After having a discussion with Matt Davies and others on Twitter today it became clear that many SEO’s are now getting increasingly frustrated by the way large brands can buy links without care whereas smaller brands get toasted.
The sad truth is that if you are a large brand you can really do whatever you like to manipulate the index as Google have to include you.
Google cant remove large brands as the average searcher will not think
“Ahh I cant find brand X, they must have been doing something naughty”
They will think
“Where the hell is brand X? Google has gone really shit!”
Sure they will occasionally do a token penalty for a few days but that action is aimed at making us SEO’s think twice about doing paid.
Does it make me think twice?
No
Does it make me angry?
Yes
Shaun over at Hobo has posted a great blog post about why outing isn’t a great idea for us in SEO too
Who is to blame?
The sad reality is that unless we are working with a big brand we have to be more careful. The truth is though that the only people who are reporting and outing sites are other SEO’s and Google ignores us….
The only chance you have to get banned is if you manage to get a staff member of Google pissed off or you do enough really bad crap that an algo penalty gets tripped.
Carry on… Nothing to see here…
Not me Guv….
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7 Comments
I do hate the token penalties – they never last if your a big brand. I remember a large SEO agency getting penalised last year for some dodgy tactics, exactly 5 days later they were back for their keyword target, a slap on the wrists you naughty boys and girls.
First of all, well done on the panda photo. Otherwise this blog post would have sucked.
Secondly, I agree with you 100%. Now, I’m going to go commit suicide.
Hugs and kisses!!
Thanks Carl – agreed
Thanks Julie – suicide?? ok race ya 3-2-1 GO!
This is why I mainly like working with large brands.
I almost fell for that Paul. ALMOST.
Are you suggesting that the UK’s second largest bearings distributions buying group isnt a large brand?
Yes. Wait. No. Am I? I am enthralled with Midge Ure so maybe.
Perhaps big brands *should* do better because they are what people would expect to see.
If you typed “coke” into google and “panda pops” came out top, that would seem wrong, wouldn’t it?
Link building is just spamming and cheating, anyway. So it’s hardly fair to sulk when someone with more money does it better and the best team win.
Perhaps companies should get on with providing interesting content instead of cutting corners with SEO. A good website can often beat a bad well-known one. Unfortunately, SEOs seem mostly pretty lacking in imagination and go down the spam route, rather than anything positive.
Ultimately, if everyone is using link building schemes then they will all cancel each other out, and the search results will reflect genuine popularity, as it should.
Buying / begging for links is a really dirty game.