This post is quite obviously going by the title a little bit of a wrist slap for all you people who think that old tired and ‘Black Hat‘ SEO and marketing methods are going to miraculously put your tiny site on the “first page of Google” which seems to be some hackneyed ideal that every one is still searching for.
The bad news: It WON’T!
Matt Cutts verified this himself: “NO-ONE can promise you the first page of Google any more!”
Unless, yes there is an unless… unless they are promising you to put you on the first page of Google under one keyword, in your locality (small defined area) with two adjectives that creates one long tail search term and most importantly you will be there more often on your computer not others because of Semantic Search practices.
Basically semantic search (and this is Google and Bing and all other search engines are following suit) where the search algorithms take into account your own search history on your IP including your locale, your previous search history and your keyword semantics – the meaning you put on those keywords or search terms e.g. if you search for fishing and your previous history shows you really mean fly fishing when you search the term fishing, your searches will be based around fly-fishing whether you want them to or not, until you show enough search history to Google to change the meaning placed on your ‘fishing’ search.
Please read the previous paragraph several times, enough times for you to fully understand the repercussions to your site and to your SEO practices!
There are heaps of SEO firms out there right now still trying to make promises they cannot keep. Read these vital posts I have collected for you over the past few weeks to validate what I am saying to you:
Link Farms – Link farms are a whole bunch of websites set up with one job in mind – to link to other websites and create backlinks. They have minimal or zero useable content and simply link out to other sites. You can usually purchase links from these farms (so as to increase your number of backlinks) for a price, but this is simply not worth it. As soon as the search engines recognize the site as link farm, they ignore all the links. It’s quite possible that you could get “blacklisted” for this sort of thing and end up ruining all your efforts.When I was new to SEO, I bought 1000 backlinks from one of these link farms and anticipated huge results. Google Webmasters only picked up about 30 of them (out of a thousand!) and within a month or two they were lost (or removed). I was just lucky that I didn’t get banned!
Cross Linking – Similar to link farms, this is the practice of linking between a whole lot of websites that you own. Apart from being ineffective, the cost of this sort of practice is simply a waste of money (considering that you can easily get links from writing articles, etc).
Cloaking – Cloaking essentially involves having two different pages – one that your visitors see and one that the search engines see. This allows you to create a heavily optimized page for the search engines, and a very “pretty” page for users. This practice is strongly frowned upon by search engines and will in most cases get your site banned within a few months.
Duplicate Content – Whether it the same content placed on different pages within your website, or content copied from another site – the search engines don’t like this for one reason – there’s no value to the visitor.
From www.site-reference.com via clp.ly
Understanding Metaweb The Official Google Blog (Semantic ‘Entities’)
Google Buys Metaweb What this means for you!
Metaweb’s technology could change the way Google Search works.Metaweb is a difficult concept to describe, although the video above does an admirable job. Essentially, it views keywords, the way we search now, as an inferior search method to what it calls “entities.” Words can vary in meaning, refer to different things, have different levels of importance or relevance at different times, and often return inexact results. So Metaweb has created a constantly growing database, or directory, of 12 million “entities,” which are really just persons, places, or things, and all the different ways you might refer to them. Wording isn’t so important with Metaweb, it’s the end meaning that matters.
Once Metaweb figures out to which entity you’re referring, it can provide a set of results. It can even combine entities for more complex searches–”actresses over 40″ might be one entity, “actresses living in New York City” might be another, and “actresses with a movie currently playing” might be another. Instead of searching through that jumble of keywords, Metaweb would just connect you to those three entities, and file down your results.
From www.fastcompany.com via clp.ly
and of course this excellent post on what Google thinks of your Squeeze or Landing Pages:
Google Slaps Squeeze PagesIt’s true: squeeze pages are nothing less than poison as far as your performance in the search engines is concerned. Google and other search engines have been working on ways to discount the rankings of these pages, which are rarely the kind of content that users are actually looking for when they use the keywords which these sites target. It comes down to what it always comes down to when search engine rankings are the issue – relevance. A webpage designed to entice visitors to fork over their contact information simply isn’t that relevant to many, if any, actual search engine queries, no matter how much content you try to cram onto the page.
Speaking of the content, this is something which has changed about squeeze pages in the last couple of years. Once these pages started being penalized by search engines for their lack of content (”classic” squeeze pages, after
all, feature little more than an opt-in form), marketers started turning them into the online equivalent of the long form sales letter – in other words, something no one wants to read, especially not page after page. This unappealing content has led to a further decline in the ranking of these pages in search results, making them even worse marketing tools than they already were.
From www.sitepronews.com via clp.ly
Related articles by Zemanta
- Google Buys Metaweb for Better Search Results (dailyfinance.com)
- How has social media affected search? (simplyzesty.com)
- Why Semantics Is Important For Search Engine Optimization – Semantic Web (semanticweb.com)
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AnnieInfinite
Hi, I am the Head Marketing Consultant for The Zen Bull, I am a social media maven, entrepreneurial visionary, partner in TZB and a member of the International Social Media Association. I love to help people grow their business and their potential and can be found on social media platforms under the name Annie Infinite - come say hello.
It is obvious that you follow Matt Cutts as well as stay abreast of the changes that Google admits to. Most people are too lazy to do this and end up taking part in shady link building programs. It is simply amazing how many people will jump at the promise of results with no work involved for them.
When are people going to learn that there is no substitute for actually doing the work. If you want results, then you have to do what it takes to get them.
Thanks Kathy you comment is appreciated
and yes I agree do what it takes, if you cannot do it yourself than learn enough to know what you are really getting and what it is important to get from your so-called SEO expert.