YouTube is in the midst of a Google/YouTube account merger. YouTube is sporatically up and down right now. Is this because of the merge? Hard to say, but YouTube is not a site that commonly goes down. I want to know what’s going on. Anybody have any ideas?
YouTube is only paritally responsive.
All over the interwebs people have been talking about Google’s new browser.
Look how fast the tabs open!
Look how I can drag things around!
Ah man, no plug-ins yet!
Is Google tracking my activity?
Wow, how predictable can you people be? Don’t you see the overlying message here? Am I the only one that sees what is going on at Camp Google? I feel like that guy from the original Twilight Zone where he is the same but everyone around him is different. (George: Which one is that?) (Jerry: Ah, they were all like that.)
What everyone is missing, but I have cleverly discovered, is Google’s blatant attempt at the hip hop community. That’s right - I said it.
It is no secret that marketing firms turn to the hip hop community to see what the future will look like. For twenty years rap music and the b-boy culture have been setting trends from the inner cities to the suburbs. But who would have thought that a search giant like Google would focus their marketing efforts at this demographic. That is just how smart Google truly is.
Wait, you don’t subscribe to my theory? Okay…proof:
First, let’s take a look at Google’s product line; G Mail, G Chat, G Docs, G Calendar - as Snoop would say, “How Gangsta!” And don’t think that the hip hop community hasn’t taken notice. Of course every rapper would want their email to be drdre@Gmail.com (that’s not real, but will now be spammed anyways). Don’t believe me - take a listen to this clip from the song Can U Werk Widat by Dj Quik and AMG (some of the originators of west coast gangsta rap):
Second, let’s take a closer look at the man who has put himself as the spokesperson for the Google Algo: Matt Cutts. Coincidence that his initials are MC? See: MC Hammer, MC Lyte, MC Breed…nuff said.
This brings me to Google Chrome. Not up on your hip hop lingo, then read: Urban Dictionary - Chrome.
Not sure what a Firefox is, and I guess Safari is kind of related to searching for something; but what the F does Chrome have to do with searching the internet? Nothing. It is simply the O.G. (Google) telling all competition that they are rollin’ out, chrome blazin’!
So finally, since I know how much interweb users need to read all of their information in list form: The Secret Gangsta Products Coming Out Of Google Labs Next
5. Google Ice
Reader: Are you telling me that all you’re giving us for Google Ice is a poorly Photoshopp’d image of a diamond studded Google logo?
Frank: Yes, that’s how I roll.
4. Google Weed
Have you ever typed in your own address on Google Maps and zoomed in all the way in satellite mode? Have you ever typed your own address on Google Maps and zoomed in all the way in satellite mode on GOOGLE WEED MAN?? Is that my truck? Wait, when was this taken? Was I even living there then? Yeah, I’ve been living here for awhile. Wait, my truck is dark green; and that truck looks like it might be some kind of blue color. Whose truck is that in my driveway? Whose fuckin truck is that???
3. FUBG
Or wait, has Google already begun their secret infiltration of hip hop clothing, see: Coogi.
2. Google Bitches and Hoes
I’m not even sure how this is a product. And frankly, I am disgusted that Google is planning to branch out into the pimp game. I’m not even sure how related this is to mainstream hip hop. Shame on you Google.
1. Google Coolio
Before you say anything, take a look at how nice those two names look next to each other. It almost looks like they were made for each other. And Coolio? That guy will do anything for a couple bucks and some Google Weed, see: Cookin’ With Coolio.
You may have been wondering when Google would finally adopt a mascot and what mascot they would choose. Firefox has a dragon (btw, a dragon? a MFing dragon? come on Firefox, what is that all about anyways?). Microsoft has a paperclip (that may not be the entire story, but Paul Harvey won’t return my emails). Apple has the kid from Dodgeball…yeah, the one that takes the wrench to the balls. Netscape has a…ah who gives a shit about Netscape. And now, Google, the largest search site on the web, has Coolio! See: G’s Paradise.
