SEO Spam Primer Featuring Key Insights From Major Search Engines

Found this really great video of SMX East (US Search Engine Optimisation Conference) session on SEO Spam on Search Engine Land. Nothing really new from my point of view. But a succinct introduction to tactics that will get you in trouble with search engines… If your search engine optimisation company recommends the things discussed in this video, fire them.

This video is a useful primer on SEO spam for anyone who isn’t familiar with the issues. And it offers great information on finding out if you have been penalised by search engines and what to do about it. But it also has significant value as an insight into big search engines’ assessment of sites and attitude to links.

Talking About SEO Spam Means Talking About What Search Engines are Looking For

Random quotes/notes, many of which are music to my ears, as an exponent of an “offer content that is of value to your target audience and the search engines will value it too” approach to SEO:

• Don’t “lose track of the user perspective” in building links — for Yahoo it isn’t about whether a link is paid but whether it is a value link that makes sense with respect to the content of the source and destination of the link… good links point your users to content they will value.
• Nathan Buggia of Live Search reminds people of the all-important search engine perspective on assessing the Web. A perspective too often lost in the discussion around obtaining search engine visibility –
  

  “Goal of a search engine is trying to find really great content and connecting people that want that content”

• Nathan again: “stay focused on creating good content” … ahem… content is… um… king!
• For Aaron D’Souza of Google site owners should concentrate on, “building great content that users are going to create the links for you” — that is, offer content that people will want to link to rather than get involved in trading links, etc.
• Aaron also reassures people that the removal of the suggestion that people submit their sites to online directories from Google’s Webmaster guidelines didn’t mean those links had been devalued. Seems it is about discouraging the plethora of low value directories. Removing the suggestion makes it harder for these directories to convince nieve site owners that investment in listings on their sites was an essential part of obtaining search visibility.
• Sean Suchter of Yahoo! Search talks about an approach to web content I would heartily endorse, suggesting site owners create content that has “timeless user value”. He cautioned against adopting the latest techniques based on SEO’s interpretation of the latest algorithm changes. Future algorithm changes will inevitably discount that content’s value… “What might work this year or this quarter might stop working at some near future point if it isn’t necessarily user focused.”

So it might be a session about what you shouldn’t do to get search engine rankings but it ends up being a powerful insight in what you should do.

Search Engine Optimiser or SEO Buyer This is Stuff Worth Knowing… Worth Watching

Watch it for that and a really interesting discussion around the issue of paid links and PageRank (Google’s measure of link popularity/site authority, Link Flux” for Yahoo! and “Static Rank” for Live Search) and whether search engine rankings should take account of big brands’ profile…

All sound a little geeky? Some of it is. SEO spam involves some tricks that take you to the border of geek world. But if you are trying to get search visibility or employing search engine optimisers, you should take a look. You will learn something.


SMX East 2008: What Is Spam? from Search Marketing Expo on Vimeo.

Junk Website Content Bad For Business

Dumbed-down website content so devoid of value it’s effectively junk can’t be good for the web. It’s definitely bad for anyone trying to build a respected business…

Sites like www.guru.com and www.elance.com demonstrate an alarming trend with respect to the value of website content. Their website content job listings are dominated by people offering $1-3 for 500 word articles. Why? A distorted view of an effective internet marketing tactic based on a quantity not quality-based search engine optimisation strategy.

The alarming thing is that these [irony] enlightened [/irony] internet marketers are not short of people, often from the Indian sub-continent, willing to produce [irony] articles [/irony] for them.

Three problems:

1. I can’t see how quality content can be the end result of these projects. So they simply add to the junk people have to wade through to reach quality content and waste search engine bandwidth as the engines try likewise to find the quality content.
2. The people producing the [irony] articles [/irony] are being exploited.
3. The overall value of website content is dragged down by an over supply of junk content.

Truly Alarming Disdain for Fair Pay, Copyright, etc.

The problem is epitomised by this Getafreelancer.com job posting requesting bids for 60 thousand word “articles” with a $250 budget.

“You can just use content from ezinesarticle, ehow or any famous articles site and rewrite it.”

Who would think $250 was a reasonable price for 60,000 words (half to two thirds of the latest novel from your favourite author) of content? Well. Twenty three bidders think, on the basis of an average bid, $172 is about right.

[irony] I s’pose, if all you need to do is copy others’ work…[/irony]

Why Would People think There Was Value in Exploitative Junk Website Content?

The demand that drives this sort of unhealthy scenario bastardises legitimate article marketing.

Rather than producing keyword savvy articles and distributing them to build links and demonstrate expertise beyond your own site. These internet marketers, often specifying keyword density, are adding little value to the Web’s content in their attempt to get search engine rankings via back link text. They may see some search engine visibility payback but spamming content sites with articles of dubious value devalues their brand and the payback won’t last…

Recent buzz about Google algorithm changes reducing weight attached to back link text are an indicator that, as with all spam tactics aimed to influence rankings falsely, the search engines will catch up with this.

Bottom line: better 10 articles that actually say something than 100 articles that just use words to create some space around keywords. Paying a few dollars for thousands of words smells a lot like your average sweatshop…

New & Noteworthy in Internet Marketing

Some comment-worthy stuff in the inbox & reader this morning:

• Cuil is the new Google challenger: the original search engine commentator, Danny Sullivan assesses the strength of the challenge in detail. Lots of buzz about this but no time to assess it today. The three column approach to displaying results is interesting, as is the use of images in results. Three column shoulds should help sites and searchers with more chance to win clicks. I’ll revisit this when the buzz dies down.
• Sound advice on writing with keywords from Karon Thackston of Marketing Words Copywriting Blog. Describing what you are not is a particularly good technique to remember — although I’ve often found people object to even the smell use of the word “cheap” adds to their copy. For me, the best guide is whether your copy sounds clunky as you read it aloud. If it does, you are overdoing the keyword repetition.
• I challenge you to read, social media expert, Chris Brogran’s 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice without being better informed about social media considerations. For me, the first one is always who is going to do the socialising and how much time do they have. No point even starting if you can’t sustain a target momentum*.

I kinda like Cuil’s three column results page but many are saying the results that fill the columns don’t match hyped relevance levels.
* Hmmm… not sure I am sustaining my target momentum with this blog. Very much a case of “do as I say not as I do.”