When the whole “page rank sculpting” thing was a hot topic and all the new, up-and-coming SEO’s were no-following all of their client’s internal links, I was suspicious. I wasn’t suspicious just because I’m paranoid. I was suspicious because of WHY the no follow attribute was created in the first place.

The no follow tag was created so that comment spam and a whole host of link-dropping activities could be minimized in terms of how those links affected search rankings. People were building scripts to comment in blog posts and those comments were full of links that passed PageRank. Google hates that kind of stuff so they pushed the no follow attribute and the world signed on.

So, the no follow attribute was created to combat spam and indicate that links to a website are not necessarily trusted.

Google likes trust.

A lot of people got wise to the fact that putting no follow tags on internal pages condensed the flow of pageRank to pages that were critical to their rankings. This was a flaw in the Google algorithm that was addressed. In the meantime, some SEOs were telling their clients to add no follow tags to their “about us” pages and “privacy” pages. For a time it worked. But to me, adding a no follow tag to an “about us” page told search engines that our about page could not be trusted.

Google likes trust.

So yesterday Matt Cutts posted a video explaining that adding no follow to internal hyperlinks was really just a bad idea. Thanks Matt. I have argued that point many times. Here’s the video:

Now that’s a great title. But the gist of the question revolves around links that I have seen on high PR websites that seem to be effectively passing pageRank. These links have a “nofollow” in the HREF section of the hyperlink but also call an onclick function that potentially creates a separate URL whereby Google could crawl the link without the “nofollow” directive.

As I stated a few posts back, Google makes duplicate content for me, Google is looking inside Javascript functions to determine if there are additional URLs and content that they could crawl and add to their index. Their goal, after all, is organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. But I wonder if their quest to crawl content previously obscured by Javascript has inadvertently provided a loop hole for people who buy and sell links.

I recently encountered a hyperlink that was composed like, a href=http://www.mywebsite.com rel=”nofollow” onclick=window.open(this.href);return false;>my keyword <. As you can see, the initial hyperlink has a nofollow attribute and Google would thereby cut off pageRank flow to the destination page. However, since Google crawls simple Javascript functions such as the window.open function, will the initial "nofollow" be added to the URL which is derived from the Javascript?

I think not. But I shall test. I recently did a little work to make my vet's site accessible and their pet grooming page has yet to be crawled by Google. (See that, I just added this nice little Javascript function to the “pet grooming” link). So this is my little test. I will be looking to see if Google picks up the new grooming page and whether the link to that page from this blog shows up in GWT. Here goes….

(update April 21) – Google immediately crawled this blog post and ranked the post in SERPs. However, it DID NOT follow the JS link to the Tucker Vet’s grooming page. It looks like links in JS that are tagged with rel=nofollow are correctly read and observed by Google!

Just because a couple of people couldn’t get through my Pay Per Post (PPP) rant in one sitting…

1. Pay Per Post is a dodgy SEO strategy and I would never recommend using it. PPP dilutes the relevance of SERPs. Likewise, Link Bait dilutes the relevance of SERPs.

2. PPP as a non-SEO strategy (i.e., Marketing and Branding), should not be wholly viewed as an attempt to game the system (Blackhat SEO).

3. But because Google does punish sites for using PPP, they should either find a way to reduce the impact of minimally relevant blogs (PPP blogs) on their SERPs algorithmically OR they should clearly communicate with Marketing departments (the ones who buy their Adwords) that PPP could negatively impact their site’s organic rankings. Marketing Departments, unlike SEOs, don’t read Matt Cutts’ blog, nor do they traditionally consider SEO in their efforts.

And as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that”. Moving on….

In my first blog post back in February of 2006, I talked about (really, rambled quite a bit about) white hat and black hat SEO techniques and I said,

People often fall into the trap of judging “black hat” and “white hat” techniques and, if one believes Google is God, then that judgement certainly has some relevance.

Oh, the blind followers, how they love to point their fingers!

