What’s the best way to boost sales of your bullshit WordPress theme?

Well…Step 1 might be to create an affiliate program that essentially bribes a bunch of talentless bloggers and SEO wannabes to over-hype your theme’s poorly-implemented features.

For Step 2…perhaps you could start blogging about SEO and WordPress–despite the fact that you know virtually nothing about those topics?

Apparently, this is the business and marketing strategy of DIYThemes, LLC–aka, the company that sells the Thesis WordPress theme.

I Can’t Not Call Out DIYThemes’ Bullshit

For me personally, I was suckered into buying Thesis by Step 1, and I have no desire to read the bullshit SEO tips being published on the Thesis blog. No problem…I can just ignore that blog entirely.

Except that I can’t ignore it. For 2 reasons:

1. Thesis doesn’t meet the criteria for inclusion in the WordPress.org theme repository, and it doesn’t implement any PHP code that allows independent themes to be notified of updates, so the only way I can find out about new version releases is to check their blog for announcements.
2. Thesis 1.8.2 is/was supposed to be a bug fix that makes one of its admin panel menus compatible with WordPress 3.2, but curiously…it also added a widget (i.e., a WP meta box) to the top of my WordPress Dashboard that displays the 5 most recent posts from the Thesis blog!?

From the announcement on the Thesis blog:

If you’ve already upgraded to WordPress 3.2, you may have noticed that Thesis’ awesome category page SEO controls were not showing up.

To fix this, we’ve released Thesis 1.8.2, and we also added one new feature: a dashboard news widget with links to the latest posts from the Thesis blog.

With a title like Thesis 1.8.2 Brings You Full Compatibility with WordPress 3.2, you might expect to find…gee, I don’t know…custom post types or customizable background images or something. But no, “full compatibility” in this case means one of the Thesis admin menus was unfucked…and DIYThemes.com is now feeding bullshit SEO information directly into your admin interface.

But whatever…surely this unsolicited junk will hardly be noticeable–it’ll probably be buried under a million more-important Dashboard widgets…right?

Let’s try enabling Thesis 1.8.2 on a test site and see what happens…

WTF?

Oh wait…I left WP_DEBUG set to true in my wp-config.php file. I forgot that Thesis generates massive amounts of PHP warnings and WordPress errors. Heh…my bad. Let me just set this to false and let’s try this again…

There we go. In case you can’t tell, this image is a full-length screenshot of the WordPress Dashboard–i.e., the administration panel you see when you first log into WordPress. I’ve highlighted the Thesis “news widget” in red, to give you an idea of just how inconspicuous it is.

I mean honestly…I spent one hundred and sixty-fucking-four dollars on the Thesis “Developer’s Option” and in return, every time I log into WordPress, the ass clowns at DIYThemes hit me in the face with a bullshit pie.

Just How Shitty is the Thesis News Widget in Version 1.8.2?

Here’s some additional fun facts about this widget o’ bullshit:

• This widget is hard-coded to display 5 posts. (That’s a lot of bullshit.)
• No configuration options
• No convenient action hook to remove
• Hard-coded as a high-priority meta box–meaning it’s no accident that this unsightly bullshit factory is at the top of the Dashboard; DIYThemes made a conscious decision to promote its blog above everything else. If for some reason you actually want an RSS half-stack of bullshit displayed in your WP admin area, but not at the top of the screen, then edit line 122 of /lib/admin/admin.php and change the last argument from ‘high’ to ‘low’ (i.e., change the priority).
• The widget uses a new PHP class, named thesis_dashboard_rss, which is instantiated (called) by the function thesis_admin_setup() in the file /lib/admin/admin.php. The class itself is defined at the bottom of admin.php. To disable this server-resource-wasting piece of shit, delete the class definition code (lines 110-142) and the line that instantiates it (line 12: new thesis_dashboard_rss). Worried about hacking core files? Don’t worry, Thesis is on its deathbed anyway.

Not All Dashboard Widgets Are Jerks

For an example of a Dashboard RSS feed that doesn’t suck, see the WordPress SEO plugin from Joost de Valk. After this plugin is enabled, a Dashboard widget appears, containing links to the 3 most recent posts from Yoast.com’s RSS feed. What sets it apart from the Thesis implementation (other than the $164 price difference) is the big X button that permanently disables it with a single click. Plus, I like the fact that it doesn’t shove its way to the front of the line, claiming to be some kind of A-list widget celebrity or something.

If anyone is interested, here’s the official documentation on WordPress Dashboard Widgets.

Examples of SEO Bullshit in the Thesis WordPress Theme

In terms of search engine optimization–or even web design in general–Thesis is undeniably flawed in several ways. Here are a few examples of why Thesis’s “airtight SEO” claims are actually bullshit.

• Internal links point to non-canonical URLs.
  • Go to any post on Matt Cutts’s blog and view the Home link in the top menu. It points to http://www.mattcutts.com/blog which then redirects to http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/. Even the Thesis blog itself has this problem.
  • Go to http://www.krispykreme.co.uk/ and view the top-level links in the top menu. The parent links point to the canonical URLs, but the first child link in the drop-down menus point to the non-canonical URLs. In other words, the nav menu contains links to both /doughnuts/our-varieties/ and /doughnuts/our-varieties.
• Comment Permalinks (e.g., /category/post.html#comment-1234) are nofollowed.
  • For example, this post by Danny Sullivan contains at least 100 self-referencing links that have the nofollow attribute added for no apparent reason. If the rel=”nofollow” attribute means “I don’t vouch for this URL,” then what does it mean when you point to your own blog post with 100 individual nofollowed links? Also, note how the Next Comments link is a normal (i.e., followed) link, despite the fact that it links to a duplicate of the entire post (only the comments are different).
• Post Authors’ links in comments are nofollowed.
• Next/Previous links point to unrelated content (i.e., posts that are related chronologically but do not share the same category).
• Sidebars arbitrarily use h3 tags to mark up headings.
• Comments arbitrarily use definition list markup (e.g., dl, dt, dd tags).
• Cross-linked posts generate nofollowed internal links as trackbacks.

