Comments for SEO by the Sea

Comment on Google Patent Granted on Fresh Related Search Suggestions by G

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:11:05 +0000

Thanks Bill for your tireless efforts in finding info that helps us better understand the behemoth of search… and the tiddler of taxpayers.
@Paul – I agree with you and your comment got me thinking… if I was a search engine I’d be inclined to use my News algos for jobs.
@All is that such a dumb idea, am I missing something obvious about why they wouldn’t?

Comment on How Google May Rank Web Sites Based on Quality Ratings by Carl

Carl — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:47:43 +0000

Even 10 years ago, the basic principle was the same – everything need to be perfect from planning to implementation. Sure, nowadays there are many more factors that matters, but again same evergreen strategies apply and mostly it is always related to proper business model and understanding the audience.

Comment on How Google May Rank Web Sites Based on Quality Ratings by Juan Castillo

Juan Castillo — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:07:59 +0000

Great article,Bill. What I see is that Google has dramatically changed the way they rank pages. What worked in the past does not work now. I agree with Mark when he says: “I think people spend too much time looking for link opportunities and not enough time optimizing their sites for better performance and quality.”. I could add “don’t be over-aggressive with link building.”

Comment on Bill’s Most Excellent Top 10 SEO Rules by Heather

Heather — Wed, 22 May 2013 07:37:27 +0000

Thanks for the advice Bill. I just started learning how to attack SEO for my company and reading this helps out a lot. CHEERS!

Comment on How Google Decides What to Know in Knowledge Graph Results by Rob

Rob — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:24:53 +0000

Bill — care to speculate about the relationship between Knowledge Graph / Panels and Schema.org?

Comment on Avoiding Misinformation While Learning from Search Related Patents by Carl

Carl — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:09:18 +0000

In the past Matt Cutts have thrown so much misleading information that I can publish a book about that. Now recent question that he answer are as useful as “ashtray on a motorbike”. Watch and read official source, but have always something in mind that things are not as it look and no so much straightforward.

Comment on How Google May Rank Web Sites Based on Quality Ratings by Rajat Garg

Rajat Garg — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:11:24 +0000

I am pretty sure Google Analytics and factors like Bounce rate, previous clicks etc are already being used to personalize the results already but using those + other factors mentioned in article will make a lot of sense going forward.

So called SEOs need to up their game!

Comment on How Google May Rank Web Sites Based on Quality Ratings by Ingo Bousa

Ingo Bousa — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:34:44 +0000

And still no-one is talking about the best metric to measure the integrity of a site/blog: The absence of advertising. Would I trust an ‘advertising-free’ blog more than one that offers ‘promoted posts’? I sure would. But how do I actually know?

All of private blogs don’t have advertising on them. I don’t do advertising. Mainly because I don’t need to make money from blogging [and I also can't be bothered]. No Adwords, no stupid blinking banners, no sneaky in-content links.. it’s a question of integrity and probably it’s also me saying “You know what? You CAN’T buy everything. Put that in your pipe”. It’s also a logical response to the frequent paid link requests that I get, the great majority of them very arrogant and impersonal. Why would I do business with you if you make me feel like your possible servant right from the start?

But I do have some do-follow text links in my side bar that point to friend’s websites. Now, the problem is that no algorithm in the world could tell if these links are paid for or given by merit. You just can’t tell. Now, do I need to no-follow these links to make it crystal clear to Google that I am ‘clean’? No way. Why would I do that? It’s my site and I give links by merit.

I noticed that during the last PageRank update my blog went from PR2 to PR3. Did I acquire lots of new valuable links during the previous 6 months? No I didn’t. Plus Google UK dropped my blog for about 3 month down to #48 for my exact-match brand keyphrase. When it finally returned to the top of the UK SERP for my brand name it had a PR of 3.

But ‘clever’ Google also started ranking a site that owns the .com version of my brand name right behind me. It’s a site that sells fake handbags and has all possible spam links pointing to it. As long as I see that site ranking directly behind me, I know that Google still can’t [or won't] drop low quality EMDs.

Google must be desperate to get away from links as main quality and authority signals because nothing is easier to game than a link-based algorithm. Always has been, always will be. It just got a bit harder and more expensive.

My guess: Google is preparing to collect the majority of its ranking and quality signals from Google+, Blogger, Google Analytics, Google Friend Connect, Google Glass. Not now, but maybe in 3-5 years. They are in it for the long run. This is just the beginning.