What do you think of this "SEO software" that uses Rand's "proven method" ?
-
I saw an ad on Search Engine Roundtable and the call to action was... "What is the #1 metric that Google uses to rank websites?"
I thought, "I gotta know that!". (I usually don't click ads but this one tempted me.)
So I clicked in and saw a method "proven by Rand Fishkin" that will "boost the rankings of your website". This company has software that will use Rand's proven method (plus data from another unattributed test to boost the rankings of your website).
I am not going to use this software. The video made my BS meter ring. But if you want to see it....
http://crowdsearch.me/special-backdoor/
Rather than use this "software", I would suggest using kickass title tags that deliver the searcher to kickass content. That has worked really well for me for years. Great title tags and great content will produce the same results. The bonus for you is that the great content will give you a real website.
-
Responding to the original question about crowdsearch.me:
It definitely does work, but the results are a little unpredictable. The best way to use it is to help push pages on page 2 or better up the rankings.
There are other similar services out there, and they are also effective.
Sooner or later the Google boys will figure out how to combat it, but for now, it's a viable black hattish weapon.
-
I think the sauce is women's products. Ever client that I have ever had that does strictly women's products seems to be able to drive things with social media. Men on the other hand it does nothing from what I have seen.
-
That's awesome. I have often asked... "Is anybody really making money from social media - Tell The Truth". They have a secret sauce.
-
I have been torn lately on the issue. I have a couple of clients that do absolutely nothing in regards to SEO. (they are e-commerce sites) By nothing I mean no SEO firm, most pages don't have meta descriptions, the title tags are just the auto generated tags, no content what so ever. If someone were to give them an on site audit they would be basically have a field day with them in terms of SEO. But social media powers their sales, it powers it hard too. They might have a pinterest post generate 1000-2000 orders in a day.
So that really has me torn to be honest. I have always seen the value in social, don't get me wrong, but I don't guess I have seen it drive a whole marketing strategy before.
-
Definitely organic SEO.
I do not participate in any social media that is connected to my website. I don't have an inclination to do that and I don't think that it is worth my time to do that. I believe that creating more content that a visitor might share is a better use of my time.
A few things that I do that might have a social element are...
I have social share buttons on my sites and some visitors use them.
I have retail reviews on my sites. Customer response to them is positive and with schema mark-up the pages of those websites receive review stars in the organic SERPs, which I feel is helpful.
I have category pages and content recommendations that automatically promote the content that visitors are engaging. This allows my visitors to determine what should be promoted. I believe that visitors do better at that job than me.
I have an industry news page that is updated five days per week. It links to several items of news and excellent content on other websites each weekday. Lots of people subscribe to Feedburner feeds and emails of that content. Also lots of people visit the site daily and click to that page. When I have new content or content that is relevant to the news, I promote it on this page. That immediately promotes it to a large number of people. I pay attention to what people engage on this page and that informs content development.
Those are the ways that I try to give visitors a role in the site or an opportunity to share it with others. These are not "social" but still enlist the help of the visitor.
-
I wanted to ask something, which do you put more value in organic SEO or social sharing?
-
You would be essentially being flying blind for however long you used it.
Right. And as soon as you stop paying them, then your rankings will tank. They will probably turn the network onto your competitors to retaliate.
-
All great points. I guess where I was going with the automatic content writing is that it seems to me more people are headline readers these days, or at least short article readers. From the different content I have on my site and using things like GA and Crazy Egg, I can see that only a dwindling percentage reach the bottom of the page.
Oh, about the software that you posted, I think that could work, but at the same time I can see it being easily blocked by Google as well. I don't personally think that would increase a site in the SERP's, but it would help with auto-complete for discovering new sites. At the same time using all of the VPN's and distributed computers that the service would use I imagine it would wreck your baseline stats too.You would be essentially being flying blind for however long you used it.
-
Do you think machines generating content will eventually take over the SERPS?
I think that a lot of "mash-up" and "spun" content gets good traffic in the SERPs. I know a guy who used to publish this type of content and had people write to him about "his articles".
What is your opinion of the death of the content writer?
If you are going to make a massive improvement in anything you have to do something new. Something different. And, the more different you make it the greater the probability that you are going to fail but also the greater the probability that you are going to win big time.
I believe that the automatically written stuff is going to digest and regurgitate instead of creating something new, novel, amazing, better, groundbreaking, spectacular, creative. So, I still think that good content writers have a better chance of winning than the spinners and mash-upers. But, they can do things at a much larger scale.
From what I am understanding talking to different people in the journalism industry it is already happening..... they look promising to a media outlet that pays $60k a year for someone to rewrite AP or Reuters news articles.
Journalism done by people in the field will be the source of all news. But, most of the news that we read is rewritten, rereported, plagiarized. Very little of it is truly "breaking". It's a shame that the original source has trouble making money these days. But, often those who rereport do a better job of explaining and presenting.
-
This is just the application I have been looking for to push my site up through the ranks. I am totally joking. I think it appeals to people looking for an easy way to rank. There are always going to people that want the easy way out of things that is why the "1 trick doctors hate" type advertising is so popular.
