I find it difficult to understand how topics involving the importance of Google PageRank continue to be an ongoing debate in forums. Interestingly enough, often those people claiming that PR has nothing to do with how Google determines the placement of sites in search results, are those people with low PR sites.

Google PageRank is certainly not the only factor in determining your position in the SERPs, but believing that it does not play a role in search results is simply crazy.

A Google feature that helps determine the rank of a site in our search results. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your searches. Webmaster Help Center

When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. Google 101

How often does Google crawl the web? Google’s spiders regularly crawl the web to rebuild our index. Crawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites. Webmaster Help Center

Please do not bother showing me dozens of examples of sites with low PageRank doing better in the search results than sites with higher PR. No one is saying that PageRank is the only factor. It is simply one of many factors involved.

Until Google chooses to ignore PageRank by removing it from the algorithm, it would be foolish for website owners to do so. While I do not feel it is something we should obsess over, for top 10 results, we certainly shouldn’t ignore it either.

J. Cricket Walker of CricketWalker.com

Don’t bother adding comments to popular blogs. It’s a waste of your time. You are about as likely to write anything interesting enough to drive a reader to your website as I am likely to shoot an Ansel Adams’esque windswept landscape, blindfolded.

Of course…

They just might like what they see, and tell others about you. *gasp!

You can’t risk it!

They might link to you!

If you take the time to set up a blog, make sure that the content is of no value to anyone. Just scrape duplicate content from other blogs and add a ton of spammy links. That way you can be sure no one considers linking to you.

Do not add quality content to your website!

Make sure it breaks in all but one browser. Preferably Opera: because nobody uses that one anyway.

Whatever you do, don’t even think about joining a quality ‘Webmaster Forum’ as the last thing you would want to do is become a valued member of any online community with your signature attached to your post and profile.

Though, if you feel the need to join, don’t bother with quality posting…

…Better yet, don’t even read the rules!

Just dive right in with ‘Mr. Obvious Replies’ and spam your URL all over the community in as many threads as possible with as much zest for ctrl-v as your fingers will allow. That way you can get banned faster and won’t have to worry about someone wanting to link to you.

Even curiosity can get a hit or two to your site a day and god-forbid if your posts lasted longer than the Windows Boot Logo. This way, they’ll all hit the Spam can and be assured of never being seen.

If someone is foolish enough to ask you for an interview after seeing the quality of your posts in the forums, tell them ‘No!’ immediately. You cannot take the risk as they will inevitably link to your site as part of the article. This can be bad news, indeed.

If after seeing your crappy content, someone is desperate enough to ask you to write a guest article for them, (it goes without saying that you would certainly never offer to write a guest article) turn them down. If the bar is that high then you haven’t been working hard enough and need to re-read this article. If they insist, make sure you do not add an author bio linking to your site.

It would be nuts to submit to a quality directory like the V7N Web Directory. Directories are like a phone book of the web. Why would you want to be listed with like-minded business people?

Join social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon? Are you crazy? Even though they use the nofollow attribute on all outgoing links, you cannot take the risk.

What if someone actually likes what you have to say, and starts paying attention to your post? What if they look up the URL to your site? Don’t do it! A few links might sneak through!

Co-Authored by Jay M. of OpticalDevotee and Cricket of CricketWalker.com

Whatever determines link juice, it sure as hell ain’t PageRank.

This comes as no new news to most SEO’s, but the myth of PageRank being the dominant factor in link juice is still quite popular amongst the forum posting crowd.

We here at v7n place a lot of links. (Matt doesn’t read this, does he?) Our Contextual Links Program has paid out over $140,000 to thousands of bloggers. So, yeah, we know links.

In the link building business, no matter how indifferent one is, sooner or later you’ll take a good look at what links are passing link juice and what links aren’t. So we do tests. We place links on blogs, using keywords in the anchor texts that do not appear on the linked-to pages. We track these links, and sometimes we place them on pages blogs that we wouldn’t usually use in the program. We place them on brand spanking new PR0 websites. We place others on old crummy PR0 websites. In most cases, the links do pass link juice.

Yes, links on PR0 websites - websites that have never had PR - still pass link juice. Amazingly enough, they pass enough link juice to put the linked-to website in the top ten for search terms that do not even appear on the linked-to page.