FRANK
It wouldn’t be SES if the Fairmont didn’t get Google-banned every night, right?
Drew and I drove back today, and I’m pretty wiped. We’re pretty proud of the blogging for the week, and we’re already working on some new content to post that isn’t related to SES. There might be another session recap or two that we throw out here, but we’re always interested in writing about new stuff, so let us know if you have any suggestions.
=george
Tags: SES San Jose 2008
I missed the first 2 presenters and walked in at the tail end when they started to discuss Reputation Management. This is a very important issue that many people need to pay more attention to. So there are many ways to manage your reputation online and the speaker had the most interesting tactic. Take out your opponent and do it hard. Here are some steps to take. Please note this is not endorsed by SEOMFG.com or the Search Engine Strategies conference. Doing any of the following is at your risk and SEOMFG or Search Engine Strategies will not be held accountable for any banning that may or may not happen.
The audience didn’t understand what the guy was saying and kept asking, why would someone go through all this work to take someone down? Why wouldn’t you just spend the time to work on your own site? Like the moderator said, it’s just one tactic to maintain your good name on the Internet. Black hats off to you.
When the presentations are posted, I’ll comb them for other interesting tidbits.
-Kim
This session is defined by the SES website as:
“Social Search can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening in cyberspace, often in real time. By using buzz monitoring tools such as Buzzlogic, search professions can be very effective in finding influencer’s within online conversations and reaching out to them. As one example of a few that will be presented, learn how Military.com leverages social media and buzz monitoring tools, together with a solid understanding of business goals, to increase profitability.”
Moderator:
Speakers:
Marshall Sponder was up first:
Rob Key:
Todd Parsons and Breanna Wigle:
Edmund Wong:
The funny reality of this issue is that there really is no good way to measure the success of a social media marketing campaign. But I think it’s helpful advice to simply measure what you can. Measure traffic, measure conversions, measure sentiment to the best of your ability. Measure everything and try to correlate your campaign to other solid metrics that already exist. The technology is getting better, but for now a human review of most data is still required.
-Drew
Tags: ROI, sentiment, SES San Jose, SMM, social media marketing
The SES website describes this session as “Marketing to and through social networks means humans are hot again. Not as directory editors; it’s Web 2.0, and your customers are in control. The old-fashioned media buy has gone bye-bye. Social media marketing is fast emerging as a must-have in search strategies. Learn about the social search revolution, and hear case studies of how marketers have successfully promoted brands and products with it.”
Moderated by Pauline Ores, SES Advisory Board & Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media Engagement, IBM Corporation
Speakers:
Vanina’s presentation was all about social media marketing basics. It would actually be a pretty good best practices document, but she didn’t delve into anything beyond an introduction. The point she repeated a number of times is “global is local.” This means that social media is very much a community atmosphere, so knowing your audience is more important (and probably difficult) than ever. She would know; Monster Worldwide does social media marketing in 20 different countries.
Erik Qualman opened by asking “How many people in here are on Facebook? OK. How many are on Twitter? How many have a YouTube channel? OK. How many people use YouPorn.” It was awesome how many people raised their hands on the last one.
One of the better points that Erik made was about Facebook apps. His company made one that tracked where you have been in the world. It was basically a brag about the difference places that you have traveled in the past. It was very popular. At some point, a random user contacted him and told them that they shoulnd’t require filling out information about yourself (name, email, etc.) in order to download the app. Erik and his company didn’t listen, and that same guy ended up making an app called “Where I’ve Been” which had been hugely successful (in terms of total downloads).
There were a couple of lessons learned here. First, listen to you audience. You likely don’t know better than they do, and this is a key point in many different types of social media. Secondly, you don’t have to be unique to be successful. Find a good idea and then rip it off. If you can do it better, or at lease improve on some shortcomings, there is no reason your app won’t be as or more successful than the original.
