One or two years ago Randy Ray and I were looking at one of our blogs from the admin panel. I noticed there were a lot of unmoderated comments that the assigned editor had not reviewed (the blog had been inactive for a while). Before I could start scanning the page for legitimate comments Randy clicked on “EMPTY SPAM” and said, “Well, that problem is handled.”
I still laugh at my reaction. I was astounded, befuddled, and beside myself. “But–but, what if there was a legitimate comment in there?” I asked.
“I don’t have time to look for it,” Randy replied. “And, frankly, this long afterward, I doubt whoever left it even remembers it was there.”
This is just one of many examples of how people create the “voice” of their Websites. I would have fished for the good comment and published it, even a year after it was written. Randy is more pragmatic. Neither of us is right or wrong (maybe I’m a little more OCD about “good comments”). It’s just a matter of choice.
Every choice you make about what you include or exclude from your Website contributes to the “voice” of that Website. And Website voice can develop a sincere tone or an insincere tone. The perception of sincerity is subjective, just as the intention of sincerity is projective. That is, we might try to be sincere or we might give someone the benefit of the doubt and assume they are being sincere until they prove otherwise.
Sincerity is measurable and yet it is not discrete — it is not really something that physically exists. It’s an abstraction that arises from the expression of thought, from behavior, and from the interpretations of those expressions. This is the perpetual conundrum for search engineers: how do they determine if a Website is being sincere?
On the one hand, a search engineer could say, “Well, let’s look at what the Website has done to project its sincerity.” On the other hand, a search engineer could say, “Well, let’s look at how sincere other Websites perceive this one to be.”
But even though I say that Websites have a “voice” Websites do not, in fact, speak — not with internal, rational intelligence. A Website’s voice is only the echo of your own activity. You might inadvertently send the wrong signals simply because you don’t know any better; other people might inadvertently misinterpret those signals for the same reason.
When analyzing the relationships between Websites on the basis of their voices, we’re really analyzing the echoes of human voices. No Website acts of its own accord. They only do what someone tells them to do.
It’s this misinterpretation of the signals that causes so much consternation. When Google shares information about “bad” links, for example, most people (seem, in my limited perception) to act shocked and deny that they did anything wrong. Of course, lately there have been more shameful admissions of guilt, but mixed with that contrition are rueful objections to Google’s singling out of the occasional “bad link” that — to the otherwise contrite Webmasters — are “natural”, “editorially given” links. If that is the case, we outside observers must ask, then why does Google object to the links?
Of course, there is the possibility that the links are not as honest as the angry Webmasters insist. People often rationalize their behavior into acceptability simply because of their core values. That means they are NOT trying to be deliberately false and untrustworthy — it means they just don’t see the world the way some others may see it. And so, in Google’s universe, even though Google employees may make occasional mistakes, Google just does not see these links the same way as the angry Webmasters.
But let’s give Google the benefit of the doubt for purely rhetorical value. Let’s suppose that, despite all the honesty and integrity of the angry Webmaster, they really did ask for a link from a bad Website (not realizing that the site was being naughty according to Google’s rulebook). This probably happens more often than most people believe simply because the Web is so vast that virtually everybody knows somebody, and when you start up a new Website you might ask your brother for a link, not realizing that he pays for his cigarettes and beer with the money he earns from selling links on his site.
So, your link is editorially bestowed but unfortunately your brother’s Website has already been tagged as a bad Website. So when Google employees see that link they go, “Hm….What’s up with THAT, Batman?”
It’s just random bad luck. But there are some gray areas that might explain a larger percentage of these kinds of links.
Take, for example, a network of independently owned/operated Websites that use a “Sponsored Post” broker — a service that solicits the purchase of articles from “reputable” Websites. The Websites are reputable with people — they receive thousands of daily visitors, publish good news, and otherwise earn the public’s trust. But to help pay the bills these sites participate in the “Sponsored Post” program.
Sponsored posts are a legitimate and honest form of advertising — of reflective marketing. I, personally, have nothing against sponsored posts. Of course, the Federal Trade Commission published some rules about how to disclaim sponsored posts in 2009. One has to ask how well most bloggers know about these rules. Sure, there was a lot of publicity around the rules in 2009 but people have grown up and started blogging since then. It’s not like there is an Accredited School of Blogging offering certifications in local laws and government rules.
Blogging is essentially a personal activity and its regulation is enforced to no more than a fraction of a small degree compared to the enforcement of automobile driving, cell phone use, over-the-counter drug use, and even the care, maintenance, and disposal of bedding and mattresses. In other words, there are no “Blog Police” waiting to give you a ticket for violating the FTC guidelines.
All we have are the search engine Web spam teams — who are not quite vigilantes. They don’t go looking for bad guys to punish — they are more like private police, security guards patrolling their companies’ premises. You can spam all you want outside their boundaries and they won’t care. But when you bring your game onto their turf, they start to care.