Examples of SEO Bullshit Published On the Thesis Blog

• Literally every SEO-related post I’ve read from the Thesis blog contains significant quantities of bullshit. The following examples are intentionally not linked. I’m not trying to inconvenience you, dear reader, I’m simply abiding by my own policy: don’t link to shit. If you want to see the bullshit for yourself, try a Google search for something like [DIYThemes "WordPress SEO for Everybody"].
• From the “Advanced SEO” post, titled How to Interlink Your Articles the Right Way:
  • Links higher in the HTML pass more search juice
    • First of all…WTF is search juice?
    • Second of all…the supporting content under that heading ended with this brain-fart conclusion: So, when interlinking pages that are important, make sure you keep it as close to the fold as possible.
• Speaking of brain farts, read this article. (I’ve saved the entire thing as an image, to show the comment I left at the bottom. My comment was deleted from the moderation queue, so the live version of this article doesn’t show it.) Does anything in that post come even remotely close to completing a valid thought?

Conclusion

DIYThemes doesn’t know jack shit about SEO…but that won’t stop them from force-feeding its customers a bunch of bullshit. Save yourself the trouble, save yourself the money, don’t buy Thesis.

Well shit, what can I say? Sometimes we even have to call ‘bullshit‘ on our friends for the greater good. When we see misconceptions and odd statements that causes more confusion, something must be said. Case and point;

New PageRank Formula May Change Your SEO Priorities

I have a lot of friends over at Search Engine Journal from the owners to the editors and even many of the authors. Shit, I even write there myself. But this post just has to be beaten to death lest we further dilute our often struggling industry. I take no joy in it, thought it over a few times… it has to be done.

Getting Geeky Wid It

First things first; if you’re going to talk about SEO, learn about search engines.

Secondly, if you’re talking about PageRank (aka PR)… you’re talking link graph. If you’re talking about the stupid fucking tool bar, please refer to it as TBPR…. ok? If you believe PageRank has little value, then stop building links. If you’re talking about that little green shit-for-brains, dumbassed, totally misunderstood little bar, then say ToolBar Page Rank. Confused? Read this.

Here’s a goddamned info-graphic

If you do that, you won’t ever make confusing goddamned statements like THIS:

“The vast majority of website owners seem to be obsessed with PageRank. It was one of the heaviest ranking factors in the original Google algorithm, and the fame persists. I must admit that I also find it hard to ignore the single most visible feedback figure presented by Google.”

After that? Stop reading patent posts as the fucking gospel.. they’re not SEO Magic Bullets. For starters, you might want to actually look at the filing date on the patent you reference (2004 for those playing along at home). That really does put a gaping fucking hole in the ‘New‘ that is referenced in the title of the post. Not ALL link related patents from Google are about PageRank. This one sure isn’t.

Next up… gee, I dunno maybe do a little research on that particular patent and it’s coverage to date? Maybe a little ol post called; The reasonable surfer; makes for unreasonable thinkers – I won’t get into the specifics again, but let’s just say it doesn’t end well (spoiler alert!).

Just the Meat Hold the Potatoes

Now Mr. Danylchuk, sorry, but much of your post just chaffes my ass to no end. Let us play shall we?

“Previously, each link on a page passed the same amount of authority to the target page. Now, every link is weighted according to how likely a “reasonable surfer” would be to click on that link.”

NOW? Really? Maybe the terms ‘may be’ ‘could be’ would be better served here no? Please though, do go on…

“To pass PageRank, the link now has to achieve the same thing as to get the click: stand out prominently from the rest of the page, and be relevant. ”

Great, please do send over the data to proves this. Not only are there dozens of link scoring methods (patents) that may also be in play, there is a lack of understanding to implicit feedback signals (that’s what behavioural stuff generally falls under).

You then go mumbling on about why your blog didn’t get any TBPR and how you’d unlocked the secret as to why. We won’t get back into the whole TBPR crap, but sweet fucking Oracle of all that’s holy, it’s complete bullshit. Next thing I know we’ll be blaming the mythical sandbox… WTF does any of this have to do with a patent from 2004?

It doesn’t… so we must stop trying to sound like an expert in areas we’re actually not. But enough of that, I promised myself not too go too hard on ya…

Editorial Integrity in SEO Media

And so my warriors, we must ask; WTF is Dave on about? We (knowledgeable) SEOs don’t pay attention to such tripe?

Agreed, that is true. There are a million brain dead fuck nuts useless posts on SEO published around the web each and every day. That never gets me too upset. It is when some of the more highly regarded publications in our industry are involved that I start twitching like a rabbit’s nose.

I happen to be the Asshole in Chief over at my own offering. Is everything there fact? Probably not. Is everything there useful to everyone? Probably not. But, would I publish pure misleading posts that are further muddying the perceptions of the facts of what a search engine is? Not. A. Fucking.Chance.

Now, at least Ann did step in a make a case for them running the piece;

“Arguing about new / not new in SEO is as old as SEO itself. We’ve seen it enough at Sphinn… Now, we are editorial blog but we let readers decide what they like. And readers obviously like this article. ”

Which might seem sensible at first glance… but it’s not that simple. Just because a lot of the wandering pandering noobs and sheeple voted for something doesn’t make it right. I truly care about the SEO industry and have spent YEARs fighting for us to become more educated and stop misinformation.

We’ve been here before right Ann? Remember the LSI post last year?

I personally believe that we do have a responsibility to encourage a greater sense of understanding of search engines and dispel the crap when we see it. (thus I decided to pen this). I take no joy in writing this post and it’s obviously not in my best interest (given my relations with the Blue Glass/SEJ crew). But it sometimes just has to be done. (I’ve also railed against Search Engine Land and SE Watch in the past. I am an equal oportunity asshole ok?).