Later, Erik’s company built their own social networking site that he referred to as “The field of nightmares” because they built it and nobody came. His advice here is that building your own community straight out of the gate is probably a bad idea. At least at first, try to leverage the existing ones and learn about the community you are trying to participate in. If there is a niche that needs to be filled then you can move onto developing your own. But even then, be certain that you have something unique to offer.
Erik closed with a list of common questions that he is frequently asked.
Next up was Brent Csutoras, and in my opinion, he was the star of the show. His entire presentation centered around using social media to get links. It all starts with good content. If you have quality stuff, social media is an excellent way to increase the visiblilty of that content. If you use sm to spread the word and your content is compelling, you can end up with massive amounts of links.
So, where to begin? Let’s say you have your content, and this could be a photograph, a video, a top 10 list, a how-to article, etc. Figure out which communties are most appropriate for your content. You don’t want to submit an Xbox 360 game cheat to a baby boomer community, so know your audience before you begin. Also remember that there is a massive audience out there, and they want your content and are willing to link to you as the source. So the challenge is getting it in front of them. Being listed on the front pages of aggregators like Digg and Reddit is an automaitc indicator of authority. So the sheer act of getting voted into those top spots will mean that most people will automatically trust you.
This built-in trust can even lead to media play outside the web (newspapers, magazines, etc. The example that Brent used was Wired magazine’s reporting on Digg stories). The ripple effect continues because other sites and Blogs who then write about you leads to higher-quality traffic that is likelier to convert. This residual effect that can last weeks if not months (as opposed to the Digg effect which is very brief).
At this point, Brent showed a picture of Matt Cutts smiling. The great thing about back links from social media efforts is that they are all completely natural. Google has stated so many times that they discourage paid linking and aim to penalize those sites that pariticpate in it. Links from social media campaigns, if executed properly, can be a get-rich-quick success story (in terms of back links).
There were recently a couple of social media phenomena. If you didn’t see them on Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon, somebody likely sent them to you in an email. I know that I saw them several times the week that they were circulating around:
and…
Each of these hit the front pages on Digg and Reddit (and likely others, though he didn’t go into detail). Brent was able to get approximately 130,000 visitors back to the target page for each one. And each on baited about 8,000 completely organic inbound links from very high value sites. He figured that this equals approximately $300,000 dollars worth of paid links.
It’s not just the funny stuff that works well. He has gotten articles and top 10 lists about tax codes and other seemingly boring topics. One client wanted to promote urinals, so they made a list of the 20 most expensive urinals ever created. The point is, with a bit of creativity, there is a way to make practically any topic viral.
TIPS:
Question and Answer Section:
Q: What does a new company do to get into SMM and selling a product/service?
Q: What is the best way to get involved with Twitter? And is this the most successful or useful social media community?
Q: Social Media tends to make reputation management harder, so what can be done about this?
Vanina: If you get a bad comment, respond.
Q: Where is social media going? What are the next steps.
-Drew
Tags: Digg, Reddit, san jose, ses, SMM, social media marketing, StumbleUpon
Yesterday afternoon’s sessions were great for an SEO that isn’t content with your run-of-the-mill Matt Cutts blog entries or dated SEO Empire posts that stopped working years ago (note FRANK’s funny roll-over comments on the blogroll).
Maybe this stuff is written down somewhere and I just haven’t found it yet, but I learned more about being an entrepreneur in internet marketing and, perhaps, in general yesterday than I have from anything I can remember reading or listening to in, well, years. Probably since I realized that you don’t have to go to college to do fine (yeah, Filly!)
Most of the SEOs on the panels have been doing this since the mid 90s — before Google. It’s interesting to hear them repeatedly speak of the days before there were hats. There weren’t any rules, other than “make money”.
Things have come an awful long way since then, but these guys are still on top of the food chain. So the question is: how?
First, it’s obvious that they can’t do this solo — maybe you can still put together an Adsense empire without the help of others, but the research and development costs to track everything one must track at such a granular level require a team of people (or a superhuman) creating tools and checking off every box.
