It would be nice to jump in a time machine and just set the setting to ten years ago and just click the engage button and just go back to 2004. Really, it would.
It was so much easier to make money back then. All you needed to do was to put up a website, find the right keywords, spam the website using those keywords, and then build all sorts of junk links.
You can even rip off content from all over the Internet basically just copying and pasting web pages and putting it on your spam page. And then using software, you can create millions of these spam pages.
Interestingly enough, you would be a millionaire if you do that. Seriously.
That is precisely what many people were doing ten years ago. Unfortunately, the game has changed.
Starting with Google Panda, you can no longer do that.
Google Panda basically says that you have to produce original content. Not only does your website have to be composed of original materials, but it has to be laid out a certain way or else it would be treated like a spam website.
Many websites got destroyed, and a lot of millionaires lost their money because of Google Panda.
Thankfully, things started to recover and people started making money again and all of a sudden; Google rolled out Penguin.
This time, all those spammy links that you are building using crap websites and directories you can no longer do that.
And again, people lost a lot of money. Even today people are still trying to figure out how to bring the good times back.
Well, I’m sorry to break this to you but the old SEO of basically creating links by simply filling out a form and clicking the submit button or buying spam links software is pretty much over.
Penguin’s updates are making sure of that.
The first Penguin update was pretty dumb and just basically penalized people for linking to their websites in a very predictable way.
Well, Penguin has become quite more sophisticated and people are still complaining because all the old tricks are falling down one by one.
The old SEO tricks are not just going to cut it.
Kind of brings a tear to your eye because it used to be so easy to make money on the Internet. You don’t have to lie to somebody. You don’t have to put up a pornographic website or push casino websites or any kind of objectionable content.
You just need to know what you’re doing with keywords, and basically you can bank.
That’s how easy it was. Well, Google put an end to all that. The good news is that you can still dominate SEO.
The challenge is you have to do it the right way. You have to play within the rules.
What is wrong with old-school SEO?
To answer the question of that what was wrong with old-school SEO is we have to backtrack a little and focus what are search engines looking for.
You have to remember that there are hundreds of millions and billions of web pages out there. There’s just so much stuff out there. And Google is really trying to figure out which pages can I trust, which pages can I show to people using Google that I know would contain the information that they’re looking for.
It’s all about trust.
The problem is that the old way of determining trust, which is using backlinks no longer works because it’s easy to fake those backlinks. Like I explained above, you only need to buy certain pieces of software, and you basically got your fake looking trust. On paper, it looks like your website has all these quality backlinks and Google will reward you by showing your page.
The problem is your page is complete garbage because you faked the trust. So Google is always trying to figure out how to determine trust and the old-school SEO focus on low trust link building methods.
In other words, you just simply fill out a form, and a link will show up. Web 2.0 websites are great examples of these. Article directory sites are a great examples of this.
Many f those types of websites don’t even care about the content that you are putting up. They just spit out a backlink. They spit out a vote for you as far as Google was concerned. Obviously, these practices don’t really build much rust and are often used to promote garbage websites.
Google got smarter and now it’s focusing on editorial control.
The power of editorial control
The reasoning behind the editorial control is pretty straightforward.
If you are a blogger, and you really care about the quality of the content you publish on your site, you would exercise a high degree of editorial control. In other words, if I was some random person asking you, “Hey, can you publish my blog post? I promise to only publish at your site.”
It’s not enough that I guarantee you exclusivity. It’s not enough that I promise you originality. Look over my materials and you determine whether your viewer ship will actually appreciate the materials that I’m contributing.” If the answer is yes, then you publish my content and in exchange you link back to my website? Everybody wins.
There’s a high degree of editorial control here because you really care about the welfare of the people reading your blog. Sound good so far?
This is how Google is thinking. Google is basically judging links based on the amount of editorial control goes into a piece of content before it gets published.
Before all those links in that piece of content are followed by Google, Google must first determine whether the editorial control levels are high enough.
This is what makes the new-school SEO so challenging.
As you can probably already tell, the difference between old-school SEO and new-school SEO is like black and white.
The old way of building links is pretty straightforward. You go to certain websites; you fill out a form, and then a link shows up. In fact, things got streamlined so much that you can buy certain spam software, enter pieces of information into that spam software, and it will fill out the forms for you. Even when you step away from your computer, your computer is just cranking out all these links.
Well, Google destroyed that model. Now Google is saying basically that you should not build backlinks because filling out a form is building a link. Creating a page in a Web 2.0 site is building a link.
Building backlinks at least in Google’s mind from Google’s eyes from a practical perspective is unethical behavior.
Okay, I got it. What is the alternative?
The alternative is you earn links. Now this makes a lot of SEOs want to cry because anytime you talk about earning they basically hear the word “work,” and that is the main reason why many people got into SEO in the first place: because they don’t want to work. Do you see the problem here?
