Is google now God? The great, decider... A viagra site may very well be relevant to a marketing site, if the marketing site is, say, the one promoting/marketing the product.. Let's also say the marketing site, like a great many web design firms places it's, designed/marketed by link/URL on the site.. Relevant? I think so. You put too much trust in the false notion that that is even the case... Let's say the content was just a link that said, "Get Your New Car Insurance here". No content, but certainly relevant.. Relevant to the site, relevant to the content of the site, ie., cars and car insurance go hand in hand. Seems quite relevant to me. Ah, the insurance company could have a deal with the car company like most mortgage brokers have with banks and realtors... Not necessarily a paid link, but maybe referral kick backs, mutual linking, who knows... Not every link is unrelated, irrelevant, paid, reciprocal or installed simply in an effort to thwart Google.. The links are there to do what the internet does.. LINK!!!! Get you from point A to B and Z and back again... I have lower SERP's on two sites as a result and have seen a 500% increase in sales... Higher Market Share does not always mean more profit if you are not making sales.. Personally I would rather have 5 visitors and 2 conversions, than 10,000 useless visitors and no conversions..
Your conversions and SERPs are obviously unrelated, unless you started targeting a different keyword. With higher SERPs you would have equal or higher sales. One of my website's traffic recently increased from 1000 to 8000 visitors per day and guess what, revenue increased by 8 times! And in Google's case, higher market share DOES mean an equally higher profit, they make money from displaying ads in the SERPs.
I am not targeting anything.. That is the point.. Both sites are 10 years old, all have content, none is focusing on keywords, now SEO, natural rankings, organic rankings/links... I never said it does not work that way.. But it certainly can work either or, or both ways.. I disagree... It really depends on what you are selling.. We once paid for PPC adwords with google on one particular site and 100% of the sales were fraud. Sure, got more traffic, got more sales, but the conversions were worthless.. I would argue that "better" placement in SERP's is often times better than higher placement...
If you have done good keyword research, the higher you rank the better. If you have done no keyword research then you better hope to rank for suitable keywords.
Actually, it doesn't matter if you rank for one successful competitive keyword if you rank for like 250 - 500 small keywords. Ranking for one major keyword is helpful, but doesn't mean your site won't succeed without it.
How is intentionally manipulating keywords in a web site any different than buying or selling links? Don't you think Google's algo looks for people manipulating keywords as well? I mean would it not stand to reason that focusing on keywords intentionally to rank well in an SE is no different than buying/selling links to accomplish the same? I'm not sure I understand the double standard.. Why is one ok, and the other is not?
Not manipulating at all, just creating a website for what people actually want. If people are searching for 'Database Marketing' why would you create an article called 'MySQL Marketing'? That would be useless. So no, creating pages about suitable keywords is nowhere near as bad as buying/selling links since one is manipulation, the other isn't. If you have a well researched topic, Google still decides whether you should rank for the keyword or not. When you buy/sell links you are manipulating Google's ranking function.
If you have an established, trusted site, there is likely more leeway to get away with a thing or 2. Of course, a blog set up purely to sell review posts will be at the opposite end of this trust status
Jeremy, the major difference is effort required. At one point SEO was this arcane knowledge that belonged to a select few, which wasn't that bad. Then one day someone pointed out, "Hey, look, all you have to do is buy a few select high power links with the right anchor text, and bam, you can rank for anything you like! Guys, we can just buy our way to the top of Google!" This, in Google's mind (as far as I can tell), looked bad to the investors, and that is a cardinal sin, and must be dealt with. Hence, the war. -Michael
You inferred Mikey...do you ever stand up and admit to something?? Reach down and see if you have a set of testicles.. or are you just hiding behind the monitor like most cyber bullies?? If you don't want a response, keep my name out of your posts.
Couldn't agree more Gazzerman. If it is OK for Yahoo to charge $299 to "review" sites and add links to the ones accepted, why not for the rest of us? The real problem here is that Google must focus more on improving the algos to judge links by their relevance (relevance and quality of the content being linked to) instead of judging link quality by whether or not it was paid for!!!
No, I did not. I'm not kidding, you apparently cannot read. That's not even close to what I said. I mean, wtf... you don't even know what "inferred" means. -Michael
Try to grow a set mikey...not having a spine is very unappealing to all your female friends on myspace.... If you build a directory and charge and not accept every site then you will not have problems. This correlates to offline member based or professional societies in that they do not accept everyone. In a way these directories help Google by weeding out what looks like spam based sites. Next the algorithm cannot and will never be able to determine relevance. Why not?/ Algorithms are programmed instructions to follow. Algorithms have no ability do deduct, reason, conclude, think or any other process that would require anything other than following the instructions programmed. Again most of what Google publishes to webmasters or through their team of puppets is propaganda to inhibit webmasters from reverse engineering the algorithms and making it to the top of the organic results... Google is at war with webmasters and SEOs. Webmasters & SEOs are Googles enemy. Like any war Google makes use a systematic approach to keep the enemy confused and off balance. Google needs to broadcast lies fallacies and non-fact based content so that they can focus on Adwords which is where Google earns a majority of their income. It is in Googles own interest to allow sites to spam their organic serps occasionally... produce results that are only somewhat relevant. Organic results with highly relevant websites & blogs would render paid advertising useless within the Google revenue earning system. Don't believe the hype or propaganda! Down with Google puppets!!!!!
I think that kinda defines almost every SEO.. 50% of the process is black magic, the other 50% is dumb luck..
It must suck going through life not being able to understand what people are saying. You really should stay out of complex conversations like this one though, if simple concepts and language usage confuse you that much. Honestly, you're not contributing. Right, but as long as it doesn't make Google look bad, they really don't care. Their stock goes up either way. -Michael
Must suck going though life not having a spine, being bald, short, and a wimp, who lacks confidence and cannot own up to their tactics... But we'll late you ramble here with your old news posts if it makes your self esteem a bit higher. You posted some very very old news which was first brought to life in 2005 by that Google blogger (puppet) who you love to brown nose as much as possible.... Still have not figured out your fascination with Matt Cutts.... as its plainly obvious kissing his _ _ _ does nothing for rankings. I feel bad for the fact you cannot handle criticism with class.
The irony here Michael is that Google spawned the SEO generation.. They created the monster.. Now they seek to destroy it? Seems kinda counter productive to me... Either way, I was doing BH, GH, WH long before Google even existed.. Long before it was called SEO.. Long before anyone gave a rats ass about PR.... The goal was exposure.. Always has been.. Nothing wrong with a little self promotion. If you put up a shingle, you have to tell people about it, or they will never find you... Buying links is no different than buying add in the Yellow pages, making them bold, red, large, whatever.. paying for or multiple times for larger and higher exposure... I don't see the Yellow Pages banning businesses for buying listings in every category under the sun.. They gladly take your money... On the flip side, I see google as no different than the phone book..