Adapt or die
We live and work in an ever-changing world. No news there, huh?
We build webpages. We use our words to market <something>. We use a lot of different methods of bringing traffic to our pages. Some of these methods could be considered ‘questionable’ in certain circles. Mostly we try to beat the search engine placement algos.
The thing is, we tend to keep on keeping on. We find an exploit that works. We tweak it. Then we run it full speed. We do it over and over again. Minor changes maybe, but still mostly the same methods.
Then one day we wake up to find that our exploit doesn’t work any longer. What happened? Well, the various search engine algos changed. Or, we got tapped by a competitor. Or……
Or, we got complacent. Satisfied that our exploit was doing it’s job, we went about pushing the envelope. We tend to forget that change is always with us. Mostly not good change either.
Michael Martinez over at SEO-Theory made a great point (well, he makes a lot of great points, but this one is relative to the post) on his blog the other day. Burn this into your brain:
Blackhat spammers burn out the usefulness of about 10% of all SEO tips, tricks, and techniques that are openly or semi-openly shared on blogs and forums in about 12 months. White hat SEOs, newbies, and SEO gurus burn out the other 90% in 6 months or less.
Michael’s comment is right in line with the real world. What works for us today has very little bearing on what might work tomorrow.
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. When (if) you discover an exploit, work it to death. Keep it close to your chest and your lips sealed. Chances are that if you tell someone else and they tell a friend of theirs, then that friend tells……….
The search engine spam techs are looking to cut us off at the knees. All the time. We don’t need to speed up the process, so keep it quiet.
Keep asking yourself how it could be done differently. Ask yourself ‘what if…’. Then do something else that Mr. Martinez preaches: experiment, measure the results, adjust. If you do that each time you have a new project, you’ll be far ahead of the pack. That means you have adapted. Doesn’t mean you won’t die, tho. lol
That’s it for this time. See you around.
~dink
P.S. If it sounded like I’m high on Michael Martinez, well I am. If you want to figure out the real deal on SEO, go read his blog. No, you don’t need to tell him that I sent you either. He can speak blackhat, but he ain’t one.
Comment by Nick
Fanboy.
Haha, just messing. While I agree with a lot of what you say, theres definitely some money to be made by being the third or forth runner in a publicly talked about tactic if you go balls to the wall. Check ‘buy viagra’ for example. The technorati-parasite has been discussed openly as well as how to boost your technorati popularity both internally (via favorites and whatnot) and externally (hello, xrumer). Yet, every week you see a new breed of spammers using it to get top 10 serps for the term. Even if this only lasts a couple of days, those guys are making good money.
While I agree that innovation is definitely key in the long term, there is nothing wrong with being the followup guy who does everything x2.
This is blackhat, after all
Nick
Comment by Dink
Heya Nick,
@fanboy. :blush; Ya. I like what he says and how he says it.
You’re 100% correct that there is money to be made with the outed exploits. It’s just harder to do after it’s been pounded to death.
xrumer still works. Just not as easy or effective as it was at first. It’ll continue to be harder to get good results with it. Finally it’ll stop working at all. Then after a year or so it can be used in a limited fashion. For a while.
Watching the buy viagra serps can give you an idea of how the top guys are doing things. It can’t/won’t tell you everything that he is doing.
Most of us will get on IM or on a forum or a blog like this one and say something like ‘hey looky at the top three in buy viagra. Notice anything? See they are all three using xxx and yyy. Most of the linkys are from .sometld. How did they do that?’
The collective heads figure out what is what and how what they see is done. So, if it was like 5 guys studying and comparing notes, plus the top three in the serps, then there would be 8 guys doing a similar thing. That’s fine. Well and good. Except someone is looking at your serps too.
Pretty soon it snowballs and everybody and his brother-in-law is doing the same thing. Then one day you check the serp pages again and say ’shat. They’ve changed things up’. That’s the bh way.
As for the top guys changing each week, I’ll bet some cash that it’s only the sites that are changing and not the site owners. The last intel that I got indicated that the top 5 are located in the Eastern Europe region and speak a Russian dialect (if you get my drift lol). When one of the sites gets knocked out they have ten more ready to take it’s place. Cooperation and cash. Works every time.
Glad to have you commenting again Nick. You always get me to thinking straight.
Comment by Nick
Agreed. Have to be one of the first to the punch with a little something extra … works in pretty much every industry. Look at the social bookmarking space … digg and reddit were the first…the next stream of a half dozen (decent) copycats, mister-wong, newsvine, propellor, etc, all fairly successful. Twitter space? You got Jaiku, Pownce, Frazr, etc. Friendster? Myspace, facebook, bebo. All of the copycats took the same basic premise and added their own little flair to it. The same can be applied to SEO … see that the top guys for ‘buy viagra’ are link spamming edus to a technorati page? Do the same AND interlink a couple technorati profiles, add some SB links, do some targeted forum/comment spamming, and you should establish a more unique and powerful link profile to help you get to those positions as well. Like you said, you’ll never know exactly what the top guys are doing … but if you have a good foundation in WH Seo as well as past techniques that work, you can apply everything you know from your experiences to the new tricks and see some great results.
Nick
Ps. Sorry about the fragments…posting from my iphone.
Pss. I guess ^ makes me a dinkstyle fanboy…shieettt
Comment by Dink
Heya fanboi! Autographs at 8:00.
>>but if you have a good foundation in WH Seo as well as past techniques that work, you can apply everything you know from your experiences to the new tricks and see some great results.< <
As my friend Nop would say..."zigzakly".
Sometimes even the old tricks will work if you take the time to revamp them. And, keep yer head low.
>>Sorry about the fragments…posting from my iphone.<<
Now there is a segment of our interweb that may just be ready for exploitation. hmmmm