But that’s the reality. You have to work to gain trust. And how do you do that?
SEO outreach.
SEO outreach is all about gaining trust. Google knows that editors will not publish your content if they can’t tell you from Adam. Your content is simply not going to up on credible websites if people don’t trust you. You have to have credibility and trust.
This takes outreach. This takes sharing content with people, gaining their confidence, engaging them, and then eventually, pitching them on content ideas.
If they like the content, they then publish it on their website. Pretty straightforward, right?
The problem is there’re a lot of time and effort involved. Also, there’s no guarantee that these people would publish your content. You might have gotten their trust, but it turns out you’re a lousy writer.
What will happen? They’re not going to publish your content because few people can read it. That’s the bottom line.
And this is precisely what Google is rolling the dice on: high levels of editorial control.
This is the new SEO.
Outreach.
Here is a quick game plan for you to play the new SEO game.
The new content SEO outreach game plan
First, you need to build a solid content portfolio.
Your content portfolio must tell people, in no uncertain terms, that you know what you’re talking about. In fact, your content must be so good that people will be convinced that you are an absolute expert in your field.
You have to do that.
You have to create a body of content so that people will trust you.
Second, you reach out to people who have blogs which share that similar content. In other words, they have Twitter accounts or Facebook accounts, they’re constantly sharing high-quality content.
Get on the radar of these people. Reach out to them. Engage them. Talk to them, and then send them pieces of content that you found. This content might not necessarily be yours, but it communicates to them that you share their interest and more importantly you know what you’re doing.
Third, once you gain their confidence, and you basically know them on a deeper level online, you can then start pitching them on your contributed content ideas.
If you play your cards right, they would not resist you. If you play your cards right, they would at least be open to seeing your proposed article and reading it.
This doesn’t mean that they will automatically publish it. This doesn’t mean that they obligate themselves to you. What this does mean is that they have an open mind towards what you’re trying to do.
Compare this with what happened before. What happened before is basically just send out articles and people will just publish it automatically.
This is what Google is betting on. That there’s a high degree of editorial control. There’s a high degree of quality control and as a result, it’s easier to trust content that’s published because this content actually went through a fairly rigorous editorial process.
You have to play the game this way. You have to earn your links through your expertise and credibility.
Otherwise, you’re just going to fall flat on your face. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to use old SEO techniques.
Unfortunately, those techniques are basically producing less and less results.
It was so much easier to make money back then. All you needed to do was to put up a website, find the right keywords, spam the website using those keywords, and then build all sorts of junk links.
You can even rip off content from all over the Internet basically just copying and pasting web pages and putting it on your spam page. And then using software, you can create millions of these spam pages.
Interestingly enough, you would be a millionaire if you do that. Seriously.
That is precisely what many people were doing ten years ago. Unfortunately, the game has changed.
Starting with Google Panda, you can no longer do that.
Google Panda basically says that you have to produce original content. Not only does your website have to be composed of original materials, but it has to be laid out a certain way or else it would be treated like a spam website.
Many websites got destroyed, and a lot of millionaires lost their money because of Google Panda.
Thankfully, things started to recover and people started making money again and all of a sudden; Google rolled out Penguin.
This time, all those spammy links that you are building using crap websites and directories you can no longer do that.
And again, people lost a lot of money. Even today people are still trying to figure out how to bring the good times back.
Well, I’m sorry to break this to you but the old SEO of basically creating links by simply filling out a form and clicking the submit button or buying spam links software is pretty much over.
Penguin’s updates are making sure of that.
The first Penguin update was pretty dumb and just basically penalized people for linking to their websites in a very predictable way.
Well, Penguin has become quite more sophisticated and people are still complaining because all the old tricks are falling down one by one.
The old SEO tricks are not just going to cut it.
Kind of brings a tear to your eye because it used to be so easy to make money on the Internet. You don’t have to lie to somebody. You don’t have to put up a pornographic website or push casino websites or any kind of objectionable content.
You just need to know what you’re doing with keywords, and basically you can bank.
That’s how easy it was. Well, Google put an end to all that. The good news is that you can still dominate SEO.
The challenge is you have to do it the right way. You have to play within the rules.
What is wrong with old-school SEO?
To answer the question of that what was wrong with old-school SEO is we have to backtrack a little and focus what are search engines looking for.
You have to remember that there are hundreds of millions and billions of web pages out there. There’s just so much stuff out there. And Google is really trying to figure out which pages can I trust, which pages can I show to people using Google that I know would contain the information that they’re looking for.
It’s all about trust.
The problem is that the old way of determining trust, which is using backlinks no longer works because it’s easy to fake those backlinks. Like I explained above, you only need to buy certain pieces of software, and you basically got your fake looking trust. On paper, it looks like your website has all these quality backlinks and Google will reward you by showing your page.
