Vince Samios - Internet Marketing Expert » SEO

Negative SEO & Recent Panda Updates

Vince Samios — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:22:37 +0000

I received the below question in my email, and you can see my reply below.

Have you touched on the recent changes by google yet? The idea that all sites must have fantastic content and social metrics and all of that.
What about the guys that want to make micro-niche sites, write on 50 different keywords, link it up, make some youtube videos, and build links, without being experts on the topic? Do you think these kind of people will be exctinct? Is the only strategy now to become an expert on a topic, something you’d feel comfortable about spreading out to your Google Circles?
What if I want to push a yeast infection clickbank product? Now I need to be the master of yeast infections, blogging out to my friends and family about it? What’s your take on all of this?

- Simon

Hi Simon,

A lot of people got burnt recently, including a load of self professed SEO experts. I think the simple facts regarding the recent shit storm are that a few link building services were specifically targeted and nuked. Lazy SEO which relied on those networks suffered with sites bombing it overnight.

But actually nothing has changed. I think the webmaster tools messages people got (I got only one, from a few hundred sites) are literally a info gathering bluff… “tell us which sites you bought links form” - yeah right!

Google isn’t in a position to process all the data required to really make the most of social media etc etc etc, and the world online is too immature to start imposing “must”s - in 20 years maybe. Its all simply scare tactics and manipulation - nobody has been able to prove negative SEO is possible, and if it was it would be extremely easy to prove.

Crack on with whatever you’re doing I say - everything helps, but nothing is required.

Incoming seo search terms:

SEO Guide for 2012

Vince Samios — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:08:41 +0000

By popular request, my thoughts about SEO in 2012.

Social Media becomes SEO

I usually mull over posts like this for a few days adding and removing pieces, reshuffling etc. This particular post has been in draft since about christmas - The below “Social Media becomes SEO” section was written prior to Google’s announcement this morning (Wed 11th Jan) which has been hailed as “most radical transformation ever” - I’ve left what I’ve written unchanged.

For a little while Google had access to the twitter hose pipe, which meant tweets could be dynamically included in rankings, and used as a ranking metric. I’ve done a lot of testing in the past 12 months with large volumes of tweets and retweets (between 200-400 tweets in each test) and at the time I did the test, there was absolutely no affect on rankings whatsoever. Just a few months prior, when Google still had access to the hose pipe, another popular SEO website asked readers to help with testing retweets for rankings, and found them to be quite effective.

Facebook has had a slim effect on SEO because profiles can’t be indexed, and there is no clear crawl path through profiles.

Also last year Google launched its own new social network, Google Plus. From a user interface point of view Google Plus is highly integrated with other google products, such as Gmail and Search. Google seems to have become frustrated with the failure of google buzz, and not having its own social network, and seems to be throwing absolutely everything into the success of Google Plus.

It stands to reason Google will use the data from its newest product to influence search, as this is a search metric Google has been desperately seeking.

I’m not going to share my own tests at this stage, but suffice to say I’ve been looking very heavily into Google Plus for SEO.

The SEO Puzzle

In the old days it used to be a matter of how many times you listed your keywords on your page, and how many backlinks you had with those keywords. These days SEO seems to be more about ticking a bunch of boxes, and not always how many ticks you put in each box.

Its almost as if the rankings are based on a points system. 10 links might give you 1 point, 100 links might give you 2 points, 1000 links might give you 3 points. But having SEO friendly URL’s might give you a point, having a robots.txt file might give you 1 point, having an RSS feed might give you 1 point, Adding the site to webmaster tools might give you 1 point and having keyword optimised images might give you 1 point. Existing for 1 year might give you1 point, existing for three years might give you 2 points, existing for 10 years might give you 3 points. And etc…

The reason this seo puzzle theory has come about is because I’ve been in numerous industries where I’ve had 10,000 backlinks, and keyword density to be proud of, but I can’t seem to leap-frog a website with 100 links, and very average keyword density. There doesn’t always seem to be rhyme nor reason behind the search results, which leaves me wondering if the SEO puzzle theory has legs.

