In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Danny Dover tries to answer some of the hard questions in SEO. These include; "If you are such a good SEO, why don't you rank number one for the keyword, SEO?" and "How can you provide advice on SEO if you don't work for a search engine?". The answers to these and some other doozies are below.
Video Transcription
Hi, Mozzers. My name is Danny Dover. I work here at SEOmoz doing SEO.
Today, I'm going to try to tackle answering the hard SEO questions. I
don't have them all on this list, so feel free to ask me other ones below
in the comments. These are the ones that I came up with, so I'm going to
try my best to answer these for you.
Number one. I get this one a lot and it's kind of awkward. Why don't you
rank number one for SEO? Right? If I'm in SEO and I'm trying to sell my
services to somebody, why do I not rank number one for the service that I
claim to do? This one is kind of awkward, actually. Right? I probably
should rank number one for one. Awkward turtle, if you've ever seen this.
It's awkward. Okay. The reason, and we've talked about this internally at
SEOmoz, the reason we think we don't rank number one for it is that the
name SEOmoz is being combined when searching to see it, as opposed to Aaron
Wall's website, SEO Book, has two words that search engines know about, SEO
and book. So he gets credit for both of those every time he gets a link
saying SEO Book, right? Whereas with SEOmoz, we only get credit for the
word SEOmoz.
There's some other things that go into this as well. QDF algorithm. QDF
is query deserves freshness algorithm, which means new information we'll
sometimes write at the top. We see this with some smaller companies.
There's a lot of geolocation stuff that goes on. We'll rank better in the
United States than we do in the UK, things like that. Frankly, what it
comes down to is that we do not have the best website optimized for just
the term SEO. We're trying to rank for other things. SEO tools, we're
trying to rank for learning SEO, that kind of thing. My way to answer this
to potential clients and other people is just be completely honest with
them. Like, "Yeah, we put a lot of thought in this and smart question.
Here's the reason that we think it was." It was just the stuff that I
covered.
Number two. How can you do SEO if you don't actually work for a search
engine? This one is similar to the one above. I do not work for Google.
I do not work for Bing. I have never read any of the code that they've
written to do their search engine algorithms. But I have put a lot of
thought, and more importantly, and actually the only important part is that
I have practiced this a lot. I have created a lot of websites, and I've
changed variables on them to figure out what helps rank better. I've also
relied on people who are much smarter than myself, so other SEOs in the
industry. I have kept abreast of the news. So there's Search Engine Land,
for example. There's lots of news things where they talk to people who do
work at Google and Bing and get their information about what they're trying
to spread. I also learn from conferences, and I learn from other people
who are successful at SEO and are willing to share their tactics or their
strategies with me. In those ways, I have been able to learn SEO even
though I don't work at the search engines.
Number three. Is Company XYZ a Google killer? This comes up, I'd say,
once every other month. So is it Wolfram Alpha or is it Bing or is it
Facebook? Are any of these companies Google killers? The answer I usually
give is, "I don't know, but probably not." Google's extremely good at what
it does, being a search engine. Right? The thing that I think eventually
will kill Google will be something that looks absolutely nothing like
Google at all. It'll be a completely different way of searching the
Internet or maybe searching something else. Right? Maybe more like Star
Trek or Star Wars, where you just talk into thin air and then an answer
comes to you on some beautiful girl on a screen that came out of nothing.
I'm hoping for that to happen soon actually. But what will kill Google? I
don't know, but I bet it will not look like anything we've seen today, my
best guess.
Facebook does have an edge being able to make search results that are very,
very customized to your friends. If I'm looking for what's the best TV,
I'm going to care about what Best Buy has to say, which is how Google
currently works, right, with these leaders in the industry. But I also
care about what my friends think. Maybe a better example is clothes,
right? What is the best shirt for me to buy? Target might be able to tell
me something or Abercrombie & Fitch or somebody else, but what I really
probably care about is the other people in my social network, what they
think. Facebook has an example there, but we'll see if they're a Google
killer. My guess is probably not.
Number four. This one's tough. Why don't I just buy links? A lot of
times it's a lot easier and, quite frankly, buying links in some cases does
work. But when you're doing that, you're betting against the very, very
small people at the search engines who are working on algorithms to detect
paid links. So while it can work in some cases, my advice is not to do it
just because it is not a good long-term strategy. I'd much rather use that
same money and buy content or pay writers or pay people who are likely be
able to create links for themselves. This, I just feel, is a much better
long-term strategy. This is what we usually recommend at SEOmoz is not to
buy links but instead put it into other strategies that will work better
long term.
