Archive for July, 2008

Eric Enge did an excellent interview with Priyank Garge, the director of product management for Yahoo Search Technology (YST).

The interview was almost exlcusively centered around to topic of "links", and Eric did a great job of asking the right questions, and Priyank gave some great honest insights into his/Yahoo’s view on links.

Here’s what Priyank said about paid links:

There’s no black and white policy that makes sense in our mind for paid links. The principle remains value to the users. If a paid link is not valuable to the users, we will not want to give it value. Our algorithms are being organized for detecting value to users. We feel most of the time that paid links are less valuable to users than organic links.

If a paid link is not valuable to the users, we will not want to give it value. Our algorithms are being organized for detecting value to users. We feel most of the time that paid links are less valuable to users than organic links. But that’s not black and white, it is always a continuum. Yahoo continues to focus on the element of recognizing links that are valuable to users, building mechanisms in our algorithms that attenuate the signal and capture as much value from that link in context, rather than worrying about it being paid or unpaid.

Eric adds more of his thoughts and analysis on his SearchEngineWatch article called Google vs. Yahoo on Paid Links. It’s a must read.

Eric says there:

Yahoo appears to be taking a different route. As I read the comments by Garg, it seems that they focus more on the end user value of a link, whether it’s paid or not. To read between the lines a little bit, end user value is most likely being measured by the relevance and context of a link.

This saves Yahoo from fighting a difficult battle, a battle that has led some to say that there’s an arms race between Google and spammers. Certainly if this battle is inherently unwinnable, the Yahoo approach may be a pragmatic one.

It’s nice to see how Yahoo treats different types of links. The Yahoo method seems pretty reasonable.

Do you agree with how Yahoo acts towards links that may appear to be paid, or how Google acts towards links that might appear to be paid?

Ok, I’m at the office after midnight again, but I’m taking a break and posting a nostalgic "I’m feeling lucky rant" - hope ya enjoy my happy rant. …

At times like these (when I’m at the office late at night working alone - only time I can get things like non-emergencies and emails done) I sit here in amazement… I feel lucky…I do. We’ve grown to 40 employees working in house here (not to mention the writers, and other outside projected people we help feed). Yea 40 in house here now…wow!

Jim steps into his time machine… I can remember it was over 9 years ago (Feb 1999) I got online for the first time. (I’d been traveling the year before.) Two weeks after getting online, I bought the domain webuildpages.com - two weeks later, I had the first version of webuildpages.com online. Two weeks later than that, I had my first web design client from 1000 miles away who had found webuildpages.com via a search engine. (AltaVista, searching "Build Web Pages.")

In 2001 and 2002, I went to work for a couple of local web design firms as their first "Internet Marketing Specialist."

In August of 2002 I attended my first SEO conference, and met Matt Cutts, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and many of my "SEO Heroes".
In September of 2002, Aimster/Madster had the same fate as Napster and I was out of a job.

I remember thinking, "Do I want to work for a web design company again? NO….SEO has to be #1, no more designers, programmers, managers, clients to stand in the way of SEO. I felt that Rule #1 should be SEO, and everything else should fall around or behind that.

So in September of 2002, I decided to see what I could do with We Build Pages on my own. My chosen phrase was "Internet Marketing." A few months later in Dec 2002, WeBuildPages.com went to #4 in both Google and Yahoo for the phrase "internet marketing." That same month, I hired my first person to help me out.

I don’t think I ever envisioned growing to the size of 40 back then…or even as of a few years ago….but grow we have….and I like it.

In the last few years alone, we’ve gone from 12 employees at the start of 2007 to 25 at the start of 2008, to 40 as of July of 2008, and there’s a lot more I want to do….I’ve got big dreams.

I’ll tell you, it’s a whole different business at 25 than it was at 12. And growing from 25 to 40 so far this year brings its own little problems, as well is it opens up many, many opportunities.

