Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Here is a snippet from our latest SEO comic, Ranked Hard. Please visit the RankedHard.com site to see the comic this month. It is the best one we have done so far, in my opinion.
From time to time I use Ranked Hard as my soap box to comment on SEO-related topics such as link buying, SEO Celebrities and Internet spam, but with this comic I decided that I would poke some fun at three well-known Internet personalities: Seth Godin (Founder of Squidoo), Jason Calacanis (Founder of Mahalo) and Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia). Each of these web celebs has created a force on the Internet.
But have they created a force for good on the Internet? Have they made the Internet a better place? In some ways they have, but in many ways–not so much. Of course the negative effects on the Internet aren’t really their fault. Let me explain.
I’ll take each person in order and, since this is my site, I am going to give my opinions. You may disagree, and if so, please post why in the comments below. A good debate is always worth the risk of offending someone.
Want to read more and see the comic? Head over to see “The Battle for Internet City“.
Posted in Ranked Hard - SEO Comic | Comments Off
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Our latest Ranked Hard, SEO Comic, is up for viewing. It deals with the concept of link buying and Google’s sporadic approach at curtailing the purchase of link. Take a look at Crazy Eddie’s Link Emporium.
Here is an excerpt from my post under the comic. Please visit and read the entire rant on link buying.
If you would listen to Google, and why wouldn’t you, you would be led to believe that they are against link buying and don’t reward sites who do buy links. In fact, they will penalize sites that do buy links. Don’t believe me? Read Google’s engineer Matt Cutt’s own words on buying and selling links. They even provide a handy dandy form to report paid links. Find a site selling links? Report them. Find a competitor buying links? Report them. Then, your site, which is honestly gathering links, should rise to the top of the rankings. Right?
Wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
Google has been caught selling links more than once. So they understand the temptation and financial rewards of selling a link. But the rewards can be much greater when buying a link: higher search rankings, more customers, more sales and more profits. But if link buying is really being stamped out by the big G, then why, oh why, are so many people doing it and dominating the search rankings?
Read the rest of rant.
Posted in Link Building, Out on a Limb, Ranked Hard - SEO Comic | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
Should you buy links through a link service? Ever since Google slapped Text-Link-Ads.com (it no longer appears in the first 30 results for its own name), that is a question webmasters have had to wrangle with more than ever. Generally, Google regards buying links as a form of spam and as threat to their business model.
Google hasn’t been shy about punishing sites who engage in this behavior lately either. Many who bought and sold links with Text-Link-Ads have reported a significant drop in their PageRank since the last Google update. This is partly because escaping the eyes of Google is difficult. Doing a search for function tla_ads will uncover all the sites selling links using Text-Links-Ads who have not yet upgraded to the latest TLA plug-in, which hides this information. If Google can see who is selling links, they can logically conclude who is buying them as well.
JohnChow.com’s recent Google slap represents one of the more drastic punishments doled out to a webmaster. Chow had ranked number 1 in Google for the keyword “make money online” for over a year, but he also aggressively pushed link selling services. Now, he doesn’t even appear in the top 30 results for the keyword “John Chow.” (He clocks in at #57 from the datacenter I’m hitting).
Analyzing Google’s behavior becomes confusing when one considers that Chow’s site still has a toolbar PR of 4. Likewise, Text-Link-Ads still boasts a PR of 7.
If one wants to remain in the good graces of Google, avoiding the use of link brokers such as TLA or TNX.net would probably be judicious. But reading Google’s mind is not an easy task, as evidenced by the erratic nature of their penalties.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Google, Link Building, SEO Mistakes | 8 Comments »
Friday, October 5th, 2007
Posted in Google, Out on a Limb, SEO Mistakes | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 1st, 2007
Catching up on my Google reading and found this tidbit on Google’s Webmaster Blog. It refers to the strategy of buying text links to give you a better rank in Google.
This confusion lies in the common belief that there are two ways for optimizing the link-based popularity of your website: Either the meritocratic and long-term option of developing natural links or the risky and short-term option of non-earned backlinks via link spamming tactics such as buying links. We’ve always taken a clear stance with respect to manipulating the PageRank algorithm in our Quality Guidelines. Despite these policies, the strategy of participating in link schemes might have previously paid off. But more recently, Google has tremendously refined its link-weighting algorithms. We have more people working on Google’s link-weighting for quality control and to correct issues we find. So nowadays, undermining the PageRank algorithm is likely to result in the loss of the ability of link-selling sites to pass on reputation via links to other sites.
We don’t buy advertising links on sites for fear of this very reason. If the site is a good marketing investment for passing on visitors then a link may be worth purchasing, but if you are buying a link for the purpose of getting better search engine ranking, you might be better off investing the time to find a free link from another site.
Posted in Link Building, Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off
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