Search Engine Land - When Link Building Is Pointless

Another good post by Eric Ward, this one is about deciding when to stop link building on a project:
Search Engine Land - When Link Building Is Pointless

Search Engine Guide - Search Engine Guide Publisher Responds to PageRank Drop

Robert Clough's article about Search Engine Guide's recent Google PageRank drop and discussion on paid ads. Search Engine Guide has been around long before Google was created and is a great resource for small businesses.

Search Engine Guide - Search Engine Guide Publisher Responds to PageRank Drop

Search Engine Guide - Where Does the Responsibility of the SEO End and the Client's Begin?

I liked this article quite a bit, having had numerous clients who really didn't know what they were getting into in creating their online business. We work with a number of small businesses that go through major growing pains while we work on a project with them. One of our clients discovered just how much there was to having a viable business online, they had no idea what it took to make it work. Quite a learning process educating the client and a study in patience for us and the client.

Where Does the Responsibility of the SEO End and the Client's Begin?

WebmasterWorld - Is Webmaster-SEO Stuff Flatlining

Interesting discussion in the Paid Supporters Forum at WebmasterWorld about the status of SEO (Paid Subscription):

Is Webmaster-SEO Stuff Flatlining

Search Engine Guide: NoFollow is for Blog Spam...

Comprehensive series on Google's no follow rules and paid links from searchengineguide's Jennifer Laycock.

NoFollow is for Blog Spam...no Paid Text Links, wait...Paid Ads...Aww Heck, Just Stop Linking and Let Calacanis Decide the Rankings

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Google's Paid Link Crisis

I remember when I worked at O'Reilly and Associates as their in-house SEO many years ago I found out about this new search engine called Google. Most companies didn't know what SEO was and they certainly had never heard of Google search engine back then. When I discovered Google's new search engine I had a gut feeling they were going to be big so I made sure O'Reilly's pages were submitted early on back in the day of search engine submissions.

In the late 1990's things were simple. A link was a link. In fact, links were around long before Google ever was born. Too bad Google doesn't remember this. In fact webmasters linked to each other with no concern because they wanted to link to each other. Webmasters saw a great article they liked and linked to it. Webmasters even sold ads because it was their website and they were trying to make a profit. Pretty simple concept.

Google's crisis is the PageRank icon they created. Not so simple to tear down now apparently. They created it but can't control it. The world wide web is a growing entity. New ideas, new methods of providing users information and making a living off the web has been changing with the times. Google's initial idea of using link popularity to rank was built into their algorithm and the other search engines followed the leader.

And here we are today with Google deciding webmasters can't use paid links to make a living while Google makes its living from paid links. Its a sad statement really. From the beginning Google was focused on the search engine user. Things have changed. The reality is it is too difficult for Google to tell which ads are paid and which are not unless they use human evaluation. Imagine the number of pages they would have to evaluate manually. As webmasters and SEO's become more clever about linking its just going to get worse trying to detect paid links. Detecting paid links is not easy now, much less when paid links go underground.

My advice to Google is to share the wealth with folks trying to make a living on the web. Considering the web was around before Google appeared it seems like the user friendly thing to do.

Search Engine Land - The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

List of discussions about Google's paid link crusade:
The Big Paid Link Debate Roundup

Forbes article: Google Purges The Payola

This article from Forbes quotes a number of SEM industry professionals about Google vs paid links. What I found most interesting is at the end of the article the Ask representative talks about the specific difference in how the Ask algorithm evaluates links compared to Google:
Google Purges The Payola

Kalena Jordan: How to Turn Around an Unprofitable PPC Campaign

Kalena Jordan's excellent article about dissecting problems in PPC campaigns.
How to Turn Around an Unprofitable PPC Campaign

e3internet: Search Engine Cheatsheet V.2 Free PDF Download

Good cheatsheet for Google, Yahoo! and MSN search engine queries, download the pdf here:
Search Engine Cheatsheet V.2 Free PDF Download

Lisa Barone of Bruceclay.com: You Can’t Automate Search Engine Optimization

A good post by Lisa Barone of Bruceclay.com. I agree you can use some automated tools to gather or parse information, but the thought of a company that automates SEO just doesn't wash with me. Without the "art", the human touch, its not the real deal and probably a bad investment for clients.
You Can’t Automate Search Engine Optimization

SEOMoz: What Makes a Good Web Directory, and Why Google Penalized Dozens of Bad Ones

This article by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz is pretty interesting, I especially like the "Twelve Attributes of Obviously Manipulative Directories" list. Its a good guideline for looking over the quality of directories you are thinking of submitting your website to.
What Makes a Good Web Directory, and Why Google Penalized Dozens of Bad Ones

SEO Theory and SEOptimise blogs: Link Building Posts

Here are a few interesting posts about link building, one focusing on the difficulties of link building and the other on external links and how they help you:

SEO External Links - How do external links help SEO?

