SEO / SEM apps
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The youtube / facebook thread a few posts back got me thinking. Posting on social networks is much like anything else with the web: "If you build it, you will be ignored." Signal to noise ratio on the web is insanely low. Was talking with a friend this weekend who does SEO / SEM stuff (and says he avoids black hat techniques in favor of long term success). Essentially, if I understand correctly, there are tons of article and video sites out there where you can post content. Part of his strategy is pushing client content out to a high number of sites, which of course increases the links back to the client site and thus boosts the page rank on Google, etc. He says there are literally hundreds of these sites, and thus he uses custom software to automate the task of posting the articles / videos into the content sites. Of course, I'm sitting there listening to this thinking, "Hey, I'm a programmer. I could probably write something like that." Never mind for the moment that this is how my weekends tend to evaporate... On the one hand, I tend to view any / all SEO stuff with a raised eyebrow since there's so much hype, shuck and jive in that industry. On the other hand, I've seen some of his results with clients, which are impressive. For reasonable keywords, the local search section and top ten results of Google are pretty much carpet bombed with references to the client. I don't know much at all about this SEO stuff. Have any of you ever used techniques like this or written apps to automate this kind of process? It's pretty much an alien planet to me.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
The youtube / facebook thread a few posts back got me thinking. Posting on social networks is much like anything else with the web: "If you build it, you will be ignored." Signal to noise ratio on the web is insanely low. Was talking with a friend this weekend who does SEO / SEM stuff (and says he avoids black hat techniques in favor of long term success). Essentially, if I understand correctly, there are tons of article and video sites out there where you can post content. Part of his strategy is pushing client content out to a high number of sites, which of course increases the links back to the client site and thus boosts the page rank on Google, etc. He says there are literally hundreds of these sites, and thus he uses custom software to automate the task of posting the articles / videos into the content sites. Of course, I'm sitting there listening to this thinking, "Hey, I'm a programmer. I could probably write something like that." Never mind for the moment that this is how my weekends tend to evaporate... On the one hand, I tend to view any / all SEO stuff with a raised eyebrow since there's so much hype, shuck and jive in that industry. On the other hand, I've seen some of his results with clients, which are impressive. For reasonable keywords, the local search section and top ten results of Google are pretty much carpet bombed with references to the client. I don't know much at all about this SEO stuff. Have any of you ever used techniques like this or written apps to automate this kind of process? It's pretty much an alien planet to me.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesI haven't ever done that specific type of SEO, but I know a guy who founded and owns a company that does that type of thing. I've done some preliminary work with him towards setting up an automated system that gives businesses an SEO "grade" on how well they are doing in different SEO areas when they input their company's info. His company offers an inexpensive base-level SEO service that he doesn't actually make money off of, to get people interested in signing up for his other services. The world of SEO has some very useful stuff and also some techniques that are questionable ethically. I try to learn from the good while avoiding the bad.
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The youtube / facebook thread a few posts back got me thinking. Posting on social networks is much like anything else with the web: "If you build it, you will be ignored." Signal to noise ratio on the web is insanely low. Was talking with a friend this weekend who does SEO / SEM stuff (and says he avoids black hat techniques in favor of long term success). Essentially, if I understand correctly, there are tons of article and video sites out there where you can post content. Part of his strategy is pushing client content out to a high number of sites, which of course increases the links back to the client site and thus boosts the page rank on Google, etc. He says there are literally hundreds of these sites, and thus he uses custom software to automate the task of posting the articles / videos into the content sites. Of course, I'm sitting there listening to this thinking, "Hey, I'm a programmer. I could probably write something like that." Never mind for the moment that this is how my weekends tend to evaporate... On the one hand, I tend to view any / all SEO stuff with a raised eyebrow since there's so much hype, shuck and jive in that industry. On the other hand, I've seen some of his results with clients, which are impressive. For reasonable keywords, the local search section and top ten results of Google are pretty much carpet bombed with references to the client. I don't know much at all about this SEO stuff. Have any of you ever used techniques like this or written apps to automate this kind of process? It's pretty much an alien planet to me.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesThere is indeed some value to using this technique and if you could automate it in some way then average people, not SEO professionals would probably flock to the product, so yes you could potentially make something cool. The downside: Most of these type sites us nofollow tags on their submissions, the importance given and even how the SE view the nofollow does change but still not warranted as important a link as a normally one. Automated implies fast and efficient, in the SE world that would actually mean penalties to your sites in some cases. If a spider picks up that you just got mass inbound links it will assume you are trying to game the system, which you are, because normal link building is done slower and more spaced out. The only ones that do get credit is viral and they can easily tell whats viral and whats generated because viral will have even more explosive growth and will be found more in certain types of media. Again if it's automated you are probably talking about 1 to a few pieces of the same content on multiple sites, again this would be duplicate content on sites that accept submitted content, the two issues with that is the SE treat outbound links from these types of sites differently, otherwise it would be as easy as who can post the most content to hit top serps. The second problem being duplicate content would also hurt your link juice being passed. There are some cool things you could do to get around these and all of the other issues in your programming though, now if you did that, that would be a very handy piece of software to have.
