They posited that Google is  dumbing down its algorithm in favor of seo companies that are able to blast their way to the top results of the search engines by virtue of creating spammy links towards their competitors.

See Below:

Pixelgrinder and I conducted a little experiment on whether negative seo was possible in the current climate – we felt it was important to know whether it was possible for a site to be negatively affected completely by outside influences. This experiment was not done with the knowledge or consent of TrafficPlanet.com owners/admin/moderators.
We carried out a massive scrapebox blast on two sites to ensure an accurate result. The two sites we chose and the reasons we chose them are as follows:

seofaststart.com (Dan Thies)

1. He has received a direct response from Matt Cutts on Twitter, so if we were able to affect his site he is more likely than most to get the ear of the right person and show google what can be done (https://twitter.com/#!/danthies/statuses/180389475497676801)

2. A self proclaimed “seo guru” (Hi, I’m Dan Thies. Although I’m best known as the “keyword guru,” I’ve been practicing, studying and teaching advanced search engine marketing strategy and tactics for several years http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/) – it should be harder than most to affect the site of an “seo guru”.

3. If it works, he should be smart enough to profit from all of the publicity he would get out of it.

4. He already has several domains 301d to seofaststart.com without penalty (not a white hat tactic) – we were wondering if he had been ‘protected’ in some way.

5. He is a suck-up-brown-noser, smugly bad mouthing everyone and crowing that “many pants are being pooped and it’s long overdue” – we don’t like him.

negativeseo.me

1. They are selling services for negative seo under the tagline “destroy your competitors”.

Rankings Before (22nd March):

seofaststart.com
dan thies – number 1
seo – number 11
seo service – number 34
seo book – number 3

negativeseo.me
negative seo – number 2
destroy your competitiors – number 1

Timeline:

15th March – Dan Thies posts smug tweets to Matt Cutts and pisses off the entire internet.

18th March – seofaststart.com – blog posts started – anchor text “seo” “seo service” and “seo book”

22th March – seofaststart.com – 1 million scrapebox blast started – 100% anchor text “Dan Thies”

24th March – negativeseo.com – 1 million scrapebox blast started – 100% anchor text “destroy your competitors”

26th March – Dan Thies posts in Twitter that he has received an unnatural links message.

Note: 18th March – seofaststart blog posts started. This was NOT US. We had previously decided that it would be risky to ‘out’ the blogs that links were getting placed on and agreed not to include blog posts in our experiment. We don’t know who did this, how many links they built or what network/s they used. We discovered these links in ahrefs and have estimated that about 5000 links where built, probably with ALN between the 18th-23rd March.

Ranking After (18th April) note rankings are still jumping a little:

seofaststart.com
dan thies – number 1 (still number 1)
seo – not in top 1000 (down from number 11)
seo service – not in top 1000 (down from number 34)
seo book – number 34 (down from number 3)

negativeseo.me
negative seo – number 6 (down from number 2)
destroy your competitiors – number 13 (down from number 1)

Other stuff of interest right now:

ahrefs seofaststart.com (notice how few of our 1 million scapebox links have shown up!)
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks/subdomains/www.seofaststart.com

ahrefs negativeseo.me (notice how few of our 1 million scrapebox links have shown up!)
https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks/subdomains/www.negativeseo.me

Dan Thies begging on google groups
https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/chit-chat/Azfly-iRtLs

Our personal message to Matt Cutts/Google: 

Negative SEO is possible. Sort it out!

Our personal message to Dan Thies:

Next time you want to smugly throw your holier than thou 2 cents into the ring, think before you speak. Every backlink to your site was analyzed before starting this. Don’t think those 301d domains hide what you are doing because they don’t – you are the same as the rest of us – your methods for link bait are, in fact, worse than some of the ‘spammers’ you so often refer to. Now your pants are being pooped and it’s long overdue

….. thanks!

Source: HERE

The post has become a wide hit in the world of internet marketing, and following Google’s over-optimization penalty this has gone the way of creating a trend that is nowadays brought out by the changes Google churned out.

So right now we are not just going to be concerned with creating high quality links, we are also going to be concerned with making sure to report some un-natural links created towards our clients which would require us to have a really powerful backlinks checker.

To note as of current time seofaststart.com is still down with its rankings:

 dan thies – 1 (only this has retained its original position)

seo – not in top 100

seo service – 43

seo book – not in top 100

My Take On This:

I personally don’t believe with negative seo until I stumbled upon this study. My initial response before was that Google will just ultimately de-index all the un-natural links created to the website involved, followed by the experience of build my rank and other similar services. Perhaps I trusted Google too much when it comes to making a website rank. But if there’s one thing to be proven when it comes to all this it is only that Google is really not helping at all with regards to spammy links and its effects.

Perhaps when Google was sending the un-natural links message they were also trying to determine where those links came from but at the same time they are not sure if those links are either created by you or not. Either way there has yet to be any reply from Matt Cutts with regards to this, and while Rand Fishkin has offered his own websites as targets it was also deemed an unfair study to begin with, being that because he named the urls they wouldn’t qualify as an experimental group.

