Is Google trying to kill SEO?

by 93 replies
106
Over the last few years, the number of SEO experts has exploded out of nowhere.
Everybody professes to get you on Google first page.
Google's response
Massive backlinking is now frowned on, as is keyword rich anchor text.
Key word rich articles... forget it
Article marketing?

It appears that the emphasis is on natural

What really is natural if everything else is forced?
#search engine optimization #google #kill #seo
  • everyone thinks they're an SEO expert after reading a few blog articles and reading some threads on forums.

    They're not trying to kill "SEO" .. it always be around in some shape or form .. but look at it from Google's perspective .. if everyone is trying to game the results to get sites to the top of search using manipulative techniques when the site doesn't deserve top rankings .. then search relevance goes out the window .. then people start using Bing/Yahoo .. then nobody clicks on Adwords ads, then they start losing money.

    Remember, Google are a business .. sure it seems like they're treading on the little guy (and in some respects I really think they are).

    Natural means not even thinking about anchor text, natural means people linking to your content because it's good content .. not just to pass link juice.
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for the responses
      I"m wondering how many people will actually wait to get natural links rather than try to find some way to game the system?
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
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  • Google is not trying to kill SEO but to kill BlackHat SEO.
    • [3] replies
    • Banned
      Hit the nail on the head here.

      Google is trying to weed out the blackhatters, but... they'll always find a way around eventually.
    • I guess you are right my friend, much better to used manual method or white hat method in building links in order to provide better ranking and look natural in Google eye.
    • Couldn't agree more with you. Google is actually trying to discourage those blackhat seo people who are manipulating Google results
  • This is not true that Google is trying to kill SEO but google is trying stop spamming and black hat SEO.
    • [1] reply
    • This is so true.
  • Well, considering that they have made moves against ecommerce sites (well, not against them directly), it seems that "cleaning up" is only one of their objectives.

    Paid Inclusion, Incentive Structures, Deep Content & Scraping
  • Google says, Natural links only improve their sites quality..and avoid spam contents..
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    • no, Google trying o improve visibility and usability. hence SEO need to improve it;s skills.
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  • Banned
    Google isn't making it easier when you're used to automation tools, the only reason these tools worked cause of the massive amount of links that you can produce. Now that Google frowns up on large amount of pr0 pr n/a backlinks (which covers almost any link that you can grab anywhere easily) it has become a lot harder for people to get results, then the only good high PR sources were comment links but these lost most of their value, if not all.

    So what's left? Purchasing links at highly private networks or buying expired domains. In the future Google might start to track expired domains and devalue them accordingly, I am suprised that didn't happen yet but maybe I miss something that prevents it. Even IF Google would start to track domains that are to expire and devalue them then there is always a 3rd choice which is even more expensive and that is:

    Buying complete websites, obvious there are also other options like guestposts, offering webmasters money for a contextual link. Anyway SEO hasn't become harder, it just got more expensive as the "spam as much as you can" times are over.
  • no
    google is not trying to kill SEO its just killing spamming and black hat SEO
  • Business is business. Google is killing black hat methods of SEO because it's killing their business. Google just wants to be fair. Just be natural and you're all good.
  • Basically SEO is tied with Google as it dominates the search world. So SEO is nothing more than following the guidelines set by the search engines especially Google. So there is no reason of what you say killing it.
  • SEO is always changing, it will never die - you have to optimize for every update
  • Google is not trying to kill SEO. Google is trying to kill spammers. I think no update can kill SEO.
  • I think it's not just black hat SEO by any means. There's a ton of legitimate white-hat websites that I consulted on that got crushed by Penguin.

    They made some critical onsite problems, all done by their previous, expensive white-hat firm. Make no mistake that Google wanted to disrupt the whole SEO community with Penguin. This was to throw everyone a curve ball.
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  • To my view Google is just trying to kill spammers and Black HAT SEO.

