Critical Thinking & SEO – Managing Learning and Your Approach to SEO

Tackling the development of a new search and social media course is no mean feat – ask Aleksej Heinze,search and social media course.
from Salford University’s Business School!  He’s been the driver behind a new academic-led, industry-supported
With MEC’s support for the course, Aleksej and I have met a number of times to discuss areas of the course’s content, with a view to develop not purely from an academic stand-point, but to consider real-life scenarios.  One of the things that came out of the debates we had then was this idea of posing several alternative approaches to search and social marketing in a way that prompted this idea of a course that promotes a foundational and more advanced level of understanding, with a thread of critical thinking throughout.

I love this idea.  I’ve previously shared what we work to deliver as part of our SEO training academy over on SEP, and one of the key items we raised here was in nurturing people’s analytical and inquisitive behaviour in SEO.  We’re working in a very subjectivity-led industry, as opposed to that of an exact-science.   SEO is an art built on the peripheral knowledge of the science of information retrieval after all, and even where people work towards making their approach to SEO more scientific, it’s nothing more than a weird science at best.

Critical thinking challenging misinformation

I like the idea that we dig in to out analytics and visibility, we test and explore on-site and off-site approaches to search engine optimisation.  As long as we share these observations with an understanding that isolating these test from unknown variables, sample sizes, caveats and a reframed methodology if necessary for the next round of tests, then I think this can be a healthy process to go through that just taking from elsewhere in the community.  This does not mean to say that all research should be shared, but just to say that even if you’re a bedroom SEO, then keeping an eye on the limitations of what you and others are testing is really quite healthy.

We recently shared some early observations on Google Instant usages in the UK.  We shared the shared the sample size, the number of verticals the test stretched across, limitations, a brief explanation of the approach to the analysis makes the research a little more valid, and very open-ended conclusions (making this more observational than definitive conclusions).  Through this approach it makes it easier for others to test for themselves the validity and value of what is being said, as opposed to just loose supposition.

I see Michael Martinez as someone with a very forthright opinion around the management and understanding of SEO, and certainly someone where critical thinking appears as a common thread in most of his articles.  For instance, on this very subject of science, SEO and chatter:

“…we share, we discuss, we analyze, and we critique. Scientists do this all the time. The chief difference between real scientists and SEO scientists, however, is that real scientists agree to be bound to a standard of quality that the SEO industry eschews…The science is based solely and completely upon what we do share that is confirmable and reliable. Everything else is just talk.”

This differentiation is a very healthy one.  Highlighting what is chatter, and what is definitively scientific in approach and output is all part of critical thinking, and I think that people can really take something away from this.  SEO is, without a doubt, still in its infancy.  It is still shaping up as an established industry, and it certainly hasn’t developed a comprehensive understanding of how to approach tests, knowledge sharing and the conclusions we pull from this.  But with that in mind, a little more critical thinking and a more resolute focus on the real value of what is being shared in training rooms, books and blog posts world-wide should almost certainly be a good thing.  I think so, anyway.

SEO Pride and Prejudice

Like many, I want to go to work and feel pride in what I do with the teams of people I work with, and this sense of pride may well be helped by the sense that collectively in our offices, we feel that we are delivering a solid SEO service, far beyond that what we are exposed to in many other places elsewhere.  So although we feel that other SEO propositions are misguided (which in itself is quite flattering and enlightening for our own), but it does require an element of astute critical thinking to highlight what we believe is good, bad and unhelpful information for how we approach SEO – and this is the whole point of this article.

Others though, see this wealth of misinformation as a real competitive advantage, including Aaron:
“I used to dislike misinformation in the SEO industry, but I have since come to realize that the more misinformed the public is the more opportunity there is for me. If it wasn’t abstract and full of misinformation then someone overseas would be doing it for $5 a day and I would lose most of my income. So I say let’s see some more bogus scientific studies.”

