If you have comments, additions or questions, post 'em.

The SEO "crowd" is talking about a possible big change in Google nick-named "May Day" as it <may have> happened around May 1, 2010.

There's speculation that Google has somehow devalued low-quality links in a way that is affecting long-tail SERPs.

I posted the following on the Warrior Forum...I'll add to it here:

You are correct that top rankings seem to be zero sum, and if one site drops out of the Top 10 another takes it's place, and assumably it's traffic.

However, there's a few more dynamics at play...

A couple are personalized and localized SERPs, which means multiple "Top 10". This will cause the same amount of traffic to be divided between more sites.

Another factor is the new "Everything" column on the left. This pushes all the SERs and the top Adwords about two inches to the right. The top AdWords ads are now right smack in the middle of the "hottest" zone, according to Google's own heat map. This could raise click-throughs by a percentage point or two, and lower them to the organic SERs.

Plus with the new "Everything" column, if it is expanded it offers all these choices:

------------------------------------------
Everything
Shopping
Images
Videos
Maps
News
Books
Blogs
Updates
DiscussionsMoreFewer
Search Options
Any time
LatestPast 24 hoursPast weekPast monthPast yearCustom range...
From:
To:
ex: 5/23/2004

All results
SocialNearby
All results
Visited pagesNot yet visited
Standard view
Related searchesWonder wheelTimeline
Standard results
Sites with imagesFewer shopping sites
More shopping sites
Page previewsTranslated search
------------------------------------------

That's a lot more options for users to choose....

There could be plenty of other factors, but the one's I pointed out above have nothing to do with what we'd call "typical SEO" or algorithms, but simply Google offering users more choices and customization which would result in less traffic for the same keywords.

As we can see, there's some big changes going on. And there will probably be a lot more...

Right now Google, Yahoo and it seems AOL are no longer giving away easy email addresses. These addresses are a major part of the SEO/link spammer toolkit.

Site owners are getting fed up with comment and profile link spam. Developers like Kickapps are updating their software so that all profile links are nofollow. Each Kickapps profile use to allow for all sorts of dofollow links and RSS. Most of the major bookmarking services are now nofollow.

And this is probably just the start, I can see bloggers getting so fed up that they shut down comments altogether and forum software making profile pages "private" so that they aren't even spidered/indexed.

Rumors are Google has devalued cheap and easy links. I'm not sure if there's truth to this or not, but it will probably be true in the future..

The fact is, if we can find these sites using footprints to search Google looking for pages where it's easy to place links, Google can probably find them too. It would also be pretty easy to tell comment links from those in the actual content of a page.

From Google's point of view, why should these easy-to-automate links count? Are they an indication of quality or that a webmaster bought some software? I think common sense says it's the webmaster bought some software.

The question now becomes, what should we do about it?

Punt?

(An insightful post as always Kurt!)

First worry about on own page. Meta tags, content, and such.

Second, get incoming links, buy asking, adding our sites to other resource sites, giving people a reason to want to share our links, giveaways, writing articles, press releases, etc.

Third, update our sites regularly.

Fourth, adjust our sites as needed.

Fifth, get a new site, and repeat.

Except for the above, for the most part, the basics have worked since the first concept of SEO, before it was even called SEO.

Kelvin

Greetings Everyone,

I agree with Kelvin. Keep doing what has worked since the beginning of the internet, and also what Kurt has been saying for the past however many years. On page optimization, relevant content, and as Kurt says "just making pages". It sounds easy enough, but it seems we've gotten away from the basics with all the distractions.

Ron

For new members, these guys have been around for a long time, 7-8 years and their message is the same...Just keep doing what we've been doing.

One of the hard things for me in this forum is coming up with new SEO stuff to keep everyone entertained. Selling SEO stuff requires everything to be new and cutting edge.

But that's contrary to "bombing". The Dombom method of SEO is to concentrate of the things that the SE can't change...They'll always like keywords in domain names, anchor text and page titles, there's really no way around it. They have to.

It's also a numbers game combined with optimization. You want to put as many words (re: profitable keyword phrases) on as many pages as possible, then link to those pages. We want to use basic SEO skills to make our use of these words and link gathering "optimal".

Let's put on our poker hats and look at this from Google's perspective...Our mission is to re-value links for the sake of ranking.

The first thing I notice is all the automation tools...You had xrummer and now Scrapebox which is very inexpensive. And now with ubot tons more people are programing automation.

If I were Google, I'd try to detect profiles, comments, forum signatures and bookmarking type links that are easy to automate. I think it would be pretty easy for Google to do this, as there are plenty of blackhat programs already that can. If we can find the footprint to place these links, so can Google.