Number five. Danny, will you marry me? No. But if you have a hotter
sister, let me know.
Number six. How do I increase my PageRank? This one I usually break into
two areas. First, I break down PageRank. The PageRank that we normally
see in PageRank toolbar, I just don't think it's very helpful at all. The
exception to that is if it's zero. If it's zero, it means you have a
penalty or you haven't been crawled yet. In both those cases, you need to
figure out what's going on. (Edit: I left out the cases that the page really doesn't have enough links to round up to PR 1 or that the page PR hasn't been updated to reflect new links) The other part is how do I increase my
PageRank? If the person asking this question is just really relying on the
fact that PageRank is still important, the way to do it is to get more
links. If they're going to ask a silly question, it's okay to give them a
silly answer. The way to increase PageRank, even though in my opinion it's
not important, is to gain more links.
That's all the time I got here. I appreciate all of you paying attention.
I will talk to you next week. Thank you very much. Bye.
Video transcription by SpeechPad.com
Follow me on Twitter, Fool!
or
Follow SEOmoz on Twitter (who is slightly less blunt)
If you have any other advice that you think is worth sharing, feel free to post it in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my SEOmoz profile under Danny. Thanks!
Nice post Danny. Here are few more questions i frequently encounter:
1. Why Google hates me?
2. How can i get X (say 20K) unique visitors per month?
3. Why this site beats me?
4. When i will be on page 1 of Google.
5. I will pay you only when you bring X visitors per month or get a sales of over say $4000 per month. So if you can't do it, then no pay. But i am sure you will do it as you are so confident about your seo skills.
6. I want to be no.1 for following keywords: insurance, finance, forex, exchange, exchange rates, ecommerce... What will be your strategy? My site is brand new and budget is $2000/month.
And don't forget to check out this video and this one :)
AH! So true!!!
And what about all these questions and a website hosted as subdomain of third party domains (for instance Vistaprint)?
I think such clients are better doing their own SEO. Hosting is so cheap these days. Anyone who is serious about his business would at least get a decent domain name and his own server space.
I know I know...
but sometimes you see that kind of websites simply because people is still fearing the technological gap they feel about "The Web", therefore they rely on hosted service like Vistaprint or others (for instance very very good blogs on blogger)
And it's a shame, because you can encounter some gems that would just need to polished.
In those rare case, then, it's maybe due to give to that potential client an educated guidance and teach him the basic of SEO and try to have the contract.
That vid had me laughing
Himanshu! Where did you find those videos. I was laughing very badly after watching it. lol! Hope nobody really gets someone like that. lol!!
glad you like them. I got one of them from seochat forum and other one i discovered myself. Here is another video mocking the Google's privacy policies. This is the funniest video i have seen lately.
That one was completely a LOL! I couldn't control myself from laughing so loud, after watching that video. Thanks for sharing that stuff, himanshu. :D
Those videos were great! :-D
For question #6, I've started telling people that if Wikipedia is near the top of the results when they search for the term they want to rank for, the term is probably too broad. I went through a list of about 10 with a prospect today with Wikipedia #1 each time.
If someone said, i'll pay you after you get me there, citing that your 'SEO skills' should make this no problem, i would say, 'how do I know that you will pay me', plus the amount of time required to accomplish your goals is impossible to predict based on the fact that the site's competitions could at any time dump thousands of $$$$$ into an SEO campaign.
Those are the worst clients anyways. I wouldn't waste your time with them.
I always encounter the same clients like you mentioned above!Great answer!
"pay on results" is never the best scenario to get involved with, largley as we aren't in control of the amount of work competitors may be doing.
If you do want these clients business though, perhaps make a counter offer, e.g
$x - at the start
$x - once you arrive here
$x - once you arrive there
$x - for every improvement or monthly retainer
It can get a little complex though :)
Danny, your WBF's rock dude. Keep it up with your slightly warped sense of awkward turtle humour.
I am very interested in knowing if "If you have a hotter sister, let me know" has ever worked for you (aside from getting slapped in the face ;)
Yeah, i wouldn't actually recommend using that in real life. There are somethings you just can't recover from :-)
Um yeah Danny, that turtle is awkward! Haha
lol, yeah. You should see awkward moose! (To be continued...)
...or awkward palm tree!
