Links don't count for SERPs anymore.

volund said:

You are correct that PR is different from SERP's but you are making conclusions from that fact that have no basis in realty at all. Google has been diminishing how much PR plays a role in ranking for a particular keyword for quite awhile now, this is nothing new. What you are forgetting about is those other 200 factors that Google uses to rank a page in the SERP's. A lot of those have to do with links (I would say most) even though they have nothing to do with PR.

Click to expand...

How can you separate PR and links? They are one in the same.
Do you think Google would actually put in 2 separate and distinct link measuring systems to grade links?

PR is links.

Google killed (the old) PR. - Ergo - Google has killed links.

best,
Reg
Proof?
That one link will beat out 277,000 is proof.
That you can find the same thing in almost any search is proof.
If links counted, low pr sites would never beat high pr.

volund said:

Just because a low PR site can beat out a high PR site does not mean that links do not matter. It only means that to rank for a particular keyword you need TARGETED LINKS.

Click to expand...

And you think that the 277,000 links to a major SEO website with anchor text in it's domain name is not TARGETED?
Please.

volund said:

You are out of your mind. I seriously hope the newbies understand just how off the wall you are. By your reasoning the site with the most links would rank for all keywords and of course that is not true. Have you heard of this little concept called Anchor Text? It is really a very cool thing, it tells Google why that link is important and why the website is linking to yours.

All links count towards PR but only links with the proper anchor text will help you in the SERPs

It is not the number of links you have that affects your rankings or your keyword it is the number of targeted links you have.

If I have 250k links to my site with no anchor text I am not going to rank well for my keywords. If I have 250k links to my site using the my keywords as anchor text for all those links then I will rank well.

Lets use a well know example.

Adobe is a well know company with lots of products and their website is optimized for those products. For some reason they Rank #1 for the term click here. Now why would that be? Could it be all those millions of links with click here in the anchor text? Of course it is. They sure have not optimized the Adobe site for the term click here.


Page Rank is a measure of the strength of your incoming links as Google seems them. Not a measure of visits by the Google bots. Do you dream this stuff up when you are sleeping? You have cause and effect confused. The bots come more often to high PR pages as a general rule (but not always) because they are higher PR sites not the other way around. I have low PR sites that are updated continuously that the bots come to a lot. I also have a higher PR site that I never update that the bots do not visit nearly as often. Bot visits do not cause increases in PR.

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This is the source of definitive and undeniable proof that backlinks are all that matters for SERPs.

Explain this one if your theory is correct OP?

You make my point for me.
On-page SEO is more important than links.

If you do an exact match for my search term you will find about 70 sites are actually competing.

Click to expand...

Not really, I only see a handful of authority sites that rank by pure coincidence. And exact match means nothing.

And how did I prove your point? I've proven that you can rank by on-pageseo alone only on keywords with absolutely no competition.

My challenge still stands: get on top 1000 for "auto quotes" with on-page seo alone. Come on, links don't have ANY value, remember? It should be easy, I'm asking only for a top 1000!

DUDE!!! you call yourself a SEO and you use Google's keywords as a tool? It is so deeply flawed as to be totally unreliable for organic results.
If I check "seo information" in the adwords tool it shows me 2400 local when signed out and 4400 when signed in.
OTOH "keyword discovery" shows 2 (TWO) monthly searches.

Out of 124 keyword phrases used to find my site, the phrase you quote was used 27.1 % This equals about 25 searches a month.

Click to expand...

Quote me when I said I'm an SEO.

I'm not a SEO in the sense that I provide SEO services for sale. I don't.

I'm an internet marketer who does most of the SEO on his sites by himself, and who is really glad of having picked up that skill, because that way I can avoid being SCAMMED by self-proclaimed SEO experts such as you, and recognize true experts the few times when I need to outsource something.

By the way 25 searches per months sucks big time. If "auto quotes" is too difficult for you, try to conquer any keyword that gets at least 10000 searches per month. In the top 10. Ok that's too much, let's make it top 100. With on-page seo and no backlinks. I did it multiple times. #1. With backlinks of course.