Now, I wouldn’t go down such a hard-line route as this, as I personally think that there are too many areas in the provision of SEO consulting that really can’t be provided in a more commoditised way (just in the same way as marketing, PR, creative teams haven’t been outsourced to more inexpensive regions of the world).  That said, I do think there is a great deal of value in the comment, as it essentially acts as a sort of filtering system – separating the wheat from the chaff.

Critical Thinking & SEO Strategy

Transferring critical thinking to the way we learn is only one application though; developing plans and delivering activity with critical thought can be hugely helpful too.  So let’s get down to a few tips…
Quite a few years ago, two gentlemen, Simon Wootton and Terry Horne, developed 6 suggestions for critically evaluating strategic ideas and plans.  These were:

• Competitiveness
• Controllability
• Compatibility
• Feasibility
• Impact
• Risk

At a strategic level you can quite easily see how critical thinking of this nature can really test the true value of ideas in the context of which they sit.

But, how do you teach day-to-day critical thinking?

Some might argue that critical thinking can’t actually be taught at all, and it’s actually more to do with what the person was born with between their ears, but I whole-heartedly disagree.  I think you can quite easily teach someone to work to a framework of which challenges the validity of an opinion, and develops a reasoned, critical judgement of their own.

The UK’s Open University provides a few ideas around how critical thinking can take shape, and importantly, how you can nurture critical thinking. A few take-aways from these articles that I think are especially helpful for those more SEOs interested in critical though include:

• Pause for thought when reading – we’re in an online industry where we know scanning of content is prevalent so occasionally pause for thought.
• Actively learn – critically engage in the content.  Ask yourself how, why, what, when, who, etc as often as you can about subjects you think are especially important.
• Work with others – learning alone is not going to be helping in moulding balanced and considered opinions as through shared-learning we naturally test each other’s understanding.
• Think independently – just because you’ve read something, doesn’t make it true!

There’s really isn’t anything too sophisticated in what is being said here – something I often think when reading management books, but challenge is really bringing to life as part of your day-to-day behaviour.  Are you up to the challenge?!

Anyway, give it a try – see if this sort of approach to reading blog posts, books, attending seminars or conferences, changes the way you understand and use the information around you.

How to Promote Your Blog Old Content to Build Links and Traffic

Blogging is exciting as each great published piece brings you new listeners and builds your community. But is it all about new posts? Is there any way to leverage the power of already written and published content – can it be used to build and strengthen your online presence?

Yes, this can be done, and here’s how you can do that:

1. Tweet Old Posts

“Tweet Old Posts” is a genius WordPress plugin I came across just recently. It lets you automatically tweet posts from your blog archives and allows you to set the following:

• Tweet prefix (to introduce each tweet);
• URL shortener to use;
• Hashtags to include in the tweet;
• Minimum interval between tweets – allows you to determine how often the plugin will automatically choose and tweet a blog post for you.
• Randomness interval – This is a contributing factor in minimum interval so that posts are randomly chosen and tweeted from your blog.
• Minimum age of post to be eligible for tweet – This allows you to set how old your post should be in order to be eligible for the tweet.
• Categories to omit from tweets – This will protect posts from the selected categories from being tweeted (Additionally you can exclude any specific posts as well).

When used properly (without spamming your followers with dozens of old and outdated Tweets daily), it can be a huge boom for your old content. I’d recommend setting it to tweet no more than once a day and exclude all “newsworthy” categories that could result in outdated Tweets.
Also getting creative in using the plugin would surely enhance it effectiveness: for example, with a niche blog (or blog category) you can create a tricky hashtag to introduce each tweet:

• #socialmedia start up of the day {here goes the tweet};
• #frugalrecipe of the day {here goes the tweet},
• etc.

This way it will be interesting to your followers and will probably create a popular hashtag (and even tradition) tied to your blog.

2. Feature Old Posts (“Most Popular” and “Related Posts”)

Displaying links to previously published posts has numerous benefits:

• Dramatically increase click-through (people who are very interested in the topic are most likely to want to read more on this);
• Increase the crawl depth by introducing additional inter-linking;
• Leverage your old content (you are likely to see your older posts commented, tweeted and stumbled).