I think these questions are pretty common for a lot of us. The Page Rank one trips me up a little bit. I always explain the concept of the 1-10 scale being an authority measure. In addition I mention that it doesn't have a correlation with high rankings. As you said, in the end I typically mention that more quality links could raise the sites PR - but that shouldn't be your number concern.
I always follow that up with ... would you wrather be number one for your keywords with a low PR or have a high PR and have nobody find your website?
Good WhiteBoard Friday!
I really like that! :-) I think I am going to start adding that. Good advice!
I'm glad you like it, I have yet to have a client question me past that statement. :-)
Baidu is the leading search engine in China, it doesn't own a PageRank like Google does, but my clients(both Chinese and non-Chinese) are still asking me to increase their PageRank value for their Baidu SEO ranking results.
I totally headaches and have to explain to them!
So SEO for most clients, the PageRank thing has a huge impact on them!
Hi Danny
Quite topical questions, that I too receive from clients quoting my SEO services (well, apart question n. 5), and the answers you give can help me in variate mine.
But the very tough answer I've to deal with is usually this one:
"Hi, I've this xym.com website and I want to be 1st on Google and have a lot of conversions. Is it possible to achieve such success with this [very small $$ budget]?"
Tough... as it is quite hard to make understand to people that SEO is time consuming and, not just for that, is not cheap at first... and it is hard to make them understand that the few money they spend on PPC monthly is going to be an investment higher than SEO could seem at first glance.
AH... I think you forgot one question too?
Number 7: Does SEO sleep?
Answer: Yes... but when they sleep their virtual Aliases are still working.
Great point. That question is a tough one. I think you did a good job explaining it.
When I encounter this, i usually do a quick audit to show them some of their potential. Dr. Pete's last post has a good overview of this. https://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-minute-missing-page-audit
Number 7. So true!
At the Search Engine Strategies Conference one of the speakers (maybe it was Rand) said the followng about SEO:
SEO is not a profession. Its a lifestyle...
So many people think SEO is a one time event when it really is like a lifestyle.
So true! My well-meaning but largely ignorant boss asked me one day (after three months of me learning it all from scratch) if "all the SEO stuff was done" and I about threw my research binder at him.
It's definitely a continuous journey, not a final destination.
ha ha, it reminds me of an old scenario of being asked "why aren't we top for ***** yet?" on almost a daily basis :)
I completely agree with you. SEO is not something that a company or organization can do once or once in a while. It has to become a daily part of their culture and resources need to be allocated accordingly.
Back to the discussion about SEO on a small budget, I find that most clients do not have a true grasp on what SEO involves. They tend to dive directly to PPC. I tend to compare PPC to renting and true SEO to owning your traffic. Owning is always a much better investment in the long run, even though it may require a higher initial investment.
I would say you can do a lot with smaller budget but you have to learn copywriting, SEO and social media.
Tools are usually free but knowing what to do much harder and cost money.
I think if people do some research and thinking they could start creating a content for a website. They could start twitter or facebook to drive traffic to their website.
Of course it won't work if someone has approach I will buy you couple beers and you will get me on the top of Google.
I agree. SEO does not need to cost many thousands of dollars depending on the goals and the availability of internal resources and knowledge. Proper web content and key word selection in conjunction with quality white papers, articles, blogs and social media can build some decent SEO momentum. Often, additional spending is needed to get outside assistance to bring it all together into one cohesive SEO strategy, to take it to the next level or if internal resources are limited.
Nevermind the SEO questions... how do you grow that glorious beard? (lol Jiti).
Seriously though, I love the response to "Why don't I rank #1 for SEO?" I'm sure it's come up a billion times.
Hey Danny,
a good one again, just one thing. When you talk about PR, PR 0 is not you'r banned or you haven't been crawled, its you'r banned or your webpage has not been around at the time of the last PR toolbar update...
Right?
Baring mind you can have either zero (the toolbar icon is white) or grey (it's grey!), from what I've seen grey tells you either:
1) Not yet indexed at all or
2) Indexed, but seriously unimportant or
3) Dumped
By itself the grey in the toolbar doesn't tell you which of these. You have to work it out. Grey barred pages can still rank for more obscure and long tail phrases if they haven't been dumped from the index completely.
With the all white toolbar icon (zero) I've noticed this can change/happen outside of Toolbar updates.
Hey Andy,
Good catch! Couldn't have said it better myself. (As this video illustrates, I mean this literally ;-p)
Hey Preseren,
Excellent point. Sorry I didn't catch that in editing! A PR of zero could also mean not indexed at all due to no links or not enough links to round up to PR 1.
Sorry for the confusion!