OMPundit
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I haven't ever done that specific type of SEO, but I know a guy who founded and owns a company that does that type of thing. I've done some preliminary work with him towards setting up an automated system that gives businesses an SEO "grade" on how well they are doing in different SEO areas when they input their company's info. His company offers an inexpensive base-level SEO service that he doesn't actually make money off of, to get people interested in signing up for his other services. The world of SEO has some very useful stuff and also some techniques that are questionable ethically. I try to learn from the good while avoiding the bad.
J. Dunlap wrote:
The world of SEO has some very useful stuff and also some techniques that are questionable ethically.
Yeah, that's what makes me twitch anytime I get near this stuff. With programming, you just buy a book and learn the geek stuff. Pretty straightforward. For SEO, it seems near impossible to find a credible, reputable source on how best to build traffic through legitimate and ethical means.
J. Dunlap wrote:
I try to learn from the good while avoiding the bad.
Of course, if you can recognize one from the other you're already way ahead of the game.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
There is indeed some value to using this technique and if you could automate it in some way then average people, not SEO professionals would probably flock to the product, so yes you could potentially make something cool. The downside: Most of these type sites us nofollow tags on their submissions, the importance given and even how the SE view the nofollow does change but still not warranted as important a link as a normally one. Automated implies fast and efficient, in the SE world that would actually mean penalties to your sites in some cases. If a spider picks up that you just got mass inbound links it will assume you are trying to game the system, which you are, because normal link building is done slower and more spaced out. The only ones that do get credit is viral and they can easily tell whats viral and whats generated because viral will have even more explosive growth and will be found more in certain types of media. Again if it's automated you are probably talking about 1 to a few pieces of the same content on multiple sites, again this would be duplicate content on sites that accept submitted content, the two issues with that is the SE treat outbound links from these types of sites differently, otherwise it would be as easy as who can post the most content to hit top serps. The second problem being duplicate content would also hurt your link juice being passed. There are some cool things you could do to get around these and all of the other issues in your programming though, now if you did that, that would be a very handy piece of software to have.
OMPundit
You make some really good points with regard to mass imbound links, high frequency updates and duplicate content. And that's where I start getting nervous about the whole thing. Experiencing greater or lesser success in your efforts is one thing, but tripping a wire that tells the search engines to essentially blacklist you is, quite frankly, a terrifying prospect for any web site. What's an honest guy to do?
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
You make some really good points with regard to mass imbound links, high frequency updates and duplicate content. And that's where I start getting nervous about the whole thing. Experiencing greater or lesser success in your efforts is one thing, but tripping a wire that tells the search engines to essentially blacklist you is, quite frankly, a terrifying prospect for any web site. What's an honest guy to do?
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesIf it was me, I would write the application as a service and write it act like a real link builder would. They could insert multiple pieces of content to be submitted, including multiple versions (like changing the description, title, names, etc...) then the service would submit only 1 or 2 different versions of these at a random but defined pace, say 4-7 a week, with a total submission of no more than 10-20 per content/version. Also as a service you could put a random on which sites it hits and continually add and remove sites from the site list, so lets say one of those gets blacklisted so everyone leading out it gets s little bad influence, you can make sure no future submissions go there. It would be basic white hat link building automated and that would be a service I would pay for.
