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What Would Homer Simpson Think of Penguin 2.0?

He wouldn’t. :-)

The long and short of it is Google is going after link-spam

It’s not as though we weren’t warned. Back in August, 2012 Google’s very own Matt Cutts told us this one’s going to be “jarring and jolting.” Even with ample warning, the black hat boys still didn’t have enough time to “get religion” and start doing SEO right.

Here at the office we like to frequent the black hat forums after big updates. It’s always good for a laugh. The SEO magicians, shaman, and witch-doctors of the world still can’t figure out how to do it right, mostly because they’re the sort of people who would step over a $1 bill to pick a fight with an 8-year-old over half a bag of gummy bears.

What does Google hate more than anything?

As far as we’re concerned, it’s

Link SPAM
Link SPAM, mostly
The answer is still link SPAM

Traditional SPAM is all about gaming systems. It’s a numbers game. If you mail a spammy offer to a big enough list often enough, you stand to make money as you bilk a certain number of real prospects out of their time (or money).

Using link spam to drive rankings on Google is a little different

It isn’t the same as spamming an “offer”, for one. Link-SPAM means posting an irrelevant link for a crawler to read. Spammers do this in hopes of getting Google to rank their sites higher, so they can use organic search traffic from Google to deliver their no-doubt irresistible offers.

Prospects don’t visit the sites marketers spam

But prospects visit Google, which is why people keep spamming. The fact is link spam still works. Why does it still work? Contrary to popular belief, Google isn’t all-knowing and all-powerful, and […]

By |June 7th, 2013|SEO, Uncategorized|16 Comments
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Penguin, Panda, Spam Query Changes Coming, says Matt Cutts

What does the future of SEO hold for Webmasters?
Matt Cutts has decided to share some upcoming release details as well as a tentative timeline in his latest webmaster video. We’re excited to see the changes he discusses in the video:

Penguin 2.0 (AKA Penguin 4)
Link spam is like a virus. That virus is rampant in local search queries all over the internet. Business owners, or webmasters wearing multiple hats, learn SEO by imitation. When they find the #1-#5 sites in their target queries have backlink profiles filled with directory and comment spam, they go out and use these same tactics on their sites. This isn’t a new issue, and it used to be that larger and higher competition terms experienced this same issue. Google’s done a increasingly better job over the last few years at targeting spam and eliminating sites that a ranking because of it. The problem has been that low domain authority sites haven’t really be impacted for their abusive link profiles. My hope is, that is all about to change.
Panda Softening
Panda was brutal for large and small businesses alike. If your site was targeted by Panda, your top earning pages all fell at once, with no warning, and no clear indication of what exactly the problem is. I’ve come to have different theories as to what exactly makes one site hit by Panda when another seemingly similar site wasn’t. Obviously, there aren’t many people in the world who can actually tell you, but their names start with Matt and Amit.

Panda needs to be softened. There are good sites, that were hit severely, that have taken significant and meaningful actions to recover but have never been able to. Panda shouldn’t entirely eliminate you from search traffic in middle ground cases. I’m […]

By |May 16th, 2013|SEO|3 Comments
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Magic Excel tips to save time and improve your data

Everyone here at Clicks and Clients can tell you I’m somewhat of an excel snob. I love excel, it can accomplish very complex tasks in a very short amount of time once you’ve become familiar with the some of the wonderful features and formulas it has. One of our common question we ask for new hire interviews is “On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your experience with excel”. The overwhelming majority of people rate themselves at a 6 or a 7. Let’s evaluate what a 1-10 scale of excel experience might look like if we rate individual experience with  the tabs in the ribbon. When you look at excel from the ribbon, many people realize just how much excel can do that they didn’t even realize. Most people who rank themselves at a 6 or 7 have never worked in the Developer tab and most likely only have very surface level formula experience. I think for most people it’s a matter of ignorance, they aren’t aware of the things excel can do but they have been successful with the simple tasks they have used excel for in the past so they rate themselves highly.

After reading this post, I hope you’ll find a few ideas you can use in excel to save yourself time and begin to enlighten you in the powerful features excel has that you can explore!

 
8 Excel Tips this SEO can’t live without
#1 Remove duplicates
Remove duplicates is one of the easiest and most common features I use in excel. In SEO, it’s a great way to clean up data. For example, when I perform keyword research, I often find I’ll use multiple tools to collect the keywords then I paste the keyword data into […]

By |May 2nd, 2013|SEO|1 Comment
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    Nine Things Every SEO Should Know About Reddit for Social Marketing

Nine Things Every SEO Should Know About Reddit for Social Marketing

If you work in the digital marketing arena, whether in SEO, Social Marketing or a similar field, chances are you’ve heard of Reddit. It is one of the most active and popular social gathering places on the web and the self-ascribed “Front Page of the Internet”.

For those who are unfamiliar with the site, let’s run through a quick crash course on how it works.

Reddit is divided into tons of different topics, called “subreddits”, many of which were created by users. Registered users can submit links, images and text content to a subreddit, which then becomes subject to the mercy of the masses, as the popularity of submissions is determined by “upvotes” and “downvotes” (similar to Digg).

The more upvotes a submission receives, the more exposure it gets on the site. Posts with the most upvotes will likely appear on the front page of the site, or at least the top of the subreddit in which it was submitted. Users can also comment on any of the posts, and each comment can also be upvoted or downvoted.

A point system is also in place, by which a running total of each user’s “Karma score”  for both submissions and comments is displayed for all to see. This creates an interesting competitive dynamic throughout the site. That’s about it for the basics of Reddit, but what about its popularity?

Despite its paltry 20-person staff and not yet having broken into the top 100 sites according to Alexa, Reddit is a social behemoth nonetheless, boasting more than 40 million registered users and roughly 400 million monthly unique visitors.

Links from Reddit posts are usually DoFollow (unless they only have one or zero upvotes), and the traffic through a popular post can sometimes […]

By |April 9th, 2013|SEO, Social Media Marketing|1 Comment
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Understanding the Risks of Bad SEO

At least once in your life, you’ve probably heard the age-old advice “measure twice, cut once.” Perhaps the most fundamental and well-known adage in the building industry, this short phrase is applicable in all realms of development. The moral therein simply encourages us to plan properly, do the job right and avoid shortcuts if we want the best results.

The SEO industry is no exception from this simple standard, yet there is no shortage of regrets amongst those who failed to heed such wisdom.

The digital marketing space moves at lightning speed, often accompanied by an ever-persistent pressure to accomplish myriad tasks as quickly as possible and stay a step ahead of the pack at all times. As a result, there exists a greater temptation to take shortcuts and automating the work seems more attractive. This slippery slope compounds the consequences even further when marketers resort to unethical, or “black hat” techniques.

Because Google is the primary channel leveraged by search marketers, we are obliged to follow the guidelines they’ve set forth for us, lest we endure penalties for violating them.

Good SEO practices (often referred to as “white hat”), if executed properly and with dedication, will yield positive results. Furthermore, the positive traction gained from good SEO will produce lasting results, more quality leads and higher conversion rates.

While it is also possible for automated tools and SEO shortcuts to produce seemingly similar effects, such results are nothing more than illusory returns with a flimsy foundation. Worse yet, these practices carry consequences that likely outweigh any of the marginal benefits gained.

The risks associated with bad SEO exist regardless of the level of knowledge possessed by the person conducting the digital marketing campaign. Unfortunately, this means that many well-intentioned […]

By |March 28th, 2013|Uncategorized|0 Comments
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