Aside from Google's toolbar, what reliable/secure tools are available for checking PR? thanks!
Great one Danny,
I come across these questions all the time and it's great to see how other people answer these tough questions.
Some common question I get are:
When am I going to get to page 1 of Google?
Why did my map drop out of the serp?
Have a good weekend guys!
I get the "when" question as well. I usually say something along the lines of "I can't guarantee anything but in the past i have seen results with in 1 or 2 months." This of course varies WIDELY depending on what I am doing. (Things like adding sitemaps and tweaking on-page can change rankings very quickly)
I haven't received the question about maps dropping. How do you usually answer that?
hmm, i would avoid saying 1-2 months and say something more along the lines of a realistic result, where its 3-4 months to see any real movement, with some possible changes happening sooner depending on how bad their site is now. (i.e. duplicate titles, no meta descriptions, no sitemaps, but some soild content that is improperly titled).
Yeah, if you have to, go with 3-5 months depending on the client or contract they have covering an ability to add content quickly, you can also discuss what their competition is doing, specifically if they are constantly adding content, and that they may need to 'catch up' in the content race a little first.
The impossible expectations have a flip side, which is a customer glad over the simplest things. Recently I had a "why don't we show up for MOST GENERAL KEYWORD yet?" followed immediately by "Hey alright there we are" for a Places listing. Even an ad showing up in Adwords elicits a satisfied response with some people.
When I answer the "when" question, I usually say that I need to wait till Google has crawled my initial batch of work before I can give them the time frame, as different website behaves differently (site structure, age, domain etc)
As for the map question, I usually say that the map is still an unstable platform, so it's hard to explain exactly why it dropped off, but I will look into it to make sure all work has been done properly.
"when" is a tricky one to answer...
I often suggest a three month period, in that time really some positive movement should be taking place. what I may class as positive movement though, may differ from a clients idea of it! :)
I would think the 'when' question could be very difficult to answer. If a site is already fairly optimized with on page seo, the fact of the matter is that it needs links, right? And building links too quickly is not susutainable long term, nor will it look good for google if you're getting a lot of links at once, then veery few after reaching page 1.
Hi Danny,
I have another question for you:What was the intention of SEOmoz to choose .org instead of .com ?
Concratulation for answering the hard n° 5 ;-)
Petra
Straight from the horse's mouth:
"Rand: So, it’s the most obvious thing in the world. When I started the blog, it’s on a .org, because I started it as kind of a not-for-profit anything. It was just a website where I was gonna post links and information and I actually had some free tools. Didn’t have a real business behind it. We didn’t even start consulting under the SEOmoz name until 2005"
Source: https://mixergy.com/seomoz-rand-fishkin-interview/
Thank you for your investigation!
I've seen this interview before, very interesting and the interviewer asks some tough questions. It really gives an insight into the SEOmoz core tenets and the life of Rand. Not much to take away from an SEO strategy perspective but if you want to know more about Rand and SEOmoz - watch this interview. FYI it is over an hour long so budget some time to do so.
Thank you for your advise. Always interesting to get some background information.
thanks for digging the link out - an interesting interview
Cheers Danny!
I think such a big part of SEO is helping clients understand how the search engines work.
Due to the nature of SEO, a lot of people really have no idea how it works and this can through up some pretty amusing questions from time to time!
Jon
Good one Danny!
Sometimes, it is hard to convince a client and make them understand that the question they ask are really so silly. But it becomes our duty to answer even those silly questions.
I have faced the number 2 question quoted here from one of my clients and I somehow managed to explain him that it is not necessary for a person to work for a search engine to do SEO.
One more question that was so silly again was, "I will pay you more money and I want my site to rank on the page 1 in less than a week" *whew*
But thanks for answering most of them here.
Forgot to mention. Your no 5 answer was too helpful(for non-seo's too). Little hard, but you made it Danny!! ;-P
I don't actually recommend using that one in real life!
Just something to spice up the laundry list of questions ;-p
haha... I know.. That is really a good one in the middle!! ;) Liked it..
Quick question: Why do sites that haven't been updated in forever rank higher than mine? My contents new, richer and not 3 years old! Thanks!
Well there is no way to answer that without giving the specific site and competitors. There are lots of tools on SEOMOZ that are free to give you the correct answer and if you really want a thorough analysis you should consider becoming a pro member. QDF (quality deserves freshness) is part of the algorithm but 1 of 100's of factors that influence ranking. Remember SEO is meant to work in concert; you need to focus on an array of factors that will help you rank well. Lastly: On Page factors count for 5-15% (arguable) of the total algorithm so if your not doing lots of off-site SEO than it will be hard to outrank your competitors.