It has been said that the future of search relies on local search results. With that being said social signals as well as IP proximity are the key components in making a google place rank along with other factors such as relevance, reviews, etc.

But something very interesting came up when Google offered their “trusted photographers” to cover your business photos.

Here’s their selling point:

1.Select a Trusted Photographer
Google provides you with a list of Trusted Photographers in your area. Simply call or email a photographer to get started today.
2.Schedule a photo shoot
Trusted Photographers will work with you to schedule a convenient time and determine a fair price for your photo shoot.
3.View your images online
Within days, your business’ imagery will be available on Google properties. Start attracting more customers from around the world.

Contentions

Now with this offer by Google the next question should be what is the added advantage when one utilizes Google’s trusted photographers?

Would it be:

A. More authority in the eyes of Google Images?
B. Higher rankings for Google Places?
C. High Authority Links from their trusted photographers’s websites?

It is very interesting too that Google offers this service as a paid venture.

One would surely tell themselves, if a photographer/photo of a business place is affiliated with Google and one paid for that then the expected returns must be great!

But wouldn’t that be just as simple as buying a link from Google?

Also what is the difference between another person’s picture as opposed to Google’s trusted photographers picture?

With that being said I would like to know how Google chooses its very own trusted photographers.

Now the next curious thing that I would like to point out is when you visit the trusted photographers website you can see that some of them have as their Google Business Photos portfolios the anchor text of the places page
(ex:,) and here’s the catch, these links are oftentimes than not a do-follow link and sometimes has a page rank of four.

Nonetheless Google stated:

What is the relationship between a Trusted Photographer and Google?
Trusted Photographers are independent contractors/businesses that are not employed by Google, agents of Google or affiliated with Google in any way. Google has certified them because they meet Google’s standards of quality for taking the feature pictures and panoramic pictures, uploading them, moderating them and eventually publishing them on Google properties.

So honestly what gives?

The way I see it, it all boils down to the business’s value for money and how much a business would like to be as close as possible to Google’s good graces.

Recently (AMA) closed its doors to new clients brought upon by the massive witch-hunt practiced by Google against Link Networks.
To note AMA is a paid service where one has the ability to place their spun contents with their links in the AMA system wherein it is automatically generated and offered for publication to its huge network of users.

What’s the difference between AMA and Build My Rank?

AMA is manually edited, wherein subscribers have the power to approve of your article while others have the power to just manually remove you from their content offers.

While BMR is using its own content network “to game” Google’s algorithm regardless of how much trash the content is.

I personally emailed them and received the following response:

AMA remains in a very strong position despite the recent Google changes that has brought down many blog networks. Put blunty, we are monitoring our sites’ index rates every 24-48 hours and they have not been impacted at all.
AMA is unique in the “blog network” market (along with places like UAW), in the sense that it is and always has been community driven.
It is not a “link market”, it’s a place to connect site owners and content distributors, and because of this, we believe AMA will remain untouched (if this changes, we will tell you).
It’s simple. AMA still works. Google are targeting networks which confirms one thing. Networks work. And they work too well. But this targeting, it’s being done by manual intervention.

Fortunately Daniel Turner gave a thorough explanation of the events HERE

Now given the business model of AMA what can Google do to make them suffer? Will they de-index all the links that was created via their network? Given that those networks are virtually similar to auto-blogging sites albeit the only different thing is the manual approval of each content?

What prompted AMA to close their doors? And state in their website: “But this targeting, it’s being done by manual intervention”?

Will Google manually target each and every member of AMA’s blogging network?

Why AMA Will Remain And Stand The Test Of Time

The responsibility of AMA with its users lies solely on the strength of its network of sites and the reliability of their members. Also what I like most about AMA was that they were man enough to admit that they have to close their doors to newer members in light of the current Google Witch Hunt.

AMA will stand the test of time because it works alongside Google’s policies of content is king, and despite “the gaming” factor involved which is the offshoot of the content network itself it should not be misconstrued or identified with other blogging networks that were penalized by Google.

Recently Google has been sending mixed signals with their capability to penalize websites by virtue of their links.

Until buildmyrank.com’s network was deindexed and they were forced to close their doors.

But before anything else let us first define what is being de-indexed means and what is an unnatural link, because by this it would logically follow that perhaps creating spammy links towards your competitor will result to their being de-indexed.

Being de-indexed means that your website has violated Google’s terms of service (which by the way changes like the weather in iceland) resulting to being relegated to the dustbin of search (either disappearing from the search engine results pages or just plain panda slapped where all your rankings go to the 30th page of Google.

While an unnatural link may be referred to as the unusual growth of the number of incoming links to your website (say around 50,000 xrumer profile signature blast).

Now the ultimate question is, why did Google have to email those 700k webmasters from all over the world just to inform them that their site has unnatural links?

Are they really looking out for the welfare of the website? Because last I heard they automatically disabled my adsense before informing me that there was a problem.

Also the way their email was worded spells more of a threat rather than a sincere interest in helping the webmaster.

