GPWA Times Magaine - Issue 23 - February 2013

By Paul Reilly n the constant battle to main- tain and improve your Google rankings, you may hear some words of advice from the al- mighty search engine. But keep in mind that the advice given is what they want you to hear, and is not always the absolute truth. Here are some answers to the questions you might be asking yourself after hearing some of the latest Google propaganda. Social signals . . . WTF? Do social signals impact ranks? Which social signals im- pact ranks? Which signals will gain more prominence (e.g., Google+ authorship)? I have seen no evidence to tie so- cial signals in with Google Search rankings. That said, user behavior, clickthroughs and Google Chrome feedback are all known factors. Ad- ditionally, Twitter’s use of URL shortening creates anchor text di- versity, which contributes to a trust- ed natural link profile. Google+ authorship isn’t (and per- haps wrongly) such an area of inter- est to me, due to the target of most of my search clients being transac- tional B2C phrases such as “online casino.” However, if you wish to build a personal brand as being an iGaming pundit, or B2B expert, then you’d be advised to link your G+ ac- count to your published work. How much of what Google publishes is meant to aid webmasters and how much is content with an agenda, such as scare tactics used to control webmaster behav- ior (e.g., widespread link warnings in Webmaster Tools)? As my friend and fellow SEO Ralph Tegt- meier puts it, these same tactics were used by the Gestapo in occupied France during WWII. A snitch box was installed in every town. Crowd sourcing information from the general population is nothing new and is incredibly effective. Yes, we are definitely seeing the follow- ing trends: • An increase in SEOs turning on each other and outing link buying • A notable increase in negative SEO activity • Increased communication between SEOs and Google Following the last two Google algorithm updates, Penguin and Panda, fear, uncer- tainty and doubt are at an all-time high. Several conspiracy theorists within the SEO industry blame the introduction of these updates and the “Notice of Unnatural Links Detected” as the cause of this in- creasingly widespread paranoia leading to a breakdown in the SEO’s code of honor. The secretive and sometimes murky SEO industry seems in some ways to have nu- merous parallels with the old Chicago Ma- fia story of Anthony Spilotro. After Spilotro had been sent to Vegas to run the Mafia casino operation, the FBI was un- able to prove his crimes and failed numer- ous times to catch him due to a strict code of silence. Spilotro was untouchable; he had witnesses, police and judges in his pocket and was able to slip the net time after time. Only when the FBI joined forces with the Las Vegas Police Department did they hatch a plan that would end with Spilo- tro’s removal from the casino skimming business. FBI and police used “fear, un- certainty and doubt” as a method to en- sure the Mob believed that Spilotro had become too risky and might turn on his bosses to save himself. This ultimately led to Spilotro’s Mafia bosses, back in Chicago, executing their own man and his brother. The bosses were left with no choice as Spilotro knew too much and had become their biggest threat. Using fear, uncertainty and doubt has his- torically been Google’s biggest method of plugging the gap in the failings of their own technology. I’ve noticed a huge increase in the use of PR and media when rolling out algorithm updates, which stepped up significantly when Panda v1 rolled out. Ironically, as an SEO, I noticed that their media communication was far from organic. It appeared from its scale and delivery to be driven by Google’s own press team. This is how Google cripples SEOs’ confidence and prevents them from manipulating their results. The effect is amplified by the nature of SEO and its inherent uncertainty because Google’s a black box. Can you spam and get away with it? Are there blackhat techniques that still work? If not blackhat, spam/advanced large- scale/whitehat? Certain types of redirects work to remove filters, but some redirect configurations actually trip a booby trap, which will turn your site into toast. Contrary to what white- hat purists may say, buying links does work but only when deployed correctly. Automa- tion is key for large-scale deliveries; we cur- rently extract and catalog over 10 million domains per day. We pull all their essential quality metrics and ensure that we deliver only quality sites in our client’s link profiles. There are, however, some functions which Deciphering today’s Google propaganda “Following the last two Google algorithmupdates, Penguin and Panda, fear, uncertainty and doubt are at an all-time high.” I Deciphering today’s Google propaganda 52