But sometimes links do not pass ranking juice. Why is that? When we find sites that do not pass link juice - and they are not as common as you might think - the one thing they all have in common is a lot of links to not-so-nice neighborhoods. And that doesn’t mean “paid links”. Paid links, even when they are marked as such, do not automatically result in a website losing its link juice. It appears to be an issue of number, frequency and percentage. If a good portion of the outbound links are to penalized websites, you can expect to lose your link juice. If, on the other hand, you slip in an occasional link or two to a bad neighborhood, chances are that you will not suffer any link juice loss.

A month or so ago HostGator bought some banner advertising on the v7n forums. Not for HostGator.com, but for their SEO hosting division, aptly named SEOHosting.com.

A few people have asked, what does SEO have to do with hosting?

We’ve known for several years now that Google has a patent which filters and devalues inter-IP links.

Quoting Google’s patent:

Re-ranking component 122 begins by identifying the documents in the initial set that have a hyperlink to document x. (Act 301). The set of documents that have such hyperlinks are denoted as B(y). Documents from the same host as document x tend to be similar to document x but often do not provide significant new information to the user. Accordingly, re-ranking component 124 removes documents from B(y) that have the same host as document x. (Act 302). More specifically, let IP3(x) denote the first three octets of the IP (Internet Protocol) address of document x (i.e., the IP subnet). If IP3(x)=IP3(y), document y is removed from B(y).

On occasion, multiple different hosts may be similar enough to one another to be considered the same host for purposes of Acts 301 and 302. For example, one host may be a “mirror” site for a different primary host and thus contain the same documents as the primary host. Additionally, a host site may be affiliated with another site, and thus contain the same or nearly the same documents. Similar or affiliated hosts may be determined through a manual search or by an automated web search that compares the contents at different hosts. Documents from such similar or affiliated hosts may be removed by re-ranking component 124 from B(y) in Act 302.

But if you’re not linking to your own sites from your own sites, why worry about inter-IP link devaluation? You don’t need to. But why are you not linking to your own sites? If you have the link popularity, use it.

We here at v7n own a hundred or so sites, and for the most part they do not participate in inter-linking schemes. Why? Because they are on different topics. Health, finance, travel, etc. Inter-linking those sites would not create much in the way of link popularity, but we still host them each on different IP ranges. The reason for this is, in one word, Google.

Google loves to launch half baked filters and penalties. They do this on the basis of what they know, so it’s in our interest to keep Google’s knowledge to a minimum. At least where it concerns website ownership.

That’s where multiple Class C IP web hosting comes in. It’s the SEO equivalent of not keeping all your eggs in one basket.

It might also be a good idea to keep your domain registration private.

Or something.

I love Godin’s stuff, but he can talk some gibberish, at times.

“One of my concerns about the misuse of SEO by marketers is that it’s largely about tactics. It’s easy to get hooked on constant cycling of this approach or that tactic, all to incrementalize your improvements. Big successes, on the other hand, come from arguments. Arguments about what you stand for. Arguments about big strategic shifts“

I think he means strategy is more useful than tactics. A person almost certainly needs a strategy, but that strategy also needs to be made up of well executed tactics. Most SEOs I know see strategy as being essential.

As for “having an argument”, I’m none the wiser.

There are plenty of big game-changing, controversial ideas that end up as road-kill, and plenty of incremental refinements made to old models that result in game changes. I’d argue Google was an incremental refinement of previous models.

GoTo was the real game changer.

Reading SEO forums is often frustrating. People suggest a possible algorithm element, and two seconds later it is accepted as fact.

One of these unproven theories that is generally accepted as fact is the theory that if you want to rank for a specific search term that you need to link to “authority sites” on that topic.

So if you wanted to rank for “Internet Marketing”, you need to link to KnowThis, Clickz and WilsonWeb.

Just a note here to say, it isn’t true. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to think to check the SERPs and see that many top ranking websites do not link out to authority sites in their field.

Overpriced, in my humble opinion.

http://www.dotsauce.com/2007/06/16/seo-domain-purchased-for-5-million/

My staff is smart. We have graduates from Cornell University, Penn State, Western University, York University, Tenri U, and the University of Canberra.

Unfortunately, when they start here they do not know SEO. I could spend days or weeks training them, but that would effectively cost me an the company hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars.

The solution? Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.

It’s thorough, accurate, insightful and the best SEO training tool available on the Internet. It’s saved me and the company thousands of dollars.

Thanks Aaron!

Heh heh.