I have done detailed overviews of various plugins that automatically link to your blog old posts as “Related” and “Most popular”. There’s no point in listing the tools again here.
Here are the round-ups:

• 3 Ways to Display Related Posts in WordPress Blog: YARPP, Arkayne and Google Related Links;
• An Alternative “Related Posts” WordPress Plugin – Where Did They Go From Here – The plugin that relies on “behavioral” relevance:
  When a visitor views a blog post, the plugin checks to see if the referral is another blog post on your site. If this is the case, then the referring post is updated with a reference to this post. And, the process continues as the visitor moves through the blog.
• 3 SEO-Friendly WP Plugins to Display Featured Posts: select which posts to feature manually;
• How to Smartly Interlink Your Blog Content with SEO Smart Links: the great plugin that automatically links keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.

Sidebar options:

• Most popular posts by number of comments: “Popular Posts” Widget and Intense Debate
• WordPress popular posts plugin lists your posts either by comment count, views or average daily views.

3. Round-up Old Posts

Round-ups are great for generating additional exposure to your previously published articles. If you get a bit creative, you can make thematic round-ups for really old articles, for example:

• “Top social media start-ups we reviewed last summer (and where they are now)”,
  
• “Best frugal recipes we discovered last year”,
• etc.

These types of round-ups will be both useful for your readers and allow you to naturally link to a bunch of your last season articles.

Now, to the good news. There’s a great plugin that lets you automatically generate roundups for you to save time!

It won’t publish the roundups automatically - it will only generate them based on the specified criteria and let you copy-paste and customize your roundups.

The features:

1. Build the roundup or the summary post for any time span, may be week or a month or any time span(this is great if you want to round-up last year’s posts)
2. Use (or change) the default CSS of the roundup;
3. Select only required categories for the roundup
4. Reorder the posts and the category headers in any order
5. See flags for the duplicate posts (those that got included from different categories). So you can remove that post from either or the category list while generating the roundup post.

Enjoy!

4 Tools to Find Related Keyword Phrases for Varied Anchor Text

Recently, I have been hearing complaints about having websites drop out of rankings (or at least get bumped down a bit) for one particular keyword phrase, but not others. The assumption is likely that it is a penalty based on un-natural linking activity for that keyword phrase.


If this is happening, how can you prevent your top keyword phrase from getting slapped by Google? Vary your anchor text of course.

Natural Anchor Text

Google likes natural, and, if you think about it, people who are not SEO’s are going to link to a variety of things that you should be using on occasion too, including:

• Website Name or URL
• Company or Brand Name
• Click Here – as generic as it may be, it also entices more people to click on the link, so while the SEO value may be low, the CTR will be rewarding.

Anchor Text Research Tools

First off, if you’re completely stumped, you can start with Open Site Explorer to see the anchor text distribution that your competitors use. All you need is a free account with SEOmoz to see the top 20 keyword phrases used.


If you’d like to know who’s ranking for your keyword phrase organically, as well as some related terms that have high CPC value, check out SEMRush and search for your keyword.


Once you have your primary keyword phrase, use the following to get ideas on other phrases that you might want to rank for, or at least include in your mix of anchor text.


1. Google Suggest

As mentioned above, Google Suggest provides a nice selection of related keyword terms to your own. Simply start typing in your phrase and it will do the rest for you.

And it’s not a bad idea to branch out and think of other phrases to use as anchor text. Someone may enter your targeted keyword phrase and get distracted by some of the suggestions that pop up in the search, more specific terms you may not be ranking for.


2. Google “Searches related to” Links

A little less popular in the scope of things, considering the positioning, but Google also gives searchers who haven’t found what they are looking for on the first page additional popular searches related to your search term. These may provide additional ideas for keyword anchor text phrases.

3. Google Insights

If you would like to dig into trends related to your keyword, take a look at Google Insights. It will show you the trending popularity of a search term, which you can view within a time period of 7, 30, or 90 days, 12 months, a particular year, or the default of 2004 to the present.