SEO can't garantee first pages.
Great WBF again Danny,
Even though we all enjoy watching Rand, you've definately appealed to a younger demographic IMHO.
I'm 22 who got into SEO to promote my business and found I enjoyed it so much one day I hope to take it to the next level.
Keep up the good work everyone over there, we all appreciate it.
Ryan
Nice article.
I did like this line: "betting against the very, very small people at the search engines".
Love the idea of some really tiny googlers...
As the new extentions (.co) are coming rapidaly. Are they beneficial from SEO point of view. If yes then how.
This is a really interesting point: shouldn't every SEO's website have PR9 and rank 1st for the word 'SEO'?
I think this topic is so interesting that I blogged about it, in the hope of opening a debate - I would love to have everybody's thoughts:
https://blog.benacheson.com/2010/09/why-dont-seos-websites-rank-1st-in.html
hi I need to rank my keywords which are long tail so I need resources and guidance for it can you please help me for this.
I really liked your post.These are some of the questions which are somewhat trickier and therefore hard to answer.You have answered them intelligently.
Big question - Does using SEOBook's Rankchecker violate Google's guidelines? I have been penalized and feel like this has to be the reason. If so, why would a reputable website endorse the program?
If this is the rankchecker I'm thinking of, then I have two thoughts on the matter:
1, apply longer pauses great than 2 seconds.
2, besides #1 I can't guess why you would get into trouble.
3, (yeah I'm an over achiever) ... I wonder what type of penalty did you suffer from?
4, Audit your site to make sure it's not something else.
If you have your IP flagged and you also happen to host sites from that IP, well, then I might be able to see a website problem. In that case, it's time to beg for forgiveness through GWT, if your site was removed from the serps, that is.
Questions I hate:
1. How much time will it take to build x amount of links? (or how many links can you build in an hour?)
Answer: Quality over quantity
2. Why can't we build 1000 local sites - i.e. denverdogcollars.com, newyorkdogcollars.com, etc. ?
Answer: Make 1 good website, not 100 crappy ones. And nobody searches for "denver dog collars".
3. Can you optimize our crappy website from 1995 with an archaic content management system?
Answer: Re-design your website first. Or if you are lazy I will optimize as much as possible within the archaic CMS you currently have.
4. So I just need to place 100 crappy articles filled with keywords / bad grammar on my site and I'll rank #1?
Answer: NO! Make 10 great articles that people will link to.
Great answers jschweitz.
Great video! =)
Very funny. If it was Rand speaking, the video would take like 10~15min. You speak fast, dude!
I'm in a little bit of a different situation; I don't work for an SEO agency, I do SEO in-house for a company in the automotive industry. So I get to deal with a different set of questions, but they are equally silly.
I can't believe how many people who work at ad agencies, especially those who specialize in web advertising, don't even know what SEO is. Ad reps will call me and try to get me to advertise on their site with a big 'ol banner and I tell them that's not where our focus lies and then try to explain we're more interested in SEO. And then they get really quiet and we end the phone call with them saying, "Okay, yeah, I'll have to do a little bit of research on this SEO thing."
And I chuckle.
You should edit out the "awkward turtle" part of Danny's WBF today, and have it available to email those pesky agency folks that don't know nuthin' 'bout that SEO thing.
I'm with ya! It's even worse when the ad agency guys pretend to know SEO.
I can't believe I got a thumbs down on that! I guess there must be some ad agency guys on here!
As far back as Jan 2005, Rand discussed Duplicate Content Penalties and how spammers were getting away with stealing from pages with lower PR, less established domain, fewer back-links etc. SEOs still dispute the existance of googles' duplicate content penalty. How can I assure clients that if they invest heavily in unique, relevant content, that it won't be stolen by bigger sites, penalising my client's site in the process? Any reputable resources to help on this question appreciated.
Let us keep SEO aside and just know whether your last Whiteboard Friday was newer one or this ?
As I am sure you can't grow this much beard in a week.
Even our farms in Punjab are not so fertile. Tell the magic.
Regards,
Preet
its very possible to grow that in a week! its not even that long, guess you've not heard of a 5 o'clock shadow before
Good genes I guess. It took me about a week and a half (and one Justin Beiber comment)
(and one Justin Beiber comment)
ROTFL. That really was a low blow by that commenter.
