Penguin Update: Where do we go from here?

BlogHue said:
That is primarily because no one is sure on what is "white hat" anymore.

Most people believe that anything "manual" is Whitehat, whereas all of us know that's not the case.
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if it's done to manipulate search rankings, it aint white hat. doesn't matter what it is, it's not white hat. if you're practicing true white hat it means you aren't actually doing anything at all except maybe writing some content or creating some infographics.
 


Actually everything we do with rankings in mind is an attempt to manipulate the results. So by the mere fact that one may even be following the web master guidelines you are attempting to create a situation that pleases Google and as thus you are trying to manipulate how your site ranks. hmm
 
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ly2 from WF said:
if it's done to manipulate search rankings, it aint white hat. doesn't matter what it is, it's not white hat. if you're practicing true white hat it means you aren't actually doing anything at all except maybe writing some content or creating some infographics.
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This is what I've been saying for years, but most whitehats don't want to hear this.
 
Insomniac said:
If you want to build shit sites, and expect the traffic to flow forever, you need to wake the fuck up, and go get yourself a day job.
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Not to discredit anything you said because of course having all those things is nice and dandy but none of that actually guarantees that your site won't be fucked by Google anyway. Just because you survived this update with your "Brand" doesn't mean the next zoo animal update won't send you into oblivion.

At the end of the day it's about return on investment and risk vs reward. If I build a semi authority site and bank $10k but only spent $500-$1000 to make it then I win. But I am not about sink $20k or more into building a "brand" and waiting a year to get the ball rolling just so I can get fucked over and lose my site before it makes me money.

The better strategy is not to completely rely on Google. That is a TRUE long term strategy and one worth investing into.
 
dcodex said:
Actually everything we do with rankings in mind is an attempt to manipulate the results. So by the mere fact that one may even be following the web master guidelines you are attempting to create a situation that pleases Google and as thus you are trying to manipulate how your site ranks. hmm
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Somehow that reminds me of an old Star Trek episode.

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because of BHS, if anyone using BHS so they'll got ranking down at google.
Now it's time to use WHS aswell quality contents.
 
adionline said:
Not to discredit anything you said because of course having all those things is nice and dandy but none of that actually guarantees that your site won't be fucked by Google anyway. Just because you survived this update with your "Brand" doesn't mean the next zoo animal update won't send you into oblivion.

At the end of the day it's about return on investment and risk vs reward. If I build a semi authority site and bank $10k but only spent $500-$1000 to make it then I win. But I am not about sink $20k or more into building a "brand" and waiting a year to get the ball rolling just so I can get fucked over and lose my site before it makes me money.

The better strategy is not to completely rely on Google. That is a TRUE long term strategy and one worth investing into.
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You're crazy if you think it costs $20k to build a brand with most of the features I listed above. When you get into the flow of it, it takes around two weeks from the designer and two weeks from the coder to build out a full product - total cost ~$2k max.

The amount of times I've seen my competitors booted (PPC and SEO mainly), while I retain the traffic, is just mind boggling.

You can fake it till you make it, but realize that sooner or later, you will be manually reviewed, categorized as shit, and either get banned or lose position. Why not spend your first $1k in rev on improving the site, rather than bottle service.

Also, even if your site gets hit, if you branded it, you can sell it. If your site looks like a $2 hooker, then it's not worth jack without traffic. People on twitter get wet over the word "custom coded". Think exit strategy.

And FWIW, it's never taken me a year to get the ball rolling. I'm not at all saying to go all white on your link building strategy. Use the same link building strategy you always do. In fact, I blasted one of my sites with over a million blog comments about two weeks before the penguin update - did I lose rank? Nope, but I did start ranking for a ton more long tail keywords.

The other thing about building a branded property - if you do get shit canned by google, it barely costs anything to have a designer tweak the layout/logo and dump it all back up on a new domain.
 
Insomniac said:
You're crazy if you think it costs $20k to build a brand with most of the features I listed above. When you get into the flow of it, it takes around two weeks from the designer and two weeks from the coder to build out a full product - total cost ~$2k max.

The amount of times I've seen my competitors booted (PPC and SEO mainly), while I retain the traffic, is just mind boggling.

You can fake it till you make it, but realize that sooner or later, you will be manually reviewed, categorized as shit, and either get banned or lose position. Why not spend your first $1k in rev on improving the site, rather than bottle service.

Also, even if your site gets hit, if you branded it, you can sell it. If your site looks like a $2 hooker, then it's not worth jack without traffic. People on twitter get wet over the word "custom coded". Think exit strategy.

