

SEO for Assholes - puranjay
http://startupdispatch.com/opinion/seo-for-dicks/

======
puranjay
Wow. Front page of Hacker News.

I can tell you from personal experience that it has become far harder to game
Google after the Panda update. The SEO rats are coming out of the woodwork
screaming for a solution.

True, there is still a massive amount of spam on the internet, but Google is
learning how to filter it down.

The ubiquity of Facebook comments, Disqus, etc. is cutting down on the amount
of comment spam. Not to mention that Akismet is becoming really good at its
job.

Spamming forum profile links gets you nowhere these days. And Google can
somehow sniff shit content from a mile off.

There will always be spam on the internet, but as long as it stays hidden
beneath the carpet, Google is doing a good enough job.

~~~
puranjay
P.S.: How ironic is it that a blog post about spam comments invites tons of
spam comments? I've already deleted 10 from my Akismet queue!

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getsat
The article is supposedly about SEO, but the author spends half of it talking
about fraud and implying that that is what blackhat SEO is about? lol

Blackhat SEO is using programs like Xrumer and Scrapebox to build backlinks en
masse, hiding content from search engine spiders by inspecting user agents,
and building low-quality content farms of keyword-laden articles. Phishing and
credit card fraud are totally separate.

~~~
TomGullen
Xrumer spams peoples websites. As I understand it this is the main strategy
employed by blackhates.

Email spam is illegal (CAN-SPAM Act). I hope that one day spamming peoples
websites is also illegal.

So it's not criminal to use Xrumer but in my opinion people who use it are on
the same moral footing as common email spammers.

~~~
nostromo
Legal solutions don't work online, technical ones do.

CAN-SPAM didn't stop spam. Bayesian spam filtering did.

Every little annoyance in life shouldn't be subject to federal regulation.

~~~
DanBC
> _Bayesian spam filtering did._

Really? Not taking out some big botnets? Not a move away from email and onto
social networks? This article suggests that email spam, at a three year low,
is still at 70% of all email.

([http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222447/Symantec_says...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222447/Symantec_says_spam_levels_fall_to_lowest_in_three_years))

~~~
nostromo
My broader point is that CAN-SPAM did nothing to reduce spam.
<http://www.cybercrimejournal.com/alexdec2009.htm> I believe anti-SEO
legislation would be just as ineffective.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Most laws have little effect on the outcome of any "lucrative business
practice".

------
jpzeni
The last paragraph made me laugh because it reminded me of when Google started
to discount the power of link directories years ago. All the cutting edge SEOs
just moved to new techniques and the exact same thing will happen again. It's
a cat/mouse game and the people who continue to win are the ones who continue
to innovate new ways of gaming the system.

The guys who were really successful were the ones who were doing forum and
comment spamming before someone decided to write a program that allowed
absolutely anyone to do it. You can be sure none of them are lamenting Google
Panda ... they'd moved on to new techniques long ago. Stuff like this is just
one very basic example - [http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-
infographic...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-
infographics).

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PaulHoule
Be careful what you say.

Eli Aliosi had a great blog where he talked about the kind of stuff that
you're talking about... bluehatseo.com

He went a little too far and got done in by Russian Hackers, the FBI and a
delusional hacker who couldn't tell the difference between anime and reality.
His server became the most burned server in the world.

~~~
dchuk
lol Eli's doing fine nowadays he didn't really get burned that bad. Plus his
SEO tactics still blow away anyone else in the industry, and he doesn't even
do much SEO anymore

~~~
jaredmck
that's good to know, bluehatseo.com was an incredible blog, got so many ideas
from reading it.

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mquinlan
From my own experiences (viewing SEO as a "hobby"), I do think the type of
semi-blackhat SEO that's most prevalent - the 20k blog comment blasts and
automated WhoIs reports - is righteously dying out. It may take a while since
a lot of people still believe that's the easy way to rank highly (and I think
a lot of the SEO world fuels that notion to a degree), but I'm at least
hopeful.

But I also think it's hard not to use a majority of greyhat methods and,
because of that, current greyhat methods shouldn't be totally discredited.
It's really time consuming do to a lot of things without using blackhat tools
like ScrapeBox and SEnuke X. However, recognize that these tools can be used
for more than just spamming. Many popular tools are great for finding a few
really targeted sites to, for example, actually post legitimate blog comments
to. And I doubt methods and tools that are used by so many blackhats will die
out soon. They can still be a vital asset to people who do take into account
the health of the Internet and use greyhat methods responsibly.

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brador
Who's to blame for the necessity of such methods?

Is it Google? Is it the spammers themselves? Is it the software makers or the
SEO specialists? Maybe it's even us.

The fact is, if you want to eat, you need to know SEO, most of which exists
only to please Google. Why does an ecommerce site selling socks need 200 blog
posts and an empty, keyword filled forum? because it works.

~~~
puranjay
It's a little difficult to assign blame here. Blackhat SEO works, that's why
it is so popular. Google's algorithm is far from perfect. There is little
reason for an eCommerce site to market itself with blog posts, but the
imperfect algorithm and the sheer scale of the competition makes it imperative
to do so.

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AznHisoka
The best techniques make it hard for any human to detect whether any blackhat
was involved. Such as scraping content that is NOT already indexed and putting
it on your own site.

