Just what you want to hear, right?
After pandas, penguins, penalties, and panic, Google is now adding salt to our wounds and stealing any shred of hope we had to re-gain our rankings or compete for any decent spot in the search engine.
Many of our readers have spent thousands of hours learning about and applying SEO practices to their websites, only to find the game changing and their rankings failing.
Remember the days when blog networks and article marketing were touted as solid linking strategies? Now all of those once-valued links you obtained from those systems have landed most of you in Google purgatory.
And now, SEO will become even harder?
Well, that’s what Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team had to say…
Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan sat down with Matt Cutts during a “You & A with Matt Cutts” at the recent SMX Conference in Seattle.
When Sullivan asked Cutts about information related to paid links (LINK), Cutts said Google is constantly working on improving its tools that discover blog networks and link buying.
Google has been warning against link buying for years, and according to Cutts, the practice will become riskier as Google builds more tools and enforces it more.
Cutts also mentioned that people who purchase links may think they are escaping Google’s clutches but most are unaware of the footprint of the website from which they are buying links. This is where Google steps in. Essentially, Cutts is saying…you will have a hard time escaping Google if you buy links. (my own words)
Cutts went on to explain how SEO is entering a new phase and it will become more difficult.
“I believe, if you ask any SEO, is SEO harder now than 5-6 years ago, I think they’d say it’s a little more challenging. You can expect that to increase. Google is getting more serious about buying and selling links. Penguin showed that some stuff that may work short term won’t work in the long term.”
If you are feeling a little downtrodden, I understand. But, there is some good news on the horizon. Here are some more valid points discussed at the session:
I’ve Been Hit!
Has your rankings suffered as a result of the latest Google changes? Did you get one of those dreaded link message alerts in your Webmaster tools account?
According to Cutts, Google wants to see “earnest effort” on your part in eliminating those links from your profile. Once you remove them or at least make an effort, you can submit a reconsideration request. Google will then consider how much “progress” you made.
Sullivan asks, “What if you can’t get rid of bad links pointing to a page, should we get rid of the page?”
Cutts responded, “If it’s not an important page, you could. Or you could at least document the effort to remove the links and share it with us.”
Good news! Google is discussing the possibility of a “disavow-this-link tool that will allow webmasters to “disavow” any suspect links they see pointing to their sites. Cutts said even though Google has implemented many protective measures to combat negative SEO, there has been a lot of discussion on the topic. If the disavow link materializes, it will be ready in a matter of months.
Negative SEO refers to outside parties sending spammy links to your site to manipulate its rankings and get your site downgraded. With this disavow link you could potentially tell Google you had no part in the suspicious links which could maintain or help your rankings in the long run.
Cutts Clears Up Misconceptions About Panda and Penguin
Are they penalties? Algorithm changes?
Cutts talks about the difference between signals and penalties, a word Google rarely uses.
Here is the exchange:
Danny: What’s the deal with Penguin. Is it a penalty?
Matt: We look at it as something designed to tackle low-quality content. It started out with Panda, and then we noticed that there was still a lot of spam and Penguin was designed to tackle that. It’s an algorithmic change, but when we use a word like “penalty,” we’re talking about a manual action taken by the web spam team — it wasn’t that.
We don’t think of it as a penalty. We think of it as, “We have over 200 signals, and this is one of the signals.”
Danny: So from now, does “penalty” mean it’s a human thing?
Matt: That’s pretty much how we look at it. In fact, we don’t use the word “penalty” much, we refer to things as a “manual action.” Part of the reason why we do that breakdown is, how transparent can we be? We do monthly updates where we talk about changes, and in the past year, we’ve been more transparent about times when we take manual action. We send out alerts via Google Webmaster Tools.
What is Your Experience?
Many of you have commented that Google downgraded your site and you are disgruntled and unhappy because of it. And others including SEO consultants/companies mentioned that their sites have not suffered at all. Some sites have even received a boost. Do you fall into one of these categories?
If so, we would love to hear from you. How have you handled your downgraded site rankings? Why do you think your site/sites have escaped the latest updates?
29 Comments on "Google’s Matt Cutts Admits SEO Will Only Get Harder"
Im Almost done with google… Naw just kidding… I have been taking a very conservative approach with my link building
It was an uprade if you have original content in your site, and if you didnt use the same anchor text on all your backlinks. Downgrade only 1 of my projects,and thats because i did not work on that projetc about 1 year.
My site is still out of the search thanks to penguin and i stiil don’t know what to do.
I don’t have any bought links but anyway i have to clean up all the links that point to my site.
That tool “disavow-this-link tool” would be really helpful i think.
I have all my sites ranking well now after all those updates from google recently. The reason might be linking strategy because the sites do not target just one keyword they are backlinked with variety of anchor texts. Some related to the site and some generic terms, when it comes to content they are all handcrafted with care so I just believe that is why these sites were not affected.
MEH. google is not the only source of traffic, and people have lost sight of that, putting all their eggs in googles basket. No one is going to tell me how my site has to be built, and what sources of traffic i can use, paid or free, just to stay in their indexes. If you have the budget, paid traffic will get you farther and faster along than waiting for the indexing and ranking process in the search engines.
I have not seen a change in rankings, but I am not doing much link building untill things become a little clearer.
I write for companies and my work is always original. I think these updates are great for writers that maintain the integrity of their craft. It might take longer, but the idea is to generate great content that actually adds value to the lives of others. I hate doing research and finding incoherent garbage online. Now I have written over 10,000 articles over the past year or so and none of those have ever been rejected. Simply provide top notch quality with great added value and you should be fine.