Below this, you will see your keyword based on regional interest, where you can drill down into specific locations. For example, in the map below, you can see that the top states interested in link building.

After the map, based on the region you are viewing, you will see the top searches within the time frame specified related to your keyword phrase, as well as rising searches for new trends that may be emerging in your niche.

4. Commercial Intent

Microsoft adCenter Labs offers a tool for detecting online commercial intention that will tell you whether a term is more likely to be searched for based on informational value or actual intent to make a commercial transaction.


This tool can help you gauge whether some of the additional phrases you are looking to build links for will be likely to result in someone looking to purchase your products or your services.

As you can see from the above example, “link building company” has a commercial intent probability of .87, whereas “link building strategy” has a non-commercial intent of .62. You can also offer your feedback about the tool’s accuracy if you feel the result is skewed.

Your Anchor Text Strategy

Have you ever been sandboxed for over-linking to one phrase? How do you vary your anchor text to make your link building campaign look as natural as possible?

source from:searchenginejournal.com

If You Tweet In A Forest… Blah Blah Blah No One Cares

According to a new study, no one really cares what you’re tweeting.* … #wtvr
Of course, it didn’t really take a study of 1.2 billion tweets to find that out, though at least now we know just how much people don’t care!

No, it didn’t take a study because if you just use Twitter, you’d know it intuitively.
And if you speak to Twitter advertising networks, they’ll admit that their CTRs are terribly low (far below 1%). (Ditto Wayne Liew’s data.) In fact, here’s some campaign data of mine from Ad.ly.

And similarly, other people like Leo Laporte notice that Twitter is really about … wait for it … ME!
Not you…

Not being social…

It’s about me! @Reply me? W000h00000! DM me? Yessss!

Ok, I’m exaggerating.

But it’s a lot easier to just focus on who’s paying attention to you than to go out of your way to pay attention to others (except for news, humour and other tweets with really engaging material, because those feed our reward systems similarly to the attention given us by @replies and DMs.

So what?

Well, for everyone using social media to [officially] you know… be social… you may need to measure the strength of your relationships.

My best guess is that the most effective way to measure the strength of your relationships is something like TwitterBFFs.Or maybe using friendfeed.

Maybe with the help of lists, as Wayne mentions.

Maybe your friendly neighbourhood HR manager might help out.

And why would you measure the strength of these relationships?

Because what gets measured… gets managed.

*(According to another study**, Wired paraphrased the study in roughly its entirety, adding no unique new value and sold ads on those pageviews. That’s l4me aggregation. Aggregation post via Quebec tech journalist @mcken.)

** Really my own unscientific observation from, y’know… reading the piece.

source from:searchenginejournal.com

Local Business Listing Wars

Have you noticed the number of commercials being run by high-profile tier one companies and websites that are in the local listing industry?

For example you may have seen TV commercials for Angie’s List, SuperMedia, Yellow Book, and of course AT&T.  If you add Internet advertising that includes but not limited to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Merchant Circle, Yelp and Citysearch many others, you have to start wondering how all these websites can attract a finite number of businesses and visitors to use their website.  The other more significant question is how a business will manage their local business listing at all the local listing websites?


History of Local Business Listings


As a business, if you have not kept up with the evolution of local business listings you will need a quick primer to know where things started and where things are today.

The origins go back to the early 1990s when search engines had directories listing businesses by categories in addition to their basic search results.  These basic business listings gave way to business directories giving the business the opportunity to add more information to their business.  Of course, while this evolution was taking place so did having the yellow pages on the web.  Business directories then gave way to the idea of rating a business with companies like Angie’s List, Merchant Circle and Yelp in social communities.  In 2007 business listings began showing up in search engines and consumer reviews were already showing up in these local business listings.

So, in summary, a local business listing is a combination of yellow pages information, business description, business marketing information, consumer ratings and consumer reviews.

