matt cutts

Only The Links Google Trusts Count x Matt Cutts

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November 13  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

At Pubcon this week Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting about links and it’s a perfect topic for us to sit and think on here. A lot of people are doing different things when it comes to building links, and it is usually dependant on what they know or their industry. One thing’s for sure, a lot of folks are blasting thousands of links with spam tools because it’s TOO easy. One thing’s for sure, the way Google views links needs a shaking up and I’m a big believer that it’s a coming.

Q. Everyone says I need more links. How do links improve the quality of the site? I don’t want to play this game and I don’t want to do this.

A: What matters is bottom line. Links are a part of search – they represent online reputation. Although there are many tools that report links, none of the tools can tell you which links are trusted by Google (not even Google’s tools). While the link structure looks bad from the outside, the actual linkgraph that Google uses/trusts looks much better. When the New York Times complained about a site with 10,000 spammy links, Google investigated the site and not a single link had slipped through Google’s filter. Only the links Google trusts count.

Now a lot of webmasters and marketers are going to scratch their heads at that last thing mentioned by Mr Cutts. I certainly did because the SERPs do not reflect this statement at all and it doesn’t take long or much effort to disprove it either. I don’t know if toxic links + a sound website make a difference, but my first search query gave me the results I needed for this post.

A quick search for “bad credit loan quotes” from my end brought me the first ten results, and the first one’s link profile was just what I suspected. Not only that, but the page ranking has 0 unique content on it and it’s basically just a push into their affiliate program. While my query is looking for a “quote”, I’d still be more comfortable from a big brand or more reputable site.

The entire site has low quality content that’s only made for the search engines and it’s basically a thin affiliate site. I hate to use Alexa but since April the site has done nothing but grow, and with a site that should have been swept up in one of the Panda updates it should have been knocked down. So we of course have to suspect the links are artificially boosting this site for now? Ranking for all sorts of loan keywords is going to take a lot of links because it’s one of the most competitive niches online. As I suspected this is what their profile looks like;

No surprise there eh? The only way a low quality site can rank so well is anchor text abuse and this is Google’s biggest flaw in their algorithm. I should mention that this will most likely not keep them ranking high forever, but it’ll be long enough for them to make some serious bank. In some of the niches we work for clients in, we have seen these types of links holding up for years now so I’m not sure what to expect any more.

So what type of links are driving the great results for this site? Well, as suspected again, they’re a mix of junk directories, site-wide paid links, blog comment and forum profile spam. But I thought we’re supposed to build great content and the links and rankings will follow? For the most part, that’s been nothing but bullhooey and I see low quality links outdoing great sites at every turn.

You’d think Google would be better at filtering out links aimed at gaming their algorithm. The offending sites top links all come from sites with junk like this;

That’s all I really have to say. To see for yourself just do any semi competitive search query and you’ll find the top 10 results riddled with this problem.

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URL Shorteners Pass Link Juice

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April 12  |  Link Building Videos  |   Ryan Clark

This question is asked a lot by our clients and I was glad to see Matt get it as a video topic. URL shorteners do pass link juice as long as they’re 301 redirects. This makes perfect sense because Google is counting signals from the likes of Twitter and Facebook in their ranking algorithm. He specifically states Bit.ly and Goo.gl as two that work well, and as you can see we use Bit.ly here. I also recommend setting up your Analytics to work with either tracker so you know how your content is doing.

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Google’s Spam Team’s Goals In 2011

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March 27  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

Here’s a video with Matt Cutts talking about what Google’s spam team is going to be focusing on for the rest of 2011. While they’re just finishing up the Panda update, I have been getting the hints that links will be viewed differently in the coming year. Matt does quickly mention that link quality is going to get another look, and frankly it’s about bloody time. I have a post coming out soonish on just how Google might look at links as I have a decent guess at it. Link spam works way too easily still, and paid links by large companies seem to go unnoticed in large amounts. A quick look at any financial keyword’s top 10 listings will prove that theory within a minute, easy. I’m glad to hear that some more change is coming, and I can imagine it’s going to cause all sorts of fun (ie Panda update) for webmasters around the world.

