This week, one of the UK's most infamous & brilliant search marketers joined us at the mozplex for what is surely one of the most valuable, insightful and lengthy Whiteboard Friday's we've had. In many ways, it's not too dissimilar from an SMX or Pubcon panel featuring the inimitable Mr. Naylor, and as usual, Dave parts with more information than you might expect.
Part I (7:38): Dave & Rand discuss the Google PageRank update (see Mel's data here), Techmeme (sorry for dropping the f-bomb in there) and new features for Google's Webmaster Central.
Part II (6:17): We cover secondary signals that Google may or may not use in the rankings equation and Dave describes how his Zippy search engine's AdSense account was eventually banned. This is also the segment where Dave says "All you mozzers who want to be Black Hats, yeah..." I'll let the video speak for the rest.
Part III (8:17): Dave & Rand discuss Dave Dugdale's recent videos on Rentvine.com - Paid Links & Google Buys Zillow - and whether links to those videos should help his site's rankings. Dave also uses the whiteboard to show us the link graph for temporal analysis.
Aplogies for the lengthy videos, but I promise these are worth 20 minutes out of your Friday. Enjoy!
p.s. Extra kudos to Scott for his hard work on this. He's put in the equivalent of three days worth of efforts to make this happen, and it's greatly appreciated. If Scott leaves a post in the comments here, make sure to show your thumblove, as I've hijacked the authoring of the post :)
p.p.s. Ack! I'd be remiss if I didn't also give a huge thank you to Jeff Pollard for his work on the new SEO Services Marketplace. Jeff, you're a champ.
Cool, thanks for devoting most of the 3rd video to talk about my link bait videos! And thanks for the free advice guys.
I can answer some of the questions you raised in the 3rd video.
For those who don't know about my site, I am one person that works part time on the site. I am competing against large publicly traded companies that have over 100 people working on just one site (Rentals.com) and I consider myself the top #5 or #6 rental site in terms of traffic.
I am pretty open what I am doing with my site if anyone is interested in reading my blog.
Rand and Dave Naylor, thanks again for using my site as an example.
Am surprised no one has asked to have you redirect the links from that page.... a new SEO company for example could use the links to help get themselves ranked - as they would be more relevant
seems the video has been taken down.... did Google or Zillow send you the cease and desist letter?
Nice stuff, particularly the suggestion for Google WMC, it would indeed reduce resource strain on the Google servers to a large degree, and is definately a "no brainer".
It is worth noting that Google has been extremely good at listening to and implementing user suggestions. The best place to go with a suggestion, and the most fruitful thing to do for most, is to go to the Google group specifically designed to suggest new features that would be useful for webmasters.
Dave: Why aren't you drunk? I was sorta confused by that...
"Dave: Why aren't you drunk? I was sorta confused by that..."
Feed... you're hilarious!
Wow, SO many things to respond to here.
Dave, you should do more of these. Thoroughly enjoyed your thoughts as always. Scott, can we get a remote feed from the UK into WB Studios?
PS Rand, I presume dropping the f-bomb in a conversation with Dave Naylor is fookin' unavoidable...
PPS Did you send Rebecca out for black-and-white cookies as a symbolic snack?
Regarding the F-bomb... when I saw Rand apologize for it - I was expecting Dave to say it - not Rand.
This changes my whole image of him.
(I'll need to re-watch parts of this but I don't think Dave said it once).
I don't know. It had communication value - "I'm one of the guys, you don't have to clean it up when I'm in the room." By not using that term Dave showed that he can present well in polite company. Both are artful comminicators. Good job all around.
I am new the SEO man, and I want to say how much I enjoyed this video. I want to learn all of this as best as I can, as I know this is the necessity to comerce in our future. Thank you for your video, and I say to the community, my name is "Christopher J. Rachal" it is a pleasure to meet all of your, and I do hope to learn from all of you.
[email protected]
Having had the pleasure of spending hours with these two talking shop as a group - this really was a great WBF - it captured the conversational, insightful and open nature of these conversations.
You have to give major kudos to them both for how much they try and educate us all without sounding like teachers
A single thumbs up doesn't express my appreciation for this post. I'd vote for this as the best post of 2007 so far.