Back to Basics

Over the past few years the basic SEO techniques seem to have lost power, leaving us SEO’s feeling a little powerless to affect improvements. In the past 6 months or so things seem to have gone “back to basics” and many of the old techniques, done right, are working well. Possibly this is just the result of Google loosening up the time based part of the algorithm to allow more dynamic changes within search.

One possibly explanation could be that instead of working with one algorithm, google has multiple algorithms to serve each portion of the search results. For example there is obvious a natural SERP algorithm, and a PPC algorithm, and now there is probably also a Social algorithm, probably separate Image algorithms and Video algorithms too. Each individual algorithm then becomes less important to the full serps, so they can slacken off a bit.

Roundup from 2011:

Split Testing - yes - still happening

User Voting - has evolved into social search

Synonym Match - not so much, but still a factor

Exact match domain names - agree with my 2011 seo guide

Other TLD’s - 50:50 on this one…

Roundup from 2010:

Time - very important

User Experience - very important

Reverse Page Rank - certainly some data to suppor the idea

Variation - yes, still important

Contant - Yes, as always

Ramp - Yes, still the case.

PR Sculpting - Lost to the pages of history

Incoming seo search terms:

Importance of Maintaining SEO Campaigns

Vince Samios — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:36:35 +0000

The most unfortunate thing about SEO is that it is unpredictable, fickle and frustrating as hell…

First time around not everyone will have a good experience. Their taste for SEO will bitter and, understandably, they swear off SEO forever.

SEO can also take one heck of a long time, with noticeable changes being sporadic and unpredictable. I was about to start telling you about a client who, after 4 months, was getting frustrated with a lack of improvements. As luck would have it, a quick rank check showed that all of a sudden rankings have improved drastically across the board.

I guess good news tells the story just as well as bad news, the point being that things can appear to be entirely stagnant, and all of a sudden something will change….

If somebody bails from SEO before the sudden, seemingly random positive results, they may never see those improvements. The reason being, if you stop SEO at any point, there is a generally slow but definite negative trend in rankings and traffic.

In other cases on a relatively new SEO campaign (less than 18 months old) stopping SEO can cause your rankings and traffic to absolutely plummet. This depends somewhat on the SEO techniques employed, but the only difference this will have is the rate of decline. Often the fastest methods for being ranked, are also the methods which fall the hardest if discontinued.

A prime example is that of self proclaimed "SEO Expert" Mark Attwood and the story behind his apparent success (which ended in administration to the tune of over -£1mil) who’s company "TopSkips", a brokerage model business run on 50% SEO traffic, 50% PPC traffic (unprofitably) used to be #1 in the UK for the popular term "Skip Hire" - when I left the company, the rankings of "TopSkips" and associated companies slowly fell. The volume and quality of the SEO on Mark’s companies decreased so drastically that is was no longer sufficient to keep up with the competition and positions were lost, including the #1 for "Skip Hire".

The number of indexed pages on "TopSkips" fell to 10% (from approx 100,000 to about 10,000) within a few months and an absurdly large number of SEO rankings have been lost.

I’ve seen it too often where a company invests in SEO for a short period of time (less than 18 months) and decides (prematurely) not to continue. Instead of continual improvement the initial SEO is lost to the wind within a few months.

Possibly the single biggest key to SEO success is continual improvement, both of a website, and of the backlink profile to the website. If instead of improving you are regressing, this will be reflected in the search rankings, traffic and profitability.

SEO is a long hard road, stick with it and don’t give up.

Incoming seo search terms:

Link Tracking SEO Tools - Yahoo Site Explorer Alternatives

Vince Samios — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:56:54 +0000

After the recent decommissioning of yahoo site explorer, alternatives need to be found so that we can track our own backlinks, and spy on competitors backlinks.

Below is a short list of SEO Tools which can, together, provide a somewhat viable alternative to yahoo site explorer.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Frankly I haven’t used Bing Webmaster Tools, but as the official alternative to yahoo site explorer one hopes it would have much, if not all of the same data as yahoo site explorer displayed. The biggest issue with Bing Webmaster Tools is that it is a tool for webmaster only, whereas yahoo site explorer allowed users to view the backlinks and backlink counts for any and all websites.

