excellent-seo-article-from-jlh-marketing-microsoft-google

Below is a very good article that I suggest you read.

Now how many people on Influenster (moms and teens with fashion and makeup blogs, mostly) do you think have any idea WTF “nofollow” even is?  Hardly any of them.  Because they don’t know. Because it’s not an Internet thing, or a wordpress thing, or a blogger thing. It’s a Google thing. Google, with the same infinite wisdom (said with heavy sarcasm) that keeps messing up my Android apps, is dictating how we use the Internet, or trying to anyway.  Situations like the one today with SocialChorus show that they are losing this battle.

The CEO of Social Chorus, Gregory Shove, said in an interview with Marketing Land:
“The bottom line is that we were not really focused or aware of this stuff until now.”

So a legitimate company, focused on their business, not caring about how they’re perceived by Google (which incidentally is exactly what Google says they want), didn’t know anything about “this stuff.” Exactly.

According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, “Another useful test is to ask, does this help my users?"  Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?

Well no, Google, I wouldn’t use nofollow if you didn’t exist.
Because it’s Marketing 101.  Make cool stuff, get people to write about it and share it.

how-to-tell-if-google-penalized-your-website-taken-out-of-google-index

How does a webmaster know if Google has penalized their website?  Nowadays Google has many different types of penalties.

So I want to start out with the most serious penalty and explain how you can detect this level of penalty.  Then over time I will explain different types of penalties, and if it is really a penalty or not.   Sometimes it could be another site stealing your content and Google indexing (put into Google results) the stolen content and not properly indexing the original content owner.

So let's use some real world examples to explain how this works.

1. MyBlogGuest.com was penalized by Google several months ago.  They are still penalized, and how do I know this for certain?
Because if you do a Google search for myblogguest.com they do not show up in the Google search results at all.  Also if you check the Google cache you see this:

MyBlogGuest.com shows a PR4, however it is not as it is taken completely out of Google.
Google will also send a message about the penalty to this site Google Webmaster Tools.
So if the site is not in the Google cache and not in the Google index then it has no PageRank no matter what the little green bar shows, it used to have PageRank before Google penalized it.
The reason you want to perform both tests is that sometimes Google does not show the site in the Google cache, when it really is.  So if it is not showing in the Google cache and the site is showing in the Google search results when you do a search like xyz.com then the site is safe and okay.

moz-link-echoes-link-ghosts-NOT-correct

The Moz Blog whiteboard video about link echoes and link ghosts is 100% different and completely opposite to any test results I have ever seen. When I say "not correct" I mean different to any test results I have ever seen.
I like Rand and he is super intelligent however I think he is totally wrong about this.
I even asked Rand Fishkin to be a star in my video with one of the creators of the Internet, Dr. Kleinrock.  Please watch the video.

I have worked on about 30+ cases this year where a website was #1 and good backlinks were removed and I have done extensive testing on this topic.  In fact I have created a database of great backlinks that Google likes and I have made a site #1, then taken the links away and pointed them to a different site and the first site drops like a rock and the new site with the good backlinks went to #1.  This only took 6 weeks to happen.

Of course I only do this for testing purposes and we follow all Google guidelines.

100% of the time when great backlinks are removed within 2-8 weeks the rankings drop like a rock.

E.g. #1 goes to #35 because they lost the good backlinks.

All I can say is I have not seen one single case of Link ghosts ever, and I have done hundreds of tests on this topic. It is very odd to me because I am certain Rand Fishkin is one of the top 10 best SEO experts in the world.  So it seems really weird to me that my test results are completely opposite to Rand's test results. The only explanation I can think of (it is a long shot) is somehow Rand's tests leaked and Google found out about them.
It is a known fact and Google has confirmed they like to play ranking games and confuse SEO's if they can. The more a SEO expert criticizes Google the more unfair mystery penalizes you may receive.

Yelp is Useless and their Review Filters Stink

Update 9-10-14

Yelp still has the same serious problems and defects I mentioned below, the part that is really frustrating is how arrogant Yelp is.  Even if you send them proof that they can not tell a fake review from a real review they will still not fix any of their defects.  Yelp remains a useless website, and their review filters are worse today than they were a year ago. Please click on the following link to see another example of how terrible Yelp is.

Manpower Movers San Diego

Please look at some real HTP Company Reviews, that Yelp does not show at all.

http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/sparks-steakhouse-sues-yelp-to-identify-internet-troll/

http://valleywag.gawker.com/lawsuit-says-yelp-made-millions-forcing-businesses-to-p-1617941464