When you grow, changes are going to happen…and not all changes are always going to work as you thought; mistakes help us find what doesn’t work ;) 

But you learn, and you grow, and you get better….

The We Build Pages team members have been troopers through our growth and changes, mistakes and regrets, yea, I’ve made a few (but yet again, too few to metion), but I feel that everyone on my/our team knows that we’re taking ALL the right steps to make our company the best we can. I feel really good, not only for what we have, but for where we’re going.

The future….well….I can say that I have lots of dreams….Some of those dreams, unfortunately, I can’t publish here….But I can say that we’re exploring all different types of dreams, and so many look so good….But in any event, I’m completely thrilled with where I am and with what I’ve got, and with what we’re doing, as well as where we may be going.

I’ve got lots of dreams, and I don’t mind exploring dreams. We explore amazing business dreams here all the time…there are a few dreams we’re exploring right now even…who knows…. The lucky thing is, is where I’m at I often feel like it’s a dream. I feel so thankful that I love what I do, through good times and in the changes, I love it. I truly do.

I’ve been lucky, it’s been a dream come true since the start, the dreams just keep getting bigger with time.

So last night I gave my "Quiz" asking you to find the "unnatural" link.

I’ll admit it….those pages don’t link to any of our clients, nor to any sites we own
It was really a rhetorical question.

The point is…you really couldn’t see what link that might, or might not, have been influenced by a link ninja. You just didn’t know.

I actually found those url’s doing some searches looking for a page with a list of links on them that appeared totally natural, (with no regard for SEO). I just re-looked at the urls now, and the value of those pages really isn’t much (if we had got a link on there for a client it wouldn’t help much….but they worked for my example).

One of the points I was trying to make is that even though so many of us know "tricks" on how we can "beat" algorithms on links that may or may not be paid, registration info, c-class IP blocks, images, etc…but we really should be taking the approach of "if a human looked at this, would they know….would Matt know??"…many seo links I see (and I’ve certainly been guilty in the past) I know can’t pass a human review…even links of relevance, that can be mapped, are not going to pass a human review….but the better you get, and the higher you rank…and the more you dominate…the higher your chances are of having to pass the scrutiny of a human review.

As always, I see so many that want the short cut…where can I order ‘em and be done with it people…and some days that may work, and some days that may not…in most of these cases, most of this can be filtered algorithmically (via position on page (in body?), flagged words near them, or mapped to a network, etc).

The links you need you can’t buy from any broker, you can’t buy them from a blog reviewer, there’s no store you can find where you can order them (because by nature, all that’s been mapped and marked already, as well as often clearly paid if a human saw these).

Anything that looks like a short-cut to getting links is dead anyways (some today, some tomorrow) and shortcuts just shouldn’t be an option for a company that’s thinking long term and serious.

The links you need you have to find on your own. You have to identify, analyze, make contact, influence, and move on.

Keep in mind that I am talking about influencing, and not linkbait. I say this because I still totally believe that you need the right link text, linking to the right pages in order to rank in the top 10 for highly competitive phrases, almost all the time.

And I don’t believe that Linkbait alone can do that (99% of the time). I highly believe that in order to rank high you need focused link text linking to specific pages.

If you too believe that you need focused link text linking to specific pages of your site, then you might have to be a ninja influencer in order to get that, …whatever your methods may be…if you are, then the biggest question you should be asking yourself is "Can I survive tomorrow" - or what may be the ultimate question…. "Can it pass a human review?".

If your time is spent today getting links that might not pass the scrutiny of tomorrow, why do it? Why not do today what can survive long haul, and the most stringent reviews there could ever be? ….for, if you’re going for the top, it might not be enough that you can pass a robots algorthym today, if tomorrow you can’t pass a physical look by a human.

Mind you, I’m not perfect, and there have been times that I did what worked the best for that time….and I’ve had to re-look at some past moves, and reevaluate, and remove those that might not be as beneficial today as it once may have been…..Like I said, I’m not perfect, but I am always getting better at what I do.

