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You're referring to meta tags. While it's still good practice to have some keywords there, it's MUCH less relevant than it was in say...2001. That's just good practice but not a silver bullet. I could spend all day putting every keyword in the world in my site description and it wouldn't do anything to improve my site's ranking. This was how people used to game the other crappier search engines before Google came along.



If Google had their search algorithm value "clicks" from a site so heavily, that would be incredibly inefficient and easily spammable. True, Google does take overall site traffic into account, as well as social media traction, but an anonymous user clicking on a link from some random site sends no signal to Google. People would just set up a bunch of sites with links to their main site, then run a script to have it click over and over again. See how easily gameable that would be?

The best signal of authority Google receives is from the existence of a link itself. And there are several caveat's to that:

1. The link cannot be bought (this will get your site banned)
2. The link cannot be irrelevant to the site in which it is listed (this drives the "authority" of the link down, and is a major indicator of a purchased link)
3. If it is a reciprocal link, its value is also lowered. Triangular linking is one way to get around this. Again, these rudimentary strategies have become far less efficient in recent years. You want links from authoritative sources with no strings attached.

The fact is, what you're talking about it simple spam linking and clicking that might boost a sites ratings in the short term slightly, but would ultimately get it banned by Google. If my company did that, we would be out of business.



I can assure you we create no such incentives. We don't offer "free iPods" or any other reason to "visit a site". An overwhelming majority of our traffic is from organic search results. Someone clicking on a random link that says "visit our site" would be very unlikely to convert into a legitimate lead. If we had such an incentive in an effort to goad links out of people, we would be found out rather quickly and ultimately reported to Google.

We literally do nothing with facebook other than having fan pages for some sites. Facebook does nothing for our revenue and purely functions as a way to connect with users and send more authority signals to Google, should a search quality employee visit our site.

Posting a bunch of links on a zillion different sites as an anonymous person offering a "tip" would barely move the needle for Google. Those links would be from pages with almost no authority, no Page Rank, very few (if any) backlinks, and would ultimately be a waste of time. Google also does extensive backlink profiling of web sites. If it noticed that a site only had links from a bunch of shitty forums and threads posted by anonymous users, it would be a high indicator that the site in question shouldn't be ranked where it is and would be subject to placement in Google's sandbox, one of the worst things Google can do to a site.



Google just doesn't work like that, hate to burst your bubble. Again, if it did work like that, it would be way too easy to game and have entire teams in India with differing IP addresses searching for your links in Google and clicking them.

A user who has to search to...i dunno page 6 of Google's search results and finally clicks on a link will also send no authority signal to Google. It wouldn't be "oh, the 100th person just clicked this link on page 6, let's move it up to page 5!" You're also overlooking the fact that very few people look past page 1, or even the top 3 results, on any given search query. This would be a self fulfilling prophecy if searching for your own site and clicking it would result in rankings increases. How would any site ever move up without massive spam?

If you're referring to Google Adsense (CPC clicking), then that's called "click fraud" and can get your account banned.

If you're just referring to finding other sites with links to your site on them, and clicking them...this again wouldn't do anything.



Not at all.

I think that you're suffering from delusions. The fact you're disgruntled combined with the idea that you'll "be something someday, just you watch," doesn't make you some great world-changing figure. It makes you, at most, the typical suburban teenager. There are years of the life of Jesus that weren't recorded, it doesn't mean he was sitting on his ass. Cincinnatus didn't retire to his farm to "take it easy." Even those who didn't have success until later in life, like Albert Einstein weren't exactly sitting on their thumbs until their moment to shine arrived. Hell, you don't even have to shake the foundations of the world to be a "person of merit," but what can you say about yourself, other than "I'm not happy" and "I'll be great later," that recommends you as such a person?



Ah, now see, you're not only making half-assed assumptions again, you're just being petty. When did I say I was a person of merit? I don't believe I did. People like me don't exist because the world needs good men. People like me exist because every once in a great while, the world needs a bastard. I've done three things that I consider to have been of any value to my fellow man, and the most important of those I did while I was in the military...other than those three things, I've been little more than a man of leisure. I don't feel bad about it, which is probably why I don't have to lie to myself about what an incredible human being I am (though I am a pretty great guy, or so I'm told).

"People of merit" don't hide in the background and whine that " life is neither easy nor fair nor balanced." They may acknowledge that, but they sure as hell don't allow it to become an impediment.

And stop with the "welfare" and "trash" bullshit when you discuss people in the military. It' a job, and there are a lot of intangibles involved with it that more than counter-balance any "make-work" or unnecessary aspect of it.



You know who I know that does use wealth as a measure of success? The guy that on occasion talks about how he's going to buy himself a harem one day. That said, was I equating the two, or were you just ignoring what was written so that you could arrive at that conclusion? Hmmm...