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If it was me, I would write the application as a service and write it act like a real link builder would. They could insert multiple pieces of content to be submitted, including multiple versions (like changing the description, title, names, etc...) then the service would submit only 1 or 2 different versions of these at a random but defined pace, say 4-7 a week, with a total submission of no more than 10-20 per content/version. Also as a service you could put a random on which sites it hits and continually add and remove sites from the site list, so lets say one of those gets blacklisted so everyone leading out it gets s little bad influence, you can make sure no future submissions go there. It would be basic white hat link building automated and that would be a service I would pay for.
I would assume that that should improve the website's presence gradually? I'm now interested in figuring out how fast can you shoot up the ranks? Where are the cut off lines between white hat rank building [quickly], black hat and viral.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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I would assume that that should improve the website's presence gradually? I'm now interested in figuring out how fast can you shoot up the ranks? Where are the cut off lines between white hat rank building [quickly], black hat and viral.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Viral is explosive, always explosive and there will be a lot more mentions of the links found in personal online media, like social "wall" posts, inside emails, and social bookmark sites, way more than a traditional site would be found in mass on these types of media. If you think about it it makes sense, viral means people are bringing other people, and these are today's best at letting others know when you found something cool. The difference between white and black can be a ton of factors, it sounds like you want to know the break thresholds for when once type of activity turns into the other. Because of ALL the different factors they take into consideration, it would be impossible to have a defined break. The use, from my point of view, would be to have another tool in my tool box working for me, and I would rather it not test the boundries but to always reside in the safe zone, that way I could sleep at night knowing its not going to get me blacklisted. As for how fast, again a lot of factors come into play but if your going after even decent keywords, and by decent I mean ones people are actually using to search with, then you would need to assess your own site and efforts versus what the top SERP results are doing in your respective area(s)
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Viral is explosive, always explosive and there will be a lot more mentions of the links found in personal online media, like social "wall" posts, inside emails, and social bookmark sites, way more than a traditional site would be found in mass on these types of media. If you think about it it makes sense, viral means people are bringing other people, and these are today's best at letting others know when you found something cool. The difference between white and black can be a ton of factors, it sounds like you want to know the break thresholds for when once type of activity turns into the other. Because of ALL the different factors they take into consideration, it would be impossible to have a defined break. The use, from my point of view, would be to have another tool in my tool box working for me, and I would rather it not test the boundries but to always reside in the safe zone, that way I could sleep at night knowing its not going to get me blacklisted. As for how fast, again a lot of factors come into play but if your going after even decent keywords, and by decent I mean ones people are actually using to search with, then you would need to assess your own site and efforts versus what the top SERP results are doing in your respective area(s)
Well I was considering it from an academic point of view. It ought to make a very interesting research paper if done properly. Especially seeing how you could benefit the public with that.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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The youtube / facebook thread a few posts back got me thinking. Posting on social networks is much like anything else with the web: "If you build it, you will be ignored." Signal to noise ratio on the web is insanely low. Was talking with a friend this weekend who does SEO / SEM stuff (and says he avoids black hat techniques in favor of long term success). Essentially, if I understand correctly, there are tons of article and video sites out there where you can post content. Part of his strategy is pushing client content out to a high number of sites, which of course increases the links back to the client site and thus boosts the page rank on Google, etc. He says there are literally hundreds of these sites, and thus he uses custom software to automate the task of posting the articles / videos into the content sites. Of course, I'm sitting there listening to this thinking, "Hey, I'm a programmer. I could probably write something like that." Never mind for the moment that this is how my weekends tend to evaporate... On the one hand, I tend to view any / all SEO stuff with a raised eyebrow since there's so much hype, shuck and jive in that industry. On the other hand, I've seen some of his results with clients, which are impressive. For reasonable keywords, the local search section and top ten results of Google are pretty much carpet bombed with references to the client. I don't know much at all about this SEO stuff. Have any of you ever used techniques like this or written apps to automate this kind of process? It's pretty much an alien planet to me.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesYou will never ethically win the SEO game unless you have the killer app, product, or service. Pushing the same content to more than one site is autoplagerism which is, of course, shunned in academic circles. I am tired of trying to find out novel information about some topic and having to wade through 100's of the exact same article to try and get to anything new, profound, or even original.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane
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Well I was considering it from an academic point of view. It ought to make a very interesting research paper if done properly. Especially seeing how you could benefit the public with that.
