I don’t post of Tuesdays but these days, a lot of things has really been standing on my way. I was supposed to publish this post Yesterday being Monday as usual but, my Internet connection said no so, i had publish it today. Please bare with me. Thanks
For many years, SEO has been one great and very effective means of getting targeted visitors to any well optimized site and, it has greatly favoured and is still favouring a lot of people today. When it comes to anything concerning SEO, there are very few people I like listening to because, they’ve proven themselves many times.
Whenever I come across a post from Neil Petal talking about SEO, I always pay attention to it because, he is very good at it and, he has lots of good results to show for it. There are also many people out there that know a lot about SEO but, with all the noise out there today, it’s always good to be mindful of the people you takes your SEO tips from.
Now, I’m sure you know who Glen is but in case you don’t, he is the owner of the popular blog ”ViperChill.com”. His blog happen to be one of the blogs I always visit when I started blogging and till this very moment, I still visits Viperchill because, there are lots of great stuffs to learn from Glen :).
Glen is also the owner of the widely used email marketing plugin “Optin Skin” which happens to be one of the best lists building plugin out there with many awesome features.
He is also one man I love listening to when it comes to SEO and, one post he wrote few days ago really caught my attention and, I decided to share it with you because, I’m very sure you will also like to know the truth or, won’t you? :). OK, let’s get to it.
Is Google Really Taking Freshness Too Far?
This is really amazing indeed. The main scope of his post is to let you know that Google is now favouring fresh sites more than the more authority sites out there. The image below by Glen explained it more…..
How can a new site with spammy links everywhere be outranking authority sites that have lots of natural links here and there? Isn’t that funny? This is really making it very hard to still believe that there is a thing like Black and White Hat SEO. Now, take a look at the following images that I got from the post, I’m sure that will tell you more.
NOTE: All the images below were gotten from viperchill.com
1. Performing a search on Google for WordPress SEO brought the following results…..
Now, as you can see from the picture above which is showing the first 5 results of that search term on Google, all the sites there are from the same person which is very abnormal. How can one site occupy the first 5 results in Google not minding that the keyword in question is a very popular one? Also, notice that the circled dates are all fresh. My question then is….. Where have all those authority sites that have written top notch articles on that term before gone to? Taken it further, let’s look at the second picture.
2. Performing another search for How to make a website which is also a very popular keyword of which many bigger sites have written one of a kind posts on before….
As you can see also, the sites here are also very new and both of them are owned by the same person…… Are you seeing it? Digging further more……
3. Check out this blog post that was also fetched from Google and its comments….
And its comments…
As you can see from the 2 images, the comments are from the post above it and there are some things you need to notice here. The post shows that it was published on 23rd July 2013 while the comments are dated 10th and 11th July 2012 respectively now, what will you call that? Look at what Glen said about it….
Honestly, i was speechless after reading this post and, one thing i will advise you to do right now is to head over to Glen’s blog and read it if you haven’t because it will really open your eyes to see what is really happening on the SEO world and how to go about it. The post also has a follow-up. Read the two of them below…
1. Revealed: The New SEO (When Google Takes Freshness Too Far)
2. The Great Google Storm of Our Time
My friend John Gibb also left a very amazing comment on the post and, I’m sure you will read it and also live yours. It’s better we all know what is working at any point in time so that we won’t be taken by surprise any time.
Finally, I will like to know your own view of this, let’s take the discussion further via the comment section and please, it will be good to tweet and share this post with your friends so they can also know the truth :).
John Gibb says
hi Theo
Thank you for mentioning me in the post!
I believe Google is somehow testing their algorithm or letting people to test it on their own, so that they know how to better protect the SERPs from spammers next time… however, for each new change, there’s a hack, isn’t it?
I don’t think Google will reach a stage where spammers won’t be able to profit from it… some spammers know how to create / outsource content better than most site owners/users, so maybe Google doesn’t want all their pages to be created by newbies…. what G publicly says is that they don’t want user to create links that manipulates the search engines… that’s interesting…
But isn’t what everybody does?
Isn’t why everybody writes lengthy posts and viral bait — to get more traffic?
We live in a world of selling and manipulation… no matter what, isn’t it?
Theodore Nwangene says
That’s exactly what they all do John,
I don’t think Google can in any way weave out all the spammers man, they will still be tricking Google in one way or the other. Lets all see what we can also get from it :). Thanks for coming.
Harleena Singh says
Hi Theodore,
Ah…I see your post finally, but that’s absolutely alright because like you, even I am not able to keep my post days sometimes, due to other committments that need my attention too, but I do make sure I post twice a week 🙂
I have noticed the date of the post as being different from the dates of the comments, just as you mentioned in a few other blogs, but they do add a little (updated) box near the date, which means the post has been updated or weaved according to the latest SEO rules perhaps, so the old post is made new in a way. I’ve yet to do that on any of my blog as I really don’t believe too much in it, but it’s something people do.
Thanks for sharing these other links that I’d surely check out. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Theodore Nwangene says
Thats really interesting Leena,
I guess there are still many things we don’t know about in blogging and, we really have to figure those out :), don’t you think so? This is the first time I’m hearing of these things and it bears my imagination. Lets keep learning mate :).
Thanks for coming,
Chadrack says
Hi Theodore,
Google’s freshness updates is something that Google actually introduced at the height of the Panda update though many people did not take much notice of it. Though some people are already gaming it with plugins that re-post articles after some days, I think Google’s idea of coming up with the freshness updates is a good one. We are quite aware that information is changing at a fast rate these days. Where an article of some 5 years ago will still out rank an article written a few weeks ago with new and updated content, that is not really a good idea.
One the search results showing pages from the same person, I actually experienced this a few weeks ago while checking my stats and discovered that yahoo.com has showed 3 of my pages for a particular search. I thought this was abnormal since I know that Google sometime ago changed their algorithm to prevent this. But when I took that same search phrase and entered it into Google.com it also returned the 3 posts! Since then I knew that something may be wrong with Google algorithms or like Glen said in his comments, Google may be testing something.
On the whole, I support Google’s freshness update but for those gaming that, Google may just need to work on looking at the content and not the date.
Thanks for sharing.
Theodore Nwangene says
Thanks for your candid opinion Chadrack,
I’m surprised that i never heard of the Google’s freshness update until now and its a very interesting one man, Lets see how can benefit from it then. Thanks
Asaolu olubayode says
Hi Theo,
i love the way you write and thanks for this wonderful information. You are the best.
Theodore Nwangene says
I’m flattered Asaolu,
Thanks for the compliment though, glad you like the post. You’re also the best :).
Reginald says
Hey mate,
Glenn is always like that! Haha, he loves doing something ‘epic’ and that is great.
I noticed that too since I saw new blogs having … better ranking than my 3 months old article. Haha
Thanks for sharing mate.
Reginald
Theodore Nwangene says
You welcome Reginald,
Its really a very strange thing but, the only option now is for us to play it that way too :), isn’t it? Thanks a lot for stopping over at my blog mate and, have a pleasant week.