Tomer Honen, Search Quality Strategist at Google – “People are spending hours looking at Google Analytics. They get a kick out of seeing who visits, what they do on the site and how they get there. But it is only truly interesting  if you do something with all of that information.”

Oliver Amar from Get Taxi –  In his talk he suggests that Google hates SEO so much that they will penalize sites not just for implementing blackhat SEO, but for implementing whitehat SEO  textbook practices. Can anyone say SEO page title? Dixon Jones, of Majestic SEO, said, “Never Tweet, Facebook or enter any SEO tools using Chrome.” Think about it.

Check out these slides by Eli Feldblum (who is just brilliant) from RankAbove.

2012 - SEO - The year of fresh

2012 - Go Even More Social

SMX 2012 The year of answers

2012 The basic check list - Eli Feldblum

SMX 2012 - The Year of Schema

 
This post was  written by Dror Gliksman and edited by Sheryl Sitman.
 

First of all, it means that if such a major brand (and huge Google advertiser) has been “caught”, than you also may be caught. Second, it means that if  a major brand felt the need to do it (or its SEO firm felt the need), then many, many other companies are following suit. In fact, a TechCrunch article published just a few hours ago, reveals a new backlink audit service that has found 25 % of sites have illegitimate backlinks that put their ranking in danger.

So apparently JC Penney hired someone who either told them (probably not) or did not tell them (more likely) how they do SEO and how they can successfully get JC Penney to rank high for lots of important and lucrative keyword phrases. This SEO company then went out and paid lots and lots of website owners to place links back to JC Penney. What does that really mean?  As an example, I get offers on a daily basis to add links to my own web sites back to other sites that I have no relationship to. By simply adding a link such as “Vacation Resort Orlando” or “Lowest Credit Fees” or “Play Poker for Free” to a page on one of my sites, a link broker is willing to pay me a small annual or monthly fee. And no, I’ve never accepted an offer. There is nothing “illegal” in doing so. It just contributes to making the Internet a bigger junkyard than it already has become.

So now the question is why is this bad and if you can’t buy links then how do you get them? Google does not want you to buy links. And if they figure out that you are buying links (and they can’t always figure that out) or even  suspect that you are (even if you are not), you can find your site sent to the deep depths of the result pages for eternity. And there is nothing you can do about it. And truthfully, you deserve it, even if you did not know that someone was buying links for you (I’m going to write another post about that soon).

The reason they don’t want you to buy links is simple. It’s cheating.  You see, a back link is just like a vote in an election. To Google’s algorithm, it means that another unrelated site thinks that your site is an authority on a certain topic and worth a visit. Other sites are telling Google that they like your site by linking back with anchor text. Anchor text is the actual phrase or word in the link.

For example, if there is a site about Internet Addiction and other sites link to that site using the anchor text Internet Addiction, then Google knows that when someone searches for help with an “Internet Addiction”, that website may be worthwhile and relevant to the search and therefore should appear high up in search engine results. However, if I buy those links, than it’s no different than a politician buying votes. So you can understand why Google does not want anyone to purchase links – because it is a blatant attempt to cheat the system. In the case of most companies, like JC Penney, a link broker is selling these links in bulk and it is easy to detect that something fishy is going on because some of the links are coming from completely unrelated content. JC Penney had a link to their Baby Furniture category coming from a Thailand Tourist site.

The reason so many companies and even respectable companies are driven towards using tactics like buying back links is because it is the single hardest part of search engine optimization (SEO). Another reason SEO companies started using the tactic is because the industry is under so much pressure to perform. Clients want to be on the first page of Google and they don’t care how that happens.

The reality of the situation is that if you contact a webmaster of another site, he is going to ignore your request, unless you give him a really good reason not to ignore it. The sites that exist today and are willing to add links usually involve an automated submission. And as you can imagine, any site that allows anyone to auto-submit a link, is probably not so worthy.

What this all leads to is the fact that building backlinks should not be about running a “link campaign” and hiring a bunch of workers in India. Google wants it to be about you getting honest votes of confidence in your content. And honest votes of content can be had whenever you provide good content. Furthermore, Google is making valiant efforts to prove that following their webmaster guidelines is worthwhile. Those of us who have been building good sites with good content with visitors in mind are seeing big benefits in the most recent Google algorithm updates.

So what is the best way to get back links?

Content!!!!!

• If you run a diet site and provide a calorie counter, you can bet you will get lots of links back to your calories counting tool.
• If you sell jewelry and provide a humorous guide for men on how to know what type of jewelry their wives will like, you can bet you will get lots of links back to your guide.
• If you sell toilets and have a “how the flush of this toilet sounds” application on your site, you can bet tons of other sites will be pointing it out with a link (I wonder if anyone has actually done this — it’s a great idea I think!).

With all my gripes about Google, I think they are pushing a good thing here. They are pushing website owners to think creatively, to provide quality and to be honest.

Basically, it means that in order to deliver a positive user experience and capture your audience, you should take into consideration that any page in your site is a potential landing page. And what does it mean to take that into consideration? It means that wherever a visitor lands, there are several elements that you need to make sure you have covered:

• From whatever page a visitor lands on, they should be able to navigate through your site and not be left stranded.
• Call to Action – from every page a visitor may land on, there should be a clear call to action. Be ready to capture them from the moment they arrive.
• The page should not assume anything about the visitor’s knowledge of the brand, product or company. Remember, each website page may be the visitor’s first engagement with your company.

But it is disappointing to me that with all that has happened online in the last years, so many companies still don’t get it. SEO is a tactic. It does not = online marketing; it’s not a strategy and by the way – it’s not rocket science either. What I try to explain to each client, when it is relevant, is that what they want is not SEO, but actually visibility and relevant traffic. They nod their heads in agreement but their eyes reveal that they don’t get it, yet.
Today, I had a contact from a Web 2.0 company seeking SEO services. And although she was focused on SEO, I think this marketing manager gets it. A 5 minute review of her site and competitor sites revealed that no way in hell would any SEO effort get them what they are looking for. Meanwhile, I am so curious to know if the Israeli SEO companies that contact her will try to sell the idea of getting top ranking for a site whose competitors have hundreds of thousands of links and millions of users.

The point of this post is, wake up!!! The era of adding some meta tags, getting some back links and mixing in a few other SEO tactics is long over as an effective way to impact your business, no matter what you do. You need to be looking at your needs and goals, your competitive landscape and figure out a strategy to get there. And you better be putting equal effort into the user experience you provide to your visitors.

The tactics? There is no lack of tactics and you better be ready to think out of the box. But if your Internet marketing strategy equals “SEO”, you will quickly be left behind in the dust by those who “get it”.

First of all, it just looks bad for a potential customer or existing customer to type in:

“yourbank.com” and get Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to yourbank.com
Did you mean: www.yourbank.com?

Second, you might be losing visitors who think they have the wrong spelling or URL.

Third, it’s SEO basics to make sure that you are using only one URL – with or without the WWW and redirecting one to the other. You’ll hear arguments for both sides — with www looks more professional, without www keeps it shorter . . . But what is important is that BOTH should work and be transparent to the visitor.