Local Business Listings as Interactive Yellow Pages

Calling these listings a business directory does not do them justice considering all the content that is available.  Not only is this about getting your business marketing information into these listings, but they also become mini-websites for your business and more importantly allow consumers to quantitatively rate and subjectively provide commentary about their experience with the business, products and services.

Local business listing websites that are social communities allow customers and consumers to collaborate.  We are distinguishing between customers being B2B and consumers being B2C.  We will discuss B2B customer comments in a future article.

Live social communities that provide location based services like Four Square, Twitter and Facebook create instantaneous feedback to friends, family and followers alike. This collaboration not only allows for ratings and comments, but the information is posted permanently.  This will require a business to ask satisfied customers to post commentary and manage those postings that are negative…..at multiple local listing websites.

Manage Your Local Business Listings Everywhere!

Unlike the traditional yellow pages where business information was located in a single source, the Internet lets business information be found everywhere. With so many sources, it becomes imperative for a business to stay on top of its information, description, marketing materials and consumer reviews at various local listing websites.

If you wonder why, the answer is simple.  Your business information shows up in search engine results, mobile search results and is available to mobile application developers for mobile apps.  Since you don’t know what source your local customers or mobile application developers are using, you need a way to manage many sources simultaneously.

Select a Company to Help

Whether we are talking about website local optimization, local business listings, mobile marketing or geo-social marketing, a business needs proper support to succeed in this new era of local business marketing.  You need a partner with experience and expertise in multiple digital marketing fields and can adapt to the progression of new technologies that will become available over the next few years.
Some key elements for a company to provide local business listing marketing services include:

• Claim your local listing at multiple local listing websites
• Providing both data and marketing services
• Update your basic business data information monthly
• Update and manage your business marketing information that include photos, videos, coupons, offers, discounts, and events monthly
• Consumer review monitoring and management monthly
• Analytics review of local business listings analytics and the appropriate changes to your local business listings monthly
• Expertise in Mapping Technologies and GPS
  

Social Media Marketing in Foreign Countries and Languages

Social media marketing is now a key strategy for any business’s global marketing communication strategy – online marketers understand the benefits of social and know how to deliver a good return on investment in their social marketing endeavours.


However, many English-speaking marketers are missing out on the huge potential of foreign-language social media marketing. There are a number reasons why this may be the case, the most obvious being a lack of knowledge about which social networks to target abroad and how to devise a social media strategy for foreign-language markets.


According to data published by Internet World Stats in June 2010, the top five countries with the highest proportion of internet users are China with 21.4%, the USA with 12.2%, Japan with 5.0%, India with 4.1% and Brazil with 3.9%.  This means that three of the top five internet-using nations are emerging (mostly non-English speaking) markets – the BIC out of the BRIC countries.
These countries are prime opportunities for export and for marketing online, particularly by using social media, but how can you go about reaching these overseas audiences? Read on for some starter tips below – we’ll begin by looking at the most popular social networks in China, Japan, India and Brazil.


China


Renren.com and Qzone.com dominate the Chinese social networking scene. Renren, a clone of Facebook, claims over 120 million users and is popular with students, although the company hopes to capture a wider demographic in the future. Qzone claims to have over 380 million users, although it’s likely many of these are dormant accounts opened via the company’s QQ network, China’s largest instant messenger service. China’s third largest network is Kaixin001.com, which is popular amongst white collar workers. Kaixin001 has developed popular networking games like ‘Slave Manor’ and ‘Happy Farm’.


Japan


The Japanese market is dominated by Mixi.jp and Twitter.jp. Mixi is by far the largest with over 80% market share, which is around 30 million users. Twitter’s official Japanese site was launched in 2008 and has around 5 million active users. Twitter.jp has an interesting revenue model whereby users can charge their followers to view their tweets, either on a monthly basis or per single tweet.


In Japan paying for content, particularly on the mobile web, is something users are willing to do. From a marketer’s point of view it’s interesting to note that writing in Japanese and Chinese characters enables Twitter users to squeeze a lot more content into single tweets than writing in English.


