RCS is built into everything we do now. This is the first we heard of RCS, via Wil Reynolds:
Most forums (including ours in the past) have questions like “where can I find a good PR5 link source?” This is a sign that you will NOT be successful in the long term. That’s not because Google has “killed” PageRank, it is that the game has changed. You have to be creative. You have to find ways outside of the box. The RCS mindset is the easiest way to get powerful contextual links.
If you take clients, the RCS mindset will also help you sell entire marketing services so you don’t rely strictly on Google. It also helps to “golden-handcuff” your clients. One idea of how you can expand beyond SEO is in the public relations space. A great book to read about manipulating the media is Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday. Holiday’s “trading up the chain” strategy is a perfect example of how to take one contextual link and turn it into 10.
Redefining
Think about the user. Ignore SEO. According to Google, this is a guaranteed way to succeed in the SERPs. We call bullshit. We’ve been building sites for users for years but that didn’t protect us from Penguin and Panda. What we’ve learned (and what will help you) is about building better (and user friendly) sites.
So, let’s redefine a couple things:
1. User: Useragent.
Google engineers have been famous saying: “Build sites for the human visitors.” The problem with that statement is the focus does not create a site for Google to properly “eat.” Instead, build sites for the useragents, specifically Googlebot with its OCD for collecting original content. Don’t let Googlebot crawl anything other than what you want it to find. Kill old themes, kill directory browsing, kill it all. Googlebot is a nosey detective and is looking for any reason to slam you. You should assume it can read anything in your FTP access.
Tip: If you don’t want the page to rank, don’t allow Google to index it. That is how simple this has become. You want LESS pages indexed in today’s market than years ago. How do you know if you want a page to rank? Simple. Is the page designed to make you money? If yes, let Google index it.
Clarification: If the page is the start of your sales funnel, you want it indexed.
2. Black Hat: Cloaking as a real fortune 500 company.
Our new slogan is “Redefining Black Hat.” We are going to show you how to mimic a real fortune 500 company in every single way possible, but move faster, more efficiently, and knowing how to sprinkle in some traditional spam to push you to the top.
Google says they don’t favor big brands, but they consistently rank well while the rest of us struggle to avoid penalties. A SEO director of a huge brand told us about some unethical things Google has done to help the brand he worked for rank before an update. The good news is everything is still algorithmic. Even though we have seen direct correlations in positive rankings by using AdWords, spend amounts, Google Affiliate Network, and direct contact with Google local, it is all still algorithmic. As long as an algorithm is involved, you can always manipulate it. Always.
More Perspective
We obtained complete proof that Google treats images as duplicate content and penalizes them as such. This is in complete contradiction with Matt Cutts’ (former Google Spam Czar) video claiming “to the best of his knowledge” that it wasn’t true. Cutts was also in contradiction with the Google engineer who focused on the image algorithm and actually discussed how duplicate images penalize a site. Then on a Hangout John Mueller (another Google engineer) advised against having duplicate PDF content on a site because of penalties… so why would images be any different?
News Flash: They are not different.
Back in 2012-2013 we had two occurrences that our testing put Google on the spot in a way that they had to directly answer our results. The first was the now-removed green line in Webmaster tools being an indicator for duplicate content penalties (where we found images as a HUGE factor).
The real question for marketers is, how far can this really go? If it’s images, text, videos, PDFs, XLSs, Docs, etc. today, then where will it be tomorrow? How can we survive?
The answer is a new mindset. Ask yourself Would a real company…?
1. Have the stock themes left behind?
No. It’s a security threat at least (think TinyThumb). It’s duplicate CSS as far as Google is concerned. Don’t be lazy and leave the stock theme laying around.
2. Use a purchased theme 500 others are using?
Not dissing Genesis specific child themes here, but rather how unique is the design? Is the CSS really unique? It’s not a huge factor yet, but it is certainly a bit of diversity we are aiming for.
3. Use stock images or have a designer customize an image to have a brand’s feel?
Again, we’re avoiding duplicate images. But why wouldn’t you make your main branded site feel better? Using stock images is one of the best ways to get your site buried by Google.