The most interesting part of the letter which I think one should be curious of is the last part where it says: “If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.”

Now what is it in their forum that can help you when Google can’t even help itself determine where your links come from?

The scenario is riveting if not utterly (excuse the term) stupid. Google goes out de-indexing sites voted as a potential gamer of their algorithm to rank other websites and eventually (or perhaps) add it to their terms of service.

So ultimately the final question remains is Google going to penalize websites that has “unnatural looking links?”

Can you practically create thousands of spammy links overnight and pull your competitors ranking down?

I’ve always believed that it isn’t so.

Google can’t do that unless a handful say another 700k webmasters points to your website as a “Google Algorithm Gamer”

Because links whatever you call it might just get de-indexed but they are still literally links.

The question one should ask is whether those unnatural links created even count in Google’s algorithm, and in my experience even spammy looking blogs still has a potential to be spidered by Google.

Now going back to the issue of buildmyrank.com we must consider the fact that it is their networks that were de-indexed ergo the links created there wouldn’t matter. How they will revive those networks will be something worth studying, yet it goes to say that a link no matter how spammy it is, is still a link as long as its indexed.

But anyway this study seems too biased in favor of link-building let us hear what Google has to say about link-building:

Links intended to manipulate PageRank
Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank (source: HERE)

Simply put It just means basically that any link that you create breaks this rule!

Now, with that said, here is what Google gives us as the solution:
“The best way to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?”
Now, if that is the only way and no active link building can be done, in a pure self regulating market, it simply means this:
The big guys with the biggest marketing budget win, the little guys will never have a chance.
How can they?
They have no way to actively promote their site to gain some momentum for other places to pickup their amazing content.
And if they do actively promote their site, they run the risk of being banned or removed from Google. (source: HERE)

But wait how about what Google says about Negative SEO?

What is negative SEO? Active link building to a competitor’s site to deliberately negatively influence their rankings.
Google have always followed the mantra of “no external link shall ever negatively affect your rankings in Google” (they also said in 2009 that over optimization of SEO would never negatively affect it as well but hey, times, they are a changin!)

The theory was (and used to be) how could an external link negatively affect a sites rankings when all a competitor needs to do is go out of their way to link bomb (in a very specific way, no I’m not telling you how) your site?

Well, to understand this, let’s take a look in their support area back towards the end of last year, where they said was part of their “guidelines”:

“Can competitors harm ranking?
There’s nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.”

Then, in November, it got “slightly” modified… just a TINY fraction too:

“Can competitors harm ranking?
There’s ALMOST nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.”

Wow, what a difference one word can make! So hang on, saying “almost nothing” means “can”, no matter which way you spin it.

Then on March 14th, they caved.

“Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you’re concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don’t control the content of these pages.”
In case you missed it, the key difference is in that first line:

From “nothing” to “almost nothing” to “perfect political answer” (source: HERE)

What can we learn from this?

Let me know your thoughts.

P.S.

I would like to share a really good video by Sir Benj Arriola on Link Building

Step 1 – Article Added
To get started, you would either write an article of at least 150 words or hire one of our writers to complete the task. For every 150 words you can insert 1 backlink to your website with the anchor text of your choosing.

Step 2 – Article Published
We publish your article randomly on 1 of our high page rank, aged domains. You control how many articles are published daily for each of your domains.

Step 3 – Backlinks Created
Once your article is published we first create an RSS feed of the article and submit to various feed aggregators such as FeedAgg, Feedage, and countless others. Not only does this help articles get indexed rapidly, but it’ll also drive some backlinks to your article from other sites.
Next we submit your article to a random selection of social bookmark sites and web 2.0 sites. These backlinks help add extra link juice and added indexing speed.

Step 4 – Index Monitoring
After your article is published, we’ll start checking to see if it has been indexed after 3 days. In many cases, articles are indexed in just a few hours or a day or so. Nonetheless, if an article isn’t indexed after 3 days, we’ll build additional backlinks to it and take extra steps to get it indexed so that you can benefit from every article you submit. (source: HERE)

Relatively they are doing their SEO well and right as such that they even approach their link-building in a drip-feed format, it has no difference with having a blog network where guest posting is practiced. Now the ultimate question is why did they fold-up? Why do they need to fold up? What made them fold up?

Apparently Google sent 700k emails to webmasters back in January 2011 an example of the letter is stipulated below:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.domain.com/,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team (source: HERE)

Because of this Google was able to determine what websites are practically selling links and de-index them.

As with any link-building network, some de-indexing activity is expected and ours has been within a permissible range for the past two years. Unfortunately, this morning, our scripts and manual checks have determined that the overwhelming majority of our network has been de-indexed (by Google), as of March 19, 2012. In our wildest dreams, there’s no way we could have imagined this happening. (source: HERE)

But they are not alone, according to other sources Google is now targeting other websites such as seolinkmonster and other network sites that applies the same methods in linkbuilding.

What Can We Learn From This?