If true, then contextual links in the main content of a page will be worth more. For example, a service like Linkvana will be more valuable, as the links are placed in posts, not comments.

Paying for articles to be posted on blogs will become more common.

Trading pages of content filled with links or restricted WPMU with other webmasters is a possibility.

So is a hosting swap like I tried a few years ago. A viable long-term plan would be to get 5 reseller accounts with totally different hosts, then trade hosting on each with 5 others, for a total of 25 different hosts. This would take some time finding the right partners, but could be a very cost effective way to expand a network.

Right now of the most effective linking strategies, I think RSS has the most long-term potential. The reason we submit and ping our RSS isn't to get the listed in the RSS directories. It's to get them in the directories AND THEN have other webmasters pick up our RSS from those directories, placing our RSS (and links) on their pages.

At least for a while, social sites like Twitter and Facebook can be automated and tied in using RSS. There's a little SEO benefit to this, but you can also automate getting traffic by adding "friends". Because they are so easy to update with RSS, any social site that also has the potential to automate adding friends is a good strategy.

I also suggest really mixing things up...Create PDFs, docs, screen savers, contests, software, podcasts and more, then submit. Email addresses are getting hard to come by. Instead of needing new email addresses to blast away at the same sites, go "deep and wide" exploiting various resources while only needing one email (or just a few).

I thought its pretty obvious - just look at the people over at wf complaining that the bought link packages are not working anymore

IMO this is actually a good thing!!!!!
With so many packages, tools etc spreading all over the internet it was only a matter of time -
but some stuff will continue to work like article submission etc (basically everything which requires work!)

Also content will be more valuable than ever before...

And this is the key...Content has always been the most important element of SEO...You need "something" to promote.

And I agree, it will become even more important. I still feel forums are the way to go as you can get tons of user generated content.

But getting a forum going is a major chore. I've tried a few forums. The only ones that were successful were ones I "added" to an existing site that already had traffic. I've tried starting a few other forums from scratch and haven't been successful.

Also reusing (repurposing) content will be essential by converting it to different mediums.

What about forums where you are able to auto post content, such as you are testing here with the AOL thread?

You could setup multiple user accounts to rotate posts to the forum.

Kelvin

11k express engine - 28k phpbb - etc -

there are over 200 webmaster boards and most of them are flooded by hired guns (signature link spammers) and if you dont watch the board then it will be overrun by xrumer spammers too LOL

the information exchanged on those boards is worthless..a lot of boards are now giving out prices/points to members to keep them...etc

but in reality there is nothing better than user generated content...

This is really funny...Here's some SEO "advice" from some of the big shots at Google:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-answers-seo-questions/13731/

The only real info is the confirmation that Google does try to weigh links in seperate parts of the pages differently.

"Zareen Kazim: Our link analysis is getting much more sophisticated than the original PageRank used to be. To answer your question, we may treat links across different areas in a different way, as some areas of a page might not be as relevant to the content of the page as others. Check out Matt’s video where he talks about links in paragraphs":

Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0fgh5RIHdE&feature=player_embedded

Please explain.

Kelvin

In this example, we're using a small adsense type site with 6-10 "money" pages SEOed around your best keywords.

Sure, you want to go out and get links to these pages. But you can also create some good link juice of your own by simply creating a few more pages we'll call "Juice Pages", which are pages we will use to help focus PR and "juice" on our money pages.

Below is a "suggested" linking strategy for small adsense type sites.

While the diagram shows the "Juice" pages linked in a standard linkwheel, also try using Backerz on just the Juice pages.

UAW - is about creating articles with 8 or so paragraphs and then spin those paragraphs when submitting the articles -

>but I found that the idea of rearranged
>>"chunks" is not working anymore...
>
>
>Please explain.
>
>
>Kelvin

I can't say I agree with this. So, first let me explain why. And just
to followup. I will be testing this again shortly.

For me the chunks means, not just rearranging "an article" be taking 40 to 100 chunks, of data to start with allowing you to create several totally new articles.

And if you want to take it a step further, you would replace words or phrases, to further de-dupe the finished articles for each run.

ie. replacing ' large dog ', with 'big dog'

Kurt explains it very well.

But using this logic, I can see no reason, why it would be, no longer an effect strategy.

Kelvin

Some notes: (using round numbers)

#1 gets 2x the traffic as #2.

#1 gets 11x as much traffic as #10

#10 gets almost 2.5x the traffic #11 gets

#11 gets 2x the traffic #14 gets

Going from #14 to #10 will increase your traffic almost 5x.

If a phrase gets 100 clicks per day, at #9 and #10 expect less than 3 clicks per day.