Quotable Quips

And now, before we go, let’s look at some of the early comments…

This was about Google changing the PageRank calculations? Fuck me. This is exactly the problem my friends. THIS is the message the reader got from it. This post proves nothing of the sort.

Writing for eyeballs or writing to educate? Your motives and measures are out of whack. Huzzah to Barry!

WTF dude, you must still be hanging on fool’s forums. Once more, those ‘changes’ are 7 fucking years old. How exactly does some friends anecdotal evidence prove ANYTHING of what is being claimed here? It doesn’t.

Thanks for the reference? Thanks for the fucking Reference? So SEJ is publishing people that don’t know something as mandatory as to how the TBPR is calculated and updated? Seriously? Muthrfuckr.

You get the idea… there are more since then that firther show the damage this post has done. There are a bunch of numb-nuts talking about the ‘new algo change’, confusing PR with TBPR and more.. It’s a fucking shame.

We MUST Become More Guarded if We’re to Grow

Anyway, I have it off my chest and am feeling better now. Thus we call this blog ‘SEO Group Therapy‘. It’s a place we can let loose and get things into the open that need to be said. As frustrated as I get, there is no real malice to Val nor my pals at SEJ. This is more about ALL OF US being more active in crafting the future of this industry.

Ignorance breeds ignorance and if we ever want to grow beyond being considered link whores and hype merchants we all need to step up. Even to the more experienced among us, these types of articles might just get a ‘meh‘… a shrug, and we move along. That is a disservice to the generation of SEOs to follow.

Keep on fighting the good fight.. I’m outties…Peace!

First up. Patience. As soon as something happens I like to know about it. So does everyone else. In a fast moving world knowledge and speed is key, that’s fine, update me, be the first to tell me or talk about it but please, don’t try and make yourself look smart by telling me what affect it will have on me, my business, my clients, my visitors, my potential visitors and the search results and all its variations after having performed only two damn searches in under 30 seconds and drawn some half arsed conclusion.

Which brings me to my next point.

Research in new developments.

If you really want to continue destroying your own and the industries reputation then please continue to rush into things. Stop bullshitting and sprouting crap and instead try stopping and thinking what the repercussions are to your own reputation and the industry as a whole.

While you may bang the drum and do it loudly it fades quickly and leaves a decidedly bad taste in the mouth with any and all comments, insight or assertions you may make in the future. Is it really worth it?

Second to this, you have influence, in some form or fashion, over one person or one million people. The numbers are irrelevant. Your professional responsibility requires that you give the best opinion, the most educated opinion and the most researched opinion possible instead of adding to the rumour-mongering and general bullshit that floats about on these occasions. Just getting your post out first wont matter, if its good info then it will rank where it needs to regardless.

WISE UP! Have self respect for yourself, your peers and most importantly to your own readers.

It gets really annoying reading all these opinion and subjective posts when a TRAVEL BLOG, a bloody TRAVEL BLOG, takes the time to produce research called Essential Travel on Google insights to understand and assess the effect of the new feature. Shame. A travel blog doing a better assessment than 99% of the SEO industry. Says a lot that.

and finally..

The Proclamations of SEO Doom

Why is it that every new development in search has the serious overtones of the apocalypse ringing in the background? Isnt anything good for search?  is it all that bad?

“Prepare to see your visitors disappear!” …”SEO is dead now!”… “you wont be able to adapt and survive this one!”….”Doom Doom DOOM!” just rings constantly, on every occasion with any new in search. Now see the previous parts of this rant.  Surely if you had some patience, taken the time to do some research and testing, then maybe you could give a more realistic and less prophetic post with some value and level headed discussion or, more importantly results, to consider. Not some whimsical, half arsed possible fact… even the Huffington Post has copped on to this and the comments are not something to be sneered at.

I haven’t mentioned any names in this post… probably because its quite obvious who I mean and anyway, they know who they are so there is no need…and I didn’t feel like linking to them anyway cause they definitely don’t deserve it. It’s just ironic that the least amount of bullshit is on a site called SEObullshit.

Peace.

The LSI myth is all grown up!

Here I go again… and seriously, I just can’t fucking help me’self. Ya know? I’ve spent many years defending the flame against those dumb ass people pretending to be SEOs. In particular, the ever popular ‘Dave Bait‘ that is Latent Semantic Indexing/Analysis. Yup, even recent pounded it here.

So you can imagine my emotions when news started to come outta the land of Moz about a LDA tool. At first some of the geekier instincts thought, this might be neat. That soon drifted back to fucking reality as the age old words of isolated anomalies took hold. Then of course if hit me like a link spammer on an abandoned blog;

Here we go again. Time for more snake oil and mass confusion!

Leaving the land behind

Now, I don’t want this to become a debate over LDA and what it means. Nor turn into Moz-illa just yet. We need the larger picture first. As with LSA before it, this will become an unholy comedy show for those reading the banter in the SEO space…

Loved these…

“I’m not even going to try to explain the intricacies of LDA suffice to say that it involves the long standing SEO theory of topic modelling which isn’t so much a theory but more common sense. Learn more about the flavour of the month over at SEO Moz ” – Hamlin.com

Uh… wow. Nice one dood. It’s a fucking bril’ idea that you didn’t get into the intricacies my good man. Because that ‘SEO theory‘ bit? It’s a computer science thingy actually. Oh but it isn’t a theory tho? So a ‘common sense’ thingy-ma-bob? Perfect. That just makes me all warm in my guts bro.

Oh and maybe this ‘Practical Summary‘ has some goodies? Awwww for fucks sakes!! Can I please get that 3 minutes of my life back? (U will pay Mikey!). I gotta love the advice…

1. Make sure you are using the rel=canonical tag.

…shit…

2. Make your web site about something.

…. fucking Thomas Edison lives

3. Stop feeding the social media machine all your stuff.

…OK, this is just getting weird.