A PLEA TO MODERATORS:
don't let this guy advertise his SEO service here, I'm sure you can understand why.

Reg-nbs-seo said:

How can you separate PR and links? They are one in the same.
Do you think Google would actually put in 2 separate and distinct link measuring systems to grade links?

PR is links.

Google killed (the old) PR. - Ergo - Google has killed links.

best,
Reg
Proof?
That one link will beat out 277,000 is proof.
That you can find the same thing in almost any search is proof.
If links counted, low pr sites would never beat high pr.



And you think that the 277,000 links to a major SEO website with anchor text in it's domain name is not TARGETED?
Please.

Click to expand...

The concept of anchor text is so alien to you?

Edit: sorry about double post but this came up while I was typing the previous one.

martha2 said:

Exactly how will they decide if page is relevant anyway? What might seem relevant to humans might not seem relevant to search engines..

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That is THE question and the KEY to today's SEO.
You have 2 factors at work here.
Relevance for the human and for the machine AI.

How do you present relevance?
In order of importance relevance is presented to the human:

1. In the Domain name
2. In the file name
3. In the Title
4. In the logo
5. In the header text
6. In the headings
7. In the links
8. In the copy
9. In the calls to action.
10. In the silo

SEO is a visual process. Present the relevance properly following the concepts of the relevance theory (by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson) (would love to link.) is the process.

Position and size of the primary and subsequent headings determine the primary relevance. The largest text should be seen immediately on entering the page.
Following through with defining the appropriate complimentary headings in smaller sizes supports the visual hierarchy.

Telling the search engine EXACTLY what the visitor sees is done with H tags, emphasis, and position in the code.

The closer to the head, the more importance.
In file structure, the closer to the root the more importance.
This is why subwebs do not do as well.

I am just lolling all over the place right now.. Backlinks don't count? HAHAHAHHAHA OMFG!

Seriously, even if you really honestly have been in SEO for a long time, it does not matter. Google changes shit up all the time. With their big changes, you basically have to learn to crawl again. While having experience helps you easily find the changes faster and how to overcome them, their update forced you to learn a new game.

I agree with the guy who posted this:

First of all your examples are deeply flawed. It doesn't matter the # of "competitors" (usually 99.9% of them are not really competitors, just webpages that happen to have the words in the keyword somewhere on the page) a keyword has, the only thing that matters when judging competition is the sites that are consciously trying to rank for the keyword on page 1.

A keyword that shows 40,000,000 results that no one is trying to rank for will be MUCH easier to rank for than a keyword with 100,000 results that a score of websites are competing for.

Click to expand...

That is absolutely true. It isn't how many results you get for that keyword phrase, it is how many of them are actually competing for it specifically. Also domain name has a factor. Such as the guy who owns makemoneyonline.com. He is sitting on page 5 because he is a complete dumbass and has no idea what he is doing. He has a straight VIP pass to the #1 position. While yes, he would still have to do SEO to keep himself there, but his job is way easier than anyone elses because he owns the domain. It doesn't get anymore relevant than makemoneyonline.com when someone searches: make money online.

To the OP: Rank for keywords that actually get searched and people are actually trying to compete for.

Go into the poker niche, some long tail poker keywords that are popular. I saw one for instance that got searched A LOT!!! When typing it into google it had like 100,000 results only. Most would be like oh wow, 100k results thats easy. That is not the case. The competition on the first page was tight as hell! Out of those 100k prolly half of them are trying to rank for that same damn keyword... damn near impossible.

It has NOTHING to do with the number of results found. It has everything to do with what I quoted above, how many people are actually targeting that specific keyword. As I call it, "how tight the competition is on the first page".

If your research determines it can be ranked for, you get there by backlinks. Good backlinks, high PR backlinks, related backlinks, Anchor text backlinks, traffic, and on site SEO.

So to whoever thinks backlinks don't matter, you are a flat out retard. I don't care how long you have been in SEO.

SamShady said:

Sorry Reg,

None of what you say make any sense and there seems to be big flaws in your logic and conclusions.