I think the answer to that question is crystal clear. Could we stick to how I'm literally disparaging you before we skip ahead to any metaphorical and/or imagined insults I might be making? It just makes the conversation easier to manage.



If we sat around and argued hypothetical bullshit, would it make you any less of a miserable human being? I don't think so, so what's the point?



What does wealth have to do with merit? Many of the most exemplary individuals in history either started or ended with nothing, and some even eschewed wealth during their lifetimes. The only person boiling it down to wealth right now is you. "People of merit" don't complain that "the world isn't fair." That is an "ignorant and small-minded viewpoint" that doesn't afflict them, but you seem to be weighed down heavily by "how fair" things are. "People of merit" don't care that the world isn't fair. They don't give a fuck. They work around it, or they change it. They don't sit behind the protective barrier of their computer screens racking up fake accomplishments in a video game to validate themselves while verbally tearing down other people of whom they are very clearly jealous.



I hate to tell you this, champ, but that description easily defines the bulk of society. The average person can read, write, and do math. Most people (contrary to popular belief) aren't stupid...not to say they don't do stupid things, but they're not stupid, and even stupid people can follow directions. I don't see how you're solving any problems that matter with this attitude of "life isn't fair" getting in your way, but even if you get points for that, so what? I haven't had a job or hobby that didn't involve working around some difficulties. Factory drones can work for long periods unattended, and most people aren't dishonest. Congratulations, you've outed yourself: you're everybody else, only with delusions of grandeur.



I think of it in the same way that the Supreme Court thinks of pornography: I can't really define it, but I know it when I see it.

I don't see it in sitting on the internet all day mocking Azelma, or arguing for the sake of arguing, or making excuses about how you're a train wreck because of your parents, or because "life isn't fair," boo-fucking-hoo. Tearing Azelma down isn't going to make you any less of a failure, even if it makes you feel better. Get off your dead ass and go do what you already know you're capable of doing. Stop making fucking excuses. Stop hiding in your apartment or in WoW from the rest of world, accept the goddamn hardship and go do whatever the fuck it is that you're supposed to do.

You're squandering your life. Stop it.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Jubber, I didnt read most of your uneducated, ignorant TLDR bullshit.
What I scanned, seems to be mostly your typical "no u" nonsense.

I did notice you made reference to Cincinnatus and Einstein, which are such stereotyped figures that to make reference to them as compared to a much wider field of available knowledge proves your ignorance.

I could provide you with the contrary - and contemporaneous - examples of Scipio Africanus and Fritz Haber. I'm fairly sure that you have absolutely no idea whose those individuals are, because you are ignorant. Other good examples would include Steve Jobs, Adolf Hitler, and Madonna.

----------------------

Azelma, the verbosity of your response (as well as characteristic lack of positive assertions) implies I caught you dead-on.
That's something I've noticed about you - the closer to the bone you're cut, the longer your compensatory response.

You engaged everything I said in an informed way, demonstrating you're familiar with the common methods I described, but in each case you gave specious reasons why you don't do that, as if Google cares enough about your firm, one amongst tens of millions, to manually audit your site traffic patterns.

So fill in the blanks. What do you do?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

TL;DR: You read it, recognized that you're a git, and still can't admit it...back to mocking the easy target Azelma makes of himself so you can feel better about being a loser. Got it.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Google doesn't manually assign rankings, index web sites or build the result sets. All of this is done 'automatically' by their crawlers and servers. The things you and Azelma listed are some of the variables factored into the algorithms but not all of them will positively help your positioning in the search results. Azelma was right; link spamming forums and blogs, clicking your website a million times or overloading your meta keyword list isn't going to help your standings.



And to think we've been catching Ethan 'dead-on' all this time...

I said a sites traffic can be a factor in search ranking, I didn't say Google manually audits every site's traffic patterns....that would be impossible. They will monitor it if the site is running Google Analytics, though.

Google has a search quality team that absolutely manually checks a site for quality. And they may not care about my company...but they care about their search results for competitive terms. If a site my company owns is ranking #1, Google will absolutely check it, and penalize it if they feel it shouldn't be there.

Without getting into exactly "how" it's done, since that is sensitive information, I'll give you the basic run down:

1. Register exact match keyword domain (if it was a site about being a lawyer in boston.... bostonlawyer.org would be a beautiful domain to have)

2. Build site that is optimized for search (IE: to be crawled by robots)
A. Make sure you have a well-formed robots.txt file
B. Make sure you have appropriate keyword-rich title tags on all pages
C. Make sure you have a site map
D. Make sure you have a meta description and keywords
E. Make sure you have plenty of internal linking with keyword rich anchor text
F. Make sure you have headers with keyword variations
G. Make sure you have good content, images, etc.
H. Make sure you use alt tags for images
I. Have a facebook page and twitter account
J. Make sure your domain is registered for multiple years
K. Make sure your site isn't easily hacked, you have a selected a web host with little downtime/server interruptions
L. Make sure your page load times are as brief as you can make them
M. If you are obsessed with Flash/Images, you better have some keyword rich text on your site somewhere that a robot can crawl

3. Build links.
A. Find relevant web sites in your niche likely to link out, and request links
B. Blog. Make blog posts that are baity (IE: link baits...likely to be linked to) that will get you long tail traffic and links
C. Submit posts to social media sites (there are hundreds upon hundreds)
D. Make sure you're always using smart anchor text with these links

NOTE: You should also do a ton of keyword research before ever jumping into this. You should know exactly what terms you're gunning for.

