64 replies to this topic

[nethy]

Nice to see you so pleased Jill.

Its fun to be right. Even more fun when you have to wait for it.

[1dmf]

Wow - Ok I see your point Jill, link spam city!

So is the only way G! Bot can tell is if your pages all of a sudden are swamped with link after link after link.

I also fail to see the point of those links being on the page, it's obvious it's for link sake, no-one in their right mind would choose to click any of those links, they are so spammy, however, the page 'on my tool bar' has ZERO PR, so what gives?

Or is that the result of the latest update?

At least i feel a little more comfortable with my affiliate program, it's not spammy or trying to offer PR in any way, whether people want to claim it's a paid link or not, thats simply semantics, when you look at that blog page, you can see who the real 'paid link' bandits are.

So Jill, having read HR Advisor, do you really just beleive this is 'visual' PR adjustment, as a few forums i've been on are moaning about actual SERPS, so would suggest there is 'real' change not just 'visual'

Any further thoughts on this? and would you say it can only be a good thing for those 'like myself' who are trying to do the right thing and 'use' the system not 'abuse' the system?

[arteworks]

Regarding Jill's Newsletter Rant:

I read through the paid-link-smack article this morning.

"I've personally been frustrated by paid anchor-text link ads in the search engine optimization space, as they have boosted tons of SEO-company websites to the top of the SERPs for important phrases such as "search engine optimization" -- ultimately pushing down those sites who don't purchase text links. (Certainly not all of the top 10-20 sites in the SERPs are buying links, but if you do some homework you'll see many are.)"

Oh, that would be me, wouldn't it? Well since you're talking about me, I am going to respond.

I've actually been waiting to hear something like this for quite awhile from Jill as I regularly monitor the serps and have seen a certain HR site struggling at times. But I did not think it would take the form of an actual attack on companies appearing ahead of HR. So let's get the facts straight.

1) the firms at the top of the serps are there because they have done what Google wants. That is the point of SEO - satisfy the engines, so the clients get what they want
2) accusing firms, such as mine, of "cheating" their way into the top of the serps because there is a single text link on a single site which is obviously paid for is ridiculous. And then to assume intent is outright unprofessional. ArteWorks advertises on SEG and I think two other sites. Certainly not enough to make any difference whatsoever in the serps. At $150 a month, SEG is one of the best deals around, and this advertising has paid for itself many times over. To make a statement that a couple of paid advertisements is the reason our firm or any other firm is doing well in the serps is simply ignorant and completely ignores the other 19,000+ natural links pointing to our site.
3) buying links won't now nor will it ever get a site "penalized". It is a legitimate form of advertising and Google knows it. Of course, if one is buying links for the sake of artificially inflating page rank, then yes, that person will be disappointed. But purchasing links from respectable sites in the industry who are a good source of link traffic is completely fine.

I have seen on this forum a few times one of my favorite quotes, "you can gripe about it if it makes you feel better, but griping won't change anything." If Jill or anyone else is unsatisfied with their search rankings, my advice would be to stop griping about it and start doing some off page SEO for your site so that you will begin to see movement. Sitting around and making bald assertions about other companies, and presuming less than honorable intent on their part, is completely uncalled for.

And just for the record, in the last few months since this whole paid link uproar started getting attention, my firm and others have moved *up* in the serps, which seems to tell me that the natural, nonpaid, link building we have been doing for years through content distribution, social media optimization, and the like, has paid off.

It is extremely unprofessional to get bitter and make statements about other firms based on the existence of a single paid link on a relevant, industry site which is a wonderful source of qualified traffic.

[Randy]

Feeling a little ticked off there Matt?

Given your rant I think you must have missed the most important part of Jill's article. That being:

That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with buying or selling them, and I’d buy them in a minute if
I felt it would be something worthwhile for a client.

She even mentioned elsewhere --and I've harped on the subject about a bazillion times-- that the reason one should purchase a paid link advertisement is to obtain Real, High Quality Traffic. What the search engines think about those links, whether they reward them or not, should not be part of the decision making process. If that's why you purchased the links, and it sounds like it was, I certainly don't have an argument with it. Nor would Jill I highly suspect. That's good business. Period, end of story.

FWIW, I'm with you on your basic premise Jill. I think this whole thing is a sort of shot across the bow by Google to get peoples attention and convince them they should start nofollow'ing those paid links. It's their way of saying to those webmasters who do accept paid links that they'd better fall in line with Google's desires or risk a real penalty.

Who knows if they'll follow through on the threat or not. In some highly visible cases you're talking about a lot of otherwise quite useful, authoritative and trustworthy sites possibly being dinged. But like Jill I'm kind of enjoying sitting on the sidelines to see what happens next. Because if they really want SEOs to abide by their wishes to nofollow paid links the quickest way for them to get their point across is to start penalizing highly visible, authoritative sites in the SEO market segment who display paid link ads sans any nofollow. So it wouldn't surprise me if weeks down the road those sites who don't fall into compliance suddenly take a tumble.

