White hat SEO is the practice of making sure sites are well structured and well covered by related sites.
Like making sure a book has a contents, index and the pages in the right order, a title that is going to look attractive, and a description that will make readers want to know more.
That part will never change no matter what search engines do, because people always make sites that aren't put together properly.
Good SEO's also look at converting the visitors that originate from search engines, nobody is going to change that either.
I think this article means to say 'The end of the recent black hat techniques in SEO' - as we all know, those breaking the rules always find new ways.
I will give you a page that breaks every SEO rule in the book but that is ranked very high for one of the most important search terms currently on the collective worlds mind.
The search term is “global dimming” and the result I am referring to which absolutely has ZERO SEO, is this:
It is now up to others to disprove my claims, that:
1) General White hat SEO is no longer relevant
2) That you cannot game Google with any form of SEO on a new domain.
So you agree then that white hat SEO, I.e. meta tags, H1 text, page text, page layout, content on the page, keyword density, validation, is all absolutely pointless. My point entirely!
Most keywords that actually generate traffic have much more results returned, usually 1 million plus, 5 million is pretty normal.
Keywords that generate traffic can also be marked by the amount of PPC ads that appear for the keyword, people paying money don't go after stuff that doesn't generate clicks, or even impressions.
What you've listed there as white hat SEO is just the on-site SEO side of it.
Are you the author of the article? or just submitted it?
Which new algorithm? The article doesn't say. In fact, it doesn't say much of anything, offering little more than unsubstantiated assertions. It might be right, be we have no way to tell.
Hmm...using search dominance to make sure they get all of the paid link business. Sounds similar to using desktop OS dominance to corner the browser business. It smells.
Not really. Google puts relevant results at the top. If you're a site that nobody has ever heard of and have no content, it's logical that you won't be at the top. Not because Google is shaking you down for money, but because your site is completely irrelevant.
If you want to show up even though you're irrelevant, you can buy an ad. (It's just like print advertising. Just because the magazine doesn't run an article about you doesn't mean they're shaking you down for ad money. It just means that you're not worth writing an article about.)
I'm wary of Google, but at least they create real products, and do some cool stuff, something that can't really be said for any of the so called "SEO experts".
I agree 110% and not because Google penalizes new domains, but because Google will go to extreme and unfair measures to protect their (soon to be) monopoly in the paid advertising market.
Google whacks paid links because it competes with AdWords. Doesn't get much more complex than that. If you own a company that makes it's money by selling links or providing webmaster an alternative to AdSense/AdWords, prepare to be attacked directly by the Goog.
The MS-like backlash will happen with Google, just give it time.
Google should whack paid links, they're less relevant than natural links; this is a good thing and makes the search results more relevant. Selling links is gaming the system. Paid links spoil the relevance of search results.
Selling links only spoils relevance because that's what Google bases their rank algorithm on. This is a flaw in Google's logic. Google created the market (both the good side and the bad), and now they want to control it too. Without Google's ranking math there would still be paid links. It shouldn't be 'our' problem that Google's logic if flawed, they should engineer a new solution.
If we take your and Google's word on this, that paid links ruin relevance, it just displaces where the money and time is spent. If direct paid links are penalized, it shifts the power and influence to other parties/locations (and all the paid link money directly into Google's pockets)
Do you remember before Google? Do you remember how bad search engines sucked and how irrelevant the results were? Google was smart enough to see that when lot's of pages link to a site, that site must be considered relevant by a lot of people.
Ranking results by inbound links was the breakthrough that made search actually work. Paid links are bad, they allow people with money to game the system and make irrelevant content show up in the search results. Unless you're a spammer or an SEO, Google is doing the right thing for the user. It is the user after all, they're trying to serve, not middle men trying to arbitrage the system. Ideally, they figure out a way to make spamming and SEO completely irrelevant, that industry needs to die.
You act as if you have some right to show up in their search results, guess what, YOU DON'T. It is Google's search engine, they have every right to do with it as they please, including exclude anyone they wish.
Google's logic isn't flawed, yours is. Google's search results are not a free market, they have every right to game their own system to make them money and there's nothing unfair about it. You have no rights and no expectation of rights about how they index your site with their search engine.
I think it was on Matt Cutts blog that he mentioned any links to advertising should have a nofollow, to protect your site from being seen to "sell links", which would then result in a penalty in the form of not being able to pass page rank, and having your page rank reduced.
What actually happened was on the previous update google experimented with a PR hit on sites that were selling links. It was specifically targeted to sites who were doing so with intentions of altering the SERPs. Thus paid links that had specific keyword specific anchor text. Most of the sites on the Internet were affected. Sites with organic links, I.e links that were plain advertising without intentions to manipulate the SERPs were not affected! On this last update the vast majority of the sites which had a reduction regained their lost PR. Instead this time round Google have implemented another strategy which looks highly effective.
Like making sure a book has a contents, index and the pages in the right order, a title that is going to look attractive, and a description that will make readers want to know more.
That part will never change no matter what search engines do, because people always make sites that aren't put together properly.
Good SEO's also look at converting the visitors that originate from search engines, nobody is going to change that either.
I think this article means to say 'The end of the recent black hat techniques in SEO' - as we all know, those breaking the rules always find new ways.