Having 3 pages ranked #3 is about the same as having 1 page rank #1.

Rank Impressions Percentage
1 2,834,806 34.35%
2 1,399,502 16.96%
3 942,706 11.42%
4 638,106 7.73%
5 510,721 6.19%
6 416,887 5.05%
7 331,500 4.02%
8 286,118 3.47%
9 235,197 2.85%
10 223,320 2.71%
---------------------
11 91,978 1.11%
12 69,778 0.85%
13 57,952 0.70%
14 46,822 0.57%
15 39,635 0.48%
16 32,168 0.39%
17 26,933 0.33%
18 23,131 0.28%
19 22,027 0.27%
20 23,953 0.29%

But what is really interesting is that it's being reported that BP has also bought the algorithm, giving BP top rankings in the SERPs for related kewyords.

If this is true, the implications are huge and it means Google can and does control rankings on a "human" level.

It also could be illegal, concealing sponsored links in the SERPs.

And it destoys a lot of Google's credibility.

Can anyone confirm if it's true that BP has bought rankings in the "organic" listings? If true, we'll have to come up with another word, as the results are anything but "organic" (natural) and based on quality and relevance, instead being ranked by profit.

And if true, IMO this will be the first real crack in Google's armor...And I think a potentially serious one.

I was with a certain person that took google to court a few years back. During the suit, hundreds of sites, suddenly went from page ranks 4 - 6 to zero.

And it pretty much did not effect anyone that was NOT connected with the suing company. After another filing because of that depute, some of the sites starting getting rank back almost immediately.

And all these sites, were white hat, plain directories. This was before the wordblack hat became common.

It was the first real hit to my income, as I was making over $1,000 a month from adsense then.

Kelvin

I know this isnt the place for it but Obama turns out to be the biggest disappointment in my life so far...

>In case you weren't aware, BP has bought a bunch of Adwords
>(and Yahoo PPC) adds for keywords relating to the oil spil.
>
>But what is really interesting is that it's being reported
>that BP has also bought the algorithm, giving BP top
>rankings in the SERPs for related kewyords.
>
>If this is true, the implications are huge and it means
>Google can and does control rankings on a "human" level.
>
>It also could be illegal, concealing sponsored links in the
>SERPs.
>
>And it destoys a lot of Google's credibility.
>
>Can anyone confirm if it's true that BP has bought rankings
>in the "organic" listings? If true, we'll have to come up
>with another word, as the results are anything but "organic"
>(natural) and based on quality and relevance, instead being
>ranked by profit.
>
>And if true, IMO this will be the first real crack in
>Google's armor...And I think a potentially serious one.

Nope, it's not the place for it. Not even close.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Broadcast/bp-buys-search-engine-phrases-redirecting-users/story?id=10835618

And yes, I agree - it might be the biggest crack in their armor as of this date.

>I have always known that google can and does.
>
>I was with a certain person that took google to court a few
>years back. During the suit, hundreds of sites, suddenly
>went from page ranks 4 - 6 to zero.
>
>And it pretty much did not effect anyone that was NOT
>connected with the suing company. After another filing
>because of that depute, some of the sites starting getting
>rank back almost immediately.
>
>And all these sites, were white hat, plain directories. This
>was before the wordblack hat became common.
>
>It was the first real hit to my income, as I was making over
>$1,000 a month from adsense then.
>
>Kelvin

Yeah Kelvin,

I remember when this stuff was going down. It wasn't pretty then, and the thing with BP won't be pretty now.

Here's a new patent Google applied for:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,783,639.PN.&OS=pn/7,783,639&RS=PN/7,783,639

The important word in the patent's abstract is "affiliation". Affiliation is a word used over and over in the Hilltop documents and is the core principle of Hilltop and in this case it means the relationship between two documents (pages) where there is a link.

And, I don't think it's a coincidence that the word "affiliation" comes up in the new patent as well as in Hilltop. The word and it's use is Google's own fingerprint and probably shows an affiliation between the patent and Hilltop. I believe this is called "irony".

Basically, Hilltop's primary function is to try to detect whether pages are related in any way, and to score the power of the links accordingly.

This goes way beyond C-block IP addresses and into anything Google can use to try to detect if pages that share a link (or two) are related.

I believe that the effectiveness of link wheels may be directly tied to the concept of Hilltop and affiliated documents. For example, if you spin the same article into 100 different versions, then use them in link structures that link directly to each, Google may be able to detect that the articles are basically the same and just substitute synonyms in certain places...Or they may share affiliate IDs, etc.

The point is, strongly consider Hilltop and ANY AND ALL ways Google may detect your pages/articles/hubs/lenses are "affiliated" to improve your long-term linking benefits.