4. Use a CDN? CloudFlare?
Real sites with tons of traffic often have images and CSS on an external subdomain… Meaning the ranking domain is somewhat shielded from duplicate content issues.
5. Have an uncategorized category?
This looks at WordPress, but someone who has it together would have renamed this category. We ran a number of tests on the uncategorized articles and surprisingly, they all struggled to remain indexed or rank. We changed the category name and suddenly things were okay.
6. Use press releases to build authority or buy Text Link Ads?
We love PRWeb and TLA has been very good in the past (even still useful on a few campaigns today). But press releases announce news, give contextual links, and can be used to “trade up the chain” as Ryan Holiday’s book describes. Use them as they were intended to be used.
7. Write content for shock and awe, page views (virility) or for the sake of having new content?
Large sites used to rank better because they were considered an authority. Single page sites can easily rank today. But if you can build subpages that naturally get links, traffic, and sell a product, the better. Now, when we say “naturally get links”, we don’t mean write the content and let the links just come in. We refer to doing aggressive marketing in forums, Facebook groups, anywhere which conversations are taking place and referring back to your content when appropriate. The link that you post will probably do nothing, but those doing research or have sites that cover the topic, could link back to you as an authority on the subject. This is aggressive marketing that will build links “naturally.”
8. Claim their social media presence?
Yes. Spammers usually skip this step. While social doesn’t magically cause rankings yet, it might in the future. So be ready. The bottom line is, social media is where the conversation are taking place and you want to be in the middle of it.
9. Have sloppy coding?
Spammers use things like Artisteer to build websites. That means bloated code and a slow page load. Anything over 1.5 seconds is considered slow to Google. Don’t take short cuts. Build awesome stuff.
10. Copy-paste their privacy policy?
Avoid duplicate content penalties. Have these for legal reasons and for manual reviewers from Google and Facebook, but noindex them. Noindexing duplicate content is the fix for duplicates. It’s really that simple.
11. Copy-paste their terms of service?
The same as above, it needs to be noindexed because NO ONE makes money from their TOS.
12. Allow folder directories to be indexable?
We see people mess this up all the time. One line in .htaccess fixes it: Options -Indexes. Can you imagine a company like Coca Cola allowing you to browse the folder heirarchy of their server? Don’t be lazy and allow your competitor to freely go through your site structure.
13. Use subdomains to host content that isn’t under their direct control, like forums?
Subdomains are a great way to avoid duplicate penalties on user-generated content.
14. Use schema data to help Google?
Help Google organize data, and Google will help you rank. Real companies have programmers that add schema data to every product. Google loves that data, and pushes them to the top.
15. Create PDFs describing products and warranty information?
These are especially useful offsite, where they can provide contextual links back to the brand. Normal spammers wouldn’t spend the time of day creating a PDF for a link.
16. Have a phone number, schema citations, location pages, etc.?
Spammers struggle to fake anything like this and won’t waste time. Consider adding this to a brand site to help it pass the “smell test” as a real brand.
Get it yet? 1-16 is mostly on-page philosophy. Here are the offsite questions that might help you understand: would a real company…
17. Buy feeders or acquire smaller ‘companies’ to link to them as the new owner?
PostRank.com was a PR5 Google acquired. For a long time it was a simple sentence with a link saying they were acquired by Google.com. Now it’s a redirect. This is how Google builds links. Take note of how you can replicate this in your own market.
18. Have a presence on job sites?
A company can always be scouting for more talent. That means an opportunity for more links. Same goes with interns at colleges. Think about that and ask yourself why you would ever spend money on a wiki .edu link?
19. Have a presence on D&B type sites, conference sites, B2B outlets, local listings, etc.?
Or would you rather have fifty web 2.0s? Where would you spend your time and money?
20. Have a blog network or a “staff” who are passionate about their company and career?
Google engineers often like to link to the projects they work on at Google. So would you rather build a blog network, or would you rather buy expired name domains/pay people to talk about how much they love your company mission?