The amount of information covered and the depth of the discussion for me makes this a sensational post. In particular, the discussion on the temporal rankings and looking at a site's linking profile over time are incredibly valuable and really help solidify some thoughts I've been having recently too. Good job guys and nice work scott on getting this all edited and live - looks great (and nice drop of faithless ;-) )
This is why I read seomoz. Thanks guys.
Whiteboard Friday is SEO edutainment at its finest.
Fantastic to see DaveN's passion for all things search.
Man, this goes down as my favourite Whiteboard Friday so far. Spamming discussion, universal search in relation to linkbait videos and the temporal nature of the value of these links... just awesome.
I've been telling Rand that I want to see him and DaveN do it...glad to see Rand listens to us.
Agreed, I really enjoyed part 3 and Dave did a great job explaining his thoughts.
Dave just plain out sucks.... he is English and they never know what they are doing.... but then agin he does represnt my lowest competitor or is that he who wears the cap.... come on Dave I want a change of clothes....
Folks Dave Naylor is the best advise you are going to get .... that lesson was worth a couple of grand - pounds or USD.....
Very, very interesting stuff. That one little black hat tip just makes me wonder how many tricks are going on in this game.
If you had removed the whiteboard and replaced the pens in their hands with beers they could have been mates down the pub. It seemed natural exchange of ideas.
I'm guessing the lack of jokes is due to the hollywood writers strikes right?
"Very, very interesting stuff. That one little black hat tip just makes me wonder how many tricks are going on in this game."
I'm not a spammer or blackhat by any stretch of the imagination - and its not because I'm morally opposed to it - I just don't have the requisite technical know-how.
But I've looked into a few things here and there - tracking HTTP requests through various redirects, scraping, etc.
In my opinion - its like an ice berg. You can figure for every one trick that a black hat makes public, there are 1000 more that are kept secret.
I'm also of the opinion that some of the biggest affiliates (who by nature probably engage in blackhat activities) are never even known by most of the blogosphere.
They keep things close to the vest lest someone steals their one big idea.
That's how you can measure the brilliance of someone like a Dave N or ShoeMoney. They know that they're going to have 1000 good ideas - so they don't mind giving away a secret here or there.
Vin, read this post I just did on Sphinn.
Black Hat SEO
I thought this was a great presentation....but one small gripe.
Can you guys use a tripod for the next whiteboard Friday? I just finished watching all 3 videos and I feel sea-sick from the camera bobbing up and down.
Ok...I'm a little weird like that.
I laughed like an idiot when I saw your avatar and user name. I'm such a Simpsons nerd.
Funny...
I tuned into the Simpsons on channel 11 at 6pm here in Los Angeles like I do every weeknight...
And tonight was the "Mr. Snrub" episode. :P
You get 10 extra fake Moz points if you can tell me who Barney Gumble's hero is.
:)
Seconded on the tripod issue. :)
Here's a thumb up for any white board Friday where you bring on guests. These are always some of my favorites.
Just to comment on why Google doesn't launch a "Web Position Gold Product"
... as mentioned in the video, it's because position is not finite, but relative! The biggest relative factor is location: you can be #1 in Canada, but #40 in the USA.
Moving forward, more specific factors will likely affect positioning: #1 in New York City, #9 in Chicago. Long term, positioning may even be different for every single person, as search engines move towards building "personal profiles" of individuals, and returning results based on what they think that user specifically would enjoy.
Hence, how do you offer a "web positioning tracking product" when web positioning itself become non-finite?
Good to hear someone else getting as frustrated by this whole PR malarky as I do. The recent drop just goes to show what an arguably worse than useless measure it is - it serves only to make site owners jittery and give us a hard time about their dropping "ranking" (even when traffic and postitions remain the same). I sometimes wonder if it's just Google's special way of giving a nice little "f*ck you" to all us SEOs.
I agree with everyone else - fantastic WBF. I'm a big fan of the PTI format and I wish more people used it (tv news, meetings in the office, etc.). Especially with the enforced time limit.
The shaky-cam at the beginning of the video was a little difficult to adjust to, but other than that I liked the video as a whole.
