Google gets smarter and less easy to trick,… or does it only seem to? We’ve seen so many discussions that black-hat SEO is dying and paid links (as well as reciprocal links) are no option at all any more (because Google is impossible to cheat) that many people start believing in that even without real-life evidence.
So is fair play the only option we have now? Or is “pushed” SEO still effective or even “more” effective? Let’s have a look at a couple of examples shared in public and also discuss our own experience.
Case Study 1
An interesting experiment shared on WebmasterWorld Forums (discussed on SER and Sphinn) is really thought-provoking. It discusses what actually works better: the good old SEO tactics (like directories and reciprocal links) or high-quality naturally-linked content.
Note: I am not talking about the purity of this experiment. Too many factors might have come into play that affected the two sites performance (like the niche, the way tactics were applied and pure luck).
What I am calling to is to share your personal (honest) experience.
2 sites on same niche and similar topic were launched simultaneously:
| Site 1 | Site 2 | |
| Domain | new, short, containing core term | 3-year-old but keyword based |
| Content | keyword-optimized, not stuffed | high-quality, keywords only naturally occurring |
| Tactics | quality paid web directories; quality paid links; (almost) relevant reciprocal link exchanges, article directories | daily unique content added, blog, press releases, video channel, Twitter account |
| Anchor text | controlled | natural |
| Results | high rankings and good Google traffic after only 3 months | struggled to rank anywhere, even for it’s own name, stagnant Google traffic |
Case Study 2
Vladimir Prelovac is sharing his experiment of reaching “what can be considered decent search engine traffic” in a month.
Tactics used:
- Established domain (Page Rank of 1 and 5 or so visitors daily);
- A new “SEO optimized” blog;
- Daily added content (it was not clearly stated in the article but I assume the content used was nothing brainstorming. Just short unique articles for search engines to crawl);
- Relevant links from niche forums.
Your take?
So do you still use “pushed” SEO or is creating quality is the only tactic you are using? Do you believe Google will ever be able to conquer “pushed” SEO or has this been already done?
there are a lot of SEOs who hope that everyone will think that paid links/reciprocal linking/3way linking do not work.
they do work until google figures it out.
i dont believe that ‘google’ figures it out on their own. nowadays we have ppl filling out spam reports on competitors ‘just in case’ they have spam
i never reciprocal linked, paid for a link, or 3way link but it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out they work!
So do you still use “pushed” SEO or is creating quality is the only tactic you are using?
Both.
Do you believe Google will ever be able to conquer “pushed” SEO or has this been already done?
Yes, not yet, but not too long.
I tend to agree w/ Gidseo.
Quality content is very important but so is keyword research and optimization.
With regard to linking strategies, I never pay, but I have done reciprocal links with good success. I receive a significant amount of traffic from the links and also seem to be getting some “Google Juice”.
I think there is a fine line between “pushed SEO” and “SEO consciousness” — I don’t like “pushed” but I think it’s important and beneficial to be conscious of what you’re doing.
i never reciprocal linked, paid for a link, or 3way link but it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out they work
Can someone tell me here SEO companies get off in offering you SEO services, but when I do a search for “SEO” on Google, I ca’t even find these companies?
On Case Study I, do you suggest we still hold on to the old seo tactics as the results based on the case study are far more appealing and profitable in terms of achieving the first page in Google?
Your thoughts please.
I think that people give Google more credit than it deserves in being able to detect and prevent “pushed/manipulated” SEO.
The days of spamming tonnes of links to a site using forum spamming, guestbook spamming, comment spamming are definately not over. I know because I can rank well using those techniques.
Join the dark side my friends you will see what I’m talking about :P
PS: No, not one of my sites has been deindexed.
The twitter account is not doing you much as it doesn’t pass Juice. Twitter is good for having people get quick updates on what you’re up to, but useless for SEO purposes.
I always hear about how one way quality links are the only way to go, and though they are totally awesome, they are difficult to get for most people unless you’re an expert in your field.
Recip links are better than no links
I agree with Giseo.
Both methods work
I think both the approach in combination wiil work, not any of these alone. I have seen so many sites even today getting to top of google with the old approach with a little bit of new methods. Following any of the two alone will not produce satisfactory results. Combining both is the trick.
As long as ‘fair play SEO’ is still giving good results to me I won’t think in another way.
Just a good SEO friendly web (and SEO ready CMS) + fine content optimization is making some of our sites rank better that some of the most important competence sites in Spain.
Ann, nice article and rather timely. I have been thinking about this and decided to document the optimization of my corporate site. I haven’t had a site for years and was lucky enough to get the domain. I plan to demonstrate that inbound links of any kind are not the optimization factor you’d think. Referential integrity, and architecture aspects of sites are the webmasters best friends.
I plan to promote this site the old fashioned way. Build content and get it visibility that draws traffic not links! I will do some of the techniques above but there will be no reciprocal (I have never done that) and only top line directories. The rest will be Social bookmarking and the two old standbys Press releases and to much lesser degree article syndication (top industry blogs)
Checkout the post at
http://www.internationalwebsitebuilders.com/BlogEngine/post/2009/04/22/Do-Domain-Names-Increase-Rankings-Yes!.aspx
where I will be posting the results of each new old school technique
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful and useful information with us. Keep it up..!!
I think that old school with the new school works well.. I noticed if you used social bookmarking sites it gets your site up fast on google but it doesnt stay.. It seems to stay longer with the old school tricks.
This is like anything else. Sure there are things that Google and the other search engines don’t want to see, but they’re effective, and if you use them to simply pepper your SEO strategy, instead of pouring it on, I’m wouldn’t be surprised if you never got dinged.
On the other hand, the “new school” of SEO, is what’s going to work in the long run, so as you build your strategy, it’d be wise to migrate out of the old habits to stay current.
I think there is an aspect of spider memory. If Google doesn’t see new activity on your site (static pages) and no new inbound links (nofollow or dofollow), then your SERPs could suffer if you are not well established. I know, because if I do not continuously comment on blogs for any long period of time (2-3 weeks), my SERPs begin to be affected.
I’d be curious to see what happens if both sites go quiet for 2 weeks to see which is more sensitive – my guess would be Site1.
I’ve seen this SEO method work best:
Continued content production around keyword research.
One key-word/phrase per page – not stuffed but rather naturally sprinkled thru the copy.
Good internal linking (for the spiders)
Natural in-bound links from credible sources.
I also believe that SEO takes time to realize results …
Lastly – I believe Google does get smarter every day – and thus it will no longer be able the quantity of your content, but rather the quality. That is, they will start taking account how many page views and average time on site.
As long as there’s some quality content for humans to see, old-school SEO methods still seem to work. I’m sure Google would like all sites to be ranked commensurately with human judgment, but that’s probably still a ways away.
And your “Hmmm, your comment seems a bit spammy. We’re not real big on spam around here” plugin is a bit bothersome – I’ve had to adjust this comment several times to get it through.
I have to agree that old SEO tactics are still working today. Everyone seems to still be using them. I just started a couple websites and are working on using the old SEO tactics and hopefully it goes well.
It’s great seo tutorial. You think very analyticly. But consider that quality site ranks better. The tactics will die anyway. Only qualityweb sites will go up up again.