You’d think that “perfect” things would be valued, right? But news flash! None of us is perfect, no matter how hard we try. Really.
And spiders know that about us wily humans. They have a filter in their algorithm that says… “Hey wait! This is too perfect and humans are nowhere near as smart as us, so Ehhh!!! This page is being manipulated to make us think humans can be perfect. As if that would ever happen.”
What classifies as over-optimization?
One thing that’s a dead giveaway is keyword stuffing. If your keyword density is unusually high, that’s just a red flag. Don’t let it get over about 2%, three at the very highest.
Something else that will get your site dropping like a stone in the results is duplicate content. If you put an article on the front of your site, and the same thing hidden somewhere inside and you see that your site took a nosedive in the SERPs (search engine results pages)… that’s the problem! Spiders sniff that stuff out like bad Limburger cheese — easily.
And never use hidden text to get every one of your 500 keywords into the page. Dumb move! Spiders can’t see color. They see your text that isn’t hidden to them and they’ll know that you just added a list of keywords that have no value. Duh.
Here’s the thing… continue reading »
I was over at SEO Book, reading Aaron Wall’s post from June 16, entitled “Expert SEO Testing: Usually Worthless,” and was surprised to learn that rel=”nofollow” no longer works. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson, admitted that was true at the recent SMX Conference.
So, Wall linked to Danny Sullivan’s post “Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting,” which made me curious. So I went over to Danny’s blog, which explains the situation in much clearer detail.
Page rank sculpting is the practice of adding “no follow” to links going to your overhead pages, like your privacy page, your terms of service, or other pages that you don’t want ranked in the search results. It used to be that if you had 10 units of page rank and each link on your page was worth 1, when you added “no follow” to 5 of those links, they would transfer their page rank to the remaining links, right? So, then, each of the bare links would be worth 2.
What Matt Cutts is telling everyone now is that “no follow” no longer transfers page rank to the bare links. So, basically, by using no follow, you’re merely wasting PR. The “no follow” links will be worth zero, but the bare links will still only be worth 1.
I should say, “Is,” because apparently, this has been true for about a year and nobody noticed.
Great.
If you’re using “no follow,” don’t run around trying to change the links back to bare links. It’s not worth the time and effort. Just understand that you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time.
Why did Google decide to institute the practice in the first place? Basically, to stop blog comment spamming, and yet, it didn’t really stop anything, so it “no follow” means “bupkiss.” It’s like the keywords META tag. Another useless convention.
Put your time into more important things like developing good, unique content and solid keyword research. Those should always pay off. I say, “should,” because there’s just no accounting for the whim of the Google ghods.
Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s happening, and try not to get caught up in the fads or fancies. Nobody truly knows the algorithm but Google, and they’re changing it all the time. Even the few people who claim to know it probably have no 100% clear idea.
I really enjoy working with search engines and all that it entails, and I’ve come to learn lots of little tricks and tons and tons of interesting information that’s been helpful both to me and to my clients.
But there are other things about SEO that people sometimes put blinders on about. First, they think that SEO is mysterious and too complicated, so rather than study it themselves, they hire people, like me, to help them with it. That’s cool. It’s what I do. What I love, and it pays well.
But over the past couple of years, I’ve learned that before taking on any client, I need to be upfront with them about some things…
Caveats of SEO
The first thing I tell people is that SEO is fluid. What works today may get you penalized tomorrow. For example, people were buying and selling links for a long time. It was great for the buyers because it helped them to get more traction with the search engines, and it helped the sellers earn some income.
But a few months ago, the Google hammer came down and smacked just about everyone doing so, including yours truly. I had a PR4 blog for eons, until Google saw my one, tiny little link that earns very little, and I could easily abandon it. But I’m a loyal person and I just won’t boot my advertiser because he/she has been on board here for many moons. It must be a link that works for them, so I won’t take that away.
The next thing I tell clients is that just because you spend time and money on SEO, that doesn’t guarantee that the strategy will work. I mean, I never provide a plan for someone, unless I’ve had experience with the system and know that it’s worked for other people. But… niches are quirky. What works in one niche, might not work in another. I mean, chances are very good that it will, but SEO doesn’t come with guarantees.
Case in point: I had a fitness client, and I did quite a bit of work for him. I set him up with a links page and did a lot of stuff that was working well two years ago. Then, boom! Google changes its algorithm and life as we knew it in the SEO world changed with it. My client was furious! His site like plummeted, and he couldn’t understand why. Owie. That was bad, and why I always go out of my way to explain that these things could happen before they pay me a dime.
Page Rank Doesn’t Matter
The third thing I explain is that page rank doesn’t really matter. Just because you see a PR5 on your Google toolbar, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your page is a PR5. Google changes their rankings all the time, but they only update the toolbar once per quarter.
That one almost cost me a job a while back. I had worked on a site for months, trying to build it to where it would show PR to appease the client, but the toolbar just kept showing a PR0. Then, after about 6 months, BINGO! PR5, first time out of the gate.
What really matters is where your page is appearing in the SERPs (search engine results pages). That’s all. You can have a PR10 and still won’t get traffic to your website, if you’re on page 8 of the results, right? That’s what matters — positioning. Where will your site fall on the results pages for the keywords appropriate to your niche? That’s all that matters. You don’t get any gold stars for having a PR anything. It looks cool on the toolbar, maybe, but that’s about it.
And finally, I explain the Brad Fallon rule that “SEO isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon.” And that’s what it is.
A good SEO system takes hours and hours of effort, and it takes consistency. You have to write in your blog every day. You have to write articles every week. You have to collect links back from top-notch directories and websites — one-way links whenever possible. You have to comment on blogs for that reason, and post in forums.
YOU HAVE TO BE A STRONG PRESENCE ON THE WEB.
Period.
You have to use every tool available, and you have use them on a regular schedule. I mean, just grab your Oulook calendar or even a paper desk calendar, like I use, and write the things in that you need to do. Monday, post in my blog. Tuesday, submit and article and post in my blog, Wednesday, make a video and post in my blog, and so on.
And then, when Google decides to change an algorithm, it won’t hurt so bad. You’ll have tons of resources shoring up your listing and you can make the needed adjustments and keep cranking!
Just don’t think that you can write an article here, write in a blog once every three months, and get tons of crappy directory links. That won’t help you.
SEO is a system. Set it up and just keep working it. It will pay off… in time.
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