Posted by Scott Willoughby

WARNING! This week’s video is pure evil! If you are faint of heart, easily disturbed, care for small children, terrified of slugs, curious about magnets, or fond of licorice, TURN BACK NOW! 

This video provides actual evidence that the diabolical practice of buying links can actually work (and astoundingly well). It also says the practice can get you penalized back to the stone age, but hey, who needs to talk sense; there’s controversy to be courted! So, without further ado (or any more exclamation points), let the heresy commence…

 

Did you avoid the temptation? Did you refuse to watch? Is the curiosity killing you? Okay, okay, I’ll give you the lowdown, but you have to promise you’ll nevereverever use this information for evil. Keep that halo sparkly, champ!

Here’s the deal: Rand snuck out without telling any of us and bought some illicit paid links. They were anchor text optimized links from the same page on the same site to minimize the confounding factors.  He got one link to each of three different sites…

Experiment 1

• Bought a link for a three word phrase with a Keyword Difficulty Score of 30%
• Directed it at an SEOmoz blog post with the term in the body, but not in the title tag
• Ranking before link purchase: #458
• Ranking after link purchase: #30
• Time elapsed: 8 days (all links were pulled as soon as changes were observed)

Experiment 2

• Bought a link for two word phrase with a Keyword Difficulty Score of 36%
• Directed at page on an established, but low-authority domain with term at end of the title tag
• Ranking before link purchase: #426
• Ranking after link purchase: #58
• Time elapsed: 4 days

Experiment 3

• Bought a link for a three word term with a Keyword Difficulty Score of 26%
• Directed at a page on a brand new site with less than 10 total links
• Ranking before link purchase: #198
• Ranking after link purchase: #4
• Time elapsed: 4 days

Holy crap, right?! That’s some serious movin’ and shakin’ out of one little link! Here are a few things to note before we discuss why you shouldn’t go smash open your piggy bank and spend your shiny coins on nefarious links: 1) As soon as the links were pulled, the rankings fell back down to where they were before the links, so if you’re renting, don’t get too comfy in that high position; 2) These were very short-term so there wasn’t much time allowed for Google to sniff these links out; 3) This is not a statistically significant sample size or a scientific test, take these results as anecdotal.

Okay then, why shouldn’t you buy links if they work such splendid voodoo on your rankings? Let’s fight anecdotal "proof" with an anecdotal warning. Some friends of SEOmoz who run a fairly well-established site recently ran into a snag–they vanished from Google.  They had ranked in the top two for many moons, raking in the lucrative spoils of their hard-won rankings. Then they got greedy; they thought a couple of paid links (four to be exact) could secure them the number one spot for all eternity. They wanted to be like the lone Highlander atop his mountain. They bought their links, and it worked for a minute. Then Google beheaded them (to continue the Highlander theme) by abso-friggin-lutely burying their site. Their links were discovered and now they can’t even rank for their business name or their full title tags. Suffice to say, this has made business a tad difficult.

Listen, my fellow marketers, to this cautionary tale of penalty and woe. Paid links may reap quick and easy reward, but the repercussions can be dreadful. Besides, everyone knows that the Krampus comes for SEOs who pay for links.

Big thanks to Avi Wilensky of PRO Media Corp for collaboration with us on this study.

 

And now, a very special message…

This week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday is a bittersweet installment for me. After producing this blog feature for over three years, and more than 150 episodes, this is my last.  As Rand mentioned in the video, I’ve decided to bid farewell to the magical world of SEOmoz and pursue my next great adventure.  I’m still weighing opportunities and haven’t decided where I’ll be heading next, but you can rest assured I’ll still be playing in the online marketing sandbox, so bring your shovel and we can build a castle together. It’ll be sweet; we can have towers and a moat…maybe a dragon.  If you’d like to keep in touch, I’m easy to find on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

I want to thank everyone in the community for contributing to the truly wonderful experience I’ve had here, and all of the amazing people I’ve had the pleasure to meet online and off.  I hope you’ve all enjoyed watching these videos and reading my posts as much as I’ve enjoyed making them. Most sincere thanks and gratitude to you all for an awesome experience over the last several years. Have fun and I’ll see you around the interwebz!

Best,

Scott

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Posted by great scott!

Welcome back to our second installment of this very special WhiteBEARD Friday! Last week Rand Fishclause discussed how the new school way to get links is to give back to webmasters. That’s right, you’ve gotta give a little to get a little.  This week, in the spirit of Searchmas©, we’re giving you 12 examples of sites that exemplify this new model.

From video hosting, to awards, to social profiles, and many more, we hope you’ll come away with some great ideas about what you can do to provide outward value to the linkerati and get a whole lotta link love back in return.

SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – 12 Link Strategies of Searchmas from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

From all of us here at SEOmoz, thanks for joining us every week for our 2009 season of Whiteboard Friday, and for being part of one of the most vibrant, fun, and talented communities on the web. Your participation and readership really means the world to us, and we can’t wait to share 2010 with you. Until then, happy holidays

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Posted by great scott!

Ho-ho-ho! Merry Winter to you! In a very special Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at the new model for attracting lots of inbound links: giving back to webmasters.  Nowadays it’s not always enough just to have great content. You’ve got to give the linkerati value–something that will incentivize them to link to your site.  Rand Fishclause discusses how this new model works and then, next week, we’ll give you 12 link strategies of Christmas just in time for you to open them under your tree and put into action for the New Year.

SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – Give and Ye Shall Receive from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Just a quick reminder that today is the final day to get the new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics at the special launch pricing of 20% off + free shipping!

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Posted by great scott!

They scrape you, they copy you, you license your content, you need geo-targeted versions of your pages…whatever the reason, duplicate content happens. In this week’s Whiteboard Friday we’ll look at how to deal with duplicate content in ways that will help you make sure you’re the one who ranks for your material (as you should) and what traps to avoid .

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Dealing with Duplicate Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

If you haven’t yet grabbed your copy of our new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics DVD series, I’ve got good news! We’ve extended our special launch pricing of 20% off plus free shipping for another week. This sale price will only be available until December 18th, and then it’s gone for good, so order your copy soon!

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Posted by great scott!

Not unlike investing, when it comes to link acquisition diversity is key.  Evidence points to a strong preference by the engines for a diverse link profile rather than a homogeneous one, even if the links in a narrow profile are from strong sites. In this week’s WBF, we’ll look at why a wide variety of linking domains is better than repeated links, even from very strong domains: it’s all about trust.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Link Diversity from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by great scott!

Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)! 

This week we’re looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight.  Since it’s now officially the "Holidays," I’m not going to reveal too much; rather, I’ll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Since it is Black Friday, I want to remind you of some killer deals that are still available for you or your favorite SEO!

There’s still time to get your FREE SES Chicago Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We’ve only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. SES just raised their prices to $1995 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access SES Pass is an awesome deal (and if Chicago’s not your thing, SES will let you exchange the pass for any SES Event in 2010).

You’ve also still got 10 days left to get super-low release pricing on the brand-new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics six-disk DVD set! Until December 6th, you can get this killer new series for 20% off and Free Shipping anywhere in the world. Hundreds of people have already ordered and supplies are limited, so take advantage while the price is low, and this limited-edition set is still available.

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Posted by great scott!

Happy Wednesday, Whiteboard Friday Fans!  You may have noticed that there was no new Whiteboard Friday on, well, Friday. That’s because a sizable battalion of the mozSquad went to Vegas for PubCon and, alas, I didn’t bring the camera with me (it’s actually prohibited by law–what happens in Vegas, and all that). Nonetheless, Rand and I feel horribly guilty about leaving you sans-WBF last week and wanted to make it up to you. Thus, I present you with this Special Wednesday Edition of WBF.

What makes it "special" other than titular anachronism?  First off, you!  You’re special and we love you, so thanks for watching. Second, I’m trying out a new video embed service called Vzaar. They were generous enough to hook me up with an account and let me try them out, so any feedback about audio/video quality, smoothness of streaming, compatibility, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
UPDATE: I switched the embed back to Vimeo since a lot of people seemed to be having trouble with Vzaar…thanks for the feedback!
So, what is the topic of this week’s WBFSWE? Link Growth Patterns!  Rand looks at how some typical link growth patterns tend to be interpreted by the engines.  Did you launch your site with a massive PR blitz and then stop all efforts? The resultant spike and sudden drop-off in link acquisition could cause you some serious problems in the SERPs.  There’s got to be a better way, right?  Indeed!  Rand will also show you how to construct a staged link acquisition strategy that will provide a much more natural link-growth curve that the engines will trust and respect.

Have fun, and we’ll see you in a couple of days for a good ol’ proper Whiteboard Friday.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Link Growth Patterns from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by great scott!

So what’s the trick?  How do these folks who run around calling themselves SEOs actually know SEO?  Do they just make it up? Is there a class you take somewhere?  This week Rand looks at exactly this question: where do these guys (and gals) learn the stuff they know and how do they stay on top of the ever-changing search landscape to make sure they’re putting forth best practices for their clients and projects?

Watch this week’s Whiteboard Friday to learn where you should focus your efforts if you want to learn SEO. You’ll find it’s not as complicated as you may think. In fact, it’s pretty simple, but not necessarily easy, especially when you start talking about IR and patent analysis, conducting research, collecting and analyzing correlation data, building ranking models, and other fancy strategies. But, as SEO extraordinaire and all-around awesome dude, Dave Snyder, adroitly demonstrated in his recent post about how he got started in internet marketing, hard work, talent, and a little luck are the backbone of success in this industry.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – How SEOs Know SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

p.s. Here’s the original post on Ben’s Ranking Models from the SEOmoz/Distilled London Training Seminar

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Posted by great scott!

Wondering how to win rank and influence users? Well, if you have multiple pages from one domain ranking in the same SERP, a little bit of optimization may help you get a coveted indented listing.  You know, one of those cool situations where two or more of your pages show up right on top of each other in the engines. While this is a bit of an advanced tactic, it can be extremely powerful for driving traffic.  Watch this week’s video to learn how to optimize and target for indented listings.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Getting Indented Listings from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by great scott!

You do all kinds of keyword research trying to find the highest-volume terms around your niche. You work and work to move one place at a time up the rankings for those competitive terms, and you still don’t see the traffic increase you’re hoping for. Why?

You’re ignoring the long tail! All of those strange and unique searches people do when looking for your specific products or content! While each of these terms may only have 1-10 searches per month, add them all together and they could represent up to 75% of your search traffic. Watch this video and learn why the long tail deserves your attention and can make a huge impact in your traffic.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Ignore the Tail at Your Peril! from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

p.s. from Rand: Props to Kristen Acker of Zillow for the "Fat Head" and "Chunky Middle" naming conventions – thanks Kristen!

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