For several years I have been actively engaging the art of internet marketing. Otherwise known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Local Search Optimization, and other forms of Online Marketing that include press releases and positive reviews, this process of attaining reputable citations (backlinks) from prime internet real estate used to be an achievable goal that would help websites rank higher in the search results.
However, just like anything else, if a good thing gets too popular people will figure out a way to “game the system” to make a lot of money from other people who lack the requisite knowledge to perform the task themselves. When that happens it usually doesn’t take too long before someone else realizes that they are loosing money that should be theirs. Google discovered this some time ago…
Approximately 18 months ago Google’s Matt Cutts began implementing sweeping changes to their search engine algorithms to change things up. Why? SEO’s and Internet Marketers were getting too many crumbs of Google’s multi billion dollar pie. For thousands of years it has been the nature of people to make the most amount of money by doing the least amount of work. Google was not going to have any part of people earning free money on the back of their search engine.
In the context of SEO and Internet Marketing this principle of greed has been accomplished by programmers who have designed software to mass produce backlinks and otherwise steal and manipulate search rankings to favor their websites. (I will hereinafter refer to these sites as “Dummy Sites”) In many cases these “Dummy Sites” were actually outranking legitimate sites owned by businesses and other reputable companies who invested large sums of money for marketing and advertising, including advertising through Google Adwords. Nevertheless, their content and ranking were fleeced by the dummy site and visitors were ultimately redirected from the dummy site to the original site, but not before earning the dummy site owner revenue through affiliate fees and/or advertisement PPC revenue. Essentially advertisers were paying to have visitors directed to their site via these dummy sites and Google was conveying a portion of that revenue to the dummy site owner.
The Crumbs
It wasn’t long before advertisers were complaining to the search engine monster about these dummy sites and Google realized that if only they could eliminate the middle-man “they” could kill two birds with one stone. (1) Advertiser sites could rank higher – making them happy; and (2) Google would be earning all of the advertising revenue instead of sharing it with Adsense advertisers.
The only way to accomplish this, however, would be to revamp Google’s algorithm parameters to eliminate preference to sites that implement certain keyword and backlink methods to rank better – a method that has been exploited by people across the globe. As a result of their Panda and Penguin algorithm updates SEO’s, Online Marketers and business owners have suffered the wrath of changes by Google and the future of successful search ranking methods are anything but certain. (NOTE: For those of you who used to take advantage of this good thing it’s time to find a new way to swindle people out of their money because Google doesn’t want to share at the expense of “their” search engine!)
A New Vein of SEO Gold
Of course, marketers are quick to see a “golden” opportunity to make good money from the victims of these updates and it didn’t take long for SEO’s and Internet Marketers to hop on the “We can help you recover from Panda/Penguin Update” train. It seems that despite the great secrecy of these algorithm parameters, there seems to be hundreds of individuals who are not Google employees who claim to know exactly how to fix a website that has been banished by Google. Granted, perhaps there are obvious indicators that even a novice SEO can identify and undue, the truth is that even legitimate SEO’s and Internet Marketers lack the capability to truly know what will and will not recoup a website that has been branded by Google as SPAM. I don’t care if a proclaimed SEO has 1,000 websites that he or she monitors and claims to be ahead of the curve on these Google updates, because quite frankly I don’t think Google themselves knows what the hell they are doing – other than scrambling search rankings to eviscerate these dummy sites. Clearly I intend no disrespect to the hundreds of Google technicians who fervently implement algorithm tweaks in their attempt to achieve better search results, but it is obvious that the frequency of these tweaks and the chaotic search rankings indicate that this is anything but a science that anyone has mastered.
The sad thing is that despite the fact that there are legitimate Internet Marketers out there that are capable of helping sites recover from bad SEO, for every legitimate SEO strategist there are 20 bogus SEO’s that only take people’s money and likely inflict more harm than good. Do yourself a BIG favor: Don’t make ANY investment with an SEO until you have thoroughly done a background check to verify that their methods are legitimate.
The New Age of SEO
Quite frankly, I personally believe that Google is completely revamping their entire search engine to completely eviscerate backlink and keyword manipulation effectiveness. From the changes that I see it appears that unique content and popularity through various social channels such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter are the new age of SEO that has a very minimal chance of being manipulated in such a way as to give an untrustworthy, unpopular website any leverage in the search engine results. If you want good rank you need lot’s of visitors, social attention, and content that has been intelligently and legitimately written for your brand and target audience.
I would be more than happy to hear your opinions in the comments below ;-)