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Feb
6
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Internet security is a big problem, and it isn’t just for the IT staff anymore. It affects us as SEOs. Don’t believe me? Consider the incident reported at the end of last year by security research firm Sunbelt Software.
…criminals are now combining SEO tactics and booby-trapped Web pages, and doing it systematically. By posting tens of thousands of Web sites simultaneously, criminals can take over all the top spots on a search results page, casting a wide net that’s more likely to catch Web users. Eckelberry described these criminals as “SEO Gods,” saying they can “take any site and get it on the first page of Google results.”
Instead of wasting energy defacing sites and showing them off as trophies to their peers on IRC, hackers are now modifying the code of hacked sites to include (invisible) links to their web properties or link farms. The article talks about virus writers creating tens of thousands of websites and cross-linking them using all sorts of queries as anchor text. They then spam blog comments around the Web to improve the overall PageRank of the link farm.
Hackers already know how to break into sites. Now that they see the profit that can be made from top-ten search rankings, they have adapted their techniques to break to take advantage. Currently, search engines’ quality reviewers can detect most sites utilizing these black-hat techniques because they show up pretty obviously as SPAM. However, this is just the beginning, and I’m willing to predict that this is going to scale with cleverer hacks that are harder to detect. Most break-ins will be highly sophisticated and highly automated. They will “recruit” thousands of computers into their link-farm. If your site is one of those “recruited” without your knowledge, your site will most likely be penalized by the search engine along with the whole group.
How can somebody break into my server if they don’t know my password?
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Jan
15
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Another new year has come and many of us are still analyzing the balance of successes and failures of the previous one. It is definitely a useful chore. I am happy to count this blog as one of my successes. It was humbling to see it included in SearchEngineLand’s blogroll and nominated for Best SEO Research blog—I voted for Bill’s and I am glad he won the title :-)—among other accomplishments. Thanks to everyone for the recognition!
On the other hand, last year I had more goals that I didn’t quite reach than ones that I did, although I suppose that puts me in the big crowd. 
I like to start each year by revisiting the unachieved goals, the uncompleted projects, the planned-but-not-executed things I call my missed opportunities. One common one (and I am sure many of my peers experienced the same) is maximizing the number of clicks I get from organic listings. The problem, as many might be asking themselves, is how to measure the organic click-through rate in the first place! Read on to learn how….
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Nov
28
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If you read my last post on advanced keyword research, you probably thought that there was no way you could look deeper into your search visitors’ desires. Well, think again. I want to share a clever technique I’ve been using for several months now to drastically improve the conversion rates of some of my projects.
The technique I am going to present is useful for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing like Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. As you will see, you can later leverage the results for your SEO efforts.
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Nov
13
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I was recently interviewed by the nice guys at Distilled— if you are a regular reader of this blog and you haven’t read it yet, Tom asked some really interesting questions — and one of the things I briefly mentioned was that one of my hobbies is playing chess. I’ve been playing the game for about 2 years, and what I enjoy most about it is that it teaches me a lot about competition and strategy.
Checkmate
One of the reasons why I recommend doing competitive intelligence for SEO is that when you truly understand what makes others successful, you can find a shorter path to your own success. I only make great progress, both in SEO and in chess, when I am able to beat stronger players consistently.
Most intermediate chess books suggest that for every move you make, you develop a list in your head of candidate moves. Those are moves that you should explore by playing as many moves ahead in your mind as you can and evaluating the potential outcomes. Unfortunately, when you are starting out this is very difficult and time consuming. Chess experts do this instinctively and do it very fast, so it is usually easier and more interesting to study professional games and try to understand the reasoning behind each move. The idea is not to memorize the tactics, like many do, but to appreciate the strategies and the logical reasoning that led to them.
Again, there are far more ways to failure than there are to success. It is far more efficient to learn from the moves of proven winners than to try to experiment every possible move for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
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Oct
29
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Last week the blogosphere was abuzz when Google decided to ‘update’ the PageRank numbers they display on the toolbar. It seems Google has made real on its threat to demote sites engaged in buying and selling links for search rankings. The problem is that they caught some innocent ones in the crossfire. A couple of days later, they corrected their mistake, and those sites are now back to where they were supposed to be.
The incident reveals that there is a lot of misunderstanding about PageRank, both inside and outside the SEO community. For example, Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg writes:
On Thursday, Web site administrators for major sites including the Washingtonpost.com, Techcrunch, and Engadget (as well as Forbes.com) found that their “pagerank”–a number that typically reflects the ranking of a site in Google…
He also quotes Barry Schwartz saying:
But Schwartz says he knows better. “Typically what Google shows in the toolbar is not what they use behind the scenes,” he says. “For about two and a half years now this number has had very little to do with search results.”
There are two mistakes in these assertions:
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The toolbar PageRank does not reflect the ranking of a site in Google. It reflects Google’s perceived ‘importance’ of the site.
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The toolbar PageRank is an approximation of the real PageRank Google uses behind the scenes. Google doesn’t update the toolbar PageRank as often as they update the real thing, but saying that it has little to do with search results is a little farfetched.