A few years ago, at one of those gatherings of SEM professionals, representatives from all the major engines were asked how they felt about Pay Per Post services. I remember the same question being asked three months later in NYC and the answers were essentially the same. Rand Fishkin has a great post called, “Search Engines say OK to Pay Per Post services” where he summarizes the conversation. Here’s a snippet from his post,

Tim Converse answered first and said that Yahoo! wouldn’t try to pick one post out of twenty or fifty on every blog that might be running advertorials or paid reviews just to stop link value from that particular post. If the engine looked at the site and saw that in general, the outgoing links were of high quality, there would be no discount of link value for paid blog material. Adam from Google agreed, but said little in particular.

That’s right, Google had no problem with Pay Per Post in late 2006 and early 2007. At least the representative at SES didn’t have any stated objections when asked directly. But that wasn’t from Matt Cutts. Matt later responded to Rand’s blog and declared that Google really wanted to “detect paid links” and that would cause offending sites to have a loss of Google trust, i.e., ranking.

Obviously, things quickly change and are not always black and white. Now, Google is asking people to report the buying and selling of links, including Pay Per Posts, so they can filter organic rankings of the evil doers, er, marketers. Like Adwords, Pay Per Post is typically used as a marketing technique so companies can increase their online exposure.

There are 3 Adwords reps for every Starbucks store and it would be easy enough for them to communicate to their clients as most traditional marketers don’t read SEO blogs. That way, the Marketing department could hear from the horse’s mouth that some marketing and branding efforts (i.e., Pay Per Post) could now have a negative effect on the efforts of the SEO Department. But that’s not how Google information flows. One might be led to believe that Google actually likes it when companies spend more money on Adwords to make up for lost organic traffic.

Sound like a “grassy knoll conspiracy”? Maybe. But I’ve seen companies take worse actions for the sake of the shareholders. Some might even believe that Google is standing up for the small guy as a result of their flip-flopping, but I would argue that they’re creating a bigger demand for Adwords.

Pop up ads – now that’s a Marketing favorite that really does warrant punishment. And I begged Matt Cutts to consider pop up punishment back in 2003. He didn’t give. But as far as tv, radio, email, print and the array of other marketing and advertising methods go, Marketing teams work very hard and spend a lot of time, effort and energy on brand awareness. If they choose to experiment with a new marketing method, they should be able to do so without considering the fickle nature of Google’s evolving algorithm. And they certainly shouldn’t be judged and accused like they’re committing a sin if they don’t read Matt Cutt’s blog.

Stealing, coveting, bearing false witness – now those are real world sins, not pay per post.

When I saw the quirky video from SES this week, I thought it was a clever link bait idea for viral marketing. Matt Cutts even liked it and gave it his golden blessing. But since it’s bound to create a lot of link juice for that guy, I didn’t applaud too loudly. Instead, I briefly had black hat envy thoughts and dreamed about hiring a big gun like Greg Boser to counter the pending link surge with a big bang of links. Personally, I couldn’t black hat myself out of a paper bag. And I can’t hire Greg either (sorry Greg, but you do rock – please disregard all of those emails, voice mails, faxes and that candy gram), as much as the Dr. Evil in me might entertain the idea. It is impressive that someone pulled off a stunt like that and it’s a trick that is gaining popularity. But the success of my site in the same space comes from the clean, hard work of some really good people and lots of great content. And that’s the way it will continue to thrive. I’m personally more concerned with making a quality product than finding ways to game the system.

As to what Google does and does not approve of, I think the whole paid link debate is off course. A few years ago, I stood up at SES and asked the Google panelist why Yahoo was not considered a “paid link”. The answer was that Yahoo! conducts a “human review” and that payment is for that human evaluation, not the link itself. Well, that’s a bunch of crap. Yahoo conducts a credit card review and that’s about it. I think it was Rand Fishkin who said, “paid links, you can’t live with them and you won’t rank without them”, or something like that.

Just for the record, blind blog posts, scripted social media tagging, link farms and other such anonymous, unqualified link herding is not something that represents quality content and relevance. In addition, contrary to Google’s public opinion, link bait is equally non-relevant and blindly skews the search engine algorithms. As a matter of fact, link baiting is only one degree away from Phishing. If the bait is relevant to the actual theme of the website, like the funny shave everywhere video, then it makes sense. When it’s out of the neighborhood, and gathers link juice to an unrelated topic, it dilutes relevance. It’s an accepted loophole and a growing commodity. And if Google did actually change their mind about it, there is nothing they could do to stop it.