6 reasons why link building is so hard

Search Innovation: Visit Our New SEM Research Directory: SEOExplore.com

Our new directory, SEOExplore.com is live as of today. SEOExplore.com provides information on every aspect of search engine optimization research available to the new and long time search engine marketing professional. The directory has information about search engine patents to link building. We've spent a few years working on this research site for search engine marketers and plan on adding new information often.

SEO Fast Start blog: Lies, Damn Lies, & SEO: Statistical Analysis of SERPs

Dan Thies debunks the myth of keyword density in an easy to understand post, its a good read:
Lies, Damn Lies, & SEO: Statistical Analysis of SERPs

14th Colony Web Development blog: Google plexed over link buying

Well written post on the Google Paid Links debate. Matt Cutts spoke at the recent San Jose SES and again addressed this issue. To me it seems strange for an independent business to tell another an independent business what to do. Paid links from online websites have nothing to do with the organic search engine results in Google. Link building, yes; paid links, no.

Google plexed over link buying

Search Innovation: Talking vs Doing SEM

Over the years I've kept up on the latest research and articles offered up by the SEM industry. I tend to read a lot of information but I don't spend much time posting to forums or writing articles. I'm just too busy workwise. There are industry SEO's that spend huge amounts of time talking about SEM. It always makes me wonder who's doing the work for them? Yeah, if you've got a team of people doing the work of course you have time to talk. Me, I guess I'm more of the hands on type. There is nothing wrong with having a team of SEO's to build a strong SEM company. Personally I've always opted for keeping our business small. The SEO work is provided by me and the technical website review by my husband. Frankly we don't want to expand our business with staff members. I need to know exactly what is happening with my clients step by step. More to the point I'd miss the hands on experience. Our company has outsourced optimization and technical website reviews for another company in the past. It was clear to me the company was big enough that the real work was being done by people like us. I have to say I just don't want that for myself. Granted it is harder to keep things organized, dealing directly with the clients and all, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Don't get me wrong, I do it all as the owner of Search Innovation Marketing. There is something to be said for being the visionary as president of the company and the person creating the source code hands on. So if you don't see me posting much in the forums or writing new articles it is because I'm too busy making client's websites successful in the search engines.

Redflymarketing.com PPC Articles

Three detailed PPC articles from Redflymarketing.com make good reading for those providing PPC services:

Do You Make These 12 AdWords Mistakes?

Dynamic Keyword Insertion - The Ultimate Guide

10 Ways To Increase Your Adwords Quality Score - A Mini Case Study

Search Rank blog: SEO Patterns, Ad Patterns and Search Engines

The article I posted yesterday http://www.searchrank.com/blog/2007/08/link-seller-caveats.html talks about not making link buying obvious. It got me thinking about how search engines are able to spot the obvious. When it comes to SEO we all know to vary the link anchor text coming from external links when link building. The same is true of paid ads. I've always thought (as David pointed out in his article) using a graphic would be a good way to keep ad information away from indexing robots. My take on paid ads and optimization being found by robots is to break the pattern.

Search engine robots are automated programs, there is only so much a software program is able to detect. Humans created the program, however clever it is. If your optimization pattern is broken up, how can an automated program detect exactly what is going on? The same is true of paid ads. If the ad text cannot be found on the page, if the ad text is not in the text links, if the ALT text has no ad information then common sense says detection is difficult at best.

Human programming is fallible and automated detection of text on the web page is based on recognizing patterns. Human detection may be part of what Google would use to find ads in their newfound mission to eradicate paid ads from websites. How feasible is it for Google to detect ads manually compared to automatically? You know the answer to that one. So the choice is, be clever and break the pattern.

Search Rank blog: Things That Bug Me Regarding Those Who Sell Links

David Wallace of SearchRank has an interesting article about link buying. I agree with his concepts on keeping things less obvious when selling links:
Things That Bug Me Regarding Those Who Sell Links