And FWIW, it's never taken me a year to get the ball rolling. I'm not at all saying to go all white on your link building strategy. Use the same link building strategy you always do. In fact, I blasted one of my sites with over a million blog comments about two weeks before the penguin update - did I lose rank? Nope, but I did start ranking for a ton more long tail keywords.

The other thing about building a branded property - if you do get shit canned by google, it barely costs anything to have a designer tweak the layout/logo and dump it all back up on a new domain.
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I had what you classify as "brand" sites get slapped while a few of my shittiest looking non branded sites survived.

By the way, putting a logo on a site (or any of the other shit you listed) does not make you a brand and I am not even going to bother with the rest of the stuff you wrote because it's full of shit and I don't feel like wasting my time.
 
adionline said:
I had what you classify as "brand" sites get slapped while a few of my shittiest looking non branded sites survived.

By the way, putting a logo on a site (or any of the other shit you listed) does not make you a brand and I am not even going to bother with the rest of the stuff you wrote because it's full of shit and I don't feel like wasting my time.
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Considering how many points I gave as to a site being "branded", and the fact the only thing you pulled from that was "get a custom logo", I really couldn't give a fuck about what your narrow mind thinks is shit.
 
Insomniac said:
Considering how many points I gave as to a site being "branded", and the fact the only thing you pulled from that was "get a custom logo", I really couldn't give a fuck about what your narrow mind thinks is shit.
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And you think that makes you immune to google updates? Because? Oh that's right, you survived one update with your "branded" sites that you spammed with shitty links and now you think your one case is somehow the answer and everyone else is fucking retarded. Get off your high horse.

My point is that you're still relying on Google and you'll be singing a different tune once your shit gets slapped with one of the many updates down the road.

What I am trying to tell you is that many sites that fit your criteria (and sites that exceed it) where fucked over. Build sites to provide a good user experience and bank while you can. Creating custom themes, getting custom code and the rest of that garbage is not necessary and does nothing to shield you from putting your eggs in one basket and relying on Google for all your traffic.
 
adionline said:
And you think that makes you immune to google updates? Because? Oh that's right, you survived one update with your "branded" sites that you spammed with shitty links and now you think your one case is somehow the answer and everyone else is fucking retarded. Get off your high horse.

My point is that you're still relying on Google and you'll be singing a different tune once your shit gets slapped with one of the many updates down the road.
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I'm pretty sure I've made it clear, I'm not one of the plebs on this forum, who are new to SEO, and think they are invincible because they've made it past one update. However, I have zero reason to give up on google as my primary traffic source. Here is the last 30 days of one of my properties:

google / organic 42X,XXX
direct 37,XXX
bing / organic 3,XXX
yahoo / organic 1,XXX
facebook / referral 1,XXX
m.facebook.com / referral XXX
google / referral XXX

During that time, 10,XXX people typed my brand into google to find my site.

You know what that tells me? People want to be on my site, and google realizes it too. I guarantee google is looking at requests from chrome / safebrowsing / firefox, along with domain name searches, to decide if a site is an authority. Even if my site gets slapped, I know that I'm going to get more traffic from google just from brand name searches, than I'm ever going to get from bing.

Are you seeing ~30% return visitors, and ~10% "direct" traffic to your site? Would anyone even give a fuck if your "brand" disappeared tomorrow? Does your "brand" show up in google suggest when you type your sites main keyword?
 
Insomniac said:
I'm pretty sure I've made it clear, I'm not one of the plebs on this forum, who are new to SEO, and think they are invincible because they've made it past one update. However, I have zero reason to give up on google as my primary traffic source. Here is the last 30 days of one of my properties:

google / organic 42X,XXX
direct 37,XXX
bing / organic 3,XXX
yahoo / organic 1,XXX
facebook / referral 1,XXX
m.facebook.com / referral XXX
google / referral XXX

During that time, 10,XXX people typed my brand into google to find my site.

You know what that tells me? People want to be on my site, and google realizes it too. I guarantee google is looking at requests from chrome / safebrowsing / firefox, along with domain name searches, to decide if a site is an authority. Even if my site gets slapped, I know that I'm going to get more traffic from google just from brand name searches, than I'm ever going to get from bing.

Are you seeing ~30% return visitors, and ~10% "direct" traffic to your site? Would anyone even give a fuck if your "brand" disappeared tomorrow? Does your "brand" show up in google suggest when you type your sites main keyword?
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If you get slapped, which is possible given the shitty links and unpredictable updates from Google then your type in traffic and direct visitors will eventually dry up. I hope you realize that and are doing something to ensure that your whole strategy isn't relying on Google rankings.

And of course branded sites are ideal, I never disagreed with that. I'll say it again though, you're not immune to what google does and how it decides to position your site.
 
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