And I concur with everyone else - the more guests the better.
Multiple Thumbs up!
Best WBF yet. You should definitally have guests on regularly.
And by the way, was that an F bomb I heard slip in the first video? haha I love it!
It'd be great seeing more guests on WBF - the one with Shor was great and DaveN is brilliant with his mix of blackhat / whitehat.
I think all good SEOs should have an understanding of blackhat techniques even if you choose not to use them as it gives you a far broader understanding of how search works.
If you're taking suggestions for other guests for future WBF... I think having Aaron Wall rant about Google, Shoemoney talk about affiliate marketing and/or PPC, Graywolf talk about link value or Vanessa to slip a couple of Google secrets... there are a handfull of other people who I think would also be interesting and bring great value to the Moz sessions, but the above list would be an awesome line-up for starters (imho).
Andy Beard, John Honeck, SabastianX, let some blogers on the board as well...
And guest star Danny Sullivan..:)
Good additions... I can't believe I didn't put Danny in there - what was I thinking (or not thinking... obviously)
Nice whtieboard, this really inspired me and made me imagine the seo future, which could be very hard, if they engage some smart guys.
Great show guys! Love posts about the bigger picture and totally second the appeal for more guest appearances.
I'd create extra accounts just to be able to give the post (and Scott) more thumbs up.
What happened to video #1 ? Whenever I try to play it Youtube says it is no longer available. :(
Video #2 is great and #3 is an eye-opener. More of those, please :-)
It's still up and available as far as I can see on the site and through my YouTube account.
I searched on Google Video for "Whiteboard Friday" and then found the videos with the post title. Good stuff.
Wow, this was fantastic! I too waited until I could sit down and watch all three, uninterrupted. It was worth the wait. Great info, and I am totally validated. A long time ago, when I was first commenting here, I said something along the lines of, "Shouldn't Google implement something to mitigate the link surges that people get from off-topic link bait?" and a few people said "no". But it looks like DaveN agrees with me!
I would not be supprised if linkbait trafic spike is already part of the PR algorithm. But it is just one part of the whole equation.
Immagine you get one link to your site and hits go wild, would not Google see that as a manipulation. verses many links to a site over time.
So what goes up really fast based on few variables will come down really fast as well.
But, it's Thurday! Oh what the heck, Whiteboard thurday sounds good too!
We've been posting the videos on Thursday because those PESKY FOREIGNERS keep complaining that by the time it's Friday in the U.S., it's Saturday where THEY live. And they're too foreign to watch work-related videos on the weekend, I guess :P
Before anyone gets testy, I'm a pesky foreigner, too. I'm very proud of the Mordor passport.
Thanks for clarifying Jane.
Jane...
Uhmurica is for Uhmuricans....and it is not Friday anywhere else, until it is Friday here. I don't care if Nick Sarkozy himself complains....
:)
Guess I'll be staying up later on Thursdays...
We usually aim to get WBF up by 10 or 11pm (PST) Thursday night so England can watch 'em in the morning...Rand was just a little over-excited about this one and got it up super early. Can't blame him, this round's a keeper and we don't want YouTube stealing any link love.
I think you are wrong... most foreigners are going to their weekend jobs that generally do not have computers
You used to live in a massive volcano?
Fookin Greaat!
Oh and BTW dave, sorry for riding you at the Webmaster Radio Party in San Jose, when will I learn Tequila is not my friend.
So worth watching. I am still on my first cup of coffee on a Sunday morning and I really thought it was great info in all three. Loved Dave's analysis on the links and the thoughts of the ranking outlook. Very interesting. Thanks for taking the time for the longer clips this week.
These videos are now down, can they be uploaded to another place please? Particularly as they've just been referenced from a recent post.
Cheers
EDIT: Clearly Youtube screwing around... hit play again and the first loaded.
I just found this great post nearly three years later and still as entertaining. Good old Zippy. :)
You covered so much that I have to view them again just to start absorbing this!!! Especially the Black Hat tip which I know now is way beyond my comprehension, but worth twisting my mind around.