I think software like this does start a good discussion though. What is your opinion of the death of the content writer? Do you think machines generating content will eventually take over the SERPS? From what I am understanding talking to different people in the journalism industry it is already happening. There are apparently programs that you can feed "lesser" news into in and from a paragraph or two it can spin a few paragraphs on the story using Google, internal algorithms and other sources. While now they are not helpful to the average SEO person, they look promising to a media outlet that pays $60k a year for someone to rewrite AP or Reuters news articles.
Also I saw you recommend Hemingway App a while back, I have been using it to rewrite some of my content, I absolutely love it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Silo architecture and PR dilution! What's real?
Hi all, Today I have gone through this "Silo" concept where we need to build 2nd hierarchy level pages and then lower hierarchy pages further to rank good for related terms of "keyword(s)". But I wonder, is it real? the so called Silo structure? Google may consider that we are trying trick if we create multiple pages (doorway pages) targeting same keyword. And one of my competitors is having too many 2nd hierarchy level pages against this Silo structure and even the homepage rank may dilute by contributing to the so many pages. But their web pages rank good for the keywords they chosen by creating multiple landing pages. These are contrary to each other. How it works in real? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Negative seo by Shady SEO Firm?
Recently a former client of man called me up and said that his rankings for his Auto Repair Shop in Tacoma WA had dropped and he had his worst November in sales since they hired this new SEO firm to rebuild their website and provide SEO. Of course the first thing I did was check his back links and sure enough there are 22 links from Yellowbook.com all pointed to different cities I checked the SEO firms website and they and they had 4 links from YellowBook. The problem was the links from YellowBook were all optimized from different cities. I am pretty sure Google penalized my client for the unnatural back-links to YellowCrook.com. Does the community agree that these links caused the penalty? I included the links in pictures on my LinkedIn Profile. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-how-google-erased-60-percent-revenue-from-small-meshach?published=t Here are the links. <colgroup><col width="202"> <col width="545"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidMeshah
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/automotive |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lower-queen-anne-seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Lower Queen Anne Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/bonney-lake-wa/mechanic | Mechanic in Bonney Lake, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-mechanics | Auto Mechanics in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/shoreline-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Shoreline, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair | Auto Repair in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lynnwood-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Lynnwood, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Auburn, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/redmond-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Redmond, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/matthews-beach-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Matthews Beach Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/wilburton-bellevue-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Wilburton Bellevue, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/laurelhurst-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Laurelhurst Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa-98166/auto-oil-lube |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/gig-harbor-wa/auto-oil-lube | Auto Oil Lube in Gig Harbor, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/northeast-seattle-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Northeast Seattle Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-transmission |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/burien-wa/automotive | Automotive in Burien, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |0 -
Redirecting 86'd Brand Product Category Page
What would be the approach if my website is no longer selling products for a brand that is driving top organic traffic? Where should I redirect the traffic on the page? I'm trying to decide between the homepage or another similar brand product page.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JMSCC0 -
Sitelinks Search Box impact for SEO
I am wondering how the relatively new sitelinks search box impacts the SEO rankings for a specific site or keyword combination - do you guys have any experience or bechmarks on this? Obviously it should help on getting more real estate on the SERP page (due to adding the search box), but do you also get extra goodwill and improved SERP position from adding it? Also, is the impact different on different type of terms, let's say single brand or category term such as "Bestbuy" (or "coupon") or a combination term "Bestbuy Apple" (or "Dixons coupon")? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tjr0 -
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title. For example: I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about" Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat? If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end? Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique? Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | keeot0 -
It's not link buying, but...
Which of these strategies, if any, cross the line from relationship building to link buying? Assume all links are do-follow. You're a local business. You give the local Boys & Girls club a few hundreds buck a year. In return, you get a very nice link on their Sponsorship page for 12 months. You send a sample of your product to influential bloggers, for the purpose of a review and hopefully a link back to your website. One of your clients is a college bar. You invite 50 college kids over for a slow evening and stuff them full of chicken wings. Then, you ask them to please review and link to the bar on their college wiki. You give a client a free service, in exchange for that client linking to your business on its blog roll. You take a blogger out to lunch, and pick up the tab. Later that day, the blogger writes up an amusing little story for the blog, and links back to your desired website. In your email newsletter, you put out a request to your customer base, "Please link to my website, and I'll provide you a special 20% off coupon."
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ExploreConsulting1 -
href="#" and href="javascript.void()" links. Is there a difference SEO wise?
I am currently working a site re-design and we are looking at if href="#" and href="javascript.void()" have an impact on the site? We were initially looking at getting the links per page down but I am thinking that rel=nofollow is the best method for this. Anyone had any experience with this? Thanks in advanced
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | clickermediainc0 -
If Google Authorship is used for every page of your website, will it be penalized?
Hey all, I've noticed a lot of companies will implement Google Authorship on all pages of their website, ie landing pages, home pages, sub pages. I'm wondering if this will be penalized as it isn't a typical authored piece of content, like blogs, articles, press releases etc. I'm curious as I'm going to setup Google Authorship and I don't want it to be setup incorrectly for the future. Is it okay to tie each page (home page, sub pages) and not just actual authored content (blogs, articles, press releases) or will it get penalized if that occurs? Thanks and much appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MonsterWeb280