And what kind of SEO work did you do more than 15 years ago? - 15 years ago webmasters were more concerned with deciding between NCSA and CERN and making HTML that would crash the least amount of browsers.

Click to expand...

Hey Sam,
There were a lot of search engines before Google.
That made things complicated as each had to be accounted for and all their algos were different.


I have been selling online since '94 and finding ways to promote has always been one of my priorities.

A couple of years after Google came into being I was cloaking for 12 search engines AND charging by results. $75 for a #1, $50 for a #2 to 10, $35 for #11 to 20.

zaldrak said:

The concept of anchor text is so alien to you?

Click to expand...

Did you not read:

And you think that the 277,000 links to a major SEO website with anchor text in it's domain name is not TARGETED?
Please.

Thanks for starting this thread.

I think we should bottom this out.

Spaceman said:

Thanks for starting this thread.

I think we should bottom this out.

Click to expand...

Agreed. MODs should move this to the lounge for its entertainment value and nothing more.

"This same site with ONE link placed in #1 position for it's targeted KW phrase upon publishing, beating out the #2 and #3 sites who had 58,000 and 277,000 inbound links, respectively.
You can find this kind of thing in almost every search. Low PR sites beat high PR."

How do you explain this?

Def an entertaining read with GOOD points on both sides of the matter. It's all perspective folks. Do what you know WORKS, and scale it all up for results

shudogg said:

I am just lolling all over the place right now.. Backlinks don't count? HAHAHAHHAHA OMFG!

Seriously, even if you really honestly have been in SEO for a long time, it does not matter. Google changes shit up all the time. With their big changes, you basically have to learn to crawl again. While having experience helps you easily find the changes faster and how to overcome them, their update forced you to learn a new game.

Click to expand...

Seems like name calling is pretty standard around here when you do not understand (or agree with) what is being said.

Ya Google changes their algos big time.
It does not look like you have caught up to Caffeine and Mayday yet.

Also domain name has a factor. Such as the guy who owns makemoneyonline.com. He is sitting on page 5 because he is a complete dumbass and has no idea what he is doing. He has a straight VIP pass to the #1 position. While yes, he would still have to do SEO to keep himself there, but his job is way easier than anyone elses because he owns the domain. It doesn't get anymore relevant than makemoneyonline.com when someone searches: make money online.

Click to expand...

So you are saying that in this case, if the onpage SEO is developed properly, the site would out perform all others because it has "Make Money Online" in its domain name?
How does this reinforce the necessity for links?

It has NOTHING to do with the number of results found. It has everything to do with what I quoted above, how many people are actually targeting that specific keyword. As I call it, "how tight the competition is on the first page".

Click to expand...

The number of results found is a valid indicator of relevance.
If it was not, why would Google even show the metric?

So to whoever thinks backlinks don't matter, you are a flat out retard. I don't care how long you have been in SEO.

Click to expand...

Can you not discuss a topic without calling names?

If your research determines it can be ranked for, you get there by backlinks. Good backlinks, high PR backlinks, related backlinks, Anchor text backlinks, traffic, and on site SEO.

Click to expand...

Give me just ONE definitive example that backlinks influence position please.
Otherwise your statement is only an opinion and follows along with most of the sheep regurgitating misinformation.

SamShady said:

Btw Reg, love how you're naming your pages - what is "article_info.php?articles_id=13" supposed to rank well for?

Oh, and your "Latest SEO Articles" section on your front page is all a bunch of 404's

Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up on the 404s. When I added a new article to the page my software changed all the links to relative and not absolute.

The reason that my pages are not using keywords in the file names is that, due to the amount of onpage SEO that I do, I do not want to get an "over SEO" penalty. The CMS that I use has a navigation system that is fully indexed by Google and does not need redirects to change the file names.

what is "article_info.php?articles_id=13" supposed to rank well for?

Click to expand...

If you read the anchor text, "Links count for little now." you would know the answer.

aldragon said:

Dude, you are a little mistaken, Check the last google starter guide and the order that changes should be done to increase serp, SPECIALLY Backlinks are relevant as content is too. There's also an explanation of how caffeine algorithm works, if you have been at SEO for so long , you should be looking to learn a bit more about algorithms, not easy but very important.
It is an algorithm that Larry page patented called Page Rank what made g00gle what it is now so get your sh*t toguether and start doing your homework as an SEO man
Regards,
Al

Click to expand...

