I posted this in another thread, but I wanted to post it for more people to see. Over the last 6 months SEO has drastically changed as we all know. The times of getting first page rankings by blasting links to your site are all but over. It is time to change your mindset and embrace the new changes.
So what is SEO all about now? One word - Authority! We used to have a blueprint, and honestly it got really easy to game Google's algorithm. Build links with heavy anchor text. Try to get as many as possible. Basically that was it. Not anymore. The game is much more sophisticated now. Although backlinks are still a big part of the algorithm, they have been drastically diminished in their value. It is all about authority now.
Anyone who has a good SEO tool can see this. Just reverse engineer the top ten competitors and you will see. Here is just one example.
This is for the keyword "Mini Split" which is one of the top keywords in one of my niches.
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Notice how 3 of the top ten sites have zero links pointing to the target page, and the rest have very little?
Now check this out:
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This is the number one guy. Notice how not one of the links uses the anchor text "Mini Split".
Don't believe me? Try it out for yourself (using Market Samurai Competition Module by the way). Obviously there is going to be exceptions. Remember this is Google we are dealing with, but I can only hypothesize that eventually a large part of the index will start looking like this. Google essentially is telling Webmasters to fuck off.
If you didn't read the recent interview with an Ex Google employee, here are some interesting tid bits from the article:
Question 5. What are common trends you looked for to determine a spammy link profile?
There are a good few elements taken into account here, like how many links are there in total? A very important one; what is the quality of the pages they come in from? Do the pages look real or are they just there to host the links? What anchors are used? The commercial vs. non commercial ratio of the anchors. In reality its very easy to recognise a blackhat profile, all you have to do is imagine what anchors would have been used if the linking happened completely naturally and compare it with what is going on in reality. Anyone can do it, just think logically and keep in mind which keywords convert to money.
Question 7. What are 3 off site (link building) tactics that you recommend?
Off site link building has dramatically changed since the recent updates. Anything that you can do automatically or at scale putts your website at risk. So keep the following in mind; Link building has changed from an almost purely technical process into something that resembles a relationship management campaign. Building a network with owners of sites that are related to yours for example. If your website is about cheese production, reach out to people in the milk industry, like I mentioned before, relevance is the new PR. Second, dont dismiss directories completely. I have heard people talking about directories being altogether bad and advise people to avoid them. This is not the case, good quality, moderated directories, or niche directories are still worth looking in to. Third, to stay focussed on quality of pages linking in to you, Google judges your link profile by the quality of pages linking to your site, getting 3 links from authentic pages will do much more than 1000 links from splogs, so invest your time into getting quality, not quantity.
So in conclusion, what can we do? Build authority sites with good content. Stop building garbage. Build relevant links. Make your anchor text profile as natural looking as possible.
That's all I got.
So what is SEO all about now? One word - Authority! We used to have a blueprint, and honestly it got really easy to game Google's algorithm. Build links with heavy anchor text. Try to get as many as possible. Basically that was it. Not anymore. The game is much more sophisticated now. Although backlinks are still a big part of the algorithm, they have been drastically diminished in their value. It is all about authority now.
Anyone who has a good SEO tool can see this. Just reverse engineer the top ten competitors and you will see. Here is just one example.
This is for the keyword "Mini Split" which is one of the top keywords in one of my niches.
Notice how 3 of the top ten sites have zero links pointing to the target page, and the rest have very little?
Now check this out:
This is the number one guy. Notice how not one of the links uses the anchor text "Mini Split".
Don't believe me? Try it out for yourself (using Market Samurai Competition Module by the way). Obviously there is going to be exceptions. Remember this is Google we are dealing with, but I can only hypothesize that eventually a large part of the index will start looking like this. Google essentially is telling Webmasters to fuck off.
If you didn't read the recent interview with an Ex Google employee, here are some interesting tid bits from the article:
Quote:
Question 5. What are common trends you looked for to determine a spammy link profile?
There are a good few elements taken into account here, like how many links are there in total? A very important one; what is the quality of the pages they come in from? Do the pages look real or are they just there to host the links? What anchors are used? The commercial vs. non commercial ratio of the anchors. In reality its very easy to recognise a blackhat profile, all you have to do is imagine what anchors would have been used if the linking happened completely naturally and compare it with what is going on in reality. Anyone can do it, just think logically and keep in mind which keywords convert to money.
Quote:
Question 7. What are 3 off site (link building) tactics that you recommend?
Off site link building has dramatically changed since the recent updates. Anything that you can do automatically or at scale putts your website at risk. So keep the following in mind; Link building has changed from an almost purely technical process into something that resembles a relationship management campaign. Building a network with owners of sites that are related to yours for example. If your website is about cheese production, reach out to people in the milk industry, like I mentioned before, relevance is the new PR. Second, dont dismiss directories completely. I have heard people talking about directories being altogether bad and advise people to avoid them. This is not the case, good quality, moderated directories, or niche directories are still worth looking in to. Third, to stay focussed on quality of pages linking in to you, Google judges your link profile by the quality of pages linking to your site, getting 3 links from authentic pages will do much more than 1000 links from splogs, so invest your time into getting quality, not quantity.
So in conclusion, what can we do? Build authority sites with good content. Stop building garbage. Build relevant links. Make your anchor text profile as natural looking as possible.
That's all I got.