The fact is, standard business directories such as the Yellow Pages cost money. Yahoo directory costs money. And most organizations consider time spent to modify a site (add a link) as an expense. Paid links are not going away. But what really rattles me is that Google invented most of these problems and they keep contradicting themselves. For years, Google said not to write web pages with search engines in mind. Now, Google wants “no follow” tags put on links such as blog links – a request specifically for the search engines. Frankly, that’s an extra step that corporate heads, programmers and marketers won’t even consider as it has nothing to do with increasing the quality of a product. Why should we do more work just so Google’s flawed algorithm won’t make a relevance mistake?

Here’s my point. I think it’s creative that someone can make a silly video and get links based on making people laugh. Creative, but not relevant to the topic of the website for which relevance score will increase. Google always harps about ranking sites based on “relevance”. Well, that’s clearly not true. If someone can make people laugh and thereby get links to increase their search engine rank for ‘digital cameras’, that does not make the site more relevant for ‘digital cameras’. That simply gets the site more inbound links. And that is interpreted by Google as ‘relevant’. That’s like giving good grades to the class clown because he makes noise and makes people laugh.

Is it marketing or is it trickery? It can be both. Great marketing gets a brand in front of people and has a variety of formats. That’s perfectly fine. But bait and switch types of link manipulation influence search engines for the malevolent and benevolent alike. If Google thinks the effect is benign, and they seem to, we will continue to see an onslaught of organizations rooted in black hat Social Media manipulation continue to saturate the SERPs with irrelevance.

Inbound links, regardless of intent, do influence search engines. And as long as there is a positive return, they will remain a commodity. Equally, link bait will continue to thrive, will continue to grow as a commodity and will continue to degrade relevance in SERPs. In the end, being relevant is about being organized, architecturally sound, persistent, having authoritative content, helping people achieve their goals, as well as being clever and getting quality inbound links. The game is getting more complex and, as the SES video has proven, anyone can have success at manipulating Google’s algorithm if they expose the right loophole.

Today I finally got around to tuning into Webmaster Radio and can’t believe it took me this long to get started. I have met Daron Babin at SES and heard his tales about what happens when a diet Coca-Cola junkie goes cold turkey. It’s nasty…but I digress.

I downloaded listened to an interview with Michael Gray. Personally, I don’t really care for the greywolf – he is a bit of a jerk. Then again, nice people don’t make the best spammers and I’m not looking for a buddy.

Greywolf sure knows about how to spam the daylights out of Social Media and he was full of tips and experimental results. Having a top dog spam master like Greg Boser conduct the interview really put two great evil geniuses together behind a mic so the rest of us could learn from their collective wisdom. I don’t plan on exploiting and cheating and mimicking their techniques for SEO purposes, but listening to them certainly opened up windows of insight.

Of course, no fancy scripts were named and the dirty details were left uncovered. There were a lot of “tongue in cheek” comments and loaded sarcasm. It was a great listen. I will be back.

I no more than write the headline and I already become worried that someone will mistake this post for something other than a reflection on a nerdy Internet pasttime – “Google Bombing”. Last week after my SEO Presentation at the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs April Meetup, I took questions from the audience and one of the questions was about the practice of Google Bombing. I was asked whether I had ever been Google Bombed.

“Google Bombing” is when a group of webmasters gets together and uses their websites to unpleasantly describe someone else’s website in a “group effort” sort of way. Using well chosen, descriptive text in hyperlinks, every webmaster uses the same phrase to link to the target website. If the evil plan succeeds, Google will return the targeted website in a top position for the chosen phrase. It’s the online version of getting your house “rolled” with TP.

The most famous example of a Google bomb was when George Bush’s biography was the top search result for the query “miserable failure”. To be fair, Michael Moore was #2, proving that any side can play. Jimmy Carter was #3. It was a spectacle of widespread manipulation of the search engines – and it was pretty funny. Google finally stepped in and did a repair job so the BBC news is now #1 for the term “miserable failure”. Now it’s fixed.

Anyway, my answer to the question was basically that I really wouldn’t know. If someone Google bombed me for the term, “curly headed bozo“, for instance, I would not be aware of this because I wouldn’t be searching for the term curly headed bozo. That’s when I spotted Rusty Zarse giggling and mumbling from his front row position. I envisioned that toad licking code magician ensuring my rise to fame with a Google Bomb of his own.