    Thanks
  • thanx for sharing new thoughts....
  • Despite their best efforts, Google is actually creating more SEOs. Everything they do to improve their search results increases their share of the pie, which then means there is greater money in top SERPs and the more incentive there is for people to try to do whatever it takes to get into them. Which until they change their algo (or allow user voting), means link profile.

    I anticipate that SEO will simply shift further towards methods that more closely imitate how "genuine recommendations" are made. There may be a return to good old hand written link begging letters or "non reciprocal" link trade networks where a pool of site owners work as a collective and have a form of "link currency" that they trade around, you gain points by putting links to other related sites in your network, and spend them when someone links to you. Looks pretty natural if done right - big ones will get infiltrated but grass roots ones will fly under the radar.

    So, google will have to carry on playing whac-a-mole until finally someone (probably not google) will develop the technology to evaluate ACTUAL quality of content rather than who has the biggest SEO budget. For the foreseeable future, google's algo cannot tell actual quality content any more than it can smell a rose and tell you whether it is a good one. And the day that machines can detect "quality" is also the day that they can mimic human behavior and then the blade runner scenario will be upon us, with infinite amounts of content and no-one can tell whether it was made by a human any more. Not for a few years yet but when it happens you can kiss all this goodbye
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Google is Not Trying To Kill Search Engine Optimization; Basically Google want SEO more organic and natural; Stuff Like Spamming, Paid Linking Will Not Helpful for Boosting Your Rank, You have to Adopt Organic Search Engine Procedures for Enhancing your Website Traffic.
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    • The problem is that no one can say for sure what these really are
      Articles ... Google frowns upon this, same as directories and forums.
      The only thing that has been expressed as a preference is social networks.
      I suppose some blogs, if done judiciously, may be accepted as natural

      When pure white hat sites are getting slapped in the process, you have to wonder what really is going on.

      It is not unreasonable to expect them to protect their business, which derives almost 90% of the revenue from people buying advertising.
      But it becomes a double edge sword. Making it harder to achieve visibility, and easier to buy ads.
      But the attempts as visibility is necessary, because Google is nothing without the content that we create.
      • [1] reply
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  • We can't say like that google is only trying to stopping spam websites. in fact that is very helpful for white hat seo followers.
  • google is killing blackhat and spam seo, and confuses white hatters on their way.
    they are trying to make seo as white as possible.
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    • I agree with you. And if there's some not their groups but slapped by google, I think it's about lucky

      CMIIW,
      virtu
      • [1] reply
  • They want to get rid of stolen duplicate content,im ok with this
  • Google is just trying to kill BlackHat SEO, not SEO. You can make your links more diversified not just submitting article, forum.

    Try to make the content valuable and worth reading.
  • I don't think Google is trying to kill SEO, they are just attempting to minimize the search results being manipulated by webmasters or spammers.
  • Not like that, google filter the worst websites through on search results, that's y they maintenance so many algorithms.
  • Google is trying to give us better result.They are not killing SEO.
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  • Why would Google kill SEO, they effectively created it when they came up with the PageRank system, the system works however it needs continual tweaking to tidy the serps results up and that basically what all the Panda, Penguins and the other updates have been for the last however many years.

    SEO is always going to happen well until the day search becomes redundant to???
  • Google killed pure SEO as a money maker years ago when they introduced personalization. SEO can still make money, but only if you use a disciplined niche approach.

    There are opportunities out there, but I wouldn't neglect all the other areas of internet marketing just for SEO. One bad algo update and your work goes out the window.
  • Google isn't trying to kill SEO itself..just the spammy way of SEO..blackhat specifically.