4. Profit

There you go. Go make a web site, Aestu.



DING DING DING

So exactly what I described - using keywords and aggressive links and stupid plugs. And I seriously doubt you don't use the other tactics I described.

Common sense and very common skills (quite a few of which you make reference to but don't actually possess).

Obviously it's all automatic. That's my point. No one is going to manually check and see that your site is pure pumpage.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Right, they don't need to manually check this stuff when a computer can accurately determine a pages ranking based on any number of variables and conditions. Since the methods you described for SEO are some of the worst which wouldn't have any positive impact on your website then you're doing it wrong.

Look guys, I don't know why you're arguing with Aestu about this. He's obviously read a book that has given him insight into the subject that you, despite actually being educated in subject and doing hands-on work in the field every day, lack. Just ask him which book it is so that you can read it, too, and not be dumb, ok? You really have to make sure you ask him, otherwise you'll just read the wrong book(s) and continue being dumb.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

In all fairness, you're calling people dumb in a post where you explain to yourself why arguing with Aestu is a bad idea.

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

So assuming you are right - since you don't work in the field either, doesn't that prove my overall point?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

What field don't I work in?

Edit: And what was your overall point?

This is not true. Google has a huge team of people who manually check search results and evaluate individual web sites. They don't manually check all sites or all search terms, obviously, but they do perform manual checks and will penalize a site if they think it's just spam or not authoritative enough to be worthy of its ranking.





I told you we don't, it is far too risky. The potential benefit of black hat SEO methods is outweighed by the risk it presents to our entire business model.

If you choose to not believe me, then you're just being willfully ignorant....the very thing you charge me to be.



I gave you a very very rough outline of how it's done. Actually executing requires much more effort and knowledge. What sites do you submit to? How do you find what sites will be likely to link? How do you construct a linkbait or make sure a post gets traction on social media? How do you build a robots.txt file?

If it's so easy, and requires such common skills...why don't you create a web site and go do it, Aestu? I've done it for web sites. Why don't you? If it's so easy, why doesn't everyone just fall out of bed and get their web sites ranking on the 1st page of Google?


I know more about this than you. Sorry.

I'm a bit saddened that the master of sarcasm doesn't realize that when I say Azelma and Eternal are being "dumb," that I'm saying it in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. They aren't "dumb," that's merely Aestu's assertion, and they actually know what they're talking about in regards to this subject, especially Azelma. The point is that this is another one of those "I can't be wrong because I say I'm not, go read a book" Aestu moments.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

I think the point he is trying to make, and failing miserably at, is that knowing exactly how to increase a web site's ranking in Google isn't a marketable skill and that "anyone can do it"

This is his overall goal of trying to paint me, in his mind, as nothing but a retard who somehow fell into a good job out of pure luck...while he, the brilliant Aestu, has been screwed over by outside factors.

He asked me to list what skills I have that would set me apart from all the other people looking for jobs, I believe my knowledge of search marketing is my greatest skill.


In his defense, he also doesn't know that I was able to get into Ohio State's first search marketing class when I was just a freshman (I had to personally write to the Dean, since it was a senior only class), and that I received an A+.

He also doesn't know that I have been to Google's New York City (Chelsea) offices and spoken with both their business side employees and even a few engineers about search. He doesn't know that I've built and sold multiple web sites by getting them to rank highly for competitive terms. He doesn't know how many Search Marketing/SEO books I have at home and that I've read all of them. He doesn't know what SEO conferences I've attended or which industry leaders I know personally.

He dismissed the fact that I had an internship at a large pharmaceutical company simply because of this experience, and that they followed my recommendations.

He dismisses the fact that instead of working for a large SEO firm working on client web sites...I took a job where I knew I could potentially get an ownership stake and work on sites that I own. Yes, I thought I would be happier working in a small business than being a corporate drone. I was right.




I don't say this to show off, but this is a clear example of Aestu's reality distortion field allowing him to convince himself that he still is much better than me, and I have no definable skills.

He has challenged me to present facts and "how to's" and assert my knowledge of the field. I have done so, and anyone other than Aestu should realize that....yes, I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about when it comes to this stuff.