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Matt Cutts On NoFollow Links

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March 13  |  Link Building Videos  |   Ryan Clark

Matt answers an interesting question from a webmaster in Thailand about only using nofollow links throughout his website. I can imagine how confusing this can get for some new webmaster’s out there. What should I append nofollow too, how should I build my internal linking structure and is that going to be seen as a PageRank passing link? Hopefully some of you find this post informative and give new webmasters an idea of how to go about linking without fear of screwing something up.

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Forbes.com Caught With Paid Links Again?

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February 16  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

While I’ll usually refrain from posting about specific sites and problems, this is already made public thanks to Google Webmaster Central. Since JCPenny was getting some flack from Google and the web this last week, it looks like other Fortune 500’s are being treated equally. While a site like Forbes.com does have what to appear to be paid links, they’re always quite on target. Despite that, they’re followed links and it seems that the new “unnatural links” message was warranted. I applaud their marketing manager for addressing it, but I don’t think he has any other option as this is Google’s only support line!

This Google Webmaster Help thread got a response from even Matt Cutts himself, which makes total sense when a big name like this asks. The thread covers a lot of interesting ground, and shows you that even the big fish have to clean up things from time to time. While they’ll most likely just have certain pages devalued, a site with this many links and that much trust won’t fall too hard. But having the paid links in question under “Resources” is also bringing more bad attention than good.

Matt Cutts even calls out Conductor Inc in the thread as they’ve been known to sell links via such authoritative sites as Forbes…but again that’s all speculation. Regardless, a few nofollow’s appended to those resources and all would be cleared according to Matt. If you watched this video I posted the other day from Matt, we can see if it auto fixes itself. By the looks of Forbes Alexa ranking, they may already be feeling the sting of the Googlebot.

Let’s hear your thoughts!

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How To Lift A Google Penalty

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February 15  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

Here’s a great new Webmaster Help video with Matt Cutts talking about lifting a Google penalty. A lot of people, and I see it in their help forums a lot, think the only way is to have it manually reviewed. It’s great to hear that you can fix things and let their spiders fix you in good time. If you’re company is feeling the sting of a penalty, we do offer our services and help in getting you back on the white list. There’s no charge to get our advice on a problem you’re having, so get in touch.

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Google Algorithm Change January 26th Confirmed

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January 28  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

The cat is out of the bag and a major algorithm change has been launched within Google. Matt Cutts has come out and stated the news on his blog which you can read here. This is definitely a post everyone should be reading but to do a slight bit of dupe content myself, this is what their focusing on:

This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.

While I’ve been ranting about our problem with content scrapers, but this week we’ve been seeing a huge improvement of the scrapers not even registering. I’m hoping this is the start of a cleaner search result, and a rise in revenue for everyone, including Google.

There is a huge amount of web chatter going on in the forums, on the blogs and Twitter so I’ll do my best to round it up here for your reading pleasure. Google and Matt are not always crystal clear on the entirety of a algorithm change, so the best course of action is to of course read up and view results for yourself. Take note of any problems your site is having and keep detailed notes of a more positive, or negative SERP result experience. Here is all I could find talking about the change, but feel free to drop some links that I missed in the comments.

January 2011 Algorithm Change Resources:

Confirmed: Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Live! Sites Are Dropping! via Search Engine Roundtable
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO via Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts: Google Algorithm Change Launched via Webmaster World
Google algorithm change launched via Hacker News
Google’s War on Spam Begins: New Algorithm Live via SEW Blog
Google Launches Algorithm To Fight Content Spam via Search Engine Journal

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Google’s SEO Report Card: Matt Cutts @ SMX West

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January 28  |  Link Building Videos  |   Ryan Clark
This is a little speech Matty Cutts gave at SMX West this year. I really liked what he had to say and think it’ll be a real information nugget to you too!
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