    Be smart with your SEO marketing techniques. Panda..penguin..none of them effected our sites
  • They are trying to give good user experience and kick spam
  • The SEO processes has become tough to handle in the current situations, as Google has become more cautious towards tricky ways of earning backlinks. Besides this, it has become important to update the fresh content upon the article directories and blogs, which has raised the demand for quality based content writing.
  • I agree they are killing blackhat SEO. Now its all about holistic approaches guys!
    • [1] reply
    • No, Google never trying to kill seo but its penalize the websites which are using black hat seo tricks.
  • Everyone has made a link themselves, submitting to directories, profiles whatever, we have all built a link to our sites in some way. So we are all filthy spammers who have ignored the "natural" links gospel.


    Get real.
  • its called seo for a reason, we optimize to every update
    • [1] reply
    • Google launched various updates to reduce spamming & black-hat stuffs from search engine.
  • No. Just trying to banish the 'cheaters' and stop other spammy methods that are really congesting alot of websites.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Exactly!

      Google is getting better at sniffing out the article rewrites, reposts, and spammy sites.

      Put away that lousy autoblogging software and bang out some nice articles. Write for people- not algorithms.
  • No, SEO will survive forever, but things are getting difficult day by day. Earlier SEO was very easy, even a school boy could do it, but now it takes a lot of things. Yes, Google is prioritizing the natural thing.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Agree, that Google try to kill blackhat SEO.
    • [3] replies
    • Just look at the big picture !

      Google even if they are on Top search engine , but they still have a high Competition with The most big company in all the world (Yahoo, Bing..)

      And to say that google is always in the top , mean that users like google because of their results

      So google need always to give the best to users . Just think with me , What if your content is the best !!! ha

      i think that Google make thing fair , Anyway here how it work from now on

      White hat Work ----> Rank Well
    • Google is now working against the black hatters and spammers. In future only high quality websites will be visible in search results.
    • Here is what Google says about links.

      our site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links influences your ranking. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. Any links intended to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site, or outgoing links from your site. Manipulating these links may affect the quality of our search results, and as such is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
      The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results:
      • Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a "free" product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
      • Excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you")
      • Linking to web spammers or unrelated sites with the intent to manipulate PageRank
      • Building partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
      • Using automated programs or services to create links to your site
      Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines:
      • Text advertisements that pass PageRank
      • Links that are inserted into articles with little coherence, for example:
        most people sleep at night. you can buy cheap blankets at shops. a blanket keeps you warm at night. you can also buy a wholesale heater. It produces more warmth and you can just turn it off in summer when you are going on france vacation.
      • Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
      • Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites, for example:
        Visitors to this page: 1,472
        car insurance
      • Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites
      • Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
        Thanks, that's great info!
        - Paul
        paul's pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego
      Note that PPC (pay-per-click) advertising links that don't pass PageRank to the buyer of the ad do not violate our guidelines. You can prevent PageRank from passing in several ways, such as:
      • Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
      • Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
      The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?
      It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.
      If you see a site that is participating in link schemes intended to manipulate PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.
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  • nik0, please don't question my SEO ability, especially when it's clear you know very little of what you are talking about. It's quite annoying. For example, you claim that SEO has become 'easier' after Penguin? Your reasoning being, Penguin has eliminated a lot of the competition. However, you fail to realize that this is the FIRST time in Google's history that it is now actively penalizing sites for things beyond its own control (i.e. off site backlinks, which anyone could build). Google were willing to even open up the floodgates to negative SEO, without a care as to the unfair penalization of many innocent sites which could be targeted and blasted into the oblivion by jealous competitors. Make no mistake: Google does not care and will sacrifice thousands upon thousands of innocent websites in order to keep its aggressive fight on web spam going strong. As you claim to be a competent provider of SEO services, you should know that, strictly, all link building with the intention of manipulating your ranking is classed as against Google's terms of service and hence, 'black hat'. Google wants to wipe out ALL these links. They want to kill them, and even penalize for them. However, the good news is, this is easier said than done. It's very difficult for Google to distinguish between a natural link vs an artifically created link with the sole purpose of increasing rankings. However since the last update Google has become much better at detecting such links and hence, SEO has become more difficult. Yes, a lot of competition has been wiped out, but for us SEOs, we must change our tactics and in many cases this leads to more expensive SEO campaigns. If you want to discuss SEO with me then I would certainly be willing, I have many experiments I conducted on Penguin to determine the nature of the update and what, if anything, could be done to reverse a penalization.