Recently Google is targeting over-optimized sites (source: HERE) and from what we can deduce from our research Google is also targeting sites that has the following:

1. Google de-indexes sites that has lots of outbound links, though I am not sure how high the number of outbound links is, I am still under the impression that any website regardless of authority can still be de-indexed if it would seem that it is being used for making other websites rank.
2. Google has no idea where links are being placed to make a website rank because if the above theory were true, the same method could be used to un-rank competitor websites and have them penalized by Google. Therefore it is logical to assume that Google is practically helpless in checking the backlinks of sites so they have to rely on other methods like Google Panda to determine if the site is indeed a reliable site or just being used for making another website rank which makes perfect sense if it would mean having more related and credible search results. Ergo Good websites should be indexed better and bad link-assisting websites be penalized. (see: HERE)

He’s been a linkbuilder for an SEO company for a year already and he want’s to go up the SEO ladder and have a higher salary.

And because I believe that this dilemma applies to other disciplines of SEO (on-page optimizers, social media, Online Reputation Management, etc) I decided to publish this for everyone to learn from, given my years in the internet marketing industry.

Aim For Mastery

Sure you are a linkbuilder but the lingering question is for how long?

Either you can aim to become the best linkbuilder there is or get to know the reason why you are doing it and aim for a higher ambition that is being a more technical linkbuilder. By that it means not just mastering what you’ve been doing all these years but basically being able to expose yourself in all the facets of linkbuilding.

It is not what you know it is what you don’t know that you’re able to know that makes you a better candidate for a higher position.

Recognize Changes In Doing SEO

Again just like linkbuilding and other disciplines in internet marketing YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY to be well informed of the updates of Google. Basically in truth we are all a slave to Google so one way of being ahead of the game is keeping yourself abreast of the recent changes in the game.

It is the only way you can leverage yourself in the world of internet marketing because you know what you are doing and you’re sure that this is what works and because there is no recognized body in the country that certifies SEO’s (Though this has been my fervent dream) you have no other choice but to self study. (if you need more information on this drop me an email)

Impute Value

One way of imputing value in yourself is being able to walk the talk. In this regard I highly suggest that you own a website, by doing this you already answered the question to be thrown at you by your potential employer even before you open your mouth.

You should be able to do the following:

1. Make a page rank in Google
2. Explain the steps you made in doing so
3. Write an article if you can’t write a good article learn it asap.
4. Explain how linkbuilding works and where you get your links.
5. (Optional) You should know how to use SEO tools.

Ask The Right Questions And Join SEO Groups

The usual question I get to encounter is not what is SEO but when will you know if you’re really one?

Because there’s no governing body (although a lot of groups) in the country that controls the quality of SEO’s by means of accreditation you have no other choice but to resort to your experience aside from learning a lot from other SEO forums.

So join groups and ask questions, no matter how stupid you think it is just ask away and I’m very sure there will be a lot of SEO’s that will be more than willing to help you.

There Is A Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Internet Marketing is a growing industry and despite its imperfection (in connection to how our country views it) it offers a variety of career paths that you can take advantage of. Trust me, we are only scratching the surface of the entire Internet Marketing industry and we have yet to discover its true potential.

You see I am not proud to admit that I built the website from scratch, I could safely say that 90 percent of its content is original and well written save from the occasional exchange posts from my advertisers but needless to say the links albeit not much natural (snickers) MOST of them are natural to the extent where my website became a small hub of traffic and I was getting my fair share of the keyword produce.

That was until Google decided to take advantage of brands instead of small websites, and while ironically it is against the SOPA and the PIPA I can’t help but assume that by rolling out Google Panda it advertently became its progenitor.

I was asked a question by a good SEO acquaintance of mine he asked what is the state of SEO in 2012? While I may have love to point him (if only there was a computer near us I would just give him the link to SEOmoz but then life isn’t that perfect)

I told him bluntly that the state of SEO nowadays is going down the drain, not short of being shitty but really all websites (and mostly new ones) are in a state of limbo.

He asked why, I told him I believe Google has to admit that it failed to really stop spam even after rolling out panda, all it did was to push web owners in the illusionary idea that the only way they can survive in the ranking department is to have a solid SEO company to back them up or else if they want to be in the branded top ten they have no other choice but to do PPC.

Bottomline is what Google wants is that all ranking efforts be handled by “professionals” that works within the confines of Googles guidelines. Which brings my friend to his next question:

If you have a website how would you make it rank?

I told him that before the age of domain matters but now the freshness of the website is the one that matters, it is not a question of which is which rather what works right now after panda.

So my thoughts are these, should one focus on creating links? Or should one focus on creating good content? And the most important question of all how can you compete with a website that has a company behind it making links/content other than being an established brand altogether?

If you’re selling cars what would make your content scalable over other websites contents?

With all things being equal for example you have the same number of content, the same level of links the same quality of articles, perhaps different urls, but all the same age of domain, same design, same keywords, number of pages etc., you get the drift, with website X = X who would Google rank higher then?

Isn’t it the one with the most social engagements? Perhaps, but what if they are equal as well?

Now doesn’t it make sense that Google needs spammers too?