Rand
Fun video, but why are you the one wearing black?
i'm super late on this one, wanted to wait til i could really watch all 3 videos.
i totally agree with dave on the off topic link bait surges. i've never really grasped the idea of posting link bait merely for link quantity over quality. i'd love to see the search engines average those spikes out like he suggested.
on a side note...i think i will be saying "yeah" a lot today!
All three videos were concise, humourous and informative. Well done to DaveN and Rand on covering a good volume of material in a relatively short period of time while still remaining useful.
Hey Scott -
Can I get a set list?
EDIT: UMM - NM, guess I could always look at the credits! It was the first one I was after.
For those lazy on Friday, like me:
Video 1: You're So Damn Hot by Ok Go
Video 2: Mass Destruction by Faithless
Video 3: I fought the Law by The Clash
was it just me, or was it a bit weird to see that a black hat was pushing for controls (suppresion of social network "coneheads")? has the force been turned inside out, or what?
Dave actually makes a living as a white hat. Don't let the fact that he enjoys playing black fool you, his clients are Englands fortune 500.
Two things about this:
I like that Dave apparently made a "promise" to Matt Cutts not to do "black hat" for a year - and then basically admitted that his zippy site had been doing some not so good stuff for the last 18 months.
I guess Dave's "promise" included a grandfather clause.
Secondly - you can't pin Dave down as far as black and white. If you go to most of the "black hat" SEO blogs he is on almost every single blogroll.
If you go to most of the White Hat sites - he's there too.
The man is just an SEO. How he does his job (black or white) is mostly dependent on what he needs to do and who he's doing it for.
I think that is why he's so respected in the SEO community.
Where is Rebecca? She deserves some credit, for her 24 quote that balanced the scales towards this show!
Great team effort by the Mozers!
Come Diggers this needs to be on page one..:)
I love that watching these is work :) Just like you must love that making them was work!
Good to hear some proper northern vowels on wbf as well. Hope you're enjoying Seattle, Dave (yes, I'm jealous).
YORKSHIRE ftw :-)
I was expecting Dave to be much more northern. Disappointed.
Rand, don't apologise for the length - I learnt an incredible amount from that - thanks (and thanks Dave!).
I look forward to some more feature length vids in the future.
Nice video!
It was the longest one and for once no one came over and interupted me while i was watching it.
I think the suggestion of normalising results is brilliant, I hope they listen and impliment along those lines.
It's the first time I have heard Dave speak, I was expecting a deep booming yorkshire accent.
"It was the longest one and for once no one came over and interupted me while i was watching it."
Once I saw what it was - I purposely didn't watch it right away.
I sometimes "watch" WBF while I am surfing in other tabs and I only click over if I hear Rand say something I think I need a visual on (it defeats the purpose, I know).
But for this one, I made sure I had 20 minutes or so to myself - no interruptions, got myself a nice cold Diet Coke - put my feet up and enjoyed.
I've listened to Dave N's podcasts enough to know that he always lets one or two good things slip.
the voice needs lubrication..... it gets more pronounced after a couple of pints!
As alcohol is a natural desiccant, I think there is proof( to be exact: 80-90 proof) that perhaps our hosts had already indulged in a libation.
Might I suggest a shot of honey and lemon juice?
Still laughing at video 2...
PTI FTW! That was a whiteboard thursday for the history books.
I thought seomoz was coming out with a ranktracking feature for premium members. Did the bandwidth issue kill this or is it still in the works?
The Oompa Loompas are mixing up all kinds of fun stuff here in the Chocolate Factory ;)
Great video guys. I really enjoyed that one. Much more advanced than some of the videos so it was a nice break. But if it's taking you guys three days worth of work to get those videos up, you should consider getting a mac and just doing them in iMovie or something faster and simpler since they're just going on Youtube anyway.
But once again, great work and thank you for the effort in putting them up Scott.
No worries, it was my pleasure. It didn't take me three whole days to do this, just three times longer than your standard Whiteboard Friday. Glad everybody's enjoying it. Apologies for the "artistic" camera work. As I had two people, a whiteboard, and one camera, I did my best to keep it engaging by cribbing from 24, The Office and other shows and movies that have made handheld, zoomy camera work a little more palatable.
As always, it was fookin' great to have Dave drop in on us. I agree with several comments above that this is my favorite WBF that we've done.
