a cautionary tale of aggressive seo @ boston joomla world conference 2013

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A Cautionary Tale of Aggressive SEO

How to Avoid Penalties and Fix Things When They Go Wrong

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A Cautionary Tale of Aggressive SEO

!

• Techniques and tools that will help your website gain rankings in the search engines, how to avoid

crushing penalties from over-optimization, and how to recover

when things go wrong.

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Hello, My Name is Scott

• • Not a Web Developer any more

• • An Internet Marketer

• • Google Analytics & Adwords Certified

• • Partner at Orion Group

• • President of Meetupery

• • Husband to Stephanie

• • Owned by “Squiggles”, a Great Dane

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First... A Little About Search Engines

• Most Searchers Use GoogleMost%People%Use%Google%

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Being on Page One of Google is Important

Most searchers stay on the first page

Some might look at the 2nd or 3rd page of search results

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Top Ranking Factors

!

• Keyword Use Anywhere in <title> Tag

• Keyword Use in Page Content

• Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from External Links

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Top Ranking Factors!!

• External Link Popularity & Diversity of Source(quantity and quality of external links)

!• Trustworthiness of Domain

(based on distance from trusted domains)

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One thing to Keep in Mind!

Search Engines Constantly Evolve

Algorithm changes leave many webmasters wondering what they can

do to ensure their websites remain visible in the search engines.

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My Black Friday Story

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My Black Friday Story

!

• Seeing an interesting niche and recognizing an opportunity to make a lot of money…

• I created ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com

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My Black Friday Story

!• The site gives visitors early intel on the

Door-busters and early-bird sales and get a sneak peek at the Black Friday ads before they are printed in the Thanksgiving Day newspaper

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My Black Friday Story

• I wanted to be #1 in the search engines.

• After my first successful season, I knew I could do better and so...

• I set off on a quest to gain backlinks for my most important keywords

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My Black Friday Story

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Google Analytics (November 2011)

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5.9 million pages to 413,458 visitors

Between November 1st-30th, 2011. Served up to 590 concurrent users 900 pages per minute.

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Adsense Earnings (November 2011)

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Unnatural Inbound Links Detected

!ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com

received a penalty

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How to Troubleshoot

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How to Troubleshoot

• Confirm the date you got hit

• Was it really a penalty or was it just an algorithm update?

• Review Google Webmaster Tool data • Was a ‘Manual Action’ taken?

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How to Troubleshoot

!

• Confirm if it is site-wide or a page-specific problem

• Review Google Analytics data

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There’s a Difference Between An Algorithm Update and a Penalty

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Google ‘Penguin’ Updates

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• Over-optimization of anchor text is bad

• Low-quality off-topic links are bad

• Keyword stuffing is bad

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Google ‘Panda’ Updates!

Many content farms, article directories, sites with high ad-to-content ratios were hit and are no longer as highly-visible

in the search engines.

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Who Gets Hit By Penalties?

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Who Gets Hit By Penalties?

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• Websites found to be in violation of a search engines Terms of Service !

• Websites with an unbalanced backlink profile

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Who Gets Hit By Penalties?

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• Websites with backlinks from low-quality sites or sites containing over-optimized, exact-match anchor text

• But… was it really a penalty or was it just an update to Google’s algorithm?

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…!

• Started in 2009 on a shared Godaddy server, it couldn’t handle the load, so the website went offline on Thursday evening, the night before black Friday.

!• Started link-building through article

marketing, and leaving relevant comments on various blogs.

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…

• In 2010, I created forum signatures, performed profile creation and distributed press releases

• In 2011, article marketing, spam comments, forum signatures, profile creation, paid link placement in “blogrolls” (sidebars) of sites that had high PageRank

• In July 2012, received an “Unnatural inbound links” warning via Google Webmaster Tools

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…

!

!

Organic traffic was down 95% over last year due to the penalty

received by Google.

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…

• Apologized for being spammy

• Requested webmasters to remove bad links

• Uploaded a disavow list to Google Webmaster Tools

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…

• Removed more spammy links that I had control over

• Resubmitted the site for reconsideration to Google Webmaster Tools

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…!

Google wouldn’t budge and wouldn’t tell me how

to fix the problem.

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…!

I needed to figure out what to do. !• Transfer the content to a new domain name

and start building rankings again?

• Continue removing more bad links to the existing site?

• Give up altogether?

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…!

So, I changed the domain name…

From:

ThanksgivingBlackFridayAds.com

To:

ThanksgivingBlackFriday.com

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My Black Friday Story, Continued…

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Tools for Diagnosing SEO Issues

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Tools for Diagnosing SEO Issues

• Google Webmaster Tools • Moz.com • OpenSiteExplorer.org

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Other Tools For Competitor Research

• Google Analytics – Keyword Performance – Bounce Rates & Pageviews – Visitor Segmentation

• Moz.org – Link Analysis – Ranking Reports – Keyword Research !

• Open Site Explorer – Anchor Text – External Links – Domain Authority

• Google Trends – Industry Insights – Top Related Searches – Geographic Hotspots

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How to Avoid or Recover From a Penalty

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Avoiding or Recovering From a Penalty

!

• Vary the anchor text of links that point to your site.

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Diversify Your Backlink Profile

• Naked URLs – “www.scottofford.com” – “http://www.orionweb.net”

• • Branded Anchor Text – “Orion Group, LLC” – “Joomla World Conference”

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Diversify Your Backlink Profile

• Brand / Keyword Hybrid Anchor Text – “SEO Blog at Search Engine Journal” – “Search Engine Journal, a blog about search”

• • Universal Anchor Text – “click here” – “visit this website”

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Diversify Your Backlink Profile

!• If you are a roofing company in Boston,

instead of using “Boston roofing company” as your backlink’s anchor text, try using:

• “a roofing company in the Boston area” • or something like: • “Apex, LLC ~ Roofing Contractor in Boston”

Any questions?

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