    Being an SEO myself I am on the side of all SEO people so I am not trying to talk against your profession at all, but you are somewhat biased as you offer SEO services. In fact, the vast majority of people who vehemently deny that SEO is becoming harder/Google is trying to kill SEO are those people who are offering SEO services. If your SEO is so profitable, why don't you just keep your SEO tactics to yourself and optimize your own sites, to earn via affiliate commissions, CPA etc.? However as always, it is only profitable for you if you charge people to rank. Because the ROI of SEO is steadily decreasing and those who are not frighteningly efficient at doing SEO for their own sites are simply not profitable. Go and do some SEO for your own sites, and come back profitable within 2 months, then I would give you some credit. This is a business. It's all about ROI. And I am confident my ROI would blow yours out of the water. Hence, I don't really need to provide SEO services to make money. Nor do I need to panic at the glaring fact that Google is on the warpath against SEO.

    This doesn't mean that there is no hope for SEO, not at all, it is still very much alive. But it IS getting more difficult, there is absolutely zero debate on that.
  • Very interesting post...I'm curious as to who is still using low-quality backlink blasters like Scrapebox blog comments after the Penguin update? Seems as there's a consensus that low-quality backlinks no longer help, but indeed hurt...

    thoughts?
  • kshields, in today's environment, yes, it can be dangerous to blast your site with scrapebox. It wasn't the case before, but after the update, it's entirely possible to get a site slapped by doing a big SB blast. It's really quite a sad state of affairs.
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    LOL, you just keep on saying this is the FIRST time that Google opens the gates for Neg SEO. LOL LOL LOL it exists for ages man, freaking WAKE UP, have you been lying under a stone or something? It has become a bit easier then it used to be though, takes less effort and yes that's why I act smart and come up with solutions for clients that are in a niche that is known for neg SEO attacks. It's as hard as you want it to be, there are always ways around that, you should know that LOL

    Btw what are you talking about ROI, when I do SEO for my largest client he has his first month investment back in the month after.

    Lately we did a site ourselves and invested a $69 package and that site is now making around $40/month. (JV deal with someone, he build the site, I ranked it)

    Is that considered a bad roi? I can't help it if other people monetize their site poor or chose the wrong keywords. I sell links, kw research not included.

    Besides that your argument that SEO'ers wouldn't sell SEO but only SEO their own sites doesn't make any sense at all. Everyone does his own thing that he likes to do, I like talking with clients, suggesting things, ranking them, finding out better strategies. I hate building websites, doing keyword research and monetizing it with all kind of crappy affiliate deals. Each to his own right?
  • Google is just trying to stop blackhat seo. And im very thank ful for this!

    Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      Exactly, it opens a world of chances now that blackhat SEO works poor, and neg SEO is only a small fraction of what really happens, there are a few niches that have huge problems with it like:

      - iphone
      - viagra
      - porn
      - gambling
      - payday loans

      and a couple other tough niches, but you can easily protect yourself from it by building links to a domain that you 301, then they can attack your main site and then you just drop it and easily replace it with a new domain, change the 301 and you're back at your feet in no time.

      To every problem there is a solution.