Second, as was so candidly mentioned during the rehab session — put yourself in a position where you don’t have to worry about what has already happened, and instead spend your time researching what is going to happen so that you’re ahead of (or, at least, on par with) the best when the time comes.
So with these things in mind, to run just a profitable black hat outfit is going to take a team of people. They all have to eat and sleep somehow, and they’re probably not good enough to do the R&D if they’re only making $12 an hour. So the team isn’t cheap. And what happens if Google gets a whiff and brings down the hammer? All of a sudden there’s less money coming in until the next scheme is up and running. Pretty stressful work environment, right?
Along these lines, there have to be myriad older (read: no longer profitable) sites and testing-only sites that SEOs can use to push boundaries and find out exactly what they can get away with across as many spaces as possible. While very complicated, it’s also pretty simple. Open up the pocket books and see how far you can push Google; take what you learn and make money.
These guys are no longer strictly black hat millionaires, either – they’re running legitimate agencies with high-paying, brand clients, and they have been for quite some time. These clients are time-intensive and require a lot of resources. I can only assume that the steady stream of client-based income must make this whole process an awful lot easier financially. And to balance everything on the R&D side, the only thing that makes sense is that many of the self- or company-owned, non-branded sites used for testing and research are also quite profitable for durations of time.
And the number of these sites that we’ll never hear about is probably much, much, MUCH larger than one would guess. Who knows, some of Eli’s SEO Empire strategies may still work — they’re probably just a much smaller piece of the puzzle, or maybe they’re simply a research tool at this point.
=george
This might have been the most refreshing session at SES. Toward the end, far after the exodus of uninvolved marketing ladies during the session’s awkward but poignant opening, a lot of valuable conversation pursued that gave some fascinating insight into the minds of many of the top players in the SEO industry.
Luckily for those in attendance the dry-witted Kevin Ryan moderated the session. Not that Anne Kennedy, the “listed” moderator, couldn’t have done the session justice. But there couldn’t possibly have been a better moderator than Ryan; his knowledge of the panelists and their strengths and weaknesses, along with his eagerness to keep everything light yet topical, was exactly what a knowledgeable-yet-fresh SEO would draft up for an ideal convention session.
The recurring joke was that Michael Gray loves to twitter about his fancy for chocolate cake at parties; yet, the takeaway was extraordinary. Through twitter, Gray has connected with a vast network of people (nearly 8,000 followers) who vigilantly follow him, asking for advice or tweeting back and forth with him about whatever his current (and opinionated) predicament might be. Based on the feedback he receives, he uses Twitter as a vehicle to connect with potential clients. Further, with these short-text interactions, he employs selection and filtering techniques to determine which clients will fit his model for success. Why work with a client that doesn’t believe in what you know you’ll recommend?
This session had it’s moments. For the sake of posting, Andy Atkins-Krüger first presented a deck describing the SEO 12 Step Program - Sanity Escaped Organically. It led to a couple interesting tangents. Here are his 12 steps, with some notes in italics:
1. Take care choosing KPIs - don’t rely on rankings
2. Set realistic objectives
3. Employ people who know what they’re doing
4. Build your web site for SEO from the bottom up
5. Only work on projects which deserve to rank
6. Only work on projects where there is a market
7. Be different - ideally unique - in the market place
Do something that creates a viral impact - something remarkable
8. Get good training
Go to conferences and get good training and good knowledge
9. Understand the mechanics
Know how the search engines work
10. Don’t try to be an expert in every SEO technique - focus on your strengths
A lot of the best SEOs use different techniques
** Greg Boser disagrees with this point — his addiction is being an expert across all areas
11. Be patient
12. Enjoy your addiction
The presentation was a great primer, but once it was over Andy was pretty much done speaking for the remainder of the session.
When Greg Boser stepped in to speak during the 10th point, the tone was set for the remainder of the session.
Will the real SEO please stand up???
