80% of Web Site Owners are Wrong about SEO and Link Building

We receive thousands of phone calls and emails every year, about SEO and Link Building. Eighty percent or more of the people contacting us have terribly wrong ideas about what works and what is important for outstanding results in the major search engines. Below are details, samples, and history of people contacting us with their requirements. Hopefully, you will find useful SEO information that will help your company grow and increase your profits.

Many people phone our company saying, " I need low cost SEO, low quality backlinks, and tons of cheap links. "

I respond, "Why?".... They say, "I want to out rank my competitors."
They think it is a pure numbers game. All links are equal and you get more and you win.

They want fast outstanding results, they want to be #1 for competitive keyword phrases in 1-5 months.

I reply,  "You do not understand how search engine optimization works, you need to look at this as a long term investment that you will be making as long as you are in business.  Good ranking results take at least 6-12 months to achieve.  Highly competitive keywords may take several years of SEO work and high quality merit based link building.  Then you have to maintain all this work forever or you will lose the top rankings you worked so hard to achieve.  Please remember your competitors are also working hard on their SEO and want to outrank you."

More on Link Building
Someone with fewer backlinks , e.g. Site A has 300 high quality natural embedded text links from topic related authority sites can out rank Site B with 20,000 low quality text links. Google now gives thousands of web site owners penalties for these low quality backlinks.
Unfortunately Google also has penalized many websites unfairly. 
Your competitors can have your web site sabotaged via black hat SEO experts.

This includes all the webmasters that do article submission SPAM (duplicate content SPAM), excessive and only low quality link exchanges, these do not work because Google considers that all junk and SPAM. E.g. A PR0 site exchanging links with other PR0 sites, to Google this is just junk to junk SPAMMY stupid SEO methods.
Please watch this video by Matt Cutts of Google:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chuhSmwsL7s

Google turned Internet business owners on their heads in 2013, and really turned the screws on low quality SEO businesses, however they also increased the importance of sites that have higher editorial standards.
Also it is more important than ever to keep high quality long (many years) aged backlinks. If you lose our well-aged backlinks Google can really punish you and drop your rankings significantly and even worse you cannot replace these long aged backlinks, and you have to start all over again from the beginning.

I have a tendency to give clients/prospects/employees/family the keen truth.  I know and fully understand this about myself and I accept who I am.
So below is some more truth about SEO.

Search engine optimization is not something you can turn on and off without Google not liking it.

Google sees all these SEO improvements we have done for you and when they see this stopping and going away Google marks your site as a "Devious website" that Google should not trust (suspicious unnatural activities) , and may filter and penalize you.
Then website owners hire a new SEO Company and this makes it even worse.  E.g. Google sees: up, down, up, down ... all these changes, unnatural activities, and lack of stability is detected by Google.  This is not our fault, as we cannot continue doing work for you for free.  This is a bad consequence of not staying with SEO long term.  Web site owners should choose one SEO Company and stay with them for many years to achieve the best results.

We see this over and over again and we warn clients that they are harming themselves with Google perhaps long term if they do not have a long term commitment to SEO .

Once Google marks your web site as a "Devious website" it is very difficult to recover, some web site owners never recover from this mistake of thinking you can turn SEO on and off without any negative consequences.

I have many people who phone me 1-2 years after I talk with them and say:

"Tom I wish I would have listened and followed your advice, and since I did not follow your SEO advice I have had terrible results."

Based on my results I am one of the top SEO experts in the world. I am also modest (lol), my resume is below.

http://www.htpcompany.com/gototom_tom_forrest.htm

It is funny to me that people hire us as SEO experts and then do not follow our advice. I feel like saying to them, why did you hire our company if you already know more about Search Engine Optimization than we do?
I will not even respect any other SEO expert unless they can prove to me that they have achieved top rankings for many years for tough competitive keyword phrases.  I often tell people that claim they are SEO experts to show me proof of their outstanding results.  Most people have no proof of any top ranking results on Google.