Scot great job with the camera and editing. I wish I was as good as you, with my mobile phone when I am making virals.
Very solid work mate..... and the Clash - outstanding
The concern raised in Video number two - that Google first initiated their PageRank penalties on several high profile blogs and sites that sold links as a tactic to get them to talk about it on their blogs and spread the news quickly - is interesting.
Another Blogger has indicated that this was verified during his discussions with several Google Engineers. However, there was an observation that none of the blogs lost any traffic as a result of having a lowered PR.
First of all, how much of their traffic comes directly from Search Engine Queries as opposed to people already familiar with those blogs and sites and just typing in the URL. Also, could the controversy have helped their rankings by bringing in more curious visitors as well as visitors being referred from Social Bookmarking sites?
Possibly, they get sizable traffic from complex, non competative seearch terms directed to newer posts that have no PR yet - but are still on the homepage.
Because this was such a short time, we can not really really access the importance of a PR drop of a few points on sites. If any sites or blogs STILL have not regained their PR and would share their Before and After stats, this could provide some insight.
But the effect of this was probably to make those sites less attractive to buyers because of the lowered PR benefits from a backlink - and also, to cause their current customers to jump ship after being 'outred'.
:-?
Just one quick note on the video. I think Google does use Analytics. Removing them across the board on my sites has improved rankings. Nothing else was done as a test and we saw better traffic as a result of removing them. I can't be 100% certain of course as nobody that doesn't work there can but that was what we saw.
Adsense for sure is being used somehow. It does help some pages move up in our experience.
That was very interesting. I particularly liked the part where Dave talked about how most bloggers only write about what other bloggers have written and that original content is getting rare. I think he had pretty valid arguments there.
OKGo soundtrack makes everything better. (Even great videos apparently...)
And I was going to comment on the great use of Faithless' Mass Destruction
Rand, how could you not link to Dave as DaveN after those whiteboards? That quibble aside--and the one already mentioned about shaky camera work (a tripod? a couple other stationary cameras for close ups and edits maybe? less Hillstreet Blues viewing before recording? a Charlie Rose intervention?)--these videos are great.
especially love the bit about the back button serving Adsense for Search results. It's a classic example of that big piece of pie thinking, "If 99% of the people that are arriving at our site click the back button, how do we profit off of that?"
opefully we'll see some more changes from Goog's WBC. Even if search results become more personalized, they have the resources to allow for selection of those variables, and that would still save them MUCH in bandwidth.
As for originality in blog posts, isn't the link spike a good thing in that regard? Normalizing would take into account long-term original thinking, but the spike could definitely help the little guy. Still, with time factors coming into play SEs will hopefully get better at figuring out originators.
Until I have mutliple cameras there will be no tripods!! I loathe static camera work, but Hill Street Blues? Come on now.
I like to keep it ole skool and therefore figured NYPD Blue wouldn't have been a hip enough pop culture reference. ;D
But I'm getting the Bochco nonetheless, eh? Alright, alright.
A Bocho of love, Scott. A Bocho of love.
Outstanding post. You could have pulled a "Lost" on us Scott and just fed one episode a week for the next few weeks - but as usual, SEOmoz over delivers. Nice work.
Rand you must be doing something wrong..:)
Rand Fishkin Vs Dave Naylor Google Fight
DaveN beats you hands down!
Perhaps in the animated fight but in the SERPs Rand get's up there for that phrase...
Rand Fishkin Vs Dave Naylor Google Fight
Besides, Rand is just one part of the Moz - I'd like to see Dave take on the Moz :)
edit... ok, that was a little closer but Igor is right, even the mighty power of the Moz still only barely beats Dave :(
SEOmoz Vs Dave Naylor Google Fight
Anyways... wouldn't Dave only fight someone if it were in a bar or at a football match... know what I mean... yeah?
Yeah Moz is a heavy hitter!
But I like how DaveN vs Rand look..:)
The Moz is a major gang but you have to see the villains Dave has in London!!!
For some reason I have this image of a group of black bowler-hat wearing SEO henchmen with umbrellers headed by Dave "The Ripper" Naylor