India


In India, Facebook has just edged ahead of Orkut in terms of monthly unique visitors, with Facebook now at 20.87 million, compared to Orkut’s 19.87 (based on July 2010 Comscore data).
These two networks are already well-known to internet marketers in the English-speaking world, which may help to make India an attractive market to target. BharatStudent is another popular network in India with 4.32 million monthly uniques. As its name suggests, this network is aimed at the younger demographic.


Brazil


In Brazil, Orkut is the most popular network. In fact, over 51% of Orkut’s total traffic comes from Brazil. That’s around 20 million monthly visits. Sonico.com is another popular network, closely targeted to Latin American users, which has around 8 million members in Brazil. MySpace has been the third largest network in Brazil for some years, although it now looks as though Facebook is about to take the number three position.
To get started in foreign-language social media marketing, you need to decide which countries to target. One way to approach this would be to find out which networks in which countries most closely match the demographic profile you want to target. You could look at data from the likes of Nielsen and Comscore to gain this kind of insight.


Once you have identified some potential networks to target, you should probably enlist the services of a local social media expert within that country. This will help you to understand social media etiquette and online behaviours, which is particularly important in some markets, like China, where censorship and state control could have an impact on your marketing activities. For example, in China, there is a list of prohibited words, the use of which will trigger an automatic ban on your posts.


Most likely, you will also need the translation services of native speakers to copy write and translate your campaigns, ensuring your message is understood and trusted by local users. These modest investments in local expertise will very likely bring an attractive return when you consider the reach of foreign-language social networks.


source from:searchenginejournal.com

How to Learn to Love Your Blog

We bloggers have an intricate relationship with our sites. Some days, you can feel something akin to a genuine affection for the blog you’ve lovingly crafted. Other days, you want to throw a brick through the screen of your PC and walk away to retrain as a truck driver.

Love it or hate it, blogging is the cornerstone of any successful business, and it’s a vehicle which looks set to stay.

Given the fact that blogging isn’t a transient trend, is there a way of developing a genuine, long-lasting affection for your site?

Can we turn our feelings towards our blog in to the equivalent of soul mates, rather than bickering siblings?

Instead of feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of updating our blogs, wouldn’t it be lovely if it were possible to look forward to going online and updating our sites, with the same affection as we walk our dogs every day, or kiss our spouses goodnight?

Well, it is.

It may not be possible, as veteran bloggers, to recapture the first thrills of blog ownership. However, it isn’t too hard to find an easy relationship with our blogs which make us comfortable with making our livings online.

Yes, blogs are frustrating.
Yes, we can feel let down when our posts flop, or we don’t generate the comments we feel that we deserve.

Admittedly it can also be soul-destroying to keep checking our site rankings and see the product of our business planning and devotion floundering around with a poor status on the search engines.
Given all this, perhaps it is time for us as bloggers to remember the principles behind blogging, and get back to the real reason why we post our views online.

Responding to the ebbs and flows of blog ownership

Running a blog is a long-term prospect. Just as we only learn to drive properly after we pass our test, or fall fully in love after being in a relationship for a few years, so we need to think about our blogs as something which we subscribe to for the long haul.

Although the ‘newness’ of a blog fades like the first flush of a relationship, it can be replaced with a full understanding of the blog process; how it works, what you need to do to succeed, and what elements of the blogging process you need to focus upon to be successful.

There will always be times as a blogger that you lose your enthusiasm. In the same way as we have arguments with our partners, we can fall out with our blogs. It could be that we experience technical difficulties, or our viewer rate drops off, or we are so pushed for time that blogging feels like a chore rather than a pleasure.

When this happens, we need to go back to the first flush. Can you remember when you first got recognition as a blogger? When you got your first non-spam comment, and responded? When your blog got its very first ping-back?

These feelings do not go away, they just at times become eclipsed by the everyday grind of keeping your blog updated.

Falling in love again

Perhaps it’s time to fall in love with your blog again. Go and look at your beautiful site and admire the work which you have put in to it.