Share your thoughts.

Protecting your name and reputation is very important for your business. So first and foremost let me try and help you “claim” your reputation.

1. Utilize Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) – A lot has changed since the hey-days of SEO and nowadays Google listens to what the social signals say.

2. Claim your business in the top review sites (ex: Yelp, Yahoo Local, Citysearch) – Permit me to say that local search is the future of SEO thus keeping yourself sparkling clean in those review sites would really help a lot in dispelling any form of doubt from your future clients.

3. Build High Quality Links – Yes I am talking about real existing one-way links you can start by pointing them to your sub-domains (Yes Google loves sub-domains *wink*) and your target pages.

4. Last but not the least Content! Content! Content! Nothing beats great content and sometimes the best content comes from the most honest one. Remember when all else fails nothing is as good as admitting youre wrong and making up for it.

5. A bonus extra – Claim your corporate identity by strengthening your social networks.

Until then remember you are what your search results say you are!

Google values technology, not social science. – Paul Adams

Do we really need Google Panda?

I have two answers for this;

Yes and No.

Yes because we really need to weed out the reliable content over the spammy ones, if you look at it closely Google Panda is another set of guidelines to follow. Suddenly people are seeing their traffic floundering. It became a standard procedure to write “quality” content. Unfortunately Google did not elaborate on this and I have seen hundreds of websites that carries well written content and reliable information from trusted authors go down I think even as I write this piece these websites are still trying to figure out a way not to be penalized by Google.

Another fault of Google is that though it stipulates what-not-to-do it did not stipulate how-not-to-do-it or to-undo-it. It virtually left the job at the mercy of their algorithm to determine what is right and wrong, and as we see this happening the problem becomes more endemic because just like driving a car you are given a ticket but not really given the reason why you were given that ticket. Thus exacerbating the problem.

No, we don’t need Google Panda until such time that we get to find the proper safeguards and tools to prevent it from happening and no we don’t need it right now until it is perfect and people are well adjusted. I hate to admit it but Google is playing God when it didn’t consider the users point of view in going on with the algorithmic change. Google did not consider the number of businesses that will be hit, shady or not the innocent ones are the ones that suffers the most, simply because they have a single mistake which they weren’t informed of or even if they were in the case of an adsense infraction it is not that easy to clear the problem as I still have yet to find a single Google employee willing to help personally on the matter.

How do we build links after the Google Panda effect?

Google Panda in essence talks about creating links “naturally” but in the case of SEO time is always of the essence we can’t really wait all day long until someone recognizes that “hey this guys has good writing style” believe it or not there are more well known and better writers out there that has good and better write ups than yours, has good grammar and great delivery of thought so how can one who has a poor grasp of the English language, or who does not speak the language be able to compete with the ones who do?

The good thing about doing SEO before Google Panda is that it gave an equal footing to everyone whether you don’t have a good command of the English language but you have more topics to write about and more pages than other websites then chances are you get to be higher in the serp rankings. But not too fast kid Google Panda does not consider the number of pages you create for a single topic as a signal for relevance; right now even a simple “block” from the Google chrome browser could make your website a target for Google panda.

So what kind of link building, works? I still believe in the power of blog commenting, guest blogging and the other entire old school link building to create more juice for rankings. This brings us to the other question.

Is Directory Submission Dead?

Yes and no, yes if you are referring to the unpaid spammy looking ones but no if you are referring to the major paid ones. The major signals to look for in choosing well juiced directories are the Page Rank, age of the directory, and relevance of the directory, on another note I still don’t know how Google Panda treats directories if you have any idea please do tell me.

Is Article Marketing Dead?

Contrary to what Rand Fishkin said, Article Marketing is well and alive I mean what is so shady/spammy if you can deliberately create a ton of reliable content and submit them to reliable article websites? Indeed most of the websites targeted by Panda are article sites; still most of the top ranking keywords have their URL’s pointing to article sites other than article sites are like the DMOZ of directories. Whether Google likes it or not it is a necessary evil in the world of SEO.

Is forum profile linking Dead?

No – In my experience a do-follow forum link or even a profile link still works, (well as long as Google still considers it) so keep doing all your forum profile links and signatures.

What is the Future of Search?

I am looking towards the power of social signals like Facebook and twitter but most importantly of Google Plus, and the +1 button. Google Plus is still a very unfamiliar territory. Aside from being a complete rip-off of Facebook Google plus is still a competition in the world of social media specially when it is Google sponsored.

How much influence does Google Plus and Social Media have over search?

To say that social media and Google Plus is one of the main influencers of search results may sound as an understatement perhaps the better question should be how an SEO takes advantage of such. But I will leave that for another day to discuss.

Brown SEO Philippines Answer:
Social Media Optimization is an offshoot of a number of factors governing search engine algorithms. It has developed as an independent science of link-building harnessing the power of leverage over page ranks.
It answers the question of finding ways to have back-links without ever asking. It is an incremental approach to online marketing, taking advantage of individual profiles instead of the typical anchor text with a link.