Today our goals are to pass the human review with our ninja influencing moves.

Sorry for the fake quiz, it was just the point I was making.

Do you think about human reviews like I do? …or do you think I’m too paranoid?

Jim’s Quiz

Some of these pages might link to some sites we work with.

Can you spot any links that don’t look natural?

http://www.gg.caltech.edu/~monty/monty.shtml

http://www.dougbedell.com/internetproject.html

http://www.peterdonis.net/catcomputers.html

http://www.freedomisknowledge.com/allsites/coolsites.htm

http://www.socalhoops.com/recruit.htm

I’m betting you can’t.

ps. and if any of these links do link to any sites we work wth, they are not client sites (but sites we may own)…I’d never put a client site above the radar in a post like this.

Do the links you get "blend in" like this? Do you care?

I feel all "grown up" now. Jim had me called into the conference room to consult on a conference call with a client. Oh sure, there were five other people already in there, but none of them had this particular bit of expertise.

It reminded me that I still haven’t written my first substantial blog entry here about user intent, and making sure a website is human-friendly, not just search engine-friendly. I’ll get to it - soon, I hope - but I have this end-of-the-month deadline hanging over my head.

I really should get back to work, proofreading what has already gone through my new editors.

But next time - user intent, I swear.

No offense at all to Graywolf, who believes it was sexist of BlogHer not to have male speakers at its 2008 conference, but I wouldn’t have gone there to hear him speak. If I’d gone at all, that is.

Let me back the train up a bit.

Until a few weeks ago, I was just your average mommyblogger. You’ve never heard of my mommyblog, and I’m not going to share it with you either. This world and that world exist on separate planes for me.

Had I been able to afford to accept the invitation to BlogHer, I would’ve wanted to hear women speak. Why? Because I would’ve been expecting to hear from other women who were doing what I was doing. Peers, not experts. Whatever expertise a man could have about blogging, he still can’t understand what it is to be a woman who blogs.

Like Michael Gray. From the crash course I’ve had in SEO and linkbait and whatnot over the past few weeks, he’s become one of the people whose advice and authority I respect. (By the way, this whole BlogHer controversy he’s kicked up is quite the linkbait. Nicely done.) But if I wanted to hear him speak, it would be at an SEO conference, not at the BlogHer conference.

I don’t think it’s about being closed-minded to new ideas, it’s about similarity. Sisterhood, if you will, but I think that has a rather campy connotation to it. A man who has all the know-how as far as creating and marketing a successful blog can certainly give an informative, educational presentation about blogging. But he can’t relate to me in the same way as a woman can.

On a very basic level, I think women join the BlogHer network because it’s the one place where they don’t have to face the "there are no girls on the internets" wall. (You know the "old" saying: on the internet, all the men are men, the women are men, and the kids are police officers.)

It’s not to say that the women of BlogHer only associate with the women of the BlogHer network. You can be a BlogHer member and still make your rounds in other internet circles, circles that include some brilliant male speakers. But when you’re in with BlogHer, I’ll be quite frank, you expect to be associating with other women who have been where you are.

It’s all about expectations. If I go to some big political shindig, I expect to hear from members of my own party. Al Gore may have lots of interesting things to say, but people aren’t going to the GOP convention to listen to him. Likewise, Karl Rove isn’t going to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic convention.

Maybe I’ll get to go to BlogHer next year (Jim?) and Graywolf can prove me wrong by delivering a really amazing presentation when he’s in the spotlight.

- QualityGal

P.S. I do hope to hear you speak at some point in the future, GrayWolf!

Alright, so not everything I do every day is quite worth making a post about here on Jim’s blog, but if you’re at all interested in what it is I do for a living, you can now follow me on Twitter.

And not that you’ll need to if you’re already reading Jim’s blog, but you’ll also be able to follow my blog posts here on Facebook.

Edited to add: You can also find me on Digg, StumbleUpon, and Sphinn.