Oh and please do go and read the thinking here. But don’t bother coming to me to get those precious moments of yer life back m’kay? Then there was some wonderous bullshit floated with sentences such as;

“You can’t get away with two sentence pages and minimally valuable content any more – you have to do the hard work of creating good stuff in order to leverage this algorithm effectively. T ”

So the algorithm likes ‘good stuff‘? And two sentence pages???? Did you miss the whole Demand Media / Mahalo fiasco? meh.

Then there was twitter, which I kept finding gems such as;

We can clearly start to see the evolution of ‘Google’ and ‘LSI’ in some unholy darker shade of SEO hell that it will soon become. Shit, shit shit… Tommy? Go fetch Daddy’s boomerang.

Now, I will leave these fine, if not somewhat misguided, folks alone. Because even that is not the point here. It has already started. And if this fire is allowed to burn out of control, we shall all be consumed by it. Staffers and contractors asking. Clients and department heads asking. Snake Oil SEOs out stealing $$$ under the ‘Google LDA’ banner. We simply must implore people to look at these things reasonably.

Back to the Moz

Ok, now, I will have to lay this back at their door ultimately. Why? Because this is the genesis of the new threat. If they like it or not. For the record I have already written about the whole ‘Google and LDA‘ thang, albeit from a somewhat different angle. But all along I tried to impart one simple concept (pun intended); let’s not sell it for what it isn’t. Also Rand, Ben et al, did seem to try and put that out there. But it isn’t helping.

Some comments on the post, such as these, needed to be answered, to stop the madness (which they weren’t) .. so allow me;

Whoah back there… ‘behind the Google curtain’. Please get up from your desk and go sit in the corner ok? That titanic shit? I have no clue what yer saying. Go to the corner.

LDA in detail? That like a 3 day SEO course? And a link to Bill’s work on named entities? Those are actually some relatively different elements there and strangely, one is ‘semantic’ analysis and the other… well… fucking named entities. And we can’t prove anything. Ok?

What the fuck? Is that English ol chap? Please don’t be all gushy like that. How do you know it is a goldmine until you try it? We are interested in having you tell us if it serves a purpose. Thanks.. I hope you successfully have that dictionary removed from yer …

Not a stretch to assume…LDA or some other semantic analysis? Uhm sure. It’s a search engine, that’s a safe bet. But once again, we’re not deconstructing Google no matter HOW many times we may have referenced them in the post. And that other stuff? Strange but it sure sounds a lot like phrase based IR, not LDA. We haven’t looked at that yet.

Thanks for that. And your welcome for that… and well.. What? Once more we have no idea why everyone keeps trying to imply this is about Google. I mean this page only scored like a 56% for those two terms.

You get the idea. I have never heard so much greek-geek speaking bullshit in all my life. I mean I am reading comments by people that sure sound goddamned smart, but when you read it a third time, it becomes apparent they don’t even ‘get’ what LDA does nor barely semantic analysis at all (synonyms being on of the common foibles). Please Rand/Ben, please do try to hit such comments and discourage the perceptions of Google gold and continue the education into CS/IR..

Help stop the madness

And so my friends, I leave it to you now. Tell peeps to read up on where LDA came from. Get them to learn more about the IR world. Won’t you just help stop the bleeding? Before it’s too late? If you see some LDA bullshit out there, please contact your local SEOBS reporter. Thank you.

I really don’t care who makes an LDA tool. Shit, you can go and grab the code for yourself if you wanted to. It is just super fucking important that people understand that we can’t really get a strong indication of what any search engine is doing with limited data sets as far as methodologies and scoring. It’s a fact, get over it. And if you’re a manic Mozer, please watch the person next to you and ensure they don’t drink too much of the kool aid. Be smart about it and hopefully we won’t all be cleaning up LDA Snake Oil and mass confusion in the years to come.

/As you were…

THE SEO CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL!

It all started out innocently enough. I posted a couple of job openings on the SEOmoz marketplace and indeed.com looking for a mid-level experienced SEO project manager to add to our team. All of the usual suspects responded. You know the ones. Ignored the “full time in-office opportunity only, no outsource operations or net-commuters” and sent me their broken English “Dear Sir/Madame I’m Habeeb and my team can get you to #1!” form (spam) letters. After I deleted those without reading passed the first sentence carefully filed those away for future reference, I stumbled upon a real gem.

Holding a MS from NYU and claiming vast experience in all areas of search, analytics and email marketing – he almost made it to the “to be interviewed” pile. That is of course until I got to the part of his resume that read:

SEO CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL

WTF? Since when did our industry elect a governing body sanctioned to pass out certifications?

I quickly fired off an email to him telling him that there was no industry recognized certification and that representing himself as holding one disqualified him from working for us (common sense is one of our prerequisites).

He replied in short order to tell me I was misinformed and that he did in-fact have such a certification obtained from seocertification.org. Oh goodie! Let’s take a look!

Before I’m even 10 seconds into the site I note that they didn’t even apply one of the most basic SEO fundamentals: Canonicalization

Observe:
http://seocertification.org
http://www.seocertification.org
http://www.seocertification.org/index.php
http://seocertification.org/index.php

Well hmm maybe in googles new search engine little details like this don’t matter anymore. I mean what do I know compared to these l33t SEO experts? I am, however, confused how they proclaim to be  “The pre-eminent source of information, education, and certification assessment for the constantly evolving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry worldwide” on same page as they list Alta-vista and Lycos logos as if those were still remotely relevant.

Those names ring a bell? Oh yeah, that’s right, they died about the same time as the first Playstation and dial-up Internet. But hey maybe I’m making a snap judgment. Best to look at the testimonials before walking away from an opportunity to “Benefit from Industry recognition, Enhanced job opportunities & increased customer satisfaction”. Let’s see…

“I wanted to keep you posted on the current ranking that my new site has received from MSN’s Search Engine. I’ve copied and pasted the results as of today. I’m delighted to say the least for receiving a position in the top 5 for the keyword ‘seo optimized’.”

OH SNAP! I want to know how to rank for useless keywords in search engines that no longer exist too!!! But how long does it take to learn such amazing skills?