Points to Remember
1. Keep content fresh: It is a good idea to keep the momentum running during a traffic generation campaign. If you receive lots of traffic one day, and little bits the next couple of days, then it could kill the momentum of your campaign. This is why I would recommend for you to either write thirty quality articles before you start your campaign, or as required by the client.
2. Vote on other content: It’s kind of selfish to just submit and vote on your website content, so spread the wealth and do it for other websites as well, because savvy users of the network will be able to detect the constant self promotion a mile away.
3. Participate in the networks: The same concept applies to online forums. The more you engage and participate in the network, the more the individuals will become familiar with you which will push up your authority, or as some networks say your “karma.”
4. Be invisible: perhaps this is the most important part of social media marketing, which is how to keep your IP from being found. There are a number of free services around the net and we are currently using TOR and Vidalia, but better add Foxy Proxy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxyproxy-standard/
5. On the Do-follow versus No-Follow: While it is advantageous to create links in Do-follow sites it is also highly recommended to create links on No-follow sites for the sake of yes you guessed it right making it seem look natural. Following the 80/20 rule of link-building being 80% Do-follow and 20% No-follow, but I’d rather that the other 20% be made from .edu or .gov websites.

The idea of competitive intelligence is very important especially when you’re in the world of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

PPC has come a long way from being a fight between who’s the one with more money over who’s more intelligent enough to bid for the right keywords or simply put bid on where the money is.

Keyword research became an exact science, and not just plain guess work that’s why it came as a pleasant welcome that SEMrush offers this solution at a very fair price.

I’ve used a lot of keyword research tools out there, the free ones and the paid ones but everything pales in comparison with SEMrush.

But I don’t want to kiss ass in this review so I will try to be overly objective in presenting my doubts and apprehensions as well as praise for their (the creators of SeoQuake) product.

Actually SEMrush is very easy to use but in a nutshell it presents the following:

A. Keyword Research

For PPC: This is one of the main highlights of SEMrush. First it provides you with keywords. You type in a search and then voila it gives you a chart, where you can see the costs, traffic and competition, search results and trends. Clicking further on a keyword would mean having to see the phrase match report and related keywords report

Comment: It could’ve been better if they also show in one graph keywords in exact, phrase and broad matches and its corresponding bid prices.

For SEO: You can even compare your keywords over your competitors and determine what are the ones that are performing and not. This feature will definitely save you time and money and another added feature is that you can download everything and then use it for your reports.

Comment: While this is commendable it doesn’t offer recommendations on how to overcome your competitor, perhaps that’s another project they are working on.

B. Competitor Research

SEMrush allows you to review your competitors either on the organic keyword level or at the PPC ad level. You can check their existing ads and take note of their changes and apply or test them to your high converting campaigns.

Comment: This by far is the most intelligent application by SEMrush, I’ve known of other companies that offers the same features but their pricing are bordering in the outrageous. Plus the simple mouse over to check an ad is an instant plus! SEMrush also allows you to download the Adwords Ad texts of your competitors, now that really is priceless!

C. Pricing

SEMrush offers a monthly recurring price of $49.95 ($599.40 per year though they offer a 6 month subscription of $249 for 6 months which I plan to apply on soon) not too shabby for the importance of the information you can obtain from them. But I really would like it if it could offer a yearly (cheaper?) subscription with premium membership that offers community (forum), updates, best practices, and other offers (webinars, eBooks, etc)

In closing my overall review of the product is highly positive, but please, please don’t take my word for it you really have got to try it and see for yourself.

Perhaps the only negative but at the same time positive thing I can think of with it, is the lingering question all SEO/SEM practitioners have in mind.

“After gathering all these information, what do I do with it and where do I start?”

For all I know my competitors are also using SEMrush and they might also be using my keywords, but with all things being equal I think, that is really where the action starts.

Join SEMRush Now!

Some are for it while some are against it.

Honestly I don’t see the point of debate.

The way I see it there are two kinds of bloggers.

1. People who blog because they want to.
2. People who blog because they have to.

While certain points of contentions were raised, ranging from the logical to the most ridiculous.

I can’t fail to note the experience I had when I proposed the idea of creating an SEO/SEM group for the Philippines. (Though I may not be the first one to do so)

I offered this intention to one of the senior SEO/SEM members of the group and the next thing he was telling me was “What do we need an SEO/SEM group for?” followed by a diatribe of anti-seo/sem-group-no-use-whatsoever. I tried to reason with him but it was just like talking to a hardcore-leftist who can’t recognize fact from fiction. And the irony of it is we were all there because he will be teaching his techniques on SEO/SEM and like giddy high-school-girls we were all huddled around him hanging onto every word he was saying.

So I shut up, I figured there’s no use arguing, yet I still have high hopes that if ever he reads this he might be able to change his thoughts on the matter.

It is beneficial to have an SEO/SEM group because of the following:

1. Credibility to the practitioner of SEO/SEM – imagine the vast number of foreign and local clients looking for “credible” and “reliable” Filipino SEO/SEM only to find someone who’s not credible ergo wasting the time, resources and opportunity granted by the client plus the blemishing of the Filipino Brand. Let’s admit it we are in the SEO/SEM field because in one way or the other we want to sell our services.