One of the most important reasons I have had such outstanding long term success for our clients is that I am a long term thinker.  We follow all Google guidelines and have had the same merit based backlinks in place for our clients for over ten years.  Google loves this.

list-of-directory-submission-sites-that-google-likes

List of Directory Submission Sites.
List of Directories that Google Likes and that Follow Google Guidelines.

Over the last few years Google has cracked down on Web Directories that violate Google guidelines.

So I decided I should give people a list of Internet Directories that Google thinks are valid and that if you obtained a listing from it would help you with direct traffic generation and also as a "good" backlink as far as Google is concerned.

1.     http://vlib.org
2.     http://www.Clasione.com
3.     http://www.ipl.org
4.     http://www.JoeAnt.com
5.     http://www.seekon.info
6.     http://dir.yahoo.com
7.     http://www.AllBusinessNow.com
8.     http://www.aboutus.org
9.     http://www.dmoz.org
10.   http://botw.org
11.   http://www.SearchPure.org
12.   http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org
13.   http://MedicalHealthSites.com
14.   http://www.HealthFitnessNutrition.org
15.   http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
16.   http://www.pickNbuy.com

Please read this good article about how and why Directory Listings can be very helpful if done properly and by following all Google Guidlines stated below by Matt Cutts of Google.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/make-money-with-directory-links-even-in-2013/66125/

Comments from Matt Cutts of Google on what to consider when submitting to a Directory.

When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls?
If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory?
Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee?
For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url.
Matt Cutts, Google

The following is an example of "free services" you should stay away from if you do not want to be penalized by Google.  These low quality free directories are considered spam by Google.
http://freedirectory-list.blurpalicious.com/

* Interesting Yelp article to read.

SEO-Process-Overview

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process is an ongoing continuing process that we perform every day for our clients. It is possible to become very successful with top natural/organic SEO rankings, as most (68% to 90%) searchers skip the paid ads. This large range is highly keyword dependent, e.g. if someone is searching for "buy refrigerator" vs. "what is George Washington's birthday". People searching to buy a new refrigerator have a higher probability of clicking on a paid Google Ad, then someone searching for George Washington's birthday.
The other major benefit of natural or organic #1 rankings is you do not have to pay per click.  Google Adwords can run as high as $182+ per click for highly competitive keyword phrases.
It is very important to stay with SEO methodologies long term in order to achieve the desired results.  If you stop this process your web traffic and rankings will drop, and it may be difficult to recover previous top rankings.
Google is very complex and secret so no one can claim to be 100% accurate as to why Google makes the decisions it does.  However we do know that Google has many different types of penalties some of which are manual and some of which are automated via advanced software algorithms.
The quality of your backlinks and the longer your backlinks are aged, make up major factors in the Google software ranking algorithms.  Please remember if you lose important authoritative backlinks, then you must start the aging process over from the starting line.  Besides losing PageRank, this also brings suspicion from Google, and you do not want that to happen.  Google detects all these changes looking for unnatural suspicious activities.

I have been doing some new testing on Google.  The changes made to a web page are indexed and applied to Google search results days in advance of what Google shows when you use the "show Google cache command".  So the freshest indexed data is first applied to Google search results, then days later Google updates what they show as cached.  This makes sense as it is more important to Google to use the freshly indexed data then to report and update the data Google has stored about a web page.  For example the newest article I have written in this blog is showing up in the Google search results five days ago.  However when I look at the Google cache for this blog, it still does not show that Google even knows about the newest article.

The following are two good videos from Matt Cutts of Google that I suggest you watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGQRMkiIA2U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-UR7NETxrk

bing-search-results-better-than-google-market-share

Today in my opinion the quality of Bing's search results are better overall than Google search results.  In the past I never used Bing and now I am using it more often than Google.
The big change came in May of 2013 when Google started using its newest algorithms with very poor results.  Known top quality web sites were pushed down and lame, crappy and unreliable sites were put at the top of Google search results.  There are many cases where "landing pages" with the exact keyword match in the domain name and literally zero content are ranked #1 for some fairly important keyword phrases.  This is especially upsetting to webmasters as Google makes videos telling webmasters to focus on content and that website owners should not worry about search engine optimization.