At this point in time I can’t comment on the usefulness of Bing Webmaster Tools as a yahoo site explorer alternative for webmasters, because I haven’t used it, however as an alternative for competitor analysis it is a completely useless tool.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is only a yahoo site explorer alternative for webmasters, as google webmaster tools has only ever been available to the sites owner. In this respect I think Google Webmaster Tools is more comprehensive than yahoo site explorer ever was.

Majestic SEO

Without paying for an account, the only information you can get for free is the number of total backlinks, referring domains, and C Class IP addresses. I have doubts about the accuracy of Majestic SEO’s data, but in respect to the number of links a website has for competitor analysis (the link count) Majestic SEO is probably the most accurate and consistent alternative to yahoo site explorer.

Google Links Search

If you use the search links:domainname.com in a standard google search, you will get a short list of sites linking to that domain name. The problem is this list is minuscule and doesn’t even reflect 1% of the links Google actually knows about (which we can compare as a webmaster, with the links in webmaster tools). It can be vaguely interesting, and it is only important in this day and age where yahoo site explorer is down and decommissioned, as one of the seo tools we can use to fill in the blanks.

Alexa

Alexa gives you a rather vague "sites linking in" feature which actually gives you a better list of linking sites than you get from the Google Links: search mentioned above. In a world before we needed and alternative to yahoo site explorer the data alexa provided was entirely redundant, but now it is again, another seo tool to help us piece the SEO puzzle together.

Open Site Explorer

Open site explorer is probably the best like for like yahoo site explorer alternative. It allows us to gather details on other sites, as well as our own. I don’t like the data for backlink counts, and in general I find Open Site Explorer a little clumsy to work with, but in an imperfect world we are left with imperfect SEO tools.

Incoming seo search terms:

Free Retweets Service - Retweet.it Review

Vince Samios — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:03:06 +0000

It’s been reported widely by SEO blogs etc that twitter is having a powerful effect on rankings.

In the course of trying to jump on the same bandwagon I stumbled across a service called “retweet.it” where you can buy re-tweets (or you can earn free retweets).

The maximum package size is 200 retweets for $40. This sounds like a reasonably good deal considering the profound effects others are reporting. Alternatively you can earn credits for yourself, and for each tweet you retweet, you earn half a free retweet. So if I retweet 400 other tweets, I’ve saved myself $40.

As with anything like this, I decided to give it a good go.

Earning free retweets isn’t as easy as it may sound. There are a very limited number of things to retweet and you need to log in regularly to be in with a chance of having enough things to retweet to earn enough of your own free retweets. I was quite surprised about this, because I thought the service would be a lot more popular and there would be a lot more opportunity to earn retweet credits.

So I logged in regularly over the course of 3 days and earn’t myself 55 free retweets which I then proceeded to use. To be honest, unless someone is being paid less than $2/hour, you’re better off just buying credits rather than trying to earn them.

With my 55 retweets I submitted my own tweet to be retweeted by 55 other people. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I was definitely expecting a little bit more than nothing.

First of all it took a very long time for my credits to be used up. I wanted them to fly out of the door in under an hour, but instead it took closer to a day and a half.

I’d only included one keyphrase in the tweets, and the target site didn’t budge even slightly for that key term.

I received absolutely no additional traffic, so no value there either, and I think I possibly received about 7 extra twitter followers, all of which were the “refollow or I’ll un-follow you” kind.

While I’m not going to base my conclusion on this one single test, I am going to say that retweeting isn’t all its cracked up to be if you’re using a service like retweet.it

This may be down to twitter being over-hyped, or it could be down to the fact retweet.it publish an rss feed of all the retweet request… which is just bloody stupid because all google has to do to filter out this manipulated retweeting, is subscript to the retweet.it feed… or maybe googles twitter quality algorithm is excellent… who knows.

Give it a go here if you like… here’s the web address retweet.it (these links are all affiliate links, and I’ll use any credits I earn from referring you, to do more tests)

Incoming seo search terms:

12 SEO Firefox Extensions - SEO Tools

Vince Samios — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:41:45 +0000

The first in a series of posts about SEO tools, first of all 12 SEO tools for firefox.

