There has been rumors floating around that Google has penalized some of the big directories because they suspect they have purchased links. Google and Matt Cutts have stated that they frown on anyone trying to manipulate the search results to their favour artificially. So my question is, does all SEO not basically try and manipulate the search results in favour of the web site being optimized? Is it just a matter of degrees? By using strategically placed <strong> or <bold> tags or targetting certain keywords in your <title> tags are you not also breaching the terms set out by gooogle? Will Google crack down on 3 way link trades? Credit given for articles?
I think there is a big difference between optimizing your page better and purchasing links at certain directories, even though they tend to have similar results of higher search engine results.
I too am very confused about seo without buying links. How are you supposed to obtain one way links at all really? And more and more sites and blog building software or masking outbound links with no follows and redirects or whatever, so i'm sure much of the fan base links are rendered worthless. And people are always saying the recipricol links aren't worth much. I'm left confused.... you don't just get one way links from a pr 3 4 or 5 page unless ur a genius site like facebook.
In googles utopia world backlinks would only be obtained organically, meaning your site has something really good to offer so another site will want to place a link to your site because they believe their visitors could benefit from it. But just like Communism, on paper it sounds great but in practice it is pretty much a disaster. First people started doing link exchanges; I will scratch your back if you scratch mine. Then spamming and black hat SEO techniques became popular because you could shoot up the SERP's by just typing in some hidden text or spamming blog comments. I personally think link purchases are the best of the bunch because it is all part of advertising and promoting a website. I also feel Google has some bigger fish to fry with them and all their publishers and advertisers getting ripped off on a daily basis from MFA sites. But it really is a mess they put themselves into, so to really solve the problem they would have to completely revamp the way they award search engine position.
I think about this a lot. Is all SEO, beyond on-page "compliance" measures, black-hat? From one point of view, SERPs should be for sites that deserve them, not those who want them. Link popularity for rankings is unfair for many reasons, the biggest being that only people who have sites are in a position to offer them...which gives an advantage to SEO and tech-related niches in that regard. Ordinary users might like your site just fine, but they aren't in a position to help your link juice...except by bookmarks, which are mostly nofollow. The bottom line is that SEO is antagonistic with search engines...because everyone wants that number one, and having that spot for sale interferes with the original concept of a democratic internet. A huge portion of the internet, including the highly controversial directory "industry" exists for little other reason. Ultimately Google (as the major SE) is responsible for this sorry state of affairs, and many SEO careers will be destroyed by upcoming changes. Really, though, any ranking-based system will be subject to manipulation. Cash, links, votes, and visits will be exchanged more, not less, as larger portions of the world join the flea-sale the internet has become.
Yeah, Heaven forbid people actually take the time to create decent link worthy sites with content people actually want to read
I think people need to realize that there is a difference between SEO and trying to game the search engines.
I think it would be enough if Google would stop giving hints to the SEO fraternity. Everytime Google gives information about its algorithm, people start looking for loopholes to exploit it. e.g. Google disclosed that they can detect paid links from their location. Now everybody tries to embed links in content by buying blogposts etc. Similarly it was Google that hinted that deeplinks are important as they look natural. Now everyone is trading "deeplinks". Google discloses PR on the toolbar and people use it as a tool to buy and sell links. If it weren't for the search engines themselves, SEO professionals would still be stuck with manipulating metatags. .
Me too, I think Big G or Google loves to see people doing a valid or cleaner process in doing SEO, not in general that people do spam links out in the net.
Can you elaborate on that? What degree of SEO is ok and where should the line be drawn? If google wanted the best most relevant search results they would want it to be completely untainted by any type of manipulation (SEO)?
I doubt that Google would ever penalize any site for making it user friendly with good contents and coded text (meta tags) that indicate with your site is all about. Why would Google or any other search engine NOT encourage this.
SEO is supposed to be about accesibility. An SEO is supposed to make sure the site is able to be crawled fully by search engines and that the information you are providing is on the page. Once you start doing artificial link building you start trying to game the search engines.
Yes you can get these links FOR FREE - buy ONLY if you have great content worth linking too. Too many people think they can throw up a crap site, buy a ton of crap links and game their way to the top. Call me old fashioned but the only stable way to the top is great content and honest hard work
The only way to make google stop "seo" is if they started manually hand indexing all the sites in their index. It's never going to happen. As long as the rankings are done algorithmically there will always be ways of optimizing sites for that algorithm.
SEO would not be frowned on, rather the opposite. Google would like to see people using SEO as long as it is proper SEO and not black hat tricks. Google have their own SEO pages as well which give you some simple guides. SEO is only knowing how the search engine works, and making use of that facility. If Google was to ban all SEO then it would be like me telling you to wash your hands in the toilet rather than the sink .