Webmaster: I've Tested Negative SEO Through Links & It Works

Last week we reported that most webmasters are claiming negative SEO is easier now than ever. If you look at the conversation there, you will see it is somewhat of a hot topic.
That being said, since then, one webmaster decided not to just say it works but also said how he implemented the technique. Sadly, it was not too difficult, according to this webmaster.
The steps?
 The first month, contract a couple $5 guest blog posts [make sure the posts are in broken English of course], then go back to what you were doing.
Second month, try a few more [4-8] $5 [broken English] guest blog posts and add some forum link drops to the mix. Go back to what you normally do -- Nothing will happen.

Google To Warn Searchers When A Mobile URL Redirects To The Homepage

Don’t annoy mobile searchers. That’s the message behind a new warning that Google is showing in mobile search results on smartphones.
On the Webmaster Central blog, Google alerted webmasters late yesterday that it will let smartphone searchers know if it thinks a website has a “faulty redirect” in place that sends the searcher to your home page, not the page they clicked on.

We’d like to spare users the frustration of landing on irrelevant pages and help webmasters fix the faulty redirects. Starting today in our English search results in the US, whenever we detect that smartphone users are redirected to a homepage instead of the page they asked for, we may note it below the result. If you still wish to proceed to the page, you can click “Try anyway.”

The Head Of Matt Cutts Tells Us The Body Is Important Too

In a magical video where Google's head of search spam, had his body removed all to make a point that the body of a page's content is really important.

Yes, Matt actually removed his body, in a way to show just how important the body is.
The head alone, while important also, is not enough, you need a good and fit body to go along with your good and fit head.
In short, title tags, meta descriptions, and the rest of what you put in your header on your web pages are important. But so is the body content and you need to make sure both are high quality, unique and useful.

Google Penalizing HARO Links? Not Really.

Bill Hartzer wrote that Google has targeted HARO, Help A Reporter, links in the latest manual action of unnatural links.

HARO links? Really? Would Google do that?

Well, not exactly. The links were because of HARO but the links that caused the penalty were not on helpareporter.com.

 Bill told me it was due to an interview received through HARO, which was then syndicated on other sites.
The other sites were called out as bad and unnatural links.

Google: Nothing Is Changing With Google+

Google's Moritz Tolxdorff, the Google+ Community Manager said on Google+ in response to the rumors of Google+ being cut down, saying that is not true. He said:

Yes, no one is moving anywhere. Everything will stay as it is.

You can Moritz's response in this Google+ thread on April 25th.
Chris Lang asked the question that got the response from the Google+ community manager.
Forum discussion at Google+.

62% Say Attacking Google's Matt Cutts Is Wrong

I am happy to say that the majority of our industry thinks that attacking Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, as wrong. I ran a poll asking Should SEOs/Webmasters Attack Google's Matt Cutts? This was an anonymous poll, so I expected the response to be much more negative but only 34% said they think it is appropriate to attack Matt Cutts. 62% said it is not appropriate and 4% said they do not know. To learn more about this topic, see our post from couple weeks ago. We had almost 500 responses to this poll, but... Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results. Forum discussion continued at Cre8asite Forums.

SEO TIPS

Businesses are growing more aware of the need to understand and implement at least the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). But if you read a variety of blogs and websites, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of uncertainty over what makes up “the basics.” Without access to high-level consulting and without a lot of experience knowing what SEO resources can be trusted, there’s also a lot of misinformation about SEO strategies and tactics.
1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.