Near the end of the session, an attendee asked the panelists to offer a domain that they use to monetize traffic. What a funny question — I’ve done tons of searches in competitive markets trying to find these types of sites, and I’ve come up pretty empty for the most part. I just don’t know the markets, because they’re niche markets and the people monetizing them aren’t going to tell you what they are.
This goes back to a theme of the afternoon: “If you’re a good SEO, you’re not getting caught.”
The response to this inquiry was Greg’s humorous quip (paraphrased), “You see that guy in the back with glasses and a goatee? Don’t ever mention one of your domains to anyone. Next thing you know, you’ll get an email from him asking, ‘What’s the deal with these 500 domains?’ and you’ll be wondering, ‘How did he find out about those?’” He was obviously speaking about Matt Cutts, who was nestled in the back row.
Another fantastic clip from Boser, when discussing black hat tactics that were discoveredby Google: “It’s because some idiot posted it on a stupid blog.” There’s a lot of give and take with SEOs, but in general, revealing secrets to the public isn’t a great way to gain favor among the innovators of the industry.
…………….
David Naylor’s deck was actually very refreshing. Essentially, his point was to automate everything. It’s possible and it’s really, really, really efficient. He doesn’t spend his time worrying about what has happened — he gets an email when things deviate from expectation and he reacts accordingly. With this type of automation, he and his staff are afforded the opportunity to spend their time determining what is happening next in the industry, not dissecting what has already happened. Hmmm, what a huge competitive advantage.
Later in the day, I had one of the more eye-opening moments in my young marketing/entrepreneurial career: Greg Boser mentioned, just in passing, that he analyzes patents. And with certainty, he’s not just analyzing Google’s patents; he’s taking a deep dive into everything that he can get his hands on to determine what he can use to propel his unknown brands and those of his clients. And all of the best SEOs are doing this. It boils down to a matter of resources and some very keen insight.
As was discussed in this session: Sequoia didn’t see how Google could possibly be profitable when they were infants in the wild world of search, and now Google is the brand of Earth. So, how is Twitter going to be monitized? Those who aren’t already using it as a vehicle like Michael Gray have a lot to figure out. But, it’s figure-out-able, and once they find their monetizing model it’ll simply be another tool for SEOs (even moreso than it already is).
…………….
One final shout for Boser: toward the end of the session when some white/black hat stuff came up, he bluntly stated, “You’re not a real SEO unless you’ve been torched.” Talk about getting the juices flowing shortly before the Black Hat/White Hat session begins.
=george
Tags: black hat, SEO, SES San Jose 2008
We all know that cruising the trade show floor is the best possible way to end up with exciting crap to give to our kids/spouse/dog/cousin/retarded nephew. Of course it will be forgotten or discarded withing the next 48 hours, but that doesn’t stop us from pretending to be interested in that booth’s product or service. “Hello! Yes, I’m Drew. Nice to meet you. Ooooh, you sell ad space on the moon? How interesting! Do you mind if I grab one of these snow globes from my retarded nephew? Thanks so much, and here’s my card.”
Here is the best of the god awful crap offered this year at SES.
10) Best Use Of Trying To Tie The Swag Into The Slogan: Acronym Media
I mean… you have to give them credit for trying. “Hands on search” is kind of clever. And as we all know, search marketing gets bacteria all over your hands. Those guys are creepy.
9) Best Shameless Exploitation Of Terrible Willpower
Like a bunch of assholes, Adgooroo served freshed-baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. Studies have shown that the human mind is incapable of resisting warm chocolate chip cookies. Next year they’re giving away piles of cocaine.
8) Worst Influence On All Of Us: Anchor Intelligence
Our moms would be disappointed in Anchor Intelligence. As if we’re all not going to stay up too late and get drunk and be hung over tomorrow morning. Thanks for feeding my habit, Anchor.
7) The Swag That Will Still Be In My Desk In 2014
Congrats to Business.com for handing out something that I’ll probably use. Oh… wait. I work for a technology company. So, um - never mind.