Dude, do your own research. Google started off using PR as a SERPs indexing factor and then started reducing its importance as link building escalated to position improving schemes rather than being the organic factor pictured.

If you want to see how many times Google has announced tweaks to PR since it's inception, read my "An incomplete history of Google SEO" which details most of the announced or documented algo changes.

There are no references to building links to increase SERPs that i can see in the Starter Guide.
The only thing they say about links is to use them to promote your site.

In the section on page 28 of the guide they state,

Promote your website in the right ways
About increasing backlinks with an
intention to increase the value of the site.
While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people
discover your content through search or other ways and link to it,
Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard
work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new
content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested
in the same subject (1). As with most points covered in this
document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could
actually harm the reputation of your site.

((1) Promoting your site and having quality links could lead to increasing your site?s reputation.)

Click to expand...

There is not one word about building links for SERPs.

I also cannot see anything in there about Caffeine or Mayday.
Perhaps you can quote their words?

"Anchor Text Links" do not increase the relevance of the topic but make navigation easier.
They are the "visual meta tags" that refer to the information.

The Guide says

Suitable anchor text makes it easy to
convey the contents linked

This text tells users and Google something about the page
you're linking to.

Click to expand...

(Like meta tags do).

I'd still like for the OP to give backup for his statements...I haven't seen anything so far...

OMG I can't believe people are actually bothering to argue with the OP. He clearly is an SEO genius! and his sites must be ranking high for those competitive keywords he is targetting!

This is hopeless. I can point to a site now with an image on it that ranks for a really competitive term. Theres no page title, no on page seo, nothing just a damn image.

F* SEO, F* KW, F* whatever!!

I build backlinks (targeted, non-targeted) just freakin backlinks, and I MAKE MONEY!!

HAHA :beach2(2)

By all means retire this if you cannot give some concrete examples of building links to improve SERPs.
Some folks just don't want understand or change. Saying linking doesn't affect SERPs can affect their incomes.
Some folks just go along with what amounts to urban legends.

Step back and apply some logic folks.

SEO is a system and any system can be reverse engineered, given a large enough sampling.

Over the course of more than 16 years of online marketing, and coming at the problem of demystifying Google's algorithms with about 45 years of systems analysis background, results are the only metric.

Intelligent appraisal of the market and the use of keyword phrases is the key.

So what if I target a longtail phrase?
Let's just look a the theory of what I preach.

Immediately around the time of Mayday And Caffeine I built 3 sites, and paid close attention to the SEO factors I know affect rankings.

Each of the sites got an immediate #1 for their primary keyword phrase and the great majority of the targeted phrases onto page1.

Each of the sites had only one link initially.

I chose the phrase on my SEO website carefully.
True that "up to date SEO information" is not recorded by Google's wildly inaccurate keywords tool, but my stats show about 25 searches a month of this phrase.

Given the size and scope of my one man operation, my 135 client base, and current social networking, i would NOT WANT more interest.

Hell guys, I'm 69 and do this for the sheer fun of seeing my client's make money.
On a lot of them, if they make money, i make money.

As an old fart... i make mistakes, hence the mainpage 404s.

Everything I say, I can prove. Notice that not one of my detractors can prove that links improve serps.

Logic.
Google hates to have it's results manipulated.
A large amount of links using identical anchor text is a Google bomb intended to tie a site to a search phrase.

The practice is to get a very large number of sites to use the same anchor text to the same site.
Now Google does not want this done for profit and they have filters in place to prevent this.
IMO they leave Google bombs like the "Click Here" Adobe link as it is not done for profit. I would think it is also a nice piece of misdirection.

If they are filtering out link bombing for profit, how can ordinary linking plans hope to achieve any results with a quantum jump less links?

There have been reports of penalties for linking too fast and for over use of identical anchor text. I would think that the levels that trip these red flags occur WAY before the link influences SERPs.

best,
Reg