The problem is your page is complete garbage because you faked the trust. So Google is always trying to figure out how to determine trust and the old-school SEO focus on low trust link building methods.
In other words, you just simply fill out a form, and a link will show up. Web 2.0 websites are great examples of these. Article directory sites are a great examples of this.
Many f those types of websites don’t even care about the content that you are putting up. They just spit out a backlink. They spit out a vote for you as far as Google was concerned. Obviously, these practices don’t really build much rust and are often used to promote garbage websites.
Google got smarter and now it’s focusing on editorial control.
The power of editorial control
The reasoning behind the editorial control is pretty straightforward.
If you are a blogger, and you really care about the quality of the content you publish on your site, you would exercise a high degree of editorial control. In other words, if I was some random person asking you, “Hey, can you publish my blog post? I promise to only publish at your site.”
It’s not enough that I guarantee you exclusivity. It’s not enough that I promise you originality. Look over my materials and you determine whether your viewer ship will actually appreciate the materials that I’m contributing.” If the answer is yes, then you publish my content and in exchange you link back to my website? Everybody wins.
There’s a high degree of editorial control here because you really care about the welfare of the people reading your blog. Sound good so far?
This is how Google is thinking. Google is basically judging links based on the amount of editorial control goes into a piece of content before it gets published.
Before all those links in that piece of content are followed by Google, Google must first determine whether the editorial control levels are high enough.
This is what makes the new-school SEO so challenging.
As you can probably already tell, the difference between old-school SEO and new-school SEO is like black and white.
The old way of building links is pretty straightforward. You go to certain websites; you fill out a form, and then a link shows up. In fact, things got streamlined so much that you can buy certain spam software, enter pieces of information into that spam software, and it will fill out the forms for you. Even when you step away from your computer, your computer is just cranking out all these links.
Well, Google destroyed that model. Now Google is saying basically that you should not build backlinks because filling out a form is building a link. Creating a page in a Web 2.0 site is building a link.
Building backlinks at least in Google’s mind from Google’s eyes from a practical perspective is unethical behavior.
Okay, I got it. What is the alternative?
The alternative is you earn links. Now this makes a lot of SEOs want to cry because anytime you talk about earning they basically hear the word “work,” and that is the main reason why many people got into SEO in the first place: because they don’t want to work. Do you see the problem here?
But that’s the reality. You have to work to gain trust. And how do you do that?
SEO outreach.
SEO outreach is all about gaining trust. Google knows that editors will not publish your content if they can’t tell you from Adam. Your content is simply not going to up on credible websites if people don’t trust you. You have to have credibility and trust.
This takes outreach. This takes sharing content with people, gaining their confidence, engaging them, and then eventually, pitching them on content ideas.
If they like the content, they then publish it on their website. Pretty straightforward, right?
The problem is there’re a lot of time and effort involved. Also, there’s no guarantee that these people would publish your content. You might have gotten their trust, but it turns out you’re a lousy writer.
What will happen? They’re not going to publish your content because few people can read it. That’s the bottom line.
And this is precisely what Google is rolling the dice on: high levels of editorial control.
This is the new SEO.
Outreach.
Here is a quick game plan for you to play the new SEO game.
The new content SEO outreach game plan
First, you need to build a solid content portfolio.
Your content portfolio must tell people, in no uncertain terms, that you know what you’re talking about. In fact, your content must be so good that people will be convinced that you are an absolute expert in your field.
You have to do that.
You have to create a body of content so that people will trust you.
Second, you reach out to people who have blogs which share that similar content. In other words, they have Twitter accounts or Facebook accounts, they’re constantly sharing high-quality content.
Get on the radar of these people. Reach out to them. Engage them. Talk to them, and then send them pieces of content that you found. This content might not necessarily be yours, but it communicates to them that you share their interest and more importantly you know what you’re doing.
Third, once you gain their confidence, and you basically know them on a deeper level online, you can then start pitching them on your contributed content ideas.
If you play your cards right, they would not resist you. If you play your cards right, they would at least be open to seeing your proposed article and reading it.
This doesn’t mean that they will automatically publish it. This doesn’t mean that they obligate themselves to you. What this does mean is that they have an open mind towards what you’re trying to do.
Compare this with what happened before. What happened before is basically just send out articles and people will just publish it automatically.
This is what Google is betting on. That there’s a high degree of editorial control. There’s a high degree of quality control and as a result, it’s easier to trust content that’s published because this content actually went through a fairly rigorous editorial process.
You have to play the game this way. You have to earn your links through your expertise and credibility.
Otherwise, you’re just going to fall flat on your face. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to use old SEO techniques.
Unfortunately, those techniques are basically producing less and less results.
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