I certainly don’t condone Google bombing and wouldn’t encourage anyone to participate in Internet TP games. The fact that I wrote a fairly obcure term such as toad licking code magician and put a strong tag in a hyperlink pointing to Rusty’s site, doesn’t necessarily mean that I would be attempting to Google Boom Boom Rusty Zarse for the term, “toad licking code magician”.

Lately, Google has been turning up the heat on those who buy and sell links and want people to report websites that engage in either activity. Google bombing is the other end of the spectrum. If people can link to your site, using any word, and can potentially influence the rank of your site for that word, should the target site not be able to negate the effect of those links? That would actually be good for the websites and not just Big-G (you know I love you, G) What would a toad licking code magician think?

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz had a good post today about link building and getting people to link to your site. In his list of turn-ons vs. turn-offs in regarding design, the list of the negatives was topped by “obtrusive ads”. Amen.

Not only do pop-ups and Las Vegas-style ads suck, they discourage anyone from wanting to link to you. In other words, a crappy design and presentation can negate the effects of good content if the website is, as Andrew Goodman says, “in the hall of shame.”

Pop-ups, pop-overs and blinking banners have sucked for a long time. If only, in their infinite wisdom, the Corporate America decision makers would fall in step and realize that a business need not be tricky or sneaky to monetize a website, the web would be a better place to hang out.

I read an interesting post from one of my favorite “black hat” SEO gurus today. There is an SEO contest, initiated by threadwatch.com, which is giving away a whopping $1k for being #1 on Google for the term “Dave Pasternack”. An article by Mr. Pasternack got under the skins of some SEO’s when he claimed that SEO was “not rocket science”, among other things. Apparently, this contest was to poke fun and harass Dave for making sweeping, negative comments about SEOs. It turns out that someone else named Dave Pasternack, a Master Chef in NYC, is getting his site kicked to the curb as a result.

First, I would like to repeat the statement that SEO is not rocket science – just like accounting is not rocket science, nor is gardening, painting or playing music. It is what it is. Besides, I have worked with a rocket scientist-turned-programmer and that man was a bone-headed assclown (thanks again, Greg…and no offense to other rocket scientists).

Some SEOs are infinitely more effective than others and no one should be insulted by the rocket science statement. The rock stars are making more than any rocket scientist anyway. Frankly, I try to de-mystify SEO at my job. Will that cost me job security? Hell no. I have experience and a proven track record. When my colleagues understand how SEO works, the more success we will have as a team.

But back to Greg Boser and his post. What Greg has suggested is that when the contest is over, people 301 redirect their web pages back to the chef Dave Pasternack’s site. That is very admirable. And hopefully this will happen to a large degree and no one will suffer because of a silly SEO contest. What is especially sweet about Greg’s post is that Mr. Boser is known as a “black hat SEO”, which is also synonymous with “unethical” in come circles. Kudos Greg, this is not only ethical, it’s admirable. And not a bad link magnet either.

There has been a lot of attention paid to the effectiveness of “paid” links to a website’s SEO success. In a recent post by Matt Cutts, he makes a point about how companies tout their paid links as “undetectable” when, indeed, the Google crew is able to filter them. Matt has mentioned in the past about detecting “networks” and devaluing those networks and the links they produce. So what links actually count?

The answer, as usual, is ‘it depends’. But I think the key to detectability is the “network”. Who knows how long it will be before Google recognizes Text-Link-Ads and devalues those listed in that network? It just depends on whether Google sees that company as a threat to it’s relevancy algorithm. Think of it this way – a brothel is much easier to discover than a lone prostitute simply because of the traffic. The question is, how far will Google go to “clean up the streets”? To take the analogy further, how will Google determine the difference between a ‘paid’ relationship or just a really expensive date – or will they bother with this determination? Google treats the Yahoo directory as a high class date. Given their earlier attempts to make all of their search listings paid, I tend to think of Yahoo as a whore…ok, maybe just a mistress.

As long as there is a relationship between linking and SEO success, there will be those that buy and sell links for cash. Linking is a commodity. What will be interesting to see is how Google polices this commodity.