If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
I have a feeling that as soon as this stuff is public enough, it changes. :-D
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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The youtube / facebook thread a few posts back got me thinking. Posting on social networks is much like anything else with the web: "If you build it, you will be ignored." Signal to noise ratio on the web is insanely low. Was talking with a friend this weekend who does SEO / SEM stuff (and says he avoids black hat techniques in favor of long term success). Essentially, if I understand correctly, there are tons of article and video sites out there where you can post content. Part of his strategy is pushing client content out to a high number of sites, which of course increases the links back to the client site and thus boosts the page rank on Google, etc. He says there are literally hundreds of these sites, and thus he uses custom software to automate the task of posting the articles / videos into the content sites. Of course, I'm sitting there listening to this thinking, "Hey, I'm a programmer. I could probably write something like that." Never mind for the moment that this is how my weekends tend to evaporate... On the one hand, I tend to view any / all SEO stuff with a raised eyebrow since there's so much hype, shuck and jive in that industry. On the other hand, I've seen some of his results with clients, which are impressive. For reasonable keywords, the local search section and top ten results of Google are pretty much carpet bombed with references to the client. I don't know much at all about this SEO stuff. Have any of you ever used techniques like this or written apps to automate this kind of process? It's pretty much an alien planet to me.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesI think the difference between the "ethical" and "nonethical" is that the "ethical" stuff does enough to get good content in front of eyes to jump start the links and general interest that might not have happened without a good shove out the door. The other stuff is pushing content that nobody wants to read anyway, so it really comes down to good vs. bad content, and the ends justifying the means.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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You will never ethically win the SEO game unless you have the killer app, product, or service. Pushing the same content to more than one site is autoplagerism which is, of course, shunned in academic circles. I am tired of trying to find out novel information about some topic and having to wade through 100's of the exact same article to try and get to anything new, profound, or even original.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane
Yeah, the duplicate content stuff drives me crazy as well, which is why I'm not sure I'd call that white hat.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
I think the difference between the "ethical" and "nonethical" is that the "ethical" stuff does enough to get good content in front of eyes to jump start the links and general interest that might not have happened without a good shove out the door. The other stuff is pushing content that nobody wants to read anyway, so it really comes down to good vs. bad content, and the ends justifying the means.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
Yeah, I've seen some really awful video content as well as badly written articles that looked like they were spit out by a Word macro being fed keywords. If that's the stuff that gets your site ranked high, I'm not sure how much good you're doing yourself. People will discover your site at the same time they discover that your content sucks. Where's the win? Indiscriminate blasting of pretty much anything is considered spam. Building a more efficient system for whatever work you're doing is just considered good business sense. Seems like the trick would be to find out what processes are ethical, and then optimize those processes to be as efficient as possible, for which software is a good tool. So, I guess where it really starts is with the question, "What SEO processes are ethical?"
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
You will never ethically win the SEO game unless you have the killer app, product, or service. Pushing the same content to more than one site is autoplagerism which is, of course, shunned in academic circles. I am tired of trying to find out novel information about some topic and having to wade through 100's of the exact same article to try and get to anything new, profound, or even original.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
I am tired of trying to find out novel information about some topic and having to wade through 100's of the exact same article to try and get to anything new, profound, or even original.
Agreed. At best, duplicate content at that level crosses the line into the gray area ethics-wise. Really, it's a form of spamming.