SEO for firefox

Absolutely critical SEO tool which loads important metrics in your browser as you search. SEO For Firefox can automatically load metrics such as Page Rank, Backlink Counts, Domain Age and Alexa Rank in your browser as you view the SERPS (along with many others)

SEO For Firefox also includes a neat little tool called “SEO X-Ray” which can show you various details about the page you are viewing, including internal and external links on that page, as well as meta descriptions and meta titles.

Another Critial part of the SEO for Firefox tool is the automatic no-follow highlighting, which I always have turned on. This allows you to view web pages with more clarity and instantly spot potential holes.

I would say this is one of those absolute must have seo tools and seems to always appear at the very top of any seo tools list.

Get it here

Search status

A very useful suite of small seo tools which sit in your firefox status bar ready to be used when you need them. The parts of this tool I use most are the “Whois” lookup, “Show Keyword Density” and “Show Robots.txt”. All very self-explanatory. In addition I also use the “Show other domains on this IP” option quite often to spy on competitors.

Get it here

Rank Checker

Not the best rank checking tool on the planet, but quick and easy to use. Checks a list of up to 100 keywords and store historical rankings. Not very pretty, but I still use it every day.

Get it here

SEO Quake

Just a bigger more bloated version of SEO for firefox. It shows you all the same data, and it does show you more data on the page you are viewing (to get the same data you’d have to do a google searh with the seo tool for firefox) but seo for firefox and seo quake don’t play well together and I personally prefer seo for firefox. I’ve also found I get banned rather quickly using SEO Quake because of the sheer volume of requests it ends up sending out.

I also don’t need pretty pictures, which SEO Quake has.

Get it here

Google Toolbar

There is very little reason to add the google toolbar. If you are running firefox you’ve already got a search box in the browser, and if you’ve got the other, better, seo tools installed, it won’t give you any extra data.

Get it here

User Agent Switcher

Vaguely useful once in a while. I find the best use for this firefox tool is to view contents on a page which require a login, but which will present all the data to a google spider.

Have you ever seen exactly what you were looking for in a meta description but you aren’t actually able to view the article once you click through? Set your user agent to the google spider and you’re in!

It can also be useful for more shading (black hat) seo.

Get it here

Fire Bug

Finding, browsing, fixing, modifying and checking code is incredibly easy with the fire bug plugin for firefox. While it isn’t, strictly speaking an seo tool, fire bug is absolutely one of the most useful tools I’ve got.

It has to be seen to be believed, but if you ever want to see code attributed to a particular object, fire bug will change your life. It’s also incredibly easy to make livee changes to a page design or layout without having to dig up ftp details, dreamweaver, and the other half of your brain.

True SEO’s understand the deep dark depths of html, javascript and css. Firebug is a fantastic firefox plugin code viewer which allows you to make dynamic changes to a page on the fly and experiment with layouts, scripts and css.

I use firebug quite often when I want to add weight to an on-page element (a good example is using a heading tag) but I first want to experiment with the way the results will look.

I can fix styling’s in CSS very quickly and I don’t need to upload multiple copies of changes before I get things right.

A must have for a serious SEO geek.

Get it here

Web Developer

Also a fairly useful tool which allows you to see a lot more of the back side of a website. In my opinion Web Developer is beaten to the finish line by Fire Bug hands down.

Get it here

Live HTTP Headers

While a bit more of a technical tool, live http headers can show you a lot of the session data transacting between yourself and a website. Some of the most important data from a seo tools perspective is the ability to see referrers and track through redirects. It’s worth having, but I only use it rarely.

Get it here

Google Global

Want to find out what the SEO results look like for a particular keyphrase in a particular country? Google Global is the seo tool for you.

Personally I just type in the country specific tld and be done with it, but I have needed to use Google Global in the past on a windows machine which was very persistent about the localized results it was showing me.

Get it here

KGen

KGen will create a list of the most common terms on a web page (keyword and keyphrase density) and show you a nice neat list inline in the browser.
Personally I just use the Search Status keyword density tool.

Get it here

Wordtracker Free Keywords

Very useful when writing a blog post, the wordtracker free keywords firefox extension is a keyword suggestion tool inline in the browser.

Get it here (Currently under maintenance)

FlagFox

Thanks to a comment below, this useful firefox extension will show a flag in the address bar showing the geographic location of the server. Nice little feature to have.

Get it here