Several sites lost PageRank, but they did not experience a drop in search referrals. Link buyers and sellers use toolbar PageRank as a measure of the value of a site’s links. By reducing this perceived value, Google is clearly sending a message about paid links. The drop is clearly intended to discourage such deals.
Some ask why Google doesn’t simply remove the toolbar PageRank altogether so that buyers and sellers won’t have a currency to trade with. At first glance it seems like a good idea, but here is the catch—the toolbar PageRank is just a means of enticing users to activate the surveillance component that Google uses to study online behavior. Google probably has several reasons for doing so, but at minimum it helps measure the quality of search results and improve its algorithms. If Google were to remove the toolbar PageRank users would have no incentive to let Google ‘spy’ on their online activities.
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Oct
1
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When John Chow’s rankings dropped a few months ago, a lot of SEOs believed, and continue to believe, that Google banned him for selling links and wanted to set an example. It seems that many ignored his review for a link back campaign, which was clearly designed to game Google. It was also the main driver in his former top ranking for “make money online.”
Now it seems that something similar happened to graphic designer David Airey, and many started to advise him to remove the paid links from his blog. On the other hand, the site is still listed, only it’s on search engine result page (SERP) 6. John Chow is listed too, coincidently on the same SERP. Some say it might be a duplicate content issue. I have to agree with Jim Boykin, however, that there is no evidence that Google is dropping sites that are selling links, and I can say from experience that duplicate content filters tend to keep at least one version of the content—they don’t remove all of them!
One of the main problems I’ve seen in the SEO industry is that we formulate theories based on incomplete information. The fact that key information necessary to make our job easier remains closely guarded by the search engines (for obvious reasons) does not help either.
There is still some critical information missing here…
Will Google ever penalize sites for selling links?
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Sep
26
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In my post about SEO automation, SEO expert Halfdeck expressed concern about the possibility of customers preferring a sophisticated SEO tool over a highly-trained SEO professional. I am sure many of my peers had the same thought running through their heads when they saw my post on Sphinn. The post even made it to the front page!
The reality is that we should embrace software progress in our field. We should look at software improvements and innovations as tools that can help us scale our own business and be more successful. Is it bad to use SEO software that does all the tedious work and helps us serve 20 clients per month instead of 10?
Man vs. Machine
If we look at the last 100 years, man has achieved an incredible amount of progress. Every invention brings a new level of comfort. You can do many things far easier, faster and more efficiently than before. There is an irreversible momentum in this direction.
The fear of computers replacing the work we do is not unfounded, of course. Machines are replacing human labor everyday. The more repetitive the work, the easier it is to get a machine to do it for you. On the other hand, the more creative and more social the task is, the harder it is for a computer to replicate.
There is software for almost any professional activity that we do, yet we (the professionals) are still in high demand. Nobody is going to trust his or her business to a computer blindly, after all. If something goes wrong, who would they complain to? 
So the question becomes: do we resist change, or adapt and thrive?
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Sep
18
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… partially
Loren Baker has asked a thought-provoking question: “Can SEO be automated?” Coincidentally he asks the question just a day after we released a product at TechCrunch40 with just such a goal.
It seems that the folks at Commerce360 are working to build a product similar to our RankSense. There is a fundamental difference in approach, however. We are not trying to replace the human element; we are trying to make humans work far easier and simpler. Truthfully, I don’t even think their goal of fully-automated SEO is possible. In many ways search engine optimization is plain old marketing—and marketing is driven by creativity. No machine can quite claim to be creative just yet.
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Sep
10
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Everybody writing about SEO will tell you that it is not a good idea to optimize your site for the most popular keywords in your niche. What are your chances of success if you tried to rank for “internet marketing, where there are about half a million websites ranking for that term and most likely many savvy competitors?” I want to tell you why I chose to ignore such advice years ago, and how I was able to reach heights I couldn't have dream of by doing so. Of course it is also clear why the guys at the top are so eager to give such advice—nobody likes to face more competition.
I remember reading such advice five years ago when Sumantra Roy's KEI was a key ratio to identify keyword opportunities. I similarly recall an earlier period when I was still working on salary and planning to branch out on my own. I used to ask my friends and colleagues, mostly engineers, whether they thought that starting a business was a good idea. Their answer was always that they didn't think so. “Why leave the security and comfort of a paycheck every two weeks?” “Why take unnecessary risks?” After a while I realized that I was asking advice from the wrong people. How could they provide advice for something they didn't have any experience with? I decided to trust my instincts instead, and put my confidence in taking calculated risks.
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Aug
23
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This is the final post in the long tail vs fat head optimization strategies series. The focus of this post is to expand on the optimization strategy for highly competitive keywords. We are going to leverage our insights from the link analysis explained in Part 2 to build better and smarter links.
The purpose of link analysis is to identify the link sources that are providing the ranking boost to your competitor. I explained several principles that are very important when evaluating links. Ideally you will try to get the same link sources that are linking your chosen web authority to link to you (at least the most important or more authoritative ones). You will also want to make sure the links come with similar anchor text or textual context (text surrounding the anchor) and complement all this effort with some traditional and out-of-the-box link-building tactics. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
"Advanced yet simple and strategic SEO" 78 pages full of useful insights and valuable tips
