Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Squeaky clean? When you write a page do you consider word density, titles and contrive the odd sentance to get a keyword in? Your just fooling yourself if you think you are innocent. There is no reason to have a squeaky clean site before you report someone and wake up.... your site is seo'd as well.
your post is EXACTLY why the idea is stupid.
"you better do it, your competitors are"
And how does the system know?
By system, I don't mean a recursive descent ftp client aka spider.
Think about it and follow the idea through.
You're only going to be worried about spam reports if you are guilty.
And, as it happens, I did used to wear dark coloured hats. However, after Bourbon I was penalised so realised early what direction this was all going in.
So now my sites are squeaky clean. They are seo'd only in that each page has correct titles, description. etc and the sites have good overall structure.
What I don't have is keyword stuffing, hidden text, massive anchor link backlink spam, network interlinking...
This makes me think that SEO as we've known it could be a dying art.
I don't think it's dying, but I do think change is coming. Traditionally most “SEO” webmasters spend more time concerned about linking than the true user experience, and with good reason. It’s the most effective way to get your site near the top.
My hope is Google is moving on from ranking sites predominantly based on linking. If that was de-emphasized and other aspects, like the amount of time a visitor actually spends clicking through the site, were given greater weight in the algo, things might improve.
Just think how good your sites could be if you didn’t have to waste so much time on linking, proper anchor text and what kind of neighbors you have. Link popularity algorithms were born to be manipulated.
If the system were a person would that solve it?
And that person could very well be a competitor.
The important thing that has happened with Jagger2 is that Google has started listening to Webmasters.
That must be a good thing.
It certainly is for me.
Suppose a company has employed a dim website design firm and they have put in hidden text. This is not the fault of the company...
Yes, it is the fault of the company doing the hiring, legally, morally and from a common sense point of view. Hire idiots to do work in your name--your fault.
However, I do agree that Google seems to be doing this brain surgery with a hammer and chisel...
It looks cleaner so far.
Reporting spam is a good thing, just don't let yourself go and report all of your competitors because it is stupid, eats resources and keeps REAL cheaters on top for longer time.
Hidden text, cloaking pages, scrappers, and other text link buyers (when this is the only reason why they got ranked) should be reported, leave the rest alone and accept being defeated.
Algo change, fashion change, stock market is king, just don't call your competition spam when their site doesn't look like yours or displays a different opinion than yours.
I just wanted to say that because if everybody would report [only] spammers and cheaters, a few months from now the SERP would dramatically change.
Don't forget to send feeback about spammers to Y! and MSN too! Maybe one day all search engines will start listening to what WM have to say :) (just kidding...money rules them all)
Doesn't solve all our problems but defintely an improvement. Is it spreading?
I know of several to watch.
The main one I would hope gets acted up hasn't been yet.
A (particular) person would not always be a good judge of a particular link. If the person doing the judging was not familar with the topic they may ( and very likely will) make an invalid judgement.
I have seen that happen repeatedly on various forums for just one instance.