“I actually found myself glued in front of my computer once I had registered and downloaded the Study Guide. I didn’t want to stop reading and practicing the test questions. All in all, I spent 3 days doing this and then felt I was ready to take the exam.”

Crap. I must be doing something wrong. Here I was under the impression it took years to hone your skills in this industry but apparently the geniuses at seocertification.org managed to compress all that information down into a digestible 3 day study guide.

LET’S CUT THE BULLSHIT:

Q: Is there a real SEO certification?

A: To make it short and sweet – No.

SEO is a constantly changing field, moving with the winds of the geeks at Google and other search engine behemoths. With each “feature” change and exploit and counter-exploit in the improvement to the search algo, what is a proven tactic today may be obsolete in a month. In such a dynamic field, any such “certification” at present will be rendered pretty useless in just a year’s time.

In addition, there is a sharp difference between being “industry-certified” and obtaining a “certificate of completion.” To sum up the difference, certification means being truly tested and approved as an expert by the industry’s recognized certifying body, such as the MD certification for physicians. A certificate,meanwhile, is just a fancy piece of paper which, depending on the situation, can interchangeably be used for either wiping your ass or impressing a potential employer who knows nothing about the position he/she is interviewing you for. Take your pick.

In the end, you don’t need a PhD (or certification) to know the difference. It all boils down to common sense. Would you pay for “SEO certification” from a site that’s not optimized, and lists engines you haven’t searched since Netscape Navigator?

I think not. But then again, I’m not certified. What do I know, right?

Jeez… if there’s one thing that bugs me more than anything, is when seemingly sane people from apparently respected outlets, don’t seem to understand the fundamentals. Who cares when some blog in some far flung nether regions of the SEO makes a pedantic proclamation? Not I… Heck, I don’t even get worked up when the latest round of ‘SEO sucks’ (‘is dead’ ‘is easy’ insert ignorant analysis here). Nope, that no longer irks me.

But those that should know better, the places where new search geeks and clients lurk for learning, I hold them to a higher standard. Case and point; there is a big difference between (Google’s) PageRank, (PR) and ToolBar PageRank, (TBPR).

Now, as with past rants, this is not meant with malice, just a love for the game. Dear Titus, care of Site Pro News, stop confusing people with articles such as this one, it’s clearly madness of the highest order

A lesson in the basics….

First off my wandering web warriors let us look at one of the more common misconceptions in SEO today. For me, well… it’s not something that needs saying, but apparently I’m fooling myself. Here’s a simple break-down;

PageRank – is the original flavour of link analysis at Google which deals with a random walk over the web graph. Since its original inception it’s been mutated with elements such as Personalized PageRank and more… but still, let us consider the core concept. We do not know the current state, but we do know it is still an important element of how Google ranks pages.

ToolBar PageRank – that is the little green bar that is a finite (non-floating point) number on a scale of 1-10 which is oft updated and when it is, can be as much as 4 month old (a snapshot not organic). Oh, and the TBPR has also been known to be manually corrected with no ill affects on rankings (aka PR).

They really are two different animals and need to be understood as such. All they really share is a name. Beyond that, there is such disconnect that we really shouldn’t be considering them synonymous and speaking of them in the same breath.

Some school yard examples

Let’s look at some of the specifics from that article (and believe me, this is not unique, the confusion is everywhere). This fine fellow was discussing Google’s move to take the TBPR numbers out of Webmaster Tools which is fine, if the distinction had been made. It had not.

And so we get statements such as;

“Regardless of what Google wants to happen, PageRank is still extremely important to anyone marketing on the web,”

“Obtaining a high PR7 or PR8 simply means more business and revenues… regardless of how Google is or is not using PageRank.”

“Total and full elimination of PageRank would be an honest start but it will still be an uphill, if not an unwinnable battle, for Google to fully eliminate link selling.”

Can you yet see the problem here? Actual PR, that stuff of link analysis lore, the mutated beast that still hums under the hood is alive and well. What Google was talking about was the fascination with TBPR, not PR. This is an important distinction unless we are saying that LINKS aren’t important anymore. Such lack of fundamental clarity makes ‘this thing or ours’ more confusing to others when it’s unnecessary.

And then we have;

“For years Google has been downplaying the important of PageRank and states it’s only one of about 200 ranking factors”

No, they’ve actually downplayed the importance of TBPR, (even if they said PageRank) you see actual PR calculations might contain a dozen or more factors all on their own. It is not ONE of them…it is many.

Followed by;

“I have even had many times when my PR drops but my actual SERPs rankings in Google goes up, mainly due to building related relevant backlinks.”

Erm, making my point here as the back links are creating greater PR and the PPR is likely playing into the anchor text scoring. The TBPR? Well, it’s a relatively minor metric.

“So PageRank counts little towards your keyword rankings but it can’t be totally dismissed.”

No no no… in your own words we’ve just established that PR (and by extension PPR) do actually play a role. It is the ever useless TBPR that can’t be used as a serious indicator.

PageRank is dead!! Long live..??

Now, I won’t harp on that particular article, but it does very clearly show what is a VERY common misconception and confusion in the SEO world. Some people will go as far as to write that PR is dead, Google will stop using PR, PageRank is meaningless and other related oddities. The problem of course is that people are still talking about TBPR and PR in the same breath when in truth their distant cousins that only see each other on the holidays.

The reason all of this worries me is that if you are an SEO and can’t readily discuss Google without differentiating PR and TBPR, then what exactly are you thinking? I should expect that any SEO worth much of anything already understands the concepts related to PR and how important they are (in their evolved form) to modern IR. There should be no confusion in the vast difference that is the TBPR.

You would think so… but no.

Ok Dave, who gives a shit?

Well screw you too ok? (dammit, talking to myself again, verbose even). I care because the more these types of fundamental misconceptions persist, the farther we drift from legitimacy (as an industry). This is often something I’ve noticed even more in the larger publications in the market. Often times the editorial integrity is skewed, or goes unchecked as the editors are just that, editors, not search experts.