2. So we’ve mentioned credibility which translates to accreditation, this time working in groups can enhance education, being able to buy SEO Tools, Online SEO Updates from SEOmoz, webinars, word tracker and other paid SEO services is cheaper in a group. This is a major advantage because not only are we going to be able to heighten our own SEO/SEM’s awareness in the world market but we are actually leveling the playing field between us and our foreign competitors.

3. Fair and Justifiable Remuneration – being an SEO/SEM is a hard job, not only are we trying to understand the search engines but we are also trying to be well compensated for those efforts. Being able to earn a fair amount of training, accreditation, and experience are such that it demands a governing body to determine and set the standards for such. It alarms me that a number of BPO companies are not paying their SEO/SEM’s well, when they can earn this from other clients and themselves.

4. Branding and Marketing Leverage – It is not only about working for other people but also working for themselves, SEO/SEM provides the practitioner the chance to earn for himself, may it be thru adsense or affiliate marketing, also helping these people and creating an SEO/SEM group will benefit everyone as local advertisers will be able to recognize the potential for advertising growth. When you are an SEO/SEM you are basically branding yourself and having a team that is ready to accept projects from San Miguel, Globe or Smart is not a joke.

5. Hope for the young ones and legacy -I remember the trip I took to Pinatubo, the whole trip was run by a Korean, in fact he monopolized it as such that everyone that comes in and out of Pinatubo pays him. He connived with the local mayor and then uses the locals to do the touring for him. It is a very sad fact that if we fail to recognize our potential as SEO/SEM practitioners the tendency is for foreigners to take advantage of that weakness and capitalize on that. Not that I have anything against foreigners but on a bigger perspective that is how we lost the Marikina shoe industry and other indigenous industries in the country. Furthermore if we do not take care of the SEO/SEM industry in our country chances are a lot of young SEO/SEM practitioners will continually be taken advantage of by their employers instead of empowering them to become independent and well paid Internet Marketers.

My hope is that in the future SEO/SEM will be one of the bread and butter of our economy and country, that we may be able to set our foot proudly not only in the world but also in the web. That it may not die a natural death, and we would be recognized as an equal SEO/SEM provider and not as a last resort link-builder.

So I think it pays to have an interest in creating a National Bloggers Association if only for the fact that these bloggers want to do something positive for the country and for its bloggers.

As for those who don’t want to join, then just don’t.

Or better yet just blog about it.

But of late their recent update have been considered by many as a major fluke, especially by relevant and authority sites.

The main idea behind the update is to “clean up” Google’s results with the noble intention of taking out the ones considered as “content farms” on layman’s terms websites that has low quality content and are just there to rank on certain keywords by virtue of the volume of content presented in their website.

While the goal is noble it also translates to question as to what are the determinants, factors that would constitute content farm site? And if one website is considered to be wrongly accused of being a content farm and their keywords and rankings taken out of Google’s’ searches resulting to a major decrease of income who should be made accountable for their losses? Who would take the cudgels to give back their setbacks?

Seems like Google does not adhere to the “innocent until proven guilty” stance, rather it becomes “guilty until proven innocent and after losing thousands of dollars in the process”.

The article below clearly illustrates this contention; please feel free to voice out your reactions in the comment section.

Brown SEO

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By Matthew Pollock

It was Google biggest update ever, in terms of impact.  In mid-February the Google Farmer Update rocked the SEO world, taking aim at so-called “content farms” which generate low-cost content to attract Ad-Sense advertising earnings.

Commentary ranged from the vacuous (“write good content and Google will reward you”) to excellent. The best coverage was in SEO Moz (SEO Moz analysis of winners and losers).  Aaron Wall published a nicely cynical review (Aaron Wall’s take).  Wired did a good article suggesting that many good sites had been unfairly penalized (Unfairly penalized sites).   One Valley site (Cult of Mac) complained to Cutts that it had been disastrously hit; he tweeted that it would soon get fixed, and within a day Cult of Mac was back!    For those without Valley connections, Google opened a forumfor victims of the Farmer Update.

The Farmer Update had catastrophic consequences for our site – US traffic down 50%, PR down from 6 to 5 (www.globalpropertyguide.com)

The idea that ‘great content is the answer’ and that our content was weak is, frankly, laughable. Our site is 100% original, with very deeply researched content, recognized within our industry as a leader, and is frequently updated. Central Banks, Multilateral Institutions, and academic researchers write to us asking for data.  Yesterday I had the Chief Economist of the Czech Central Bank write to me to ask for data.

Our site looks clean and modern. Yet our US traffic is 50% down, across all keywords, new articles and old, more or less entirely undifferentiated.

Our content is almost 100% original, written by us, at a cost of enormous hard work.  Each article takes 2-3 weeks.  The only non-original section is a small part of the Home Page, which references news articles which appear elsewhere.

