Subscribe in a reader
HOME
Weak SEO and the quick fix
Some have noticed that I occasionally remove posts that link to places I do not care to have my synapses reach anymore. I promised myself I would never do this again but with much thought it makes perfect sense. Like for instance, I am what people consider a “white hat SEO” in that I believe in following Google’s webmaster guidelines closely to build long lasting internet footprints, so why would I link to darker areas that do not agree with my current strategy.
Last night I pruned a few posts and even an entire interview from this blog and plan to remove more. In fact, I have changed more in that last couple of months (now that all the data is in) that I could delete everything prior and not feel a thing.
I want to make no future reference to:
1.) Paid Posts - As in Aaron Wall’s and Andy Hagan’s Reviewme.com that I believe will do more damage to unsuspecting bloggers blogs in the near future than anything. Preying on bloggers, authors and copywriters dreams of earning money online to rob them of pagerank is evil and even more so when it can result in the loss of the ability to pass pagerank.
2.) Paid Links - I bought a link once, turned out it didn’t do a thing for my rankings, if you can find some that do.. great but you will not find any future reference to it here.
3.) SEO Contests - I believe there is nothing more damaging to the reputation of an industry than SEO contests. The phrase “wacking off” keeps coming to mind and I am really surprised at some people who I once respected for getting involved, including myself. ;-(
I do not want to promote anything that would ruin someones chances of ranking organically in Google. People will give examples of the above spammy ways of doing business as key, but I consider it similar to the addiction to crack, it is extremely weak SEO. They will also accuse you of “whining” when you get in the way of their snake oil advice so don’t even bother.
If those around you are no longer supporting your beliefs is there any reason to reward them by linking to them?
Would it be smart to play the same game and circular link to only those who believe in long term SEO and ignore those who go the route of the quick fix?
Should I just delete this entire blog or are their others who believe as I do?
I am interested in your views on anything I say above, I have spent much time studying and thinking about this. Thank you!
Similar Post:
- How to remove content from Google
- Loss of the ability to pass pagerank
- Circular linking patterns of the SEO elites
February 26th, 2007 at 7:36 am
I’m down with everything you said, except the complaining about snake oil salesmen.
I think you have to say something if some idiot is on a webmaster discussion forum starting up some silly self-promoting crap about how link exchanges increase PR, which of course is the universal SEO solvent; or how cloaking is okay under circumstances of (insert BS reason here); or how it’s okay to keyword-stuff a job post on another site because it only applies to the site in question and therefore is a victimless crime (except of course to the unsuspecting site in question, but who cares about them, right?)
There are a lot of newcomers and people who may be looking on who may not have the same level of knowledge or ability that many of us have, and if you know something is wrong, it really is something you should stand up and say something about.
In the case of one board, webmaster-talk.com, there are a number of skilled webgeeks who have created an informal bond to speak out against the search engine spammer types and have done a pretty good job of it. Newcomers can learn and the spam noise is kept to a minimum.
So stand up and be counted, mah brutha.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:33 am
Prunings good for no other reason to keep the blog going in the direction you want. Just don’t waste any of that google juice and 301 to an appropriate page. I see you’ve done a 301 discussion for www and non-www a nice add-on would be how to handle single pages to their new on-topic replacement.
Hmm, that would be a nice plugin for wordpress. Instead of deleting a post, have an option to redirect to a newer or different post/page, I wonder if anyone has done that?
February 26th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Seek and ye shall find! Follow up to my previous comment with a link to a plugin that handles just that.
http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/
I haven’t tried it yet, but seems like the description is spot on.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:25 am
SEFL - I just used the “snake oil salesmen” phrase to bring home a point but yeah, “complaining” and debating are two different things. Smart people debate, not smart (that would be stupid right?) people get mad and call people names to defend their weak arguments.
JLH - Yes sir, instead of trying to have the folks a cpanel repair the cpanel/.htaccess/wordpress overwrite bug that plugin would do the trick. Excellent! *insert electric guitar sounds* :)
Dax also worked on a plugin to redirect all to root to harness link love if you forget the URLs of old deleted posts. It looks like it needs to be salvaged but that is a cool plugin also. Playing with Urbangiraffe redirection now… thanks.
I will eventually write up a post on rankings and removing posts in Google. I have to warn, it is not for everyone, if you know what the word “sticky” means you will lose that gift until you build more content and site flavor.
Update: Dax is surely an evil genius (in a good way), his 404 redirect works for all pages that no longer exist, type in a messy incorrect URL and see it fly.
Sorry, back to the subject at hand, JLH is 100% webmaster not SEO, anyone else care so agree or disagree?
February 26th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Touché, Mr. Pratt.
February 27th, 2007 at 1:57 am
I would cover what ever I thought would be a benefit for people to know. Meaning give the good with the bad, but if you do not agree with it, say it.
Oh btw, I am starting to see something that I noticed here first, nofollows being dropped and commenters are being rewarded with site wides. Looks like some heard you message.
March 1st, 2007 at 2:36 am
Some people lose their senses when they talk about things like paid links and nofollow. Biased arguments based on self-interest is the quickest credibility killer. I will buy links if my life depended on it, but you’ll never catch me claiming the tactic is ethical or tell you that paid links improve SERP relevance.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
Your SEO Contests link seems to go to one of the posts you’ve removed. Now that’s funny! :-) I got here after running Xenu and finding bad links on my site to yours. I can’t seem to find alternatives for the links unfortunately.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:08 am
As I said:
I am breaking association with all the is “spam” and have removed many pages from this blog and will continue to remove more, link sleuthing is a smart idea for people who linked here. I also a one point changed permalink structure to have all posts end in “/” instead of “.html”
My name is Aaron and I am the king of broken websites. :)