6) Best Swag That I’ll Give To My Aunt At Christmas
Commission Junction is pretty much the shadiest company ever. Of course, everyone involved in its creation is a millionaire. So what better swag to give away than a hundred dollar bill holder? That’s what is for, right?
5) Most Inappropriate Swag
Here’s the thing: SES attendees aren’t athletes (Not even ultimate frisbee athletes). The better choice would have been to label these things as Tron 2.0 Light Discs.
4) Ezanga.com’s Stress Frog
We all get stressed-out at trade shows. And we all hate frogs with the white hot burning intensity of a thousand suns. Take out your aggression on these sons of bitches. Good move, Ezanga. Thanks for facilitating my frog strangling fantasy.
3) The Totally Unfair Giveaway
A SmartCar? How are you going to beat that? If a dude wins this thing, I hope Omniture is able to track his success with women.
2) Best Consolation Swag
Aaaah, OK. So you’re probably not going to win the cool real-life SmartCar. So here is a tiny version of the real thing… to scale.
1) Best All-Around-We-Are-Not-Interested-In-Swag Giveaway
You have to respect somebody who just doesn’t give a shit. Some might say this is worse than pens, t-shirts, hats, keychains and buttons combined. I say this is the ultimate in simiplicity. Give your potential clients a ball. You can bounce it, you can squeeze it, you can throw it, you can stare at it. It’s the prototypical toy, and it’s awesome. Syndico, I’m not going to buy your service, whatever it is that you do, but I’m coming back to your booth next year and you and me are going to play some 4-square.
-Drew
Tags: Free Stuff, Giveaways, SES San Jose 2008, Swag, Top 10
None of the people on the panel had anything prepared, so this session was purely intended to be an open discussion/debate about the white/black hat issue. As it turned out, this was an idea format, and we got some very candid insights into the thought processes of a handful of the best SEO minds in the industry.
For the purpose of this post, George will be black hat and Drew will be white hat. We will present each of the major issues that arose during this session and play devil’s advocate for each of our sides’ stances.
Drew: It’s pretty unfair to say that a white hat SEO has no game. We simply play by the rules. And, of course, those rules are made by the search engines. To be fair, we are working for the client (that’s who is paying us after all) not the search engines. This is often the rationale that black hats give for crossing over to the other side of the search engines’ terms of service. But remember that ultimately we are beholden to the search engines for our rankings and subsequent success. As far as I’m concerned, my client’s success or failure has to do with little more than thier ability to rank well. If we risk their getting banned or black listed, we have failed.
Let’s say a client can profit enormously from 10-20 head terms; they’re probably only going to get significant traffic from a small percentage of them.
So what’s the strategy for monetizing the remainder of the head terms? Create a faux affiliate network and optimize the affiliate sites for the remainder of the head terms! It was said over and over today: “Divide and conquer.”
The affiliate sites aren’t tied to the brand, just to the monetization. So black hat wins! If an affiliate site gets penalized or banned, simply rearrange the content and start over from scratch with a new affiliate optimized for the key word(s). At this point, we already know how to optimize! We already know who to buy our links from! We already have the general strategy, it’s simply re-implementation in a manner that will evade the predatory eyes of the competitors.
If we really want to take the “divide and conquer” strategy to heart, we can try to completely own the front page of Google for the keywords with a large number of different web sites. So, as long as each affiliate site is “unique”, all of the significant organic traffic can be owned. This would also lend well to multi-variate testing and CPO; each “affiliate” site can be a test bed for something new. This gives us a lot of options.
Drew: Well, let’s cut to the chase then. By and large, linking is what is causing this whole argument, right? I mean, if linking were taken out of the equation, there would be no such think as white/black hat.
