNN.com. Which page will Google deem to be more reputable?
                  And I'd be willing to bet if everything else is equal that age of domain will win. You're using a very selective argument. There are a number of factors, Google claims 200.

                  The direct age of a domain is likely one of the 200. But there's an indirect advantage and that is a 10 year old page has had a lot more time to build links and trust and authority.

                  No asusmptions made to favor either side, if the pages are of EQUAL quality, the 10 year old page simply has more time to have gotten links naturally.

                  That's a fact. Sorry. This fact doesn't even consider "age" of the links, all factors in long term SEO, at least with Google.

                  A 10 year old page has had time to build links, naturally and othewise...A month old page doesn't.

                  Your comments also leave out link velocity and decay.

                  I wont argue that what you say has some effect, but my point is that all things being equal a video with more links pointing to it will out rank a videos with fewer.
                  Sure it will. And so will a video with more views outrank a video with no page views, if they have the same value of links. They are both part of the formula.

                  Links may have more weight now, but I believe that TREND is shifting.

                  Pages today rank well with more links. But tommorrow, Google will use more and more people-metrics to judge the quality of the content. They already measure Youtube views by how many times the entire video is played.

                  Here's my opinion: When search engines went from all "on page" to including link-pop, they didn't stop using the page title and on-page text in their algos. They merely added linking to the equation.

                  On-page metrics and "People Rank" won't replace on-page SEO or linking. It will merely be added to those.

                  And the reason is simple: They work. Yahoo and Google have release reports and filed patents.
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              • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
                Originally Posted by Kurt View Post


                Basically, your concept of link pop as the major ranking factor makes it IMPOSSIBLE for any new article to outrank an older article, no matter what the quality of either is.
                I don't know if link popularity is the major ranking factor or not. I know it is major for me in the sense that it's one thing that always works for ranking my sites.

                Besides standard on-page SEO, link pop is one of the factors that we have the biggest control over. That's why it's the most talked about aspect of SEO.

                It may very well not be one of the major ranking factors, but it is one of the few factors which we can manipulate.

                If a study came out today and said that avg. time on site, bounce rate, number of page views, visitor paths were important, then you can bet that SEO's would be gaming it one way or another.

                That's the truth of this whole thing. No matter what changes Google makes to the algorithm, we will find ways to manipulate it. Now, if they did like you say is feasible and implemented a review team for the top 100,000 search terms, then we might have problems. But, we all know that isn't going to happen. Google is all about algorithmic and not so much about employing thousnads of new employees to do quality reviews.

                I know that whatever happens, SEO will find a way. It just makes sense. No matter how many PHD's Google employs, there will still be 10x as many people trying to learn how to manipulate the system. We've got the advantage in numbers.
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                • Profile picture of the author Kurt
                  Originally Posted by Jacob Martus View Post

                  I don't know if link popularity is the major ranking factor or not. I know it is major for me in the sense that it's one thing that always works for ranking my sites.

                  .
                  I use "link pop" as a generic term to discribe any and all linking theories based on the concept of getting more links, including PageRank, link authority, etc. They are all based on the principal that a link is a "citation". Even "authority links" use link pop. You get 5 "authoritiy links" and I'll get 6, is link pop.
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          • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
            Originally Posted by Kurt View Post

            - Google can track your scroll speed as you scroll down the page...Are you scrolling at "reading" speed? How far did you scroll down the page? Did you scroll slowly at reading speed all the way to the end?
            Scroll speed. That is a new one to me, but it seems to be a relevant metric none-the-less.
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            • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
              Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom View Post

              Scroll speed. That is a new one to me, but it seems to be a relevant metric none-the-less.
              Not really, because people use browsers in different ways at different times for a variety of reasons. It would be impossible to track due to the natural random chaos of the data. For example, was my slow scrolling on this thread due to me being interested in the content or because I stopped to munch on a chicken wing? Did I stop scrolling to read in detail or did my wife ask me to take out the garbage (NOW!!)? Multiply this out over millions of people it's unlikely that a relevant statistical pattern will develop out of this chaos and any pattern that seemingly develops may be subject to a number of statistical problems, probably worse than those involved with counting and weighing links.

              I guess if I subscribed to the idea Google is all-knowing, all-seeing, like some people do, they would know. They would even know if the wings came from a national chain or a local restaurant.

              Of course, Google is already running into issues with their caviler attitude toward personal privacy. I suspect that this will eventually be their undoing courtesy of the legal and legislative systems in the US and Europe unless they change their ways.
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              • Profile picture of the author Kurt
                Originally Posted by bgmacaw View Post

                Not really, because people use browsers in different ways at different times for a variety of reasons. It would be impossible to track due to the natural random chaos of the data. For example, was my slow scrolling on this thread due to me being interested in the content or because I stopped to munch on a chicken wing? Did I stop scrolling to read in detail or did my wife ask me to take out the garbage (NOW!!)? Multiply this out over millions of people it's unlikely that a relevant statistical pattern will develop out of this chaos and any pattern that seemingly develops may be subject to a number of statistical problems, probably worse than those involved with counting and weighing links.

                I guess if I subscribed to the idea Google is all-knowing, all-seeing, like some people do, they would know. They would even know if the wings came from a national chain or a local restaurant.

                Of course, Google is already running into issues with their caviler attitude toward personal privacy. I suspect that this will eventually be their undoing courtesy of the legal and legislative systems in the US and Europe unless they change their ways.
                Sorry, but unless you had access to this data, you have no idea of what it could or couldn't predict. You haven't tested anything. If Google is interested in this info, then so am I.