It’s important to understand that without a constant education and vigilant oversight of blogging activity that the system of bloggers will revert to a pre-regulatory state of awareness. Self-regulation works in large systems but it largely ignores legislation (not entirely, though, as anyone who has considered the Red Light Dilemma* knows).
If you ask a Website for a link — ask politely, nicely, without providing incentive, offering a list of reasons for why your content is relevant, interesting, and useful to their readers — and that Website gives you the link, are you nonetheless culpable for asking for a link from a site that blatantly and egregiously sells sponsored posts?
Is it your responsibility to know that you’re driving across the railroad tracks into the wrong neighborhood? Is it your responsibility to make sure that the sites you seek links from have good records and reputations with the search engines?
This is an issue that SEO bloggers who all too often hand out bad advice like “check your competitors’ backlink profiles and follow their strategies” fail to bring up.
If you don’t know the other site is selling links, then are you responsible when you’re tagged for acquiring tainted links? You can still find at least one reference to “bad neighborhoods” in Google’s guidelines, although that reference is to LINKING OUT, not obtaining inbound links.
Nonetheless, the rule of thumb is “don’t be caught associating with ‘bad neighborhoods’ in the search indexes”. To fulfill that expectation you have to perform due diligence on a Website. Just because your competitors get links there isn’t good enough reason to seek links from the site. You have no idea of whether those links are helping or hurting your competitors (or simply being ignored).
You’re allowing the SEO Blogger GPS guide you across the linkscape and, frankly, your trust is badly misplaced. Most SEO bloggers don’t know what they are talking about, much less take responsibility for sharing their bad advice with the world. Your desire to obtain referral from a search engine creates an implicit contract with the search engine, by which you agree to uphold and comply with their guidelines and they agree to include you in their index, allowing their algorithms to decide whether to list your content prominently in response to user queries.
It’s a bit like gambling, in that the odds do not favor the individual Website; rather, the odds favor the system (which is not exactly the search engine company). And so you try to improve your odds of receiving traffic from the search engines, a practice they somewhat endorse but strive to regulate. If you pay no attention to their guidelines — if you’re unaware those guidelines exist — you’re still culpable for your part of the (implicit) bargain.
And so that morally and ethically makes you culpable, in my opinion, for obtaining links from the wrong Websites. Even if you hire an “expert” to obtain only “white hat links” for you, you’re taking a huge risk without offsetting the culpability. There is no set of industry standards that define which activities are “white hat” or acceptable; and search engine guidelines only tell you what NOT to do; they are not so clear on what TO do. Hence, “white hat SEO” usually becomes cancerous and evolves in guideline-violating practices simply because it scales for the purpose of influencing and modifying search results beyond what the algorithms would naturally, normally do without that intervention.
Compliant search engine optimization isn’t about towing the line. It’s about making sure all the technical requirements for fair inclusion in the index have been met. Everything beyond that is either marketing or manipulation (and there are times when it’s hard to tell the difference). You have no right to complain if you listened to bad SEO advice, studied your competitors’ backlinks, and went out and got links like those links. That’s YOUR choice, YOUR decision, YOUR fault.
You have the right to ask for links, to buy links, to acquire links in any non-invasive way possible. But the moment you enter into that implicit contract with the search engines you willfully, deliberately, and intentionally abridge that right as part of the exchange of value between you and the search engine. You just may not be knowledgeably doing so. Worse, you may not be knowledgeably violating the terms of the implicit contract when you obtain links from a site that you don’t know is violating the guidelines.
Now, you can dismiss me as being an apologist for Google (and Bing) but if you do so you miss the point entirely, for I am not defending their guidelines or even trying to explain or justify their interpretations of what is happening on the Web. What I am saying is that everyone who relies on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has to take responsibility for their choices. You choose to entire a complex world that operates by rules the common man is unaware of and simply does not grok.
It’s your responsibility to learn what the rules are and to bear the consequences of whatever happens next. We end up in bad link neighborhoods because of the choices we make, not because the universe works against us. Sure, 5 years ago that editorially-bestowed link came from an honest, compliant Website and now it’s on a link-selling network. But that link won’t hurt you unless you’re actively obtaining other links that — when taken together with the old “earned” link — all look very suspicious.
Plenty of people are earning large numbers of links that don’t paint suspicious pictures. In fact, most Websites avoid the “you misunderstand my links” nightmare. And that speaks volumes about the choices “Web marketers” often make.
*Red Light Dilemma — What is the Red Light Dilemma? It is that moral, ethical quandry that hits you when you are out driving late at night on a country road far from anywhere. You come to a traffic signal and the light is red. You can see in all directions for at least a mile. You know the light will change before anyone can reach it from another direction. So what do you do? Is it okay to drive through the red light or should you “do the right thing” and stop, wait for the light to change? It’s a classic Qui-gon Jinn “certain point of view” question with no universally accepted answer.
Read More about Search Engine Optimization
How Long Does It Take SEO To Work?
Outbound Links: Why Use Forward Links for SEO?
On-Page Optimization SEO Checklist
White Hat Link Earning Techniques
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