Drew: Another important point. As SEOs, we have two choices: rank fast (30 days) or rank properly according to Google, which could take up to 3 years - sometimes more. I have a hard time with this one. On one hand, I would never NEVER put my client’s site in any kind of jeopardy. But on the other hand, delivering immediate results is highly beneficial - not to me, but to my client. Obviously, I get paid sooner, but this isn’t what I’m talking about. If I can get my client to rank very quickly then I’ve achieved my goal… but at what price? So the big question here is, “how is this done?” And the answer is buying links. Google and their nerd extraordinare, Matt Cutts, have said time and time again (more vocally each day it seems), paid links are worse than STDs. But no white hat can argue that paid links work. Many times, I have debated with my collegues about what exactly paid linking is. Here is an ambiguous example. If I have a ecomm client who sells model rocket kits, and I find a college model rocket enthusiast club on the web, I will probably approach them for a link, being and .edu and all. If they say “no” I’ll probably offer to pay them. They probably need the money (I hear college kids sell their plasma for beer). Is this bad? Everyone benefits and the end user AND my client end up with what they need. But as a white hat SEO, I will typically shy away from this behavior. And the bottom line here is that Google makes all their money from paid links, right? I mean, after all, what is Adwords?
Right?
It’s paying for links strictly to manipulate PageRank that Google considers “black hat”. But that’s still the game. The traffic driving pay-links are great for conversions if you find the right partner, and Google shouldn’t penalize you for that.
If Google is all about “user satisfaction”, then to paraphrase Todd Friesen, “When I rank #1 for Viagra, and a user finds me on Google, and they buy Viagra and receive it in 2 days, how is that a bad user experience? The user is happy! They got exactly what they wanted! That’s what Google says their intent is with user experience!”
He also mentioned that he was asked to speak at a Commission Junction summit years ago, and when he walked up to the stage, he basically stated, “Look, I haven’t read your terms of service, I’m not going to, and I’m going to do this however I want to. I’m going to make money, and I’m going to make money for the company I’m pushing business to, so tell me whatever rules you want me to follow but I don’t give a shit.”
And he said there were a line of people out the door that wanted him to pimp their products after his presentation was over. So much for white hat.
Drew: Not so fast. White hat is ultimately good for the user experience over time. And if being SEOs for a long time has told us anything, it’s that gaming the search engines never works for long. Back in the old days, black hats could meta-keyword-stuff porn pages’ keyword tags with phrases like “Mickey Mouse” and it would work because back then nobody cared about conversions (of course, Google didn’t even exist back then). Page-views were king, and anything that got you the page-views was considered a win. But that stopped working after a while. So in today’s SEO game, what is legit? It’s a hard question to answer, but according to Jill Whalen, staying within the boundaries is just common sense. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to call bullshit on a fellow white hat. The “I know it when I see it approach” won’t fly. But at the same time, I think most SEOs can honestly say that they know full well when they are being black hat. Todd Friesen suggested, if Matt Cutts were to walk up behind you while you were working on a client’s SEO, would you immediately shut your laptop closed? If so, I think you have your answer.
No. BMW is going to be fine, and their ban was for a very short amount of time.
And this leads to the defining point in the black/white hat debate: in reality, there are SO many SEOs that suck, and they’re the huge problem. They mess things up for everyone. If you’re a good SEO and you know how to game the system, that means you’re not going to get caught — unless, as Greg Boser so eloquently put it in the previous session, “Some idiot posted it on a blog” (he he).
………………..
There are a lot of rambling thoughts that I’ll post on this session (and the session before it — “SEO Rehab and Intervention”, which was also fantastic for the accelerated newcomer) when I have a little more time tomorrow. There was so much genius that was subtly revealed this afternoon, and it was funny that the vast majority of the follow-up questions in the Q&A were dumbed down link-purchasing questions or egotistic black/white hat arguments.
The black/white hat debate rages, and it probably will until it’s irrelevant (read: a long time from now). I’ll leave you with one important notion from the black hats: they understand the competitive landscape of their clients, and if black hat techniques are required, they know that’s how to compete in the specific space. So if you want to be white hat, take Jill Whalen’s approach and stick to clients that can rule their vertical with playing the game.
=george &
-Drew
Tags: Black Hat SEO, link buying, linking, SEO, SES San Jose, white hat seo