                And if you don't think scrolling halfway down a page filled with nothing but 15k of text doesn't tell you anything, you need to study web metrics a little more...And I have some bottom banners I want to sell you for the same price as my top banners.
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  • Profile picture of the author bgmacaw
    Originally Posted by severt View Post

    Yesterday I went to a Search Engine Optimization seminar in Amsterdam and want to quickly tell you what's going on.
    I hope it didn't cost you anything to attend the seminar.
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    • Profile picture of the author digidoodles
      Originally Posted by bgmacaw View Post

      I hope it didn't cost you anything to attend the seminar.
      lololol Too funny.
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  • Profile picture of the author eagle1776
    I agree on the importance of content, but this is not to say that backlinks are still not very important.

    I also agree with linking to valuable external resources that are already deemed authoritative by Google. This will help your visitors and it also makes you more believable as a resource. I have done this with success.
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  • Profile picture of the author TristanPerry
    So Google are becoming more like Bing (who value content over anchor-text-heavy incoming links)?

    Good.

    Thanks for the information anywhoo.

    I see no signs that Google are switching away from anchor-text-heavy backlinks towards great content as the main ranking factor, although there's rumours of a big upcoming algo change (on webmaster world) so who knows?
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  • Profile picture of the author Jordan Kovats
    I love the hook line put on by some of these companies..."trained by Google Experts..." Sure you were. I can't wait, I get to go to one of these seminars this week to hear the sell job being put on. I just have to rememeber to bring my 'other' business cards.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    This argument by Google always had one central flaw.

    In what year will google''s bot actually be able to determine great content.

    Only humans can do that and thats likely to be so decades from now. I can't see Google going away from human votes (backlinks) any time soon
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      This argument by Google always had one central flaw.

      In what year will Google's bot actually be able to determine great content.

      Only humans can do that and that's likely to be so decades from now. I can't see Google going away from human votes (backlinks) any time soon
      That has been my point, Google's bot does pick out great content (at least for the most part). It does it by factoring how reputable the pages inbound links are, how many links, the links anchor text & how well is the sites pages interlinked among other factors. The technical term is Referential Integrity (You got to trust the guys from StomperNet). Its not 100% of the weight but is certainly a contributing factor.
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    • Profile picture of the author thebitbotdotcom
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      This argument by Google always had one central flaw.

      In what year will google''s bot actually be able to determine great content.

      Only humans can do that and thats likely to be so decades from now. I can't see Google going away from human votes (backlinks) any time soon
      That is why I believe that behavioral analysis will continue to become more and more influential with respect to the algo. Nothing filters spam like the human brain. Google is just tracking the source, slowly and surely.
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  • Profile picture of the author seoindiaforu
    Content was always important...and now it has become more important and why not?Internet is all of information...getting good information is what a searcher wants and therefore unique content is important.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
    Another example of links over content. Search "POTUS" (president of the united states) in Google. The 7th listing is answers.com. That page is nothing but images, ads and links. The only real content is "abbr. President of the United States" That's it... 6 words, and it out ranks about 1,520,000 results.
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  • Profile picture of the author jacobycage
    motivating although my data also doesn't prove these points about backlinks moreover. Agree with JackPowers, it seem like the Google PR engine wass out in full at this seminar.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Adams
    @Kurt You make it sound as if my argument is that links is all that matters. I don't believe that Wikipedia has any distinct advantage over any other website, just because its Wikipedia. So, I don't believe that they get bonus points by Google. If Google thinks that Wikipedia style articles are the most relevant, then it just makes it ranking factors to find and promote pages that are similar to Wikipedia.

    I don't believe that Wikipedia page rank better just because they are Wikipedia pages. It would go against what Google has said, they rank pages and not sites. This prevents sites like Amazon from being able to dominate the SERPS for ever product simply by being on Amazon.

    Its almost insulting to Wikipedia in a sense. Your page is not good enough on its own to rank so we will boost your site across the board. For me its just not logical.

    As far as YouTube goes, a simple search will show you that the number of views is not a huge contributing factor to the rank. Do a YouTube search for the all coveted term "SEO"... the fourth natural listing has 131 views and 1 comment. The 6th ranked video has 116,000 views and 114 comments.
    There is no doubt that user activity may be a factor to some degree and that degree may be increasing in the future. But to bgmacaw point "For example, was my slow scrolling on this thread due to me being interested in the content or because I stopped to munch on a chicken wing? Did I stop scrolling to read in detail or did my wife ask me to take out the garbage (NOW!!)? Multiply this out over millions of people it's unlikely that a relevant statistical pattern will develop out of this chaos and any pattern that seemingly develops may be subject to a number of statistical problems, probably worse than those involved with counting and weighing links"

    As for age of the domain, again, Google has said that they rank pages not sites. Google likes sites that are fresh with content and new relative links. Think of the oil spill that just happened. If you search "oil spill" there is no reference/ page/ site that talks about the Exxon Valdez oil spill of '89. Why? Because its not relevant. I bet there are 100s of articles that are archaic about an oil spill. So age may have some importance but it also reflects old information that may not be relevant to the users search.
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  • Profile picture of the author goosexxx
    Are people forgetting that backlinks do more than just improve you in the rankings? They also can generate actual traffic to your site which is what this whole game is about.

    Does my content need quality content? Yes.
    Does my site require backlinks in well written content from outside sources? Yes.
    Does google suck my @$$ for removing my site from the listings and having blogs from 2008 ranking as number 1 for some search terms? Yes.
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  • Profile picture of the author goosexxx
    Ps.... I went to a SEO Seminar once and all I got was this lousy t-shirt... oh yeah.. and 10,000 spam emails about article spinners, submitters, and plain ol' bull spitters...
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