Great link bait from Tropical SEO. “Why the Rest of the World Should Love SEOs“.

“Now, I hear some white hat SEOs whining: but it wasn’t us! It was our black hat SEO cousins! To that I say: bugger off. Yes, we come in different shades and colors and types, but none of us wants to rank ‘correctly’, we all want to rank ‘as high as possible’, so stop pretending you’re on Google’s ’side’“

Someone give that man an award…

A lot of SEO companies seem to have a very clearly defined, five step marketing strategy.

1. Sign the client, even if it means over-promising
2. Get the client to sign a non-disclosure agreement
3. Keep the client in the dark
4. Show the client all his #1 rankings for non-competitive search terms
5. Call it a day

Not that this is bad, but I have a few suggestions nonetheles. They are fivefold.

1. Guarantee Something

Today my staff and I talked about SEO companies. One of our Ivy Leagers (we have two, and I’m very proud of the fact), Geoff, asked how SEO companies determine pricing and what they sell. I responded that they usually do not sell anything other than SEO consulting. They make some changes to the pages, they perhaps make some URL’s friendlier, and perhaps add some content. Geoff was shocked by the non-quantitative and intangibility of this business model. When he asked about guarantees, I had to inform him that most SEO’s do not guarantee anything, and they are proud of it.

Well, I don’t like to ruffle anybody’s feathers. After all these years in the field, I have never once offended an SEO and I wouldn’t want to start now. But I have to say, non-guarantee is crap. I recently read one so-called SEO’s site.

In our experience, it is simply not possible to guarantee results.

Huh? What the huh?

People, it is easy to guarantee results. You simply guarantee them. If you don’t deliver, you refund the client’s money. When a so-called SEO says “it is simply not possible to guarantee results“, what they really mean is “it is simply not possible for us to deliver results“. In which case you shouldn’t be doing SEO.

2. Be Honest

I’m not saying you should tell your wife that she needs to lose weight. I’m suggesting that SEO companies should be honest with their clients from the beginning. Anybody who has done SEO at all knows the dirty little secret of the SEO industry, that SEO companies are over-promising and under-delivering. Those big well known SEO companies have ex-clients, and those ex-clients, when shopping for a new SEO, tell their stories. They were promised, but not guaranteed, rankings. They paid $30,000 for SEO, and they got squat.

The SEO company should have been honest from the beginning and told the client, We cannot get you a top five position on Google for web hosting, for $30,000.

Of course that would mean that you don’t get the contract, but hey that’s life. You are better off focusing your resources on contracts that you can honor, and making happy clients. Just because you had your client sign a non-disclosure agreement doesn’t mean that your client isn’t telling his sob story to every other SEO on the Internet.

Under-promise and over-deliver. It’s just good business.

3. Get a large Retainer

Somewhat repeating what I just said, but I’ll say it anyway. Honesty requires that your client is honest with you and you are honest with your client. Some clients cannot afford $20,000 ~ $50,000 in SEO, but they will pretend that they can just to get the work done. Here’s where you should think like an attorney. Attorneys are smart, they get large retainers up front. So should SEO’s.

4. Explain the Timeframe

Most often when I hear complaints about SEO companies, the problem is not ineffective SEO, but the fact that the SEO did not explain the timeframe. I guess SEO’s aren’t explaining the timeframe because they don’t want to scare off customers. They would be wise to put it in H1 tags on every page of their sites: YOU WILL NOT SEE RESULTS IN UNDER A MONTH.

5. Maintain Resources

People seem to think that SEO is best done by one-man shops. I don’t know what possible benefit there could be, but the big SEO companies often get maligned.

I know small SEO companies and I know big ones. I know of no small SEO companies that own hundreds of established high traffic web sites. I do know of a few large SEO companies that own hundreds of established web sites. I know of one that has several thousand sites. Having hundreds of web sites at your disposal comes in handy when it’s time to build links.

A large staff also comes in handy. Think about it. My staff of 14 is small compared to some of the larger SEO firms, but even I can do the math and see the huge savings I’m realizing by having low cost staff - $10 per hour - doing simple tasks that were previously done by staff who earn $20 per hour. Simply stated, I get twice as many links for my money.

Moving Forward

The SEO industry is regarded by many with suspicion. As it should be. The Internet as a whole is full of liars entirely un-credible businesses.

Perhaps someday in the near future we can stop bickering amongst ourselves long enough to establish a Better Business Bureau for SEO firms.