Let me put it another way, I’m bloody writing about it ain’t I? This is a fundamental area of SEO and there really shouldn’t be any confusion nor misconception. There simply is no serious correlation with Google doing away with TBPR numbers from WMT and how they’re ranking pages… Furthermore there’s little consistency, nor real relevance of the TBPR and the real PR, the one that we can’t readily ascertain.

For the record, this particular little mind muddle is everywhere. Ol Titus just happened to come across my screen as the proverbial straw to this camel’s back side. People using the vernacular PR to actually reference the TBPR can be seen in some of the highest profile blogs and publications.

We really need some clarity on this one peeps… so puhleaaaaze… let’s start being more specific – m’kay? There really IS a significant difference.

Until we break out laughing.  Which is what happened last night when I found out that Google has a new search engine.  And while some Internet Marketers are in an uproar, apparently others are making millions!  Or at least that’s the opening salvo at one asshat site, GoogleCaffeine.com.  So I had to speak up.  Because this one is just so over the top that I nearly puked my breakfast out all over my desk…

No Link Juice For Dino

I’m not going to give a link to Dino Vedo, the mastermind behind that crap.  Just mentioning it was more than I’d normally prefer to do.  But Jesus Horatio Christ, you’ve got to see this bullshit for yourselves.  But before you go – be sure to put on your grease-monkey overalls.  That way, when you puke your guts out all over the place, at least your clothes will be protected…

Anyhow, for those of you too afraid that actually seeing the site will cause you to laugh so hard you’d rupture your spleen, just envision the typical endlessly scrolling one pager douchebag marketing pitch that offers naive, dumb, or otherwise mentally deficient people the opportunity to find fame, fortune, and, once they realized they’ve been sucker-punched into a load of craptastic bullshit, endless fits of frustration…

Except Dino boy takes it to a whole new level.

Taking It To A Whole New Level

Dino’s really gotten creative – where he takes real-world terminology and concepts, then twists them into a panty-knot of unreality that still “sounds” right.  At least to the hordes of Shoemoney-esque wanna-be’s in the world… :-)  And he does a stellar job of spinning the daisy-chained panty-knots, to the point where, I suppose, if you really do come from the Brad Fallon fanboy fold, you’ll just be dazzled by the level of bullshit…

Exhibit #1 – The Opening Shocker

Yeah- isn’t that frakkin special?  Ole Dino touts his offering by associating himself with CNN, Twitter, bing and Google.  Like he’s been featured in some bullshit frakkin television show or somethin…  Although I’m sure he’s not lying TOO MUCH given that he’s using Google’s brand in his frakkin domain name – and so far Google hasn’t slapped him for it. Just do a search for Google Caffeine and sure enough, he’s there in the SERPs.

(Hey Matt – ya may wanna slap this boy Dino at some point, ya know?  Because if you don’t, I will – and if I slap him, it’ll be so hard he won’t see stars, he’ll see frakkin water-buffalo’s that look like dancing girls in brown mud-soaked bikinis…)

Google’s New Search Engine?

So I guess the rest of us shlubs in the SEO business didn’t get the frakkin memo from Matt.  But apparently Caffeine wasn’t the change to the process of indexing we’d been led to believe (thus called their new search index), but they went and threw out the entire existing algorithm! OMG no wonder every one of my client’s sites plummeted into the basement!

Oh. Wait.  That didn’t happen.

No, not one single site saw a drop of any significance with Caffeine’s rollout.  I must be one of the lucky few, I guess…

Anyhow – I love how he uses the George W. Bush “you’re with us or against us” tactic there highlighted in yellow – don’t you?  Except instead of cowing people into thinking their either patriots or terrorists, he’s going for those half-a-brain hopefuls that he lures to the site to think – Hell – I’m either gonna be on the side of the whiners, or I’m gonna finally get my chance at makin millions! Yeehaw!

Exhibit #2 – The Classic Tangible Asset

And lookie here – Dino then shows his “mind-of-a-3rd-grader” readers the awesome book they’re gonna be offered later on down below the fold… though it’s just an e-book and it’s not so unheard of for e-book writers to make such a representation.

But just look at this sucker – “Master Google’s New Search Engine…”

“Rank Higher in Caffeine” – don’t you just love how these jackass marketers take real-world terms and play off them?  (Except Caffeine is the name given to a change that  was made to the index,  it’s not the frakkin name of the Google database…)

Of course, if you want to rank higher in Caffeine, it’s helpful to learn how to optimize your site for it, which will help to ensure that you don’t end up doing the Google Dance!

Okay, I apologize – after that last sentence, I had to go over into the corner of my office and sit on the floor so I wouldn’t go into an asthma-induced coma from laughing so hard!  Fortunately I’m back to my senses now…

Of course, such a stellar pillar of the Internet Asshat Offering world,  Dino Vedo himself, shows his face.  It’s nice to see he’s willing to let the world know who he is and what his before-I-am-Arrested-For-Internet-Marketing-Fraud mug shot looks like. :-)

Exhibit #3 – Chock Full Of Typical Bullshit

The rest of this too-good-to-be-true “sell ice to Eskimo” pitch is just chock full of motivators.

Don’t Waste Another Minute!

Warning! Results May Shock You!

Get a FREE Tip To Improve Your Ranking In Caffeine Right Now!

See What Our Customers are Saying…

Quality Over Content Is Key!

My guide purchase is entirely Risk-Free and is backed by 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!

$49.99 – “Launch Exclusive Offer

Everything you need to arm yourself to fight the Caffeine update is here, now it’s your turn. Get started today!

———————————————————————————————————–

Exhibit #4 – The Testimonials Circle Jerk

One of the more typical bullshit hype games Vedo plays is the crappy Testimonials circle jerk.  This is where Vedo solicits customer testimonials from his circle of jack-off buddies in the internet marketing scam business.  In this case, for example, we’ve got a testimonial from none other than the very Don Leadman himself.