21. Create their own competition or try to get double listings on a single site?
Honestly both are possible, but if one brand is dominating a market, you need variations. Think of how Pepsi handles Mountain Dew. It’s not Pepsi.com/mountain-dew/.
22. Use targeted anchor text or a brand identity?
Building for the long term means brand identity, and a lot of variety. You can’t adjust the dial on permanent targeted anchor text.
23. Buy links or sponsor charities and local organizations? Spam .edu wikis or grant college scholarships, awards, etc.?
We love to buy links, but we are getting a lot smarter about it. If we can benefit the world while we help a site rank, we will never worry about being reported for spam.
24. Pay for posts or hire a press agent?
We love to pay for posts, but getting a juicy story through a contact on Huffington Post and ABC News gets other bloggers to talk, meaning more links than you could buy.
25. Build web 2.0s or build a corporate umbrella site, an investor relations site, etc.?
Look at the structure of how the “big boys” play online. Couponsinc.com is a PR6. It links to Coupons.com, the actual site they want to rank. There is a reason why they do this. It’s very similar to how BugMeNot.com (another PR6) links to RetailMeNot. And they’re owned by Google.
26. Buy fake traffic for clickstream data or actually get bursts in traffic from ad spends?
Clickstream data is a weak indicator that nobody should worry about right now. But some spammers are paying to buy fake traffic hits in Chrome to their website so it seems more powerful. Why wouldn’t they spend that money testing ads instead?
27. Buy guest posts or hire product reviewers from magazines who have their own audiences?
The reviewers for magazines, even digital magazines, have to do their own SEO to keep their traffic levels high. Most people selling guest posts don’t care about their actual SEO rankings. Coupons.com recently took on a massive review campaign and had massive rankings increases across thousands of markets.
28. Put the same video across multiple platforms or offer a prize for people posting replies to a video contest?
A no-brainer. Forget the mass video syndication software. It’s pointless.
29. Spam Pinterest or offer a prize for most unique image or caption contests?
The amount you would spend on Pinterest spam tools (which turned into nofollow links) would be much better offering some cheap prize or giveaway. Plus it would be pretty white-hat and pass the smell-test of a Google engineer.
30. Buy social media spam or social media influencers?
Remember, social media spam still isn’t working like so many gurus claim. But it can serve as a nice foot-in-the-door to real links and real connections. Buy relationships, not links.
Summary
If you start thinking in this direction, you will see how the algorithms favor big brands. Many are black hat, but they are on another level most of us haven’t reached yet. This is redefining black hat. This is the conversation SEO Revolution members need to be having:
“How do we look like a real company?”
“My competitor has 3 awesome links from TechCrunch, Kickstarter’s blog, and ABC News. How can I get listed there?”
“My competitor used a $5000 scholarship to get contextual links on 25 .edu college sites. 5 are PR3+. Is there an easier or cheaper way to get that kind of results?”
“How can we engineer a viral campaign that gets links every time?”
“The top 3 competitors have completely different link profiles. One is all driven by news stories. The other has a few industrial directories mixed with associations. The third is just spam. What’s the fastest way to beat all of them at their own game?”
If you get this mindset right, it will be nearly impossible to algorithmically detect you as a spammer. We tried to detect ourselves applying this mindset, and we honestly couldn’t find any differences between our network and large companies. We are just doing superior marketing.
This is RCS, real company shit; enterprise black hat. Since applying this mindset to our own campaigns, we are finding rankings much easier to get. We have lowered monthly costs (like renting links and networks) by 90% while improving rankings. We started to compete with normal affiliates in large markets as “affiliates” of a larger brand of a competing product, even though we control the entire sales funnel because we are the brand. It’s a layer of protection affiliates dream of and simply can’t compete with. Each site we build is something branding experts and other businesses want to buy. If a market goes sour it’s not a problem. We can sell a brand and still make profit. Compare that to the average black hat SEO.
Do not ever whine or complain to us about big brands dominating SERPs if you aren’t actively building your own!