I never did seo and stuff like that. My site has hardly any sites linking to it (probably none!), but I link to many as they are relevant to my post. That is probably why I have always had a low page rank. However, my site has excellent content. I think google should reward sites like mine. Content is what finally matters. There has been no change in my rankings of late though.
Both of my sites dropped to a 4 from a 5 and I really don’t know what I should do differently. I have no idea who links to me or with what anchor text. Hmm, maybe I should try to figure that out?
Yep, I’m also just staying away form any link building, exceppt internal of course. I wonder if I’ll get boxed for selling myself links? Humm…
Can’t wait to see “disavow-this-link tool” so we can move past this. But then again, it’ll just be something else we’ll have to worry about.
All part of the game.
um, does Google know the difference between paid links and valid advertising? How can it tell?
I have not done any SEO in about a year and my site has finally reached the first page of google for the keywords that I wanted to rank well.
I think I may have to check for bad links in WT and start doing something about the bad ones. I dropped ranks from a 1 to a 0 on my page and I`ve been wondering why. I never thought that would make such a difference..
I wasn’t really affected with Pinguin on my sites but Panda took away about 70% of my Adsense income and 50% of my traffic. I did create few social pages that send me some traffic (especially StumbleUpon) but, they don’t click. The annoying with Pinguin is that now, I got people asking me to remove their links and the funny things is that it’s from my web directories. Who asked them in the first place to write the same description in all the web directories they’ve been? If they had wrote an original piece of text first, it would have been better, right?
People should use Axis or Bing and it will solve all our problems.
At the end of the day one thing will still remain the same, that Google’s hunger for quality content. So if have quality content and that people are liking that then obviously google will notice it.
Negative SEO is real! Instead of providing just “disavow tool”, Google should notice that their algorithmic changes have seriously given Negative SEO practices bigger chances. If penalty is a human action, then Google should target those who do negative SEO with penalties.
It is not a problem if SEO is harder, it is and will always be. The problem we face now is Google SEO is confusing, more and more confusing than before…
I’ve never bought links for any client even when requested I do so – Google always said they didn’t approve so why would I, and now those who did are whingeing – well that’s just tough!
My site was on the web for over 10 years. Never ever bought one link and was pretty well known. Panda killed us and blew away over 60% of our traffic. A spammy competitor with loads of ads and no value content and crap navigation and everything else Matt Cutts said to do actually rose in traffic above our site for six months. The only thing that helped us recover some traffic was buying some link building. Creating dozens more quality articles did nothing for our SE rankings.
Then along came Penguin. Smashed us for another 25% traffic loss. All of our links were good. Spoke to search engine experts. They said our site is really nice, well built, quality articles, excellent domain but Google just screwed us and we are stuck in a downward spiral unless we buy backlinks from professional content farms which are run by many SEO companies.
Matt Cutts can say what he wants but it’s all marketing. Fact is that Google does many things for “user convenience” that kills legitimate sites and will push traffic towards those paying big money for backlinks from “high PR” sites. 100% automation will not work no matter how hard Google tries to pretend like it’s possible.
I have had a very positive experience so far, however it probably has nothing to do with penguin. I launched my website about three months ago, and have no experience whatsoever with SEO strategies, web design, or most of the things a “webmaster” should know. However what I do know is that in the past couple weeks I actually started seeing some search engine traffic hitting my site. Granted it’s not much, but it seems to be pretty steady, so if penguin had something to do with it then I’m a fan. If thebtraffic is due to something I did on my own then it doesn’t matter to me either way, the game is new to me anyway.
I have tried very hard to let things happen naturally & I only add content to any of my clients’ sites that I’ve edited & that I consider quality content. I use what I guess would be considered white hat linking strategies across the board! And I stay away from anything marginal!! My clients’ sites all came away unscathed…thus far. But I am very protective, some would say overly so. It’s just not worth trying to game the system for a short term gain.
If Google really wanted to stop paid links and get rid of most of the crappy link spam on the Internet, they’d remove backlinks as one of the “over 200 signals” from their algorithm
Sadly, it seems as though their search algorithm is too dependent on this one signal.
Dan
Hi Jenna,
Thanks for great article and usable for my own needs.
However, I thinking to contribute an article and fill the form at “Become an Author” page, it’s force me to enter phone number. I just fill it as the my actual phone number (I am Indonesian) and looks the form doesn’t allow me caused my phone number.
Any thought?
Thank you,
Saputra
Thank Jenna – I lost ranking on only one site, thankfully. And, that site had some garbage backlinks that I did not set up. Sigh. Since it was mine, and one I wasn’t using at the moment, I’m trying to figure out if I want to go through the effort of cleaning that one up. No note in Webmaster tools, just disappeared off the face of the earth – or rather Google
Yes it is so hard, years of hard work gone in just minutes. All traffic dropped just like my blog.
SEO has *ALWAYS* ‘got harder’, that’s the whole bloody point
It makes it hard for us non profit charities that I trying to attract traffic and gain support for our community activities.
My Clients website was badly hit by this update. The ranking is suddenly dropped and the visitors too.
seriously hard! link building effort is now getting harder… you can’t just easily put a link or two with specific keywords on your guest post and will immediately see an increase. it’s not that easy now. even article marketing is now nothing….
Years of hard work gone in just minutes. All traffic dropped just like my blog.
+1