      Don't believe me, just google: "unlock iphone 4" and you'll see whole page 1 filled up with PR0 sites that 301'ed a strong domain. Obvious you can't see that they 301'ed but its the only logical explanation why they rank for such terms with as good as 0 backlinks and no visible authority.
  • BlackHat SEO is spam on domain and google kill a BH SEO Nowadays.
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    Google is neither trying to kill SEO nor it tries to blackhat seo. But by the frequent changes it just tries to reduce the spam sites and spam content from the web and tries to provide the unique, fresh and meaningful information to people for their search. So this changes will be beneficial for all to build their site with more perfection and with providing the quality information. And so if we take these google changes in positive way then we will understand that google not tries to kill seo but it be helpful to seo for more quality and to get more results.
  • no. seo is a business so, google will not kill seo.
  • seo is Google slave. We create rankings.
  • I sure hope not or I've been wasting my time lol
  • Yes, Google want that everyone use adwords service.
  • (now this is all speculation)

    But i truly believe that google doesn't care about the small mom and pop business's anymore. There more concerned about BIGGER business's that has a established brand already. Google sees small business's gaming the search engines with their EMD's and black-hat seo methods are taking away from more established business's that use paid ads (adwords)

    In the end. Its about GREED.
  • Now is too much adwords to small quality serps. Shops with cut off long tails it is normall now. Google want still more money
  • SEO, expanded as Search Engine Optimization, means optimizing search results. As long as there are search engines, there will also be a need for optimizing the results.
    Hence, Google is working on trying to make search results more relevant by removing black hat techniques.
  • Google is trying to build a standard to do things in a better way and people when search something shall get best results out of it.So i don't think Google is killing SEO rather they are a killing machine for spammers.
  • content quality is hard to check. I think the most important for Google is not serp quality but Adwords popularity.
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  • I agree with it. Really cannot predict Google's eyes nowadays. Ranking problem still prevails.
  • No way nothing like that, infact google like SEO.
  • True.. Overmanipulation just doesn't work. That's why you have to choose varied types of links to keep it natural.
  • Not kill SEO, kill those gaming the system (that's 99% of us)
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    WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS THREAD

    • [2] replies
    • Certain people swarming like vultures trying to sell their services.
    • Too bad you asked that before seeing the gems people put out after your post

  • Of course they're trying to kill seo. Their ultimate game is to have you pay for traffic. Read the writing on the wall folks why to you think they're rolling out all these updates that's killing everyones businesses. Search results certainly haven't improved in fact they're pretty much laughable at this point.
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  • What are the criteria "black hat SEO" with new algo Google now?
  • I do t think so but just trying to clean up all the spammy to the top quick quacks out there
  • No, Google want's quality so Google kill may be spammers. But Google never Kill SEO.
  • Yep,Google is killing SEO but Killing To Black hat SEO.Google is not killing to White Hat SEO. It is FOR making internet world clean and spam free.
  • SEO is the need of the hour and every website needs seo. So google cannot kill seo.
  • Google is not killing SEO, Google trying to tell us improve your content.
  • Yes! They hate SEO.......Google dont like SEO

    Or websites for that matter which is why they knock sites out (hand over face)
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  • According to me Google is become less search engine and more publisher,and google going to increase his revenue,Some of my client going to use Google adwords,because they do't have trust on SEO . because Google has update 65 new algo in August to sep this year.the recently update was EMD,but when i Start SEO and i read every where that, Exact match domain help to increase ranking and now google slap these type of sites.I think this is enough
  • they are not trying to kill SEO but they are trying to improve the experience of users, that's what they said .
  • in a hurry to root out blackhat techniques google is also harming some genuine bloggers. i have seen many blogs with genuine content and no traffic at all.
  • Google has taken some really odd positions lately, that are difficult to understand. I know of two instances where they stopped an AdWords advertiser from advertising by telling them in order to have their ad reinstated they need to link to a free competing product, even if the product was not equivalent in nature. In others words if you wanted to advertise a photo editing software you needed to prominently display a free link to Picassa or another equally relevant free photo editing software. Link to a free competitor just so you can give Google money???? Really? I don't think their SEO position is their biggest issue right now.
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  • I think they're just trying to get rid of all the spammy type sites. I don't know, Google's always changing it's mind.
  • Google is trying to reward the businesses those are based on visitor oriented. where visitor gets required information.
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