Just do a Google search on Donny boy, and you’ll see where this is going.  The first result in the SERP for Donny comes from MoneyFanClub – “For the Online Money Makers” :-)  In this entry, Donny posts a forum entry that has the subject line of:

$7,500 in 30 Days with $47 investment. Real Business! Money Back Guarantee!

Of course, since Donny is just a n00b to the whole ripoff-your-high-school-jock-followers-who-are-dumber-than-a-bag-of-rocks crowd, he’s only got a “Junior Member” status on this site.

But let’s not go crying for Don Leadman just yet.

It turns out that Dino’s wanking partner Donny likes to call himself a “Lead Offline Marketeer”.  Whatever the frak that means…  He’s got a site called OfflineMarketingPro.com  – where he opens with:

“Near-Bankrupt Father-To-Be Discovers Untapped ’Real World’ Goldmine Of Easy Money With Nothing But A Laptop And A Hunch…”

And that site’s – ya, you guessed it – another scrolling land of fantasy opportunities…

Exhibit #5 – But Wait! There’s More!

Donny doesn’t rest on his laurels.  Nope.  See, back over here on Dino’s site, Donny’s testimonial shows that Donny has another site – YoungAffiliate.com :-) and let’s not forget or ignore his other domain BigBackLinkBomb.com!

Exhibit #6 Bringing The Jerk Full Circle

Just do a search for Dino Vedo and you’ll be SHOCKED to learn he, too has other fish frying…

DinoVedo.com for example.  Where he bills himself as

“A young entrepreneur turned millionaire”

And VedoMedia.com Where his tagline reads “Seo Experts, Marketing Gurus, and Super Affiliates…

Yeah, Seo, not SEO. 

In Conclusion

So let’s just skip right past the asshat “before you go are you sure you want to throw away your life” pop-up that opens when you leave the site.  Or the fact that even though Dino displays an Authorize.net secure checkout button, a BBB Online Reliability program button, an Authorize.net Verified Merchant button, and a “100% Secure Purchasing” button, none of these is clickable.  Because when you click on Dino’s “Order Now” button, you actually go to “TrialPay.com”, which is secured using Verisign, and has a McAfee Secure icon…

And that’s kinda like the Internet Porn payment system of douchebag Internet marketing…

Which means that if you’re one of the dumbest jackasses on earth, none of that matters.  Even though it’s Bullshit.

And The Feather In This cap

The icing on this particular bullshit cake?  When I came upon this particular dung-heap, I tweeted about it.

And to that, Dino Vedo himself responded

:-)

It began quite innocently really, just sitting around going about my day, when one of my fellow warriors came to me complaining they’d lost some rankings due to the infamous Google MayDay update. He wanted to know if I could poke around and give some insights on the situation. Innocent enough.

I grabbed the analytics and webmaster tool info and we immediately noticed there were some very strange data coming in. The site was getting traffic for some terms that had absolutely nothing to do with the site, not even the same language actually.

Huh. Methinks something is rotten in Denmark. Ok, so next we went to Google and searched for some of the terms via the site: command and sure enough, they were showing up. When you click through to the page there was nothing. Then we looked into the source… still nothing. Not to be deterred, that next stop was the Google Cache. Ah HA! Fuckers.

Will Hack for Links!

It turns out they had been using a method that only shows the hidden links to Google-bot and so when you viewed the page and source, there was no trace of it immediately. I decided then to cross the border and talk to one of my dark side aficionados. He looked at the code and said this was most certainly the case and took a shot at the fella for using ’2 year old methods’. Apparently there are ways to avoid being detected even from the Google cache (great..sigh).

While I generally can tolerate a lot of black hat techniques and have some cohorts that use them (one must learn ALL approaches to SEO) – I am not one that tolerates hacking to meet those ends. Dear hack hatter; do you want me to break into your house and shit all over the place? Because that’s what it is to me.

Serisouly. Some of these people have families to support and the few bobbles they make from their website might be the difference between stake and kraft dinner. Between a child’s birthday party and not getting anything at all. Do you really have the right to break in for your own selfish ends? How do you know you haven’t truly hurt someone in the process. THAT is total bullshit.

Words to the wise

Now, I talked to black hatters and Goolers alike to get a better picture on this. The dark side folks said that WP (which was the CMS in this case) is generally fairly secure, it is more often the plugins that they use to gain access.

From the other side of the fence, the Googler said it wasn’t all that surprising and highlighted another approach that can make finding them via Google cache even harder. And no, I am not going to say what that was as I ain’t giving no one ideas… nor warning the hackers what G looks for. But they do suggest using the webmaster tools ‘Fetch as Google-bot’ if you are concerned about hanky panky going on with your site.

Considering that I doubt these assholes do care or will ever stop, here’s a few proactive tips.

1. Set up alerts for various common spam grounds (think the 4 Ps – pills, porn, poker, and payday loans)
2. Watch your webmaster tools KW data
3. Check suspect pages in WMT ‘fetch as Google-bot
4. Keep your CMS up to date – limit the plugins

And if you’ve found some problems;

1. If it is a template hack, re-upload a clean version
2. Keep CMS up to date
3. Assess what plugins you are using
4. Add ‘Monitor Hacked Files‘ and set up cron
5. Once clean, file reconsideration request (esp. If lost traffic)

When you do file a reconsideration request, be sure to have the documentation of how you found the offending (hidden) links and what you have done to clean it up and (hopefully) avoid it in the future.

Stay on top of things

This does highlight the need to be watching the vital signs for your website. Always be checking both analytic data and webmaster tools for any anomalies. Even better, grab and install the Monitor Hacked Files program (thanks Donna) and set the cron to run a few times per day. We have successfully deployed it and actually been able to catch hacks before ol Google did. Very handy.

These crap hatters are a shitty bunch by the way. I was very concerned about posting this episode because the last time I outted a tactic, I was beset upon with hacks and a slew of non-stop comment spam that was just ridiculous. I won’t go into detail on what they did once in, but it was ugly and cost me a TON of time.

