2012 - End of SEO?

What?????

That's is a REALLY limited view and definitely WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!!

Here is an example of what Google ranks #10 for the phrase "make money"

make

They may have good intentions, but in reality they can not control who links to your site or my site and they have decided to go ahead and punish everyone as their solution to that.

In the end I suggest running to social media and finding ways to get quality traffic that way. Forget Google as in the long run you can never win a game that you do not understand the rules for, and the rules change in the middle of the game.

Life's to short to see what works and what doesn't

Just go with paid traffic

Its been said before but this just gives a big boost to a competitor who wants to take you down by simply getting loads of crappy links to your sites. Whoosh, you are gone. Has Google thought this through?

Here is the silly reply from Google:

Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages.

I can see a whole new business model for some unscrupulous guys - 'buy our competitor destruction services!'.

Come on Google, sort it out.

There's been reports across various IM forums over the last few days. Not sure what's going on. Anyone here has inside info on or know anyone on the inside of what's changed apart from the official stuff?

What's a good link these days? I know the obvious bad links... but, what exactly is a good link?

So are you saying they're trying to reward sites that contain good content? Because if that's the case, I'm not seeing much evidence of that.

I've not done any of that on this site, purposely, to see if my content would rank well, based on its own merit. This hasn't been the case unfortunately.

Penalising bad sites makes sense, as does good sites with artificial links. But what about GOOD sites, that only have natural links???? Given what I've seen/experienced, that doesn't appear to be enough either?

Publishing good content is easy. Getting good quality links isn't. You know after I published about 25 articles, I decided to send seomoz, seo round table, search engine land, seobook, and search engine journal an email asking if they would be willing to link to my site, or perhaps link to one of my articles. (My site is SEO related)

I made sure I was sincere in my email and worded it in a way that demonstrated that I was genuine about my request. I wasnt just out to push some crappy thin affiliate site. I provided them with everything they needed to assess my site.

Do you know how many replies I got back?

NONE. Not even a "thanks but no thanks.."

The truth is. No one gives a ****, about you, your website, or your product. And why should they?

Given that, getting "good quality links" is virtually impossible. Okay, its not impossible, but its extremely hard. I'm getting sick and damn tired of Matt Cutts saying "....engage with other webmasters and ask them to link to you..." It just doesnt happen that way.

Google's perception of the web is seriously skewed.

Writing good quality content and getting other webmasters to link to you, just doesnt work, which is probably the very reason why, people turn to link building networks and pushing artificial links.

Why would person B spend days or months on end, tirelessly emailing other site owners, asking for a link, when person A, simply spins a chunk of garbage, publishes it, then pushes artificial links and it ranks in 3 days?

I understand that Google acknowledges this as problematic, but this issue has been around for YEARS.

Is it getting any better???? I dont know....

Andy, I agree with what you're saying, Im not arguing the point, however out of interest, just recently, I went about purposely publishing comprehensive articles (some 2,000 words long) all of which contain onsite links, images, useful resources, and links to other (helpful) sites. In essence, I really ramped up my efforts to deliver the best quality content I could.

Even though these articles are getting social engagement (likes, +1's, tweets and so on) ...they're absolutely NOWHERE in the SERPS. Actually I wrote about what I did in this article here.

Actually this site has a bounce rate of 44%, a 40% return visitor count, as well as an average time onsite of 4+ minutes.

Again, I agree with your points Andy, it just gets frustrating ...thats all.

*shrug...

Nah man, Id say thats a rumour. I know a few high profile marketers and they all recommend GA. I use it, too, for all of my sites.

Hmm, yeah, who knows. There's really no way of knowing for certain. What's interesting is your wording there.."breaking the rules, whatever they are"

I couldnt have said it better myself.

Of course not.

A good link will be from a site where no one cares about you, your site, or your offer.

Good luck

You don't say.

This whole Google thing really doesnt make much sense at all.

Its like getting called for a foul in a game of sport, when you ....

1. Dont clearly understand the rules
2. The rules (those that you are aware of) constantly change
3. The rules really are anyones best guess
4. You do your best to play with good intentions and those that obviously break them are the ones scoring all the goals.

*..shakes head.

That's because you're missing a huge element of the situation - It's virtually impossible to automate the determination of what is 'super high quality'.

Unless every site on the internet is manually assessed - you can never get this right and therefore there will always be automation trying to make a best guess effort at that judgement.

The biggest difference in all the recent Google changes has been nothing to do with the content of people's sites, but in how Google determine the judgement about the value of that site - which comes down to the response it illicits from it's visitors.

This is why they are discounting all the crap links that used to add up to some small value and even penalising people for trying to trick them.

They'll always need to make a judgement about your website based on:

1 - user experience. (speed of loading, amount of content, relevance of content etc.)
2 - response of user (do people stay on your site, how many pages do they consume, do they talk about it on social networks, do they republish your content, do they 'rate' your content (Google+, Facebook Likes etc.), do they bookmark it).

If you have a great site that no-one links to - it's irrelevant.

If you have a crap site that people link to - your links will be assessed and penalised if they look manipulated.

Google make their money from charging people to advertise - they create value for their advertisers by ensuring they show the best results for the searches being made so that they have a large user base.

SEO is not going anywhere - you just need to use your brain and move with the times.

Search marketing is getting bigger all the time.

Andy

Do you really think Google will be able to come up with an update that people will just not be able to manipulate? I'm sorry, but I can never see that happening.

People have done it before, and they will do it again. It is all a matter of keeping up with the trends. Sure, it won't be as easy as it once was where you'd just run Scrapebox and reach number 1 in position. SEO is slowly becoming more and more difficult to understand and carry out, and that trend will continue, but to say that people will not be able to optimize their websites because of a Google update, that is a misunderstanding as far as I am concerned.

I completely agree that content is playing an increasing role, but there is always going to be a role for intelligent link building. The methods by which it is done, however, has and will continue to change rather dramatically.

But was is NATURAL?

If I make a hubpage, with unique content, have 1 link back to my main site and 1 to another web 2.0, or youtube vid... is this natural?

I'm not being funny, I have no idea if this is or isn't... I read on here that it isn't... and that Google sees this as a way to manipulate them.

I've no problem following the rules... but they're just saying unique content and be creative?

Ok.... so, unique content... do I link it to my main site, my 2nd tier sites... can I use anchor text?

It's all just a bit vague, I just don't want to be wasting my time on something that doesn't work, or worse, hurts my sites.

I can see a surge of WSO's on the way....

Yes, this is precisely what I said in the post you quoted. So basically you said the exact same thing as the post you quoted. :confused:

And this. Until search engine spiders can actually read (comprehend, understand, infer, etc), there will always be SEO tactics and ways to manipulate the rankings in your favor.

You know, I just want to make a point that the damn problem is that 99 percent of all the internet marketers I see out there are selling crap products that they would never buy themselves.

Take a step back and look in the mirror. Is the stuff you are selling stuff you would sell to your mom? Would you buy the stuff yourself? In most cases the products I have seen sell are manipulative word games, telling you what you want to hear about that 'secret' way they never told you to make money online and be a success. Heh