SEO News Blog

Posted by randfish

This is a feature I’ve been asking for in analytics packages for the last 2 years:

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Many Thin Affiliate Sites Look Real

Some of my friends publish fake review sites which organize product recommendations by using the following quality measurement and rating system (affiliate payout per conversion * conversion rate). If people buy it, it must be good.

I have other friends who do real in-depth reviews, but they use such poor formatting that their content looks less trustworthy and more advertisement-like than fake review websites.

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Posted by randfish

A conversation last week got me thinking about how knowledge spreads in the world of SEO. I noted on a panel that 90% of all SEO knowledge is “out there,” floating on the web, mentioned in presentations, and generally findable by anyone who knows enough to ask the right questions or perform the right searches. The other 10% is behind the curtain - it’s hidden knowledge that rarely ever rears its head. Things in the 10% might include:

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A friend of mine sent me a link to The Kept University, a great article about how corporations are increasingly turning universities into cheap biased research labs.

Companies give researchers stock options for conducting research on product development, censor negative reviews, and see a much higher rate of positive reviews. They then use this research to try to push new products into the market. That is about a million times worse than something like PayPerPost, which recently saw many of their bloggers get their PageRank axed by Google.

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Posted by CredoPaul

NOTE from Rand: This post was contributed by the winner of our landing page competition, Paul Robb. Here’s Paul’s winning page, which drew both surprise and controversy. Paul offered to write two posts on the results of his page and his strategy for persuasive copywriting - this is the first of those posts. Enjoy!

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Newspapers Going Free

The NYT just went free and likely the WSJ will follow. Once something goes free it is hard to start charging for it again - just ask Prince.

Getting Real Information From Google

A few years ago some Google human review documents were leaked stating things they considered spammy at that time. Google usually gives webmasters misinfomation about organic search results, but their advice on AdWords ads is typically clearer in how they want to shape the web. The Inside AdWords blog just classified ebook sites as being similar to other types of sites that are likely to get hit by quality score issues.

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Imagine you are looking for fresh information, and are one of the hundreds of students searching for new scholarships each year. The top result Google shows you is a CNN news article for a $250 white’s only scholarship from 2004. It was a stunt to shock people and send a message, and as a side effect anyone searching for new scholarships on Google gets to see that message. Does a speeding ticket make a driver a good driver? No, it just means that he was citation worthy. Some people do despicable things for links and make lots of money from it. It is a flaw of the current relevancy algorithms to assume that a citation makes a business trustworthy. On the commercial parts of the web, most links are an indication of is an ad budget, a public relations budget, nepotism, or controversy.

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