It was not meant to be a low blow. Just wanted to say that in good humour bro.
Good Danny. It means you are leaving a healthier life than me. Keep it up.
Haven't heard that earlier Rick, thanks for the information ;-)
Does it not mean that the webpage been around at the time of last PR update, has gained few links, but the links are not contributing to the pagerank ( low quality links )
Yup, great WBF Danny! Loved the part especially about the PR factor....and I just wish more newbies would see that rationale, eh!
:)
Jim
Did you get that polo shirt from Target? I think I have the same shirt.
lol, awkward turtle (again).
I'm getting asked a lot of awkward Qs at the moment.
The problem is when you can't prove something works very easily.
Really good information provide here. and i also clear one of my dounts.
Thanks buddy
Keep updates
So in the discussion over the name SEOMoz how close are you in deciding to change the name and dive into everything (*nightmare*) that would entail? After all no one is probably as qualified as all the people at SEOMoz is to do it and retain most of your authority etc. Are you 20% in favour of a change in name and 80% against ... or is it higher and you just need to take a deep breath and just do it? Is the brand already too strong to loose? With hindsight would you have gone with another name? I only ask this as I am sure a lot of people might be sitting on this particular fence, not daring to jump off either way.
Hey... SEOMoz is such a brand that I think it would be quite a shock not see it brandizing the domain name.
And, honestly, I think it would be a huge mistake to change it, even if it would be possible to retain the authority.
We are just brainstorming the pros and cons of each TLD. Its been a really interesting discussion but no decsions have been made either way.
Ahah, nice but true! Customers needs sometime to back to basics :)
I think a zero pagerank could also just mean that the page has no quality links behind it. Doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't been crawled or are penalized.
Yeah I misspoke and didn't catch it in editing. FAIL!
Haha no worries, I just went into a mini panic mode when I heard you mention that :P (one of my new sites has a few 0 ranked pages). Had to research real quick and make sure I was correct! :)
Great post, per usual. However, in the transcript, was calling the people who work at search engines "small" a Freudian slip, and you meant to call them smart, or are you implying that Google employs wee faerie folk?
I miss Rand :(
I like Danny. He is doing a good job :)
Different styles. I enjoy them personaly, a sense of humour (for a wide definition of humour) is very much missing online and its a great differentiating factor for SEOmoz.
I will still say, it stops me posting these on to developers/designers/hippos tho
Wonder if we can get them to do one together as a Good cop, Bad cop routine ;)
Danny is THE MAN for whiteboard.
Keep the fire coming Danny!
Have you ever dealt with a client who would not change his/her website design? How do you go around explaining to them that their spiffy flash animation won't get them the results they want and may need to opt for something not as animated? They see it as "I spent X amount of dollars for this sweet design, and now you're telling me it's not helping with my rankings?!"
I've heard horror stories of stubborn clients who flip at the idea of a "redesign"...always prepare for the worst!
Just break it down for them. Most clients wants facts/figures so if you can show any past work and the results achieved by transforming a site into a more SEO-compliant one from a flash version. If you did it for an E-commerce site and actually had a measured ROI increase that's even better. Clients do not want opinions they want facts as they often see you telling them to change the website design as a ploy to get more money.
Also, IMO flash is really starting to die especially if the entire site is on it. The Iphone, and Ipad do not support it and it's really load heavy. You should use as many angles as possibly to explain it to the client.
good point about the iphone & ipad not supporting flash.
That could be a huge blow to flash being essential on websites
How exactly could google actually tell if you bought links or not?
If you do the transaction completely off the radar via email, and there was no mention on the internet that the page was selling links, how would google be able to tell the difference?
Lets say a link broker contacts me with a list of sites. The whole process is done via email and never publicized online. I buy the link and my link gets posted. Wouldnt google view this as normal link?
Hey jrod11,
Google would probably pick it up over time. There are sooo many ways to get caught. For example:
1. Google could catch the broker and discount or penalize everyone involved.
2. The algorithms could see that statistically, the kind of site where the link is coming from does not normally link to your type of site.
3. Your historical link graph could look 'out of whack' compared to others in the industry, or on the web as a whole.
4. All competitors have a huge incentive to turn a web site in for buying links. And although Google may not take action immediately, they probably will eventually. And, it only takes one guy turning you in one time... to lose EVERYTHING.
Also keep in mind, (as SEOmoz consistently reminds us), that any money/ time spent on buying links, could have been invested in a natural, long term campaign such as link bait projects.
Hope this helps :-)