After all, where else can Google have such a large effect by affecting so few sites?

[arteworks]

So the question is, will Google follow through, or nofollow through...

No, I did not miss Jill's point. Doesn't change the fact that she made accusations about other SEO firms not legitimately being where they are. The one statement does not negate the other.

[Randy]

Well, I can only speak for myself. But my issue has never been with the folks doing anything that takes advantage of the search engines. My beef has always been the engines sometimes saying one thing, but doing the exact opposite.

This is what Google has done since they first came out with their rote pronouncements that they dislike paid links and do not count them. Even though we've all always known figuring out which were and were not paid is a very, very difficult thing for a machine to ascertain, they've still been saying one thing for months, while doing the exact opposite.

If you want my guess on the recent developments, I think they're going to make an example out of a dozen or two high profile sites in the SEO market if any of them are crazy enough to thumb their nose at Google one more time. Do I think that's fair? No, not really. Google shouldn't be in the business of telling people how to design their sites.

That said it is Google's engine and they can do with it what they want. So if they choose to come down on some sites to make a point they're completely within their rights to do so.

[1dmf]

That said it is Google's engine and they can do with it what they want

I always find this statement hard to digest.

There is surely an argument that when you go into business and produce a company that is as big, powerful and rich as those such as Google.

Does your responsability to your customers and the public become greater than Joe blogs down the road running a newsagents?

It's their newsagent and if they chose to stop selling papers, yes it's their business they can do what they want, and people would simply get there paper else where.

Can the same be said about Google.

I'm not sure which side of the fence i sit, I get pulled by both sides of the argument and it can depend on what sort of day i'm having, but i'm sure i've seen on the news (though cannot recal exact examples), where it is accepted that big companies have a duty and responsibility above and beyond Joe Blogs Limited (LLC in USA i beleive).

[Jill]

artworks, I have no idea how you made the leap you made in your post from what I said in my article. Perhaps you need to read it again because I didn't say anything even close to what you think I said.

[arteworks]

I hear you Randy, but are we all conspiracy theorists? Is google really manually going through the serps for "search engine optimization" and performing adjustments by hand based on whether a site has paid links sans nofollow on it?

i will agree with jill that there is at least one result in particular that i have been very concerned about, but it's not paid linking, and my concerns are not so much for the integrity of the rankings as they are for the consuming public. they claim to be offering "free submission" if you add a linking code on your site to their site, a ringtone site, or one other site. i feel so sorry for the poor folks that add this link to their page thinking they are getting something for it. either way, it is definitely *not* "search engine optimization", except maybe for the target site!

[arteworks]

Jill, that quote is directly from your article. Those are your words. There is only one way to read them.

If you want to backtrack or retract that statement, then fine. But just do it, don't deny you made it.

[Mhoram]

If a business becomes a monopoly, it has a greater responsibility to put fairness to all parties ahead of profits. However, although Google may seem to have a monopoly these days, it hasn't been on top for that long; and in this business, if you get complacent and slow down at all, you'll get passed in a hurry. Google has done a lot of things right to get where it is now, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone else is on top in five years.  I remember when everyone seemed to be using AltaVista.

My concern would be this:  If all they're doing is slapping the wrists of some major players to make a point, they can do that manually and be sure they're getting the right ones; but to penalize paid links in general, they'd have to automate it.  Can they really tell paid links from unpaid ones reliably enough to automate that?  My client has some links that are paid and some that are free reciprocal links.  I don't see how a spider (or a human, without going through some signup forms) could tell the difference between them.  (Especially now that we've nofollow'ed them all just in case.)  As a web searcher myself, I'm glad they're trying to weed out the sites that are content-free lists of links and ads; but as a site admin, I'm concerned that sites could be wrongly penalized because some of their links "look" like paid links somehow.

[1dmf]

My client has some links that are paid and some that are free reciprocal links

reciprical 'link to me, i link to you' links breach G! guidelines , so G! telling them apart from paid links would be irrelevant, they both command a penalty

[Jill]

Okay Arteworks, since you obviously speak a different language than I do, I will have to address your twisted words one by one

"I've personally been frustrated by paid anchor-text link ads in the search engine optimization space, as they have boosted tons of SEO-company websites to the top of the SERPs for important phrases such as "search engine optimization" -- ultimately pushing down those sites who don't purchase text links. (Certainly not all of the top 10-20 sites in the SERPs are buying links, but if you do some homework you'll see many are.)"

Oh, that would be me, wouldn't it? Well since you're talking about me, I am going to respond.

Huh? Full of yourself there, artworks. I had nobody specific in mind when I wrote that post, and least of all you! But if your site fits that bill, then that's fine too.