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Viral is explosive, always explosive and there will be a lot more mentions of the links found in personal online media, like social "wall" posts, inside emails, and social bookmark sites, way more than a traditional site would be found in mass on these types of media. If you think about it it makes sense, viral means people are bringing other people, and these are today's best at letting others know when you found something cool. The difference between white and black can be a ton of factors, it sounds like you want to know the break thresholds for when once type of activity turns into the other. Because of ALL the different factors they take into consideration, it would be impossible to have a defined break. The use, from my point of view, would be to have another tool in my tool box working for me, and I would rather it not test the boundries but to always reside in the safe zone, that way I could sleep at night knowing its not going to get me blacklisted. As for how fast, again a lot of factors come into play but if your going after even decent keywords, and by decent I mean ones people are actually using to search with, then you would need to assess your own site and efforts versus what the top SERP results are doing in your respective area(s)
Yeah, staying in the safe zone is critical to the owner of the site, but of course the less than ethical SEO guys don't care about that as long as they get their money up front. I think you make a lot of good points on this & previous posts. Sounds like you have a fair bit of experience (i.e. battle scars!) in this area. :)
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
I am tired of trying to find out novel information about some topic and having to wade through 100's of the exact same article to try and get to anything new, profound, or even original.
Agreed. At best, duplicate content at that level crosses the line into the gray area ethics-wise. Really, it's a form of spamming.
Yeah, I'd have to agree. And any way you shake it, you're gaming the system.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Yeah, I've seen some really awful video content as well as badly written articles that looked like they were spit out by a Word macro being fed keywords. If that's the stuff that gets your site ranked high, I'm not sure how much good you're doing yourself. People will discover your site at the same time they discover that your content sucks. Where's the win? Indiscriminate blasting of pretty much anything is considered spam. Building a more efficient system for whatever work you're doing is just considered good business sense. Seems like the trick would be to find out what processes are ethical, and then optimize those processes to be as efficient as possible, for which software is a good tool. So, I guess where it really starts is with the question, "What SEO processes are ethical?"
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesI wonder if the videos were from these guys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Media[^]. They take the concept of SEO to a whole new level.
I can imagine the sinking feeling one would have after ordering my book, only to find a laughably ridiculous theory with demented logic once the book arrives - Mark McCutcheon
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I haven't ever done that specific type of SEO, but I know a guy who founded and owns a company that does that type of thing. I've done some preliminary work with him towards setting up an automated system that gives businesses an SEO "grade" on how well they are doing in different SEO areas when they input their company's info. His company offers an inexpensive base-level SEO service that he doesn't actually make money off of, to get people interested in signing up for his other services. The world of SEO has some very useful stuff and also some techniques that are questionable ethically. I try to learn from the good while avoiding the bad.
J. Dunlap wrote:
The world of SEO has some very useful stuff and also some techniques that are questionable ethically.
Anything that makes you start thinking of people as numbers of "potential customers" is a bad thing, and once you start getting involved in these "techniques", the techniques take over, and become the only logic you can see. But they're not logical. It really, really doesn't make sense to drive people to your site/product if they don't want it. Blanket campaigns are good for increasing awareness of a company name, but little else -- and bad blanket campaigns tar you with the SPAMmer/scam artist brush. We're not in a "shopfront" industry, where the number of people walking past the shop greatly increases the chance of sales; all it does is increase the number of people walking past the shop. If they're there because they have been misled into thinking that you provide something you don't, they ain't gon' buy nothin'. Search engine managers (and marketing cretins who don't know what they're doing, but think that numbers matter) might want you to think that being ranked top in a search helps, but it doesn't -- when was the last time you bought something from the top return from a search, where the search string didn't contain the name of the company you wanted to buy from? So the best you can hope for is one or two extra sales (which you would have got anyway, by targeting better), and a huge number of pissed-off people who will never consider your product -- even if things change later, so that that they do need it. The only number that matters is the number of people who actually want your product, and pissing about with marketing-cretin techniques won't help you to find them. You have to target them and only them, know who they are and where they go, and *advertise* there -- as in pay for proper, professional advertising ("adwords" and other tax-dodges need not apply). So, for a somewhat extreme example, if you have a developer named Albert Sexwithdonkeys, don't use his name as a keyword to attract millions of hits from people who want websites about sex with donkeys, because if sex with donkeys ain't what you're selling, you'll just be alienating the people who are looking for it, and your name will forever ring negative in their minds. A phrase worth remembering, whose subtlety flies way over the heads of marketing cretins, is "Numbers don't count; people do".
I wanna be a