Even after many people have complained Google has not fixed the quality of their search results yet.  Furthermore Google continues to treat webmasters poorly.
What do I mean?

1. Google continues to unfairly penalize good web sites; I have given proof and written several articles about this serious problem.  Google's staff can not even implement Google's own guidelines and rules properly.

2. Google continues to deny that any negative SEO even happens and that SEO sabotage is not possible, when I have personally seen many cases of this and there are many companies marketing these negative SEO services.
So no matter what bullshit claims and excuses Google comes up with, the bottom line is they have made several wrong strategic decisions and implemented a set of defective new algorithms, which have harmed their search results.

3.  Google has decided to squeeze all the money out of web Publishers that run Google Ads on their websites.  I talk with many hundreds of successful Internet publishers and I hear story after story of people that used to earn $11,000 per month from Google Adsense and now they earn $2,000 per month.  You ask how this is possible.
Well Google makes you sign an agreement that they will pay you by a secret formula, which Google will not reveal.  Yes as crazy as it sounds many people agree to this and whenever Google decides they can take as much money as they like and the Publisher is left with crumbs.

So why is Google not losing market share to Bing yet?

I think they will over time unless Google straightens out and starts treating Internet publishers better and quickly improves their current poor search results.

Currently Google still has 67% of search market share, and Bing has 29%, this includes Yahoo, since Bing provides all search results to Yahoo.
This is a good question to ask people to find out what level of knowledge they have about the search engine industry.
If a person does not know Bing provides all search results to Yahoo, then you know you are talking with someone that is ignorant of the search engine industry.

Frankly I wish better search engine companies would spring up and start giving Google even more competition.  I do not think Google is going to take any steps to fix the problems I mention above unless they start losing some market share.

In some ways it is sad to me, as I used to be very loyal to Google and now that Google treats me and all of its other clients/customers so poorly I am promoting and asking people to try Bing and other search engines.  I think the big problem for Google is many people are starting to see this in similar ways I am seeing it.
I think the part that bothers me the most is all the unfair penalties Google gives to web site owners.

* After I wrote this article I did a search on Google for "tom forrest htpcompany" and compared it to Bing's results.
Guess what Bing won, however how can Google screw up a basic targeted specific search like "tom forrest htpcompany"?
Google has had this example search correct for over eight years and now based on their new defect algorithms Google cannot even get this simple search right.  

Google Updates Their Link Building Policies Again

Google has updated their policies again and it is as confusing or more confusing then ever.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
At the bottom of this Google page, you can put your rating and comments.
I put: Google should just decide what links to count and not count and leave web site owners alone, and stop penalizing innocent web sites.

Google has the average website owner so confused they do not know what to do.  Google continues to penalize innocent web sites and implement their still vague and confusing rules unfairly.  I will say Google is trying, however the results are poor, it certainly does not make anyone who has received an unfair penalty from Google feel any better.
Furthermore when you see all the evil hackers and spammers running wild on the Internet you can not help thinking, why is Google not better at going after the bad guys and why does Google manually and unfairly penalize innocent web sites?

Google has never been willing to admit any mistakes, the best any website owner can hope for is that Google may fix their defects and mistakes over time.  One site www.ichatdev.com had an unfair penalty from Google for 2.5 years, and the website owner never changed a single thing and finally after 2.5 years Google just removed the penalty that should have never been there in the first place.
This is why I always recommend business owners have multiple web sites registered by private proxy and hosted on different servers located all over the world.
I know a guy that has a $50,000,000 per year business, most of it coming from online sales and Google unfairly penalized his main web site, and thankfully he had followed my advice and made a full recovery in less then one year.

Below are excepts from a good article that zdnet wrote.  The problem is after you read this article three times you will still be confused about what Google is trying to do now.

Excerpts from:
http://www.zdnet.com/did-google-just-kill-pr-agencies-7000019182/
However, under the new rules, Google could penalize a PR firm's client web site because it will view the links as an attempt to unnaturally promote the site! Only "natural" growth in the popularity of a web page is allowed.