Ultimately, I felt that this time the desire to help others outweighed the potential risk. Wish me luck and be careful out there!

“Blackhat SEO Scam Hits Mop.com Gaming Site”

It’s sure sticks out huh? So, being the concerned netzian that I am I decided to go check it out.

“One of the world’s most popular online gaming sites is under siege from a creative malware scam that attempts to swindle players’ personal information and gaming credits”

Huh… so how the fuck is this SEO? Sure doesn’t sound like it. So we read on….seems they’re quoting another piece. So I went to check that out.

“Security pundits around the world have issued numerous warnings over the past year for Internet users on popular social networking and community sites to be on the lookout for socially engineered malware scams that attempt to capitalize on breaking news and pop culture events, as well as popular online gaming sites. ”

Ok hold the goddamned train a moment here. I still don’t get it? They are talking about hackers and putting us (wonderful and sweet) SEOs into the same fucking pile. What did we ever do to the security world? Are they of their rockers or what?

It sure seems they know a thing or two about SEO, however misguided, because they targeted a link in the post with ‘black hat SEO‘ which leads to this. A post about SQL injections? Listen up my bird shit writing brethren – HACKERS ARE NOT SEOs.

I mentioned this to some of me mates in the BH community and even they were offeneded (lol I had no idea they took pride in their work hehe). I don’t mind the trolls that trash SEO shenanigans as there are some black hatters that make a mess of the web, but to put them into the same boat as hackers? No fucking way. That’s illegal and entirely different. Are these shitheads ignorant? Or trying to capitalize on the spectre of those evil black hat SEOs? Not sure… but it is some serious crap.

Anyway, as you were… I just thought it was total BULLSHIT and had to get it outta’ my system.

Seems every time I write something one of the grammar cops stop by and tell me everything I did wrong. And they always explain how, while my sites look good, my unprofessional writing style has turned them off and they will never buy anything from me.

About the only thing I dislike more than the grammar police are the blackhat police.

I was posting on a forum the other day when someone brought up a link wheel and everyone immediately started in on how building lots of websites and linking those sites back to your own site is blackhat. I tried to explain how this was not the case and the thread was locked and my post removed.

These are SEO’s that feel that their job is to point out and explain what is and what isn’t black hat. To say that building more than one site and linking those sites together is blackhat is stupid to say the least.

Let’s take Ted for example.

Ted works for Bill and Bill owns a shoe website that sells all types of shoes. Ted is the salesperson over the Nike division. Ted is the person you would talk to if you had a question about Nike and were to call the number on the website.

Ted gets a lot of questions about different types of Nike shoes, but is limited to what he can add to the website, because the site is a shopping cart. And in order for Ted to add content to the site it has to be approved by his boss, his bosses’ boss and the marketing department, and then it has to be sent to the web design department. It can take months to have information added to the site.

So…Ted being a good hard working employee decides to start his own blog about Nike shoes. Here he can write answers to the common questions and point potential Nike shoe purchasers to the main shoe website. This saves Ted time and potential clients love it because the information is great and they can find the answers to questions that they would otherwise have had to call about.

The information is so good that people begin linking to the blog from other sites and both the main site and the blog begin to climb in the search engines. The blog is now driving tons of traffic back to the main shoe site. The Nike shoe division grows and begins out selling the other shoe divisions. The owner of the company starts hiring more employees in order to keep up.

Now the company starts getting calls from customers who want to complement them on the Nike blog, so they decide that each shoe division should have its own blog.

The site now has over 50 different blogs and the managers of the different departments are over each blog. Since it is the same company all the blogs link back to the main site, so people can buy the shoes but also link to one another as one shoe might be a better fit than another depending on the type of use.

One day Bill (the owner of the company) visits a SEO forum where he learns that building multiple sites is a blackhat technique. So he rushes to the office fires Ted (for bringing this blackhat technique into his business) and shuts down all the blogs.

As an immediate result sales start to drop and Bill has to start laying people off.

The sad truth is that what he was doing was not a blackhat technique. Had he or the SEO that was pointing out this blackhat technique used a little common sense, they would have seen that Google themselves use more than one website.

But instead of using common sense the blackhat police want to group it all together and call it the same. This is the same mentality that started the zero tolerance policy in schools and it’s the reason most SEO’s fail to rank their own sites, much less their clients.

Instead of trying to figure out how to market a product they are spending all their time on SEO forums pointing out what is and isn’t blackhat. And I was stupid enough to believe that was Google’s job.

A lot of blackhat techniques are whitehat techniques that work when used correctly, blackhats want to abuse the system, automate it, and believe that bulk abuse is the way to go. The truth of the matter is that blackhat techniques want stand up to whitehat techniques when they are run side by side.

Building 50 real blogs, with kickass content, will out deliver a blackhat who bulk builds 150 crap blogs with crap content. But most SEO’s don’t want to spend the time doing that, so they just call the whole thing blackhat.

Blackhat is nothing more than a copout for SEO’s that don’t want to spend the time to do it right.

And while we are talking about BlackHat let’s not forget that according to Google ethical SEO is an SEO that provides useful services for the website owners”, Google goes on to describe the range of what those useful services are: “from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted”.

Writing copy, giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories….I agree that these are a SMALL part of what search engine optimization is. But search engine optimization is about ranking and Google doesn’t even say anything about optimizing the copy to rank.

Sounds like Google has gotten web development and search engine optimization confused.

Google goes on to say, “there are a few unethical SEOs who have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results”. Sounds to me like any search engine optimizer that goes further than the sort of things that Google mentions, or actually optimizes a web page to rank, is unethical. Google clearly views any sort of optimizing to improve rankings as unethical.

Marketers are a ruthless bunch. And the methods each marketer uses are the same methods that separate folks that get excited when they make a sale, from those that are making a living online.

Online marketing is a full contact sport and if you want to be nothing more than a fan that points out what everyone else is doing wrong then you need to get your ass off the field.