Check out the number of visitors whom you attract every day, and feel that first wonder at being able to provide the service to your customers. Read your comments and be proud.

Most of all, consider your blog as an extension of you, with all your foibles, faults and attributes, and learn to love it once again.

source from:searchenginejournal.com

Google’s Reasonable Surfer Model: A Scalable Solution to Paid Links?

Google recently released a patent based on the browsing tendencies of “reasonable surfers”. Within, it details that previously, Google had followed a “random surfer” model – that every link on a page was equally important, without process or thought on user tendency or where the most used links would lie.
This new development, the reasonable surfer model, means that Google now judges a link based on standard user behavior – or is in the course of perfecting said process – giving more weight to links that are more likely to be clicked on, and less to those buried away in the nether regions of a page.

This means that certain links, like footer and sidebar links in particular, are likely to be devalued. And it’s as they should, right? If a link is tucked away in the footer, the webmaster is stating that he doesn’t care much for it – or it has little value other than for extraneous pleas to the search engines.

When this was released, my initial thought was that this made sense, sure, CTR, rationale, important links, etc. But what I didn’t weigh was the thing that it most importantly impacted – paid links.

Spammy, nefarious paid links litter sidebars and footers all over the internet. In droves. So, then, was this implementation one that was meant to find the strongest links – or, otherwise, had the most reason to devalue the spammy ones?

Not so long ago, Matt Cutts came out as saying that Google takes action against Conductor’s paid link network – one known to purchase links on some of the biggest, most valuable sites on the internet.

Despite this, murmurs persisted – and rankings seemingly backed up – that these sites still had value being passed to them – and for sure, none of them had been de-indexed or heavily penalized. So, then, what did Matt Cutts mean when he said “we do take action in response (to Conductor’s paid link network)”?
Maybe – maybe – what he meant was that Google was actively applying the reasonable surfer model to devalue these links – just as they were on every other website on the internet.
Yes, that’s right. You can guess where these links – Conductor’s links – are located on the biggest sites on the internet — the deep, bottom right section of the sidebar.

A Scalable Solution

There’s been complaints about the state of webspam, particularly from one of the biggest voices in the industry. However, I think Google is doing a fine job – and they’re doing it in a way that makes sense for them. Scalability. It is my theory that one of the biggest reasons for this patent is that it offers a scalable solution to paid links – devaluing a large majority of links that were improperly skimping the index.
Hand picking at scale is just not a reality – and in many ways, becomes extremely unfair to some webmasters who get picked out – and lose their welfare – while others continue to thrive based on brand identity alone. Scalable, reductionist models like this are the scalable offerings that make sense for the future. Identify paid link signals, and devalue them. Don’t penalize or de-index (unless done en masse) – just find the common threads, and cut them down.

Oh, Wait — The Problem

Before we go, let me offer one point of error with this model – sometime users don’t matter. Think about most reasonable blogs on the internet. Do you think the body content is the part where links should be given the most credence? No. The links on a blog – a natural blog – that are the biggest indicator of a “vote” for a website are in the blogroll – something that frequently goes ignored by the user.

In this instance, user behavior should be ignored – because the blogroll is the spot where the webmaster is willing to put their neck on the line. They are willing to put their neck on the line for links that sit there. And are sitewide. These are the links they visit frequently – and if someone who runs a website with 50k backlinks says THIS site is worth having in their blogroll, the users shouldn’t mean a damn.

Of course, this leads to manipulation. And paid links show up there frequently. But the thing is, the blogroll should still be the spot where SERP positions are earned. Perhaps Google should uniquely identify this area (and maybe is?),  and completely ignore those links with commercial anchor text – thus removing any problem with manipulation. But it’s a difficult thing.

No matter, the reasonable surfer says the reasonable surfer generally ignores this area. But it’s the biggest damn vote on the internet. IT’S THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE OF THE INTERNET.

Google – the body content’s votes don’t matter – but the blogrolls do.
Frequently ignored links for President.


source from:searchenginejournal.com