Tom Foremski does not mention the huge problem Google has created called SEO Sabotage or Negative SEO, which I have seen several cases of and I have helped people write emails to Google explaining they have been a victim of SEO sabotage by one of their competitors.  Google just sticks their heads in the sand and pretends this does not happen, when it has been happening for years now. It is also possible to trick Google to penalize an innocent online business owner via complex duplicate content generating schemes. Google's current policies are just making this negative SEO a huge and rapidly growing problem.  Even when presented with overwhelming proof of SEO sabotage, Google will not acknowledge the problem even exists.
Please click on this link it explains the concept correctly:  http://www.negativeseo.biz

Today Google also put out a bunch of new videos and Matt Cutts seems like a gracious and very nice person, however not one word is mentioned in any of these new videos about Negative SEO or SEO Sabotage.  Google we have seen many cases of SEO sabotage, it does happen and happens often.  If Google makes a nice video and tells me the sky is not blue it is green, guess what Google it ruins your credibility.  Clearly Matt Cutts is a highly intelligent and talented person, who makes great videos, so how can he believe or pretend to believe SEO sabotage does not happen?
If this is what Google honestly believes they are amazingly naive and in denial of the true facts.
http://searchengineland.com/google-releases-six-videos-on-typical-manual-spam-actions-169226


I wanted to research what blackhat SEO forums are saying about Google's new Link Building Policies.  The question was asked:
Can Competitors use Negative SEO and Sabotage your rankings with Google?

Below is a screen shot with the correct answer to this question.

Why Website Owners Should be Very Angry at Google

 UPDATE: 9-26-13 - Google is unfairly targeting many UK websites for penalties.

Google has caused a huge problem by creating a big new industry called Negative SEO.
Most web site owners do not even know what is a good backlink that is helping them and what is a bad backlink that Google does not like.  This is made even worse by the fact that Google is not very good at deciding what is a natural link and what is an unnatural link.  Google will not even tell web site owners which backlinks they do not like, Google asks the web site owner to guess.  Hello Google ... your policy is ridiculous and making the situation worse.
Frankly, we see Google make many mistakes penalizing innocent web sites and letting terrible spam web sites go free and clear.  The USA war on drug smuggling is 50 times more effective then Google's lame war on spam unnatural backlinks.  lol

Now many webmasters are afraid to give out any links as they think Google will make a mistake and unfairly penalize them, or they are emailing other web site owners that gave them a merit based natural backlink that Google likes asking to have it removed.
This is very frustrating to the few people like me that really understand what is happening.  Most people are clueless and so confused by Google they do not know what to do.

I do not understand why web site owners are not so angry at Google that they are not trying to start some protest activities against Google.

I have talked and emailed with many web site owners who are victims of SEO Sabotage. Please understand that this can happen to anyone, all that has to occur is a competitor of yours hires a company like this:

http://www.negativeseo.biz

Furthermore Google is not doing anything to stop the evil spammers they should be going after, please click and read these links:

http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47171

http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/Google_PageRank_Hacked_by_Directory_Network.php


What to do if Google Penalizes your Website?
A SEO expert friend of mine sent me an interesting article about trying to recover from Google penalties today.
This article by Gary Viray proves how easy it is to sabotage a competitors rankings on Google, and Google is in total denial about this huge SEO Sabotage problem.

Note: I do not agree with some of the points this author makes, e.g. people should pay Directory owners if they want them to remove listings, etc.  The bigger issue is people that are ignorant of SEO that ask to have listings which are helping them with search engines removed, then these ignorant people are even more confused by Google's vague and confusing guidelines.

http://www.garyviray.com/google-penalty.html

This is the best Google penalty and recovery story I have read to date, and it is full of excellent information and useful links.

Below is what a positive penalty removal looks like from Google.  Meaning after you complete the massive amount of work that Google is requiring and submit one or more Reconsideration Requests.


Below is a message sent out by Google.  This means Google is taking the penalty off of your web site.