I've actually been waiting to hear something like this for quite awhile from Jill as I regularly monitor the serps and have seen a certain HR site struggling at times. But I did not think it would take the form of an actual attack on companies appearing ahead of HR. So let's get the facts straight.

Huh again? Where's the attack in my statement? It's a simple statement which is true. It was not an attack, and I don't see how anyone could see it as one.

1) the firms at the top of the serps are there because they have done what Google wants. That is the point of SEO - satisfy the engines, so the clients get what they want

Absolutely agree and I said the same thing in the article.

2) accusing firms, such as mine, of "cheating" their way into the top of the serps because there is a single text link on a single site which is obviously paid for is ridiculous.

Please point out where I ever said anything about "cheating"? There's no such thing as cheating where SEO is concerned and I have never ever ever ever accused anyone anytime of cheating. If you can point out where I have, I'd surely like to see it. You amaze me with how you take what I say and pretend it was something else all together. Truly and utterly amazing.

And then to assume intent is outright unprofessional.

I have no idea what you're even talking about in that one. Assume intent about what?

ArteWorks advertises on SEG and I think two other sites. Certainly not enough to make any difference whatsoever in the serps. At $150 a month, SEG is one of the best deals around, and this advertising has paid for itself many times over.

I think that's great! I'm all for SEG making money on their ads.

To make a statement that a couple of paid advertisements is the reason our firm or any other firm is doing well in the serps is simply ignorant and completely ignores the other 19,000+ natural links pointing to our site.

I never made such a statement. Of course a couple of paid advertisements won't help in the SERPs. It takes way more than a couple.

3) buying links won't now nor will it ever get a site "penalized".

Did I say it would? It's not for me to say whether it will or it won't. I believe Matt Cutts has said it will, but the jury is out on whether that's simply an idle threat or not. Personally, I don't give a whether they get penalized or not.

It is a legitimate form of advertising and Google knows it. Of course, if one is buying links for the sake of artificially inflating page rank, then yes, that person will be disappointed. But purchasing links from respectable sites in the industry who are a good source of link traffic is completely fine.

Perhaps you need to direct your anger at Google and not at me then? It's has nothing to do with me or anything I've said!

I have seen on this forum a few times one of my favorite quotes, "you can gripe about it if it makes you feel better, but griping won't change anything." If Jill or anyone else is unsatisfied with their search rankings, my advice would be to stop griping about it and start doing some off page SEO for your site so that you will begin to see movement.

Where's the griping? I made a simple statement.

Sitting around and making bald assertions about other companies, and presuming less than honorable intent on their part, is completely uncalled for.

Again, you've made up something I didn't do.

It is extremely unprofessional to get bitter and make statements about other firms based on the existence of a single paid link on a relevant, industry site which is a wonderful source of qualified traffic.

And yet another thing I didn't do or say.

Artworks, I don't know why you can't seem to understand a very simple, clear and straightforward article, or why you believe it had anything to do with you, but that's not my problem to figure out.

[torka]

reciprical 'link to me, i link to you' links breach G! guidelines

Not that I can find in these guidelines, they don't:
http://www.google.co...mp;answer=35769

There's nothing wrong with reciprocal links per se, no matter what the Chicken Little "sky is falling" SEO crowd would have one believe.

Granted, there has never been anything particularly good about randomly trading links with pages that have no value for your site visitors. But the links still "count" as links unless the site you're trading with has already been penalized for other spammy practices.

And if you and another business owner in a complimentary business decide to trade links for the mutual benefit of your site visitors, there's never been anything wrong with that, and I can't imagine there ever will be.

--Torka

[arteworks]

Nope, not full of myself. If you had nobody in particular in mind why did you mention top 20 firms with paid links on SEG? That seems pretty particular to me.

It's an attack. You insinuate that YOU don't agree with the serps and that more deserving firms should be ahead of those that advertise on SEG. You talked about doing your homework, but at least according to your article the extent of your homework was looking at links on the front page of SEG, then the top 20 results, and then making a sweeping statement about sites in the top 20 being undeserving because of the existence of a paid link on SEG. If you did more homework, you probably should have clarified that, for instance if you found sites with hundred or thousands of paid links. The way it was written does not indicate that to the normal reader, and in fact appears to discourage readers from considering legitimate any top 20 firms who advertise on SEG.

You assumed intent in that firms advertising via a single paid link on SEG are doing so to increase search engine positioning and not for proper business motives.

You did make a statement that paid advertisements are the reason "tons" of top 20 seo firms appear at the top of the serps.

I don't have any anger at Google, Jill. Our site and other sites who engage in legitimate SEO including *natural* linking to *content* are doing great!

You're griping alright, being "frustrated" that other sites are ahead of yours.

I understand the article just fine.