There’s a case study on Moz on how to get your site back following a link penalty. An SEO working on a clients site describes what happened when their client got hit with a link penalty. Even though the link penalty didn't appear to be their fault, it still took months to get their rankings back.
Some sites aren't that lucky. Some sites don’t get their rankings back at all.
Bing recently stated testing listing 'alternatives' near their local search results.
I wasn't able to replicate these in other search verticals like flight search, or on an iPhone search, but the format of these alternatives looks similar to the format proposed in Google's ongoing monopolistic abuse case in Europe:
Guest blogging was once considered a widely recommended white hat technique.
Today our monopoly-led marketplace arbitrarily decided this is no longer so.
Stick a fork in it. Torch it. Etc.
If the current war on SEOs by Google wasn’t bad enough if you own the site you work on, then it is doubly so for the SEO working for a client. When the SEO doesn’t have sufficient control over the strategy and technology, it can be difficult to get and maintain rankings.
Facebook. A mobile phone. Email. How often do you check them? Many of us have developed habits around these services.
The triggers that help create these habits can be baked in to the design of websites. The obvious benefit of doing so is that if you create habits in your users, then you’re less reliant on new search visitors for traffic.
How To Build Habit Forming Products
You’ve got to feel a little sorry for anyone new to the search marketing field.
On one side, they’ve got to deal with the cryptic black box that is Google. Often inconsistent, always vague, and can be unfair in their dealings with webmasters. On the other side, webmasters must operate in competitive landscapes that often favour incumbent sites, especially if those incumbents are household names.
Matt Cutts is just toying with SEO’s these days.
Going by some comments, many SEOs still miss the big picture. Google is not in the business of enabling SEOs. So he may as well have a little fun - Matt has “called it” on guest posting.
Fear Sells
Few SEOs took notice when Matt Cutts mentioned on TWIG that "breaking their spirits" was essential to stopping spammers. But that single piece of information add layers of insights around things like:
Yahoo! is currently rolling out secured search, which prevents sending referrers to unsecured sites. The roll out is ongoing, but currently they do pass data to secured sites. Unlike Google's secured search roll out:
It's hard to deny that some folks working at Google are geniuses. It's also hard to deny the disconnect in their messaging.