Prior to this update, we had 180,000 visits/month and a Page Rank of 6.  We have never done any link trades.  People write to me to ask for link exchanges, I ignore them.  I have always ignored them. So we are unlikely to have received links from ‘bad neighbourhoods’.

One problem may be that our work gets copied. Everyone in the international property industry copies us, putting our information up for free, and then offering properties alongside.  At first we sent ‘cease and desist’ letters, but as an international site we have no legal remedy. The copy-cats realize this very well. So they carry on copying.  We stopped doing anything about it, relying on the Google promise that ‘you will never be penalized because others have copied your site’.

My take on the Farmer Update:

Google’s new perspective

Previously, there was a rule:
“Google does not rank web sites, they rank pages”

Not true any more – Matt Cutts has now said, somewhere – you want to remove low-quality pages, because they impact the whole site.

So Google is saying: “If you LOOK like a content farm, we WILL TREAT YOU as a content farm”.
We will rate the site as a whole.

Sites with diverse old content = content farm = BAD
Sites with diverse new content = news site = GOOD

Sites with Above Fold small ads = content farm = BAD

Sites with targeted keyword SEO = commercial site = OK
Sites with messy untargeted keyword SEO + old content = potential content farm = BAD

Sites which look low budget = potential content farm = BAD

Why we got hit
1. Our classical SEO isn’t the greatest, so Google sees an enormous diversity of keywords when it looks at our site. Previously, we thought this was quite a good thing. We relied on the increasingly strong consensus – just write good content, don’t link exchange, don’t cheat, have good internal links, and make your site content visible to the bots.
2. We have a strong diversity of content within the one research category, because our research covers our subject from many angles.
3. We update frequently, but not enough to be considered a news site.

4. We get copied a lot, so our site loses uniqueness.  Everyone is writing the same material – our material.

These factors, we believe, caused us to be hit by the Farmer Update – diversity of content, yet updates not frequent enough to be considered a news site. Plus we have some above the fold Ad Sense type advertising, which we are removing.

That’s why we were hit. Not because of content or design.
What to do about it, is less clear.

We would be very grateful for any suggestions.  As I have mentioned, our SEO has been weak, and there are likely to be stupid SEO mistakes we need to fix today.  Please tell us what they are!  Are we to blame for the results of the update?  Or has Google messed up a little?  Take a look atwww.globalpropertyguide.com and tell us what you think.

To make it, let alone survive, in the digital age, you have to exist in cyberspace. This is precisely the reason why businesses, whatever the scale, and individual professionals resort to building websites to get the word out on their products and/or services. The work does not end with merely building websites. Maintenance and promotion of these sites are the key ingredients toward gaining an audience and, more importantly, customers. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.

According to PayScale, the annual salary of an SEO Specialist in the United States as of July 2010 ranges from $32,370 to $52,441. The figures are derived from considering education, knowledge and experience, benefits, and profit sharing options. At these rates, the job of an SEO Specialist is solely confined to that of his/her core responsibilities: analysis and application of changes to websites for optimization for search engines, keyword identification for SEO implementation, and conceptualization of strategic methods for search engine ranking improvements.

It is but sheer common sense for website owners from first world countries to seek the very crucial SEO services in the Philippines. BPOs in the country market the skills of their SEO Specialists as cheap as PhP 15,000 (approximately $327) per month, plus office fees and benefits. Then, there is the option of hiring a freelance SEO specialist via online marketplaces or SEO forums. Freelance SEO in the Philippines cost a maximum of $10 per hour. Without the office fees and benefits (and the strings attached with opting for BPOs), SEO freelancers are even cheaper. Many freelance SEO Specialists in the Philippines offer packaged services. Aside from the “regular” SEO services mentioned above, most of them offer providing content for the websites they are to promote. That saves the companies between $32, 500 and $35,000 annually that they usually shell out for content editors.

Big savings, all-around website service plus near-native English proficiency. There is no reason for companies worldwide not to invest in SEO in the Philippines.

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Carol Bustos-Santiago is a Manila-born Offsite Content Editor based in California. Childhood dreams of being a diplomat urged her to complete a Bachelor of Arts Degree in International Studies Major in European Languages from De La Salle University. However, the tainted politics, both in the local and international arenas, developed her aversion from a career she once believed is right for her.

An opportunity to provide web material for a travel website through a Business Process Outsourcing company awakened her love for writing from its long slumber. Before she knew it, she was engaging herself in a profession that once toyed in her head as a child.

Gtalk: fcbsantiago
YM: fcbsantiago1
Skype: carol.bustos.santiago
Twitter: fcbsantiago

But theres a downside in having Google Adsense:

1. Google Adsense have the tendency to steal your customers if you are affiliate marketer.

2. Google Adsense have the tendency to self regulate itself and mark you as spam even if you are really just as innocent as ever.  (I’ve heard lots of fellow SEO Specialist who experienced this problem)

3.  And lastly Google Adsense sometimes doesn’t show relevant ads.  (And just like how Facebook changes its interface every now and then we are left with no choice in this)

The way I